Show Cue System

Hi Mike,

While I think this has come up before (and I think I may have commented then) the requirement has come up again with us for a single instance of a cue player to be able to send to 8 possible stereo outputs rather than the four currently allowed. Now before anyone says "just run two subcues at the same time playing the same cue" - that is what we do, but it gets messy when one is trying to create extended sound moves around a set of 8 surround speakers, for example - a helicopter flying around a room.

I am in favour of using a 'mono fader' programming technique here - where one level slider (assigned to sound card output pair 1) is permanently panned left, the next one (assigned to the same output pair) is panned right, thus giving you separate fader control of the left and right outputs of each pair. The reason for not using each fader as a stereo pair and moving the pan control as well as the faders in subsequent fade cues, is that a better result can be achieved in most cases where the level change in pairs of speakers is asymmetrical.

The downside of this is that one player ( and subsequent timed fade cues) can only address four of the speakers. Running another (linked) subcue with its faders assigned to four other outputs works, but you end up for a large part of the cue having double fade cues, both addressing 'active' speakers in the surround pan trajectory.

I seem to remember that the reason you stated previously for not providing 8 faders per cue was one of screen real-estate. It would be nice if the idea could be re-visited, though.

Cheers,
nick

Interestingly I received an SMS from another user a couple of days before your post requesting:

Option to select discrete output channels as mono device, eg output1=left, output2=right. This would bypass pan and sum stereo audio to mono on the fly.

I'll have a look into this and the feasibility of increasing the number of faders displayed.

Incidentally, Nick (and others), what screen resolution do you use for productions? SCS is 'designed' for 1024x768, but higher screen resolutions are becoming more common these days, and I am considering adjust the amount of info displayed according to the screen resolution, instead of just expanding the Run window to fit the screen.

what screen resolution do you use for productions

Depends - my laptop without additional screen runs at 1024 by 768, the show computers are desktops and it depends which screen we send out - if 17" we use 1280 by 1024. If we need a 17" screen to have 8 faders per cue (mono is fine if it is a fader-by-fader choice within a cue), so be it - 17" LCDs are so cheap now.

Cheers,
nick

Mike,

Resolution -- I would suggest staying at 1024 for now. All of the 15" LCD screens are 1024 res only, and there really isn't that much detail on the run-time screen that would warrant a move to a larger resolution.

8 faders -- If the only thing keeping you from this is concern of real estate usage, please don't let this stop you! I could definitely use full independent control of 6-8 outputs from a single FX cue, and I can think of at least a few ways you can handle this:

a) rubberband the height of an individual running cue display, expanding the height if more than four outputs are displayed.

b) allow us to specify that pan is not needed, and replace the pan control display area with 4 additional output fader controls

c) Locate the groups of four side by side, narrowing usage of real estate for the various components of the cue display

d) Or, some combination of (b) and (c). For example, pan controls are not displayed for mono output channels. So if all of your 1-4 output channels are mono, then that column of pan controls will dissappear, freeing up real estate. And the same for outputs 5-8. if one of the outputs is stereo, then the pan control will appear and will squeeze into its place, shifting the other components aside.

Thanks. John

John,

I've just been working on mod along the lines of your suggestions (b) and (c) but not quite the same as (d). I plan to release this later (in SCS 10) but the approach is to increase the number of outputs available per audio file sub-cue to 8, and then on the Run screen to show only Level faders for any sub-cue that uses more than 4 outputs. Faders for the first 4 outputs are shown in the first column of faders (currently the Level faders) amd the faders for the next 4 outputs are shown in the second column, ie in place of the Pan faders.

Sound good Mike. Fyi, I mocked up a screenshot that moves the controls from the right side to the bottom, freeing up horizontal real estate so you have more breathing room for two columns of Level/Pan controls. It doesn't looks like you can do attachments on this forum UI so I will email to you separately.

Thanks. John

For the information of others, this is the screen design that John has emailed me:

There are some good suggestions here which I will consider. Some extra fields need to be fitted in, eg 'When required'.