New and Changed Features in SCS 11.5.0
- SCS now includes Lighting Cues which may be used to control lighting fixtures or dimmers via DMX. Any other DMX-controlled unit could also be connected. To use a full 512-universe you will need an SCS Professional Plus or higher license, but SCS Professional supports Lighting Cues using DMX channels in the range 1-16, which is sufficient for some environments.
- To support Lighting Cues, Production Properties now includes a new Device Group for Lighting. (Only DMX is currently supported as a Lighting device type.)
- A new feature is available in the Editor to allow you to Copy Properties from another Cue or Sub-Cue. You can, for example, use this to copy the devices, levels and pan settings from any Audio File Cue to the Audio File Cue you currently have open in the Editor. Copy Properties is activated from a new icon at the bottom of the side toolbar of the Editor. (Initially this feature is only available for Audio File Cues and Lighting Cues.)
- SCS now accepts Cue Control by Network OSC messages.
- Previously, 'Stop All' would not reset hibernated cues as a hibernated cue could be a pre-show playlist that you want to resume at intermission. There is now a Production Property under Run-Time Settings that allows you to specify that 'Stop All' includes resetting hibernated cues. This is useful if you hibernate cues for other reasons.
- When using TVG as the Video Playback Library, if you had more than just a few still images and/or had large image files, then TVG could fail to pre-open some of the files. To overcome this limitation, SCS by default now uses a built-in '2D Drawing Library' for handling still images, which it has always done for xVideo. Having TVG handle still images (as well as videos) may provide better cross-fades between still images and videos or vice versa, so if you want to revert to TVG handling the still images then a new Video Driver Option is available to cancel the '2D Drawing' option.
- Modified the Color Scheme Designer to provide more control over the color differences between the next manual cue and other cues. The purpose of this modification is to provide an alternative to having the Next Manual Cue always displayed in a set color, regardless of the type of cue. Also added a new scheme named 'SCS Light', and modified the 'SCS Dark' scheme. Although 'SCS Default' continues to be the default scheme (for backwards compatibility) we recommend you consider using 'SCS Light' instead.
- Added Keyboard Shortcuts to decrease or increase the level of the last playing cue. If that cue is no longer playing then the function is ignored. Default shortcuts for these functions are Ctrl+F11/F12.
- Added a Display Option to allow the monitor (screen) to timeout and turn off. This is useful if SCS is being used unattended for lengthy periods, eg all-day or 24/7.
- A 64-bit version of SCS is now available. The default video playback library in the 64-bit version is TVG because xVideo is not available in 64-bit.
- Video/Image Cues and Memo Cues may now be displayed on one of up to 8 secondary screens for SCS Professional Plus and higher license levels. Previously this was 4, which is still the limit for SCS Standard and SCS Professional license levels.
- A new Production Property has been added to Run Time Settings that allows you to prevent SCS pre-loading video hotkey cues. This is to avoid situations where the video playback library (eg TVG) runs out of resources to pre-load many video cues.
- A Polish translation is now included.
- Fixed an error in the code that checks for auto-repeat when holding down a key for too long (eg more than 0.5 second). That could cause multiple cues to be started by holding down the space bar, if that key is assigned to the GO button (which it is by default).
- Double back-slashes in file names are no longer converted to single back-slashes as this could cause network files to be 'not found'.
- Fixed an error with the status field in cue panels that shows 'Ready' etc. This field was not always being updated with 'Next Manual Cue' when required.
- The MIDI/DMX Cue field in Cue Properties is now only required for MIDI and DMX Cue Control device types. Previously SCS incorrectly reported an error if the field was blank for 'External' activation methods if only Network or RS232 Cue Control devices were specified. SCS also now checks that at least one Cue Control device is present if an 'External' activation method is selected for a cue.
- For time-based-cues, if the end-of-day auto-reset occurs and a new time profile is selected for the new day, then the main window title and cue list were not being updated for the new time profile. (This was only a display bug - the new time profile itself was being correctly processed.)
- When saving a new device map, a message containing one or more instances of 'nDevMapId incorrect!' could be displayed. The error that caused the condition is now fixed.
- When ASCII Network Cue Control messages are received as multiple messages separated by <CR> or '|', the messages may have been processed out of order. Also, an 'scsGo("0")' message may have been ignored if sent as part of a multiple message.
- When importing cues from another cue file, any imported non-media cues (such as SFR cues) would initially be set as 'not loaded' instead of 'ready'. This could result in the GO button being disabled for such cues, unless some other action had occurred to 'ready' those cues.
- A recent performance enhancement to ignore MIDI short messages using a MIDI channel number that's not used in the Cue Control settings could ignore all messages from a BCF/BCR2000 external controller.
- Fixed an error in 11.4.2 which prevented 'logo' images being displayed.
- Fixed an error that prevented cross-fading to the final image in a slideshow if that image was marked for continuous display.
- If the number of samples in an audio file is very large (eg several 100 million) then SCS could throw a memory error when trying to load data for the audio graph in the editor. SCS now traps the condition and in these rare circumstances bypasses drawing the audio graph.
- When an exclusive cue has finished playing, the 'GO' button for the next manual cue was not always enabled.
- When editing an SFR cue and selecting a 'Cue or Sub-Cue to be Actioned', SCS would reset the 'Action Required' and other fields.
- Fixed an error that could prevent fade-in and fade-out times being saved for Audio File Cues.
- If you entered an invalid entry in a text field (such as a DMX Item in a Lighting Cue) and then clicked on a slider (eg DMX Value), when the error message about the text field was displayed the mouse pointer may have been 'clipped' to the area of the slider, possibly rendering it impossible to click on the OK button of the message box.
- Audio File cues with cross-faded loops would not fade correctly if an SFR or Level Change cue that affects that Audio File cue is played.
- Fixed a 'thread assertion error' that could occur when SCS tries to open a cue containing a MIDI file.
- Fixed an issue with toggle hotkey cues that hibernate a cue which could cause the toggle state to be incorrectly reset on terminating the hotkey cue.
Many thanks to those who have assisted in testing features in this release, and in updating translation databases.
