Relative Level Change (in 10.4.0)

[sound]

When you have a show with a lot of Level Change Cues and need to change the level of the Audio File Cue you have to change all the levels in the related Level Change Cues as well.
This is 1) Time consuming and 2) easy to make an error.
What do you think of 'Relative Level Change Cues'?

Thanks and greetings,
Walter

[jkowtko]

I second this request, and suggest a simple nomenclature (i.e. r+10, r-5) if you don't want to create another "relative vs absolute" UI widget.

[Mike Daniell]

I've been thinking this thru and I can see three options, each with it's own pros and cons. First of all I'll say that I don't mind displaying an extra UI widget to indicate that levels are relative rather than absolute, so displaying this extra widget is not a problem. These are the three options:

1. If the user selects relative levels then the existing Level faders in the Level Change cue will be changed to percentage sliders (similar to the relative level slider in Playlist cues). The major drawback with using percentages is that they don't work very well for increasing the level, especially when starting from minimum.
2. If the user selects relative levels then the value displayed in the dB field will be the dB change required in the level. The appearance of the slider wouldn't change, but if you were to go back to the original Audio File cue and adjust it's level then when you return to the Level Change cue both fader pointers (ie both the white pointer and the yellow pointer) will be adjusted accordingly, so the dB change you originally entered will remain the same. This dB change would, of course, be capped so that the new level would never go above 0dB.
3. The third option is to leave the Level Change cue as it is, but to provide an option to auto-adjust the levels if you change the levels of the associated Audio File cue. For example, if you have an Audio File cue with a single device and a level of -12dB and you change the level (in the Editor) to -18dB, then when you leave that cue (or sub-cue) SCS would look for any Level Change cues that operate on that Audio File cue. If SCS finds one or more of these then a message box would be displayed listing those cues and asking you if you want the levels in those Level Change cues adjusted by the same proportion. The major drawback with this option is that getting the message box popping up could get annoying if you don't want the Level Change cues to be adjusted.

Probably option 2 (based on John's suggestion) is the most practical. Any comments?

[sound]

Probably option 2 (based on John's suggestion) is the most practical. Any comments?

Yes, option 2 is fine. Might be good to add some visual (red pointer?) indication when the level is capped.

Thanks and greetings,
Walter

[MaikW]

Yes, option 2 is fine. Might be good to add some visual (red pointer?) indication when the level is capped.

I second that totally!

[john-tapas]

Hi Mike

I Having just had to adjust a pile of cues I think this is a great idea & option 2 seems the most sensible.
Surely anyone has used a mixer will automatically be comfortable with dB's of change.

Cheers

John

[Mike Daniell]

Revisiting this topic - now that in 10.3.0 you can use Bulk Edit to adjust the levels on all or selected cues, does this make the request for a 'relative level change' obsolete?

[jkowtko]

Hi Mike,

The bulk edit features seems pretty useful, but I think is different from an individual level change cue.

The relativel level change cue probably isn't a critical feature (unless others think so), but if you have the time it would make a great convenience/flexibility feature. It would provide benefits like:

- ability to set up duck and recover hotkeys on an individual cue, for handling intermittent dialogue, etc, while other cues might be playing.

- ability to provide full volume control hotkeys on a single cue (or set of cues) while other playing cues remain unaffected

- minimize editing work if changing the starting volume of an audio file cue which undergoes multiple level changes throughout the program.

Thanks. John

[sound]

Mike,

Revisiting this topic - now that in 10.3.0 you can use Bulk Edit to adjust the levels on all or selected cues, does this make the request for a 'relative level change' obsolete?

Thanks for the Bulk Edit - works great and is a real time saver. But for the reasons John already mentioned the relative level change will still be useful.

Thanks and greetings,
Walter

[Mike Daniell]

Relative Level Change feature added in 10.4.0.

[jkowtko]

Thanks Mike -- looks great

[sound]

Works great - thanks!

I'm starting to run out of ideas for feature requests

Greetings,
Walter