- The new development platform provides or makes possible a number of benefits, including:
- A more efficient processing engine, which means less processing overhead and better control of internal operations.
- All language-specific text can be loaded from optional language files (or similar), making it feasible to provide German, French, Spanish, etc user interfaces – even both US and British English! The built-in language will continue to be US English.
- SCS 11 will be compiled in Unicode mode, providing support for multi-byte character sets such as Chinese and Japanese.
- The initial version of SCS 11 will be 32-bit (as is SCS 10) but shortly afterwards a 64-bit version is expected to be available.
- In the SCS 11 User Interface, ‘Display Options’ and ‘General Options’ will be combined into a single ‘Options’ button on the toolbar. The display options will be on a new tab in the existing ‘general options’ window, and the color scheme designer may be on another new tab (haven’t finally decided on that yet).
- There will be additional layout options, including the ability to nominate where the ‘Next Manual Cue’ information bar will be displayed, so you will be able to locate that at the bottom of the screen if required (see this forum posting).
- The cue list on the main window will no longer highlight the next manual cue using the Windows default ‘selected item’ color. This highlighting has caused concern as glancing at the screen while a cue is running doesn’t highlight the running cue but the next manual cue. A new row marker column will be displayed on the left, which will identify by distinct colors running cues, stopping cues, and the next manual cue.
- In the Options window, the ‘Mixer Levels’ tab will be removed. Since the introduction of Vista this tab has become fairly meaningless and doesn’t cover the complete range of ‘mixer’ faders.
- In the Options window, the ‘Editor’ tab will be removed. It currently only contains one field (graph auto-display max file length). If there is demand for this option to be reinstated then I will consider providing access to it directly from the Editor, not from the Options.
- In the Options window, I’m considering moving the various device ‘options’ to a new location as they are not really ‘options’. I’d welcome your thoughts on that.
- The toolbar in the Editor will be redesigned as follows:
- The cut, copy, paste and delete buttons will be moved to the vertical sidebar below the cue movement buttons, so they will no longer be required in the horizontal toolbar.
- The contents of the four tabs (File, Production, Cues and Sub-Cues) will be combined into a single toolbar, so the tabs themselves will be removed.
- The existing separate buttons for adding different types of cue will be replaced by a single ‘Add Cue’ button containing a drop-down list of cue types. Similarly for Sub-Cues. On advantage of the drop-down list is that new cue types can be added without having to find real estate in the toolbar for buttons for the new cue types.
- The existing ‘Production’ buttons will also be displayed in a drop-down list under a single ‘Production’ button.
- A new ‘Favorites’ group will be included in the toolbar. For functions you frequently use, such as ‘Add Audio File Cue’, you can include these in your ‘Favorites’ so you can continue to have single-click access to these functions instead of having to select from a drop-down list. By default the Favorites group will be populated with ‘Add Audio File Cue’ and ‘Add SFR Cue’, but you will be able to setup your own Favorites.
- In the sub-cue properties, the ‘Description’ field will be hidden unless the cue has two or more sub-cues. If a cue has only one sub-cue then that sub-cue will internally inherit the ‘Description’ of the cue. The existing method of auto-populating the Description will be retained (such as using the title from an MP3 file), but the auto-populating will be tightened up (or possibly disabled) if you move cues around (see this forum posting).
- The Cue Properties panel may be adjusted to optionally hide the ‘Standby Control’, thus making more space available for the sub-cue properties panels.
- I may add a new cue property for ‘Script Page No.’ or similar, as per this forum request. The title of this field you would be able to set yourself, so you could replace this with ‘Page/Line’ or whatever you like.
- Additional options will be added to the ‘Sub-Cue Relative Start Time’. Currently this field is the sub-cue's required start time relative to the start of the cue, but there will be a facility to select other options, such as time relative to the start or end of the previous sub-cue within this cue. Also, an alternative timing method will be provided as an option, where the timing is derived from the playback position of the first sub-cue – see this forum posting for details.
- New (sub-)cue type properties will be available for the ‘Go To Cue’ and ‘Set Position’ cue types, replacing the existing implementation that uses special formatting in the ‘Note’ cue type.
- Level Change cue properties will include a new checkbox ‘Stop when fade-out completes’, as per this forum request.
- Additional fields will be included in Bulk Edit (‘Cue Enabled’ and ‘Audio Devices’) as per this forum posting.
- A hotkey for global fade and pause / resume will be implemented as per this forum posting.
Nearer to the time of the release of SCS 11 I will be looking for beta testers - let me know if you're interested. You will need to have a current update plan to participate in beta testing.
