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Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2016 7:55 pm
by Baer
siegmund wrote:Again, all you said is right and working. What is not working is the monitoring feature itself. As soon as you pull the scene slider downwards, the monitoring slider goes not down with it.
Ok, tested your workspace and saw what you ment, need to debug why this happens.
mlohrey wrote:When in the usual slider monitoring mode, it is not possible to adjust the slider at all. I expected to that to overcome this you would need to push the OVR button This would release the slider from monitoring to being able to override the monitored value up or down.
Ok not sure if i got it but I try to explain how i understood.
What you describe is the old behaviour of the Slider in Monitor Mode. There you weren't able to change the value of the slider at all in HTP mode. Making the whole thing more or less useless.
The this thread and related: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=10384
This behaviour I changed to work as intended for an HTP Mode Level slider, meaning the higher value (regardless of Scene or Slider) wins. This works as I expeced, except for the Bug siegmund already mentioned above.

The new override Feature gives you more flexibility:
As long as override is active the slider has full control regardless of scene change (maybe we can make this optional and disable override on scene change)
If override is disabled again slider should currently simply set back to scene value (here is some bug), and later fade back to scene value (not implemented yet)

Thats what i have implemented so far (except for the fading), and what I mainly extracted from the feature list. Hope I got this right, but for me this would be the behaviour I would assume on such a feature and the one a would use. If here any disagreements let me know.
mlohrey wrote:I think it is important to know when the slider is over riding the scene value up or down and the user should have to choose to override the scene. Or as discussed before, if the slider is moved up or down, it assumes the user has taken control and changes to red to indicate this.
This is all nice tho have you writing here, but worthless if the functionality of the feature is broken. Therefore a won't take care about cosmetics, because you can always see if overwrite mode is active on the checked button. If the feature itself is working as every one intends I will think about such cosmetic things and slight usability improvements.

Plan is to release new version by end of this week before i go on holiday, so that everyone can test for a week and find bugs ;)

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2016 10:36 pm
by mlohrey
Holidays sound good. :D

I understand your view a little better now. You have looked at the situation from the viewpoint of a normal HTP slider and that the OVR button allows you to choose lower values essentially overriding the HTP requirement.

I have looked at the situation from the view of a slider in monitoring mode and that the OVR button would override the locked slider allowing it to adjust the scene.

This is quite similar to what you have already done, it would just mean that the OVR button needs to be engaged before a level can change.
I have no idea how hard this is to implement but my preference would be to have the OVR button indicate that monitoring had been disabled and that the slider was in control. At a glance I could then tell that a slider had been adjusted.

Thank you for your work on this, it is very impressive!

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2016 10:23 am
by siegmund
mlohrey wrote:This is quite similar to what you have already done, it would just mean that the OVR button needs to be engaged before a level can change.
I have no idea how hard this is to implement but my preference would be to have the OVR button indicate that monitoring had been disabled and that the slider was in control. At a glance I could then tell that a slider had been adjusted.
That is a very good point - I did not think about that, yet.
So if the monitoring slider could be raised above the scene level without pressing OVR, it has somehow taken control of the channel. So this should be indicated.
While thinking about this I would more and more go with mlohrey's approach because it is more consistent (especially for new users). HTP can be confusing when using it the first time...

You already deserve your holidays very much, Baer :)

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2016 5:36 am
by shortylight
Hi,

I think this discussion leads into a wrong direction. It is not necessary to have a new behaviour for fader in HTP level mode, I think. If we would change the behaviour the chance to have this branch merged into the main branch of QLC+ would not be verry high for compatibility reason. If we return to our initial idea of a similar behaviour like simple desk fader have and if we see our initial definition of the functioality, there will be no confusing situation for users at all.

We have to do the following changes to the actual implementation:
  • "OVR" mode has to be activated or deactevated in the fader's preferences and not only enabled. With this, there is no change in the behaviour during operation in run mode of QLC+ which could lead to confusion.
  • As soon as the fader is used manually there has to be a visual indicator that this fader took control (not implemented yet)
  • With a reset button instead of an activation switch in the fader's GUI the return to "scene mode" would be initiated and the visual indicater would be reset.
In my opinion This would solve all the things discussed in the last posts without leading to a minor function of the fader.

Bear did a first technical implementation without any respect to GUI or "cosmetic" correctness, but we discussed the usability of this. We should agree on the next steps soon, so Bear can do the rest of the work when he returns from holiday.

Thanks again to all of you for the work done on this topic!

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2016 7:08 am
by Baer
Good Morning Guys,

Did a little debug Session last night and saw what the problem with the monitoring mode is. If your channel is in HTP mode (which i would prefer for intensity, this is way start fixing this in the first place) due to HTP mode scene never writes to channels if slider value is higher than scene value. therefor monitor can never detect that scene has changed the value.
This is also the problem on override disable.
So I need to handly the whole thing somehow differently.

Current offical implementation is somehow useless because you can't even manipulate a channel which is not part of an active scene if the channel is in HTP mode.

On the other Hand we have the override mode. Here we want have full controll over the channel as long as it is active. (Maybe with automatic reset to szene value if this changes)
On disabling override mode Slider value should fade back to Scenes Original value. If slider has control over the scene this should be indicated.

Plan for functionality of the rewritten level mode:
Slider with monitoring disabled: now change to known behaviour
Slider with active monitoring: LTP no change to known behaviour, HTP will react correctly but resetted on scene change (this change is because I need it)
Slider with override active (indicated throgh button):
- Get full controll of channel
- optional reset to scene value if scene changes
- on deactivting override fade back to scene value over time (can be adjusted in the preferences)
- If more than one slider try to overwrite the same channel normal LTP/HTP is taken into accout depending on the channel settings
- activation of override mode will be done during operation and not in the preferences (because I need this and need to be a little selfish on this point)
As soon as the slider is moved away from the scene value (regardless of mode) there will be a visual indication that the slider currently controls the value.

This is basically what i think is possible within current qlc+ structure and the amount of time i can spend on this, so this is more or less fixed, but we can tweek the details on some point.

Will start today and can hopefully provide a version on friday.
If someone can create a nice icon for the override button (active and inactive) and for the indication that slider has control this would be welcome.

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2016 5:26 pm
by siegmund
Hey Baer,

I'll just try to clear something out:
Baer wrote:- activation of override mode will be done during operation and not in the preferences (because I need this and need to be a little selfish on this point)
As soon as the slider is moved away from the scene value (regardless of mode) there will be a visual indication that the slider currently controls the value.
So are you implementing it in the way
  1. shortylight proposed: Automatic activation of override mode when slider is moved away from the current level
  2. mlohrey proposed: One need to activate OVR before the level can be overridden
  3. or the way you currently implemented it: One need to activate OVR to override the scene downwards, upwards adjustment is always possible
Honestly, I would prefer 1 because this is really the way we initially defined it.

Anyway, I love to hear some development is going on so I'm looking forward testing the new things. Thanks for your work, Baer! :)

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2016 9:11 pm
by Baer
Option 3 would be the one I would prefere, but i understand that it's behaviour is somehow confusing.
Because I want to handle channels not controlled by an active scene, meaning upwards needs always be possible.

Therefore I think going with option one with a reset to scene value button, and providing an option If Slider should be reseted on scene changes could be a good comprimise.

Hope everyone is Ok now with this definition?

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 7:06 am
by shortylight
Hi Bear,

to me its perfect. I am looking forward to the next version of your implementation.

By the way ... We initially talked about a way to show the scene value inside of the slider in OVR mode all the time (kind of bar graph or so). Did I understand you right, that this will not be possible, as you cannot get that kind of scene information all the time?

Again, thank you for your great work!

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 8:12 am
by Baer
I know that we defined that initalyl, with to former version there was this not always possible.
With the version I currently work on it i think it is possible (without any promise) to show the scene value somehow (at least with a label, i think), in a few hours i think a can give you some more details on this.

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 10:53 am
by siegmund
Baer wrote:Therefore I think going with option one with a reset to scene value button, and providing an option If Slider should be reseted on scene changes could be a good comprimise.
I'm absolutely okay with it. I assume sliders, which are not controlled by any scene at the moment just do not turn red/indicate control.
Baer wrote:With the version I currently work on it i think it is possible (without any promise) to show the scene value somehow (at least with a label, i think), in a few hours i think a can give you some more details on this.
Although this would still be a really nice feature, we don't really need it at the moment. Maybe face on the core functionality first and then do some visual improvements.

Thanks for your work, can't wait to test :)

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 11:48 am
by Baer
Just pushed a new version to my git repository

Slider got two Buttons (a Reset and an EnableAutoReset)

As long as the slider wasn't moved it follows always the scenes value
You can always move the slider away from the scene an override the scene
With reset Button slider is set back to current scene value
With enable Auto reset the override is only active as long as scene value does not change

Hope I'm close enough to what you all hoped for.
Happy testing and let me know any bugs you find.

Additonally: It would be really great if someone can test this click&go stuff for me, because I have never used I can't really tell if everything is working fine.

Next steps will be:
-> Show current Scene Value
-> Add some Visual feedback
-> Make buttons controlable by external control
siegmund wrote:I'm absolutely okay with it. I assume sliders, which are not controlled by any scene at the moment just do not turn red/indicate control.
Would be happy to make this work, but currently I haven't figured out how to determine if the original zero cames from a szene or from unused :( So maybe every slider who took controll over the channel (regardless if from scene or noone) seems do get the visual feedback

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 9:22 pm
by shortylight
Hi Bear,

I just compiled the new version for Windows and it looks very promising. All the tests I did showed the expected behavior. As far as I know the click & go feature everything is doing well. Great work!
Will you also add a switch to the preferences to enable both reset button separately for each fader in the next step?

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 10:15 pm
by siegmund
Because I'm away at the moment I'll test this on Sunday - still sounds very good to me.
Baer wrote:Would be happy to make this work, but currently I haven't figured out how to determine if the original zero cames from a szene or from unused :( So maybe every slider who took controll over the channel (regardless if from scene or noone) seems do get the visual feedback
Okay, don't mind. Due to the fact, that this slider somehow is in control over the channel and the value before was 0 this is somehow correct.
shortylight wrote:Will you also add a switch to the preferences to enable both reset button separately for each fader in the next step?
I'll back this, too, but maybe in a different way so we have at most one button at the slider (more is a bit too much I think) and you can select the behavior in the preferences.

For now, have great holidays :)

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2016 7:16 am
by shortylight
Hi,

just a remark: The monitor feature of QLC+ does not have any impact on the slider's behavior at the moment. The slider follows always the channel value regardless if the checkbox in the preferences is set or not.

Have a nice day.

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2016 2:29 pm
by Baer
shortylight wrote:Will you also add a switch to the preferences to enable both reset button separately for each fader in the next step?
I haven't decided how to activate the functionality in the final version. For testing just the two buttons where the fastest version.
Will think about it when I'm back.
shortylight wrote:just a remark: The monitor feature of QLC+ does not have any impact on the slider's behavior at the moment. The slider follows always the channel value regardless if the checkbox in the preferences is set or not.
I'm aware of this, this is another point of discussion, and one where we should take Massimo and/or Jano into the loop.

The functionality is more or less a rewrite of the LevelModeSliders behaviour. There the monitoring feature is mandatory to work for the implementation.
We have either the possibiltiy to drop the option for monitoring and have it always on, or i can copy back the whole old functionality, and one can select in the preferences to use the old or the new version.

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 7:52 am
by mcallegari
Alright, jumping in. To be honest, I haven't read every single word of this long discussion, but in general, to face a technical change in a software (and before writing a single line of code) the questions that need to be answered are:

1) the motivations - why do we need a change ? What is not working at the moment ?
2) the goal - what is that we want to achieve ? How will users interact with the change ? Does it preserve backward compatibility ?
3) the feasibility - is it even possible to reach the goal ? What is the impact of the change on the code ?
(normally there should be a 4) the timings, but we're not in a hurry, are we ? :) )

I would like someone (Baer ?) to please summarize this discussion and answer the questions above. If the discussion is still ongoing, then please carry on with it, until you agree on something that makes everybody happy.
Then I can offer my help and knowledge of the code to comment on #3 and eventually go into the techy bits of the code. I believe David can comment too if he's reading this discussion, since he's the one who implemented the slider monitoring.
Also, I would like to remind everyone that the VC Slider monitoring feature is still marked as EXPERIMENTAL, as indicated in the documentation.
The reason is simple: a VC slider in level mode can control several channels, and each channel can have a different value at runtime. Therefore it is impossible to represent multiple levels with a single slider. There is no escape from this limitation.

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 9:06 am
by plugz
mcallegari wrote:I believe David can comment too if he's reading this discussion, since he's the one who implemented the slider monitoring.
I believe you're the one who implemented this behavior :)

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 10:21 am
by mcallegari
plugz wrote:
mcallegari wrote:I believe David can comment too if he's reading this discussion, since he's the one who implemented the slider monitoring.
I believe you're the one who implemented this behavior :)
Really ? :shock:
I remember you posting an animated GIF of something and I got confused with this !
In fact, searching for it, it was solo frame mixing: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8624&p=37833#p37826
I totally am getting too old for this... :cry:

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 1:12 pm
by Baer
Hi Massimo

since I'm currently away (till next weeks sundy) I will give only a short answer, maybe one of the other guyes can give a longer summary, otherwise i will do it if when I'm back.

1. The motivation was to be able to overwrite a scenes value (similar to simple desk sliders) with a level mode slider in monitor mode (+ some cosmetics and behaviour options). Also the monitoing feature has some other drawbacks. (e.g. you are not able to control a monitored channel in HTP mode...)

2. The goal to achieve we summarized on one of the postst (think siegmund was it), difficult to find on phone and currently no access to pc.

For 3. I implemented some kind of prototype on my personal fork of qlc+ ( https://github.com/mgubisch/qlcplus/ ) if you wan't to have a look
The prototype has currently the follwing behaviour (all somehow experimentel, but looks functional from first brief tests)
As long as the slider isn't moved it follows always the scenes value
You can always move the slider away from the scene an override the scene
With reset Button slider is set back to current scene value
With enable Auto reset the override is only active as long as scene value does not change

In the current implementation backwards compatiblity is somehow destroyed. Due to the fact that slider always follews the scene i will not act like a normal HTP slider anymore. But I think I found a solution for this yesterdays evening, where you can even switch of the monitoring.
Therefore backwards compatiblity for not monitored channel should be there, but for monitored channel the behaviour changed in the way described above.

4. I'm not in a hurry (but i can always use my personal branch) for the other guyes I don't know, but due to my limited freetime I think the earliest getting something releaseable is during christmas holidays.


Currently the final usability/user interaction is still in discussion, because first we wan't to check the feasability

Ok that was longer then inteded but more in about one week...

Re: Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2016 5:20 am
by mlohrey
If I could add to
1. Motivation
What is not working at the moment?
For live theatre work it is very difficult to make a quick change to a Scene. It may be that a single spot light is too bright and just needs to be adjusted down. I think that those interested in the improved feature, set up VC to mimic a traditional desk, with sliders for each channel. Being able to see the levels for the active scene and then make a quick adjustment is a powerful feature. This can be achieved in other ways it is just too slow.
Massimo said: The reason is simple: a VC slider in level mode can control several channels, and each channel can have a different value at runtime. Therefore it is impossible to represent multiple levels with a single slider. There is no escape from this limitation.
I have thought about this for a day or two.
I don't think it impossible to represent multiple levels with a single slider. :D
If I could use the analogy of different properties of drawing objects in a drawing program. Let's say you have a square and circle drawn with different line thickness and then select both. In the line properties dialogue it will not be able to display the line thickness as they are both different. Many pieces of software display this conflict with a '?' or just blank. Then, if you then choose a line thickness it is applied to both.

Now, I don't have any understanding of the programming, but if the slider (controlling more than one channel) in monitoring mode could indicate somehow that the levels it was monitoring are different then it would be a visual indication to the operator in that if you adjust the slider then all channels would be set to the same level. This would be analogous to making the objects in my example above all have the same line thickness.

What the visual representation would be I am not sure. This might work
slider_with multiple levels.png
slider_with multiple levels.png (3.08 KiB) Viewed 10797 times