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Comments and/or suggestions for a future version...


jamills706

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Brian,

Now, after having sequenced 40-minutes of music for Halloween and 2-hours of music for Christmas, I have a couple of suggestions for, what I would call, enhancements to your already amazing software. Not in anyway to be considered complaints...just some thoughts I had that would make my job easier (perhaps I'm the only one...but hey, why not make the suggestion?):

 

Setting the manual clipping area...I find it difficult to accurately set that clipping rectangle with the shift-drag option. I always have to try several times. How about providing x,y coordinate entries much like an image's start and end location to provide the upper left and lower right coordinate for the clipping rectangle/

 

Selecting multiple items... I usually have all of one type/style/fixture-type located in one row of the sequencing grid (i.e.: row 10 is all the morphs that do a specific thing on a specific arch). If I decide I want to change the color on all of them in that row for the entire song, I have to click on all the visible ones, then scroll right, ctrl-click again and repeat through the length of the song. How about clicking on the row number (in this example click on the 12) and have SS select all effects that appear in that entire row?

 

Nudge time right...frequently I will have a series of effects end to end. When I select them all (say I have 5 in a row and I select all 5) and then click Nudge Time Right I am left with overlapping effects that I have to then individually nudge to the right to eliminate the overlap. How about shift-nudge time right and have SS automagically shift them at the same time so they remain touching?

 

Nudge Time left...again, similar to Nudge Time Right...I am left with empty spaces between each effect. How about shift-nudge time left and have SS automagically shift them all so they remain touching?

 

Image movement...I love using images and made great use of them in my shows. Would it be possible to, along with moving from x,y to x,y position on the matrix be able to specify the angle of the image over time? For example, maybe I have a large snowflake that I would like to make slowly rotate as it falls down the screen...if it started at angle 0-degrees and ended at angle 359-degrees it would rotate in a full circle during it fall down the matrix.

 

Image flipping....I love that I can flip and image left to right or up and down...but how about about shifting the image at some arbitrary angle, too.

 

Image section copy and paste.... is it possible to allow, perhaps with a shift or control click and drag to select a "chunk" of an image and then paste it back into the image at a different location?

 

Continuous morphs across several lines...is it possible to allow for selecting a morph's 1a position in one "column" of the sequencing grid and then select it's 2a position in a different column? For example if I want a morph to run across all of my arches from left to right I could set 1a as the left end of the left arch and 2a as the right end of the right arch. I doubt this would be useful in a matrix situation, but would be great in using a series of arches.

 

Thanks again for your wonderful software and the support you give!

And, thanks for considering my thoughts here.

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Good comments, I can comment on them after this week is over. Way too much to do!

 

I may forget, so you may want to post them again in a week.

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I will comment on a couple of those that may already exist.

 

<snip>

Setting the manual clipping area...I find it difficult to accurately set that clipping rectangle with the shift-drag option. I always have to try several times. How about providing x,y coordinate entries much like an image's start and end location to provide the upper left and lower right coordinate for the clipping rectangle/

 

Selecting multiple items... I usually have all of one type/style/fixture-type located in one row of the sequencing grid (i.e.: row 10 is all the morphs that do a specific thing on a specific arch). If I decide I want to change the color on all of them in that row for the entire song, I have to click on all the visible ones, then scroll right, ctrl-click again and repeat through the length of the song. How about clicking on the row number (in this example click on the 12) and have SS select all effects that appear in that entire row?

 

<snip>

Continuous morphs across several lines...is it possible to allow for selecting a morph's 1a position in one "column" of the sequencing grid and then select it's 2a position in a different column? For example if I want a morph to run across all of my arches from left to right I could set 1a as the left end of the left arch and 2a as the right end of the right arch. I doubt this would be useful in a matrix situation, but would be great in using a series of arches.

 

 

Setting the manual clip area.  I assume your issue is that the grid is so small that it's hard to grab the exact square that you want.  Solution may be to use floating windows so you can make the grid larger.  My current grid is 100 pixels wide by 64 rows high.  With floating windows it's very easy to make the grid large enough to grab exactly what square is desired.

 

Selecting multiple items would be GREAT!

 

You should be able to select all of your arches with the Visual Effects mode.

 

Did any of those help?

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I hadn't thought of using floating Windows for that. I'll try it.

I am not familiar with the Visual Effects yet. I'll have to read up on that.

Thanks!

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I LOVE floating windows.  Even if I am running on a single monitor, floating windows is great.

 

And BTW I mis-spoke, it's VisEffects - checkbox near the bottom of the Morph Setup screen.

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Completely random question and not intending to hijack the thread, but are their future plans to marry SS and PE? Seems like it would make sense.

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I wouldn't expect to see those two merge as, to my eye, they go about their end results in a completely different and incompatible way. But obviously I have no idea! LOL

Edited by jamills706
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Brian,

In addition to the comments that start this thread, I forgot to include that I would like the ability to include image pre/post ramping in the "movement" section of the image. Currently movement doesn't occur until the end of the pre-ramp. Sometimes I would like the fade in to occur during the movement.

Thanks!

Jeff

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  • 2 weeks later...

Brian,

Just a nudge to remind you, in this very busy time of year, as you commented earlier about this post- in case you forgot.

Thanks!

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For reasons that are hard to explain, that is actually fairly difficult to do. It probably won't happen next year.

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Here are comments on your first post:


 


Setting the manual clipping area...I find it difficult to accurately set that clipping rectangle with the shift-drag option. I always have to try several times. How about providing x,y coordinate entries much like an image's start and end location to provide the upper left and lower right coordinate for the clipping rectangle/


With the floating windows feature it should be possible to make the grid large enough that setting the manual clipping region with the mouse is workable.


 


Selecting multiple items... I usually have all of one type/style/fixture-type located in one row of the sequencing grid (i.e.: row 10 is all the morphs that do a specific thing on a specific arch). If I decide I want to change the color on all of them in that row for the entire song, I have to click on all the visible ones, then scroll right, ctrl-click again and repeat through the length of the song. How about clicking on the row number (in this example click on the 12) and have SS select all effects that appear in that entire row?


Will probably do something similar to this. Have the ability to select an entire row.


 


Nudge time right...frequently I will have a series of effects end to end. When I select them all (say I have 5 in a row and I select all 5) and then click Nudge Time Right I am left with overlapping effects that I have to then individually nudge to the right to eliminate the overlap. How about shift-nudge time right and have SS automagically shift them at the same time so they remain touching?


There are four buttons, Nudge Left, Nudge Right, Nudge Length Left, Nudge Length Right. When you say "Nudge Time Right" are you referring to the "Nudge Length Right" button? If so then I understand the issue. If you lengthen the effects then the overlap changes. But sometimes they may already overlap and you just want the overlap to stay the same. I'm thinking a button that changes the length and moves the effects that are after the first selection would make sense. In other words, do what you are saying except its not that "they remain touching" but that the overlap stays the same, and in the case where they are touching, they will remain touching.


 


Nudge Time left...again, similar to Nudge Time Right...I am left with empty spaces between each effect. How about shift-nudge time left and have SS automagically shift them all so they remain touching?


Something similar to this, but have a button that doesn't move them, it just changes the lengths so they touch. There are some special cases that have to be addressed. What if you select two effects that are exactly on top of each other? What would you expect to happen? What if you select two effects that overlap? Do you shorten the first one or the second one in order to get them to touch? One approach would be to only enable the button if the selected effects don't overlap, and then you extend all the lengths to touch the next effect.


 


Image movement...I love using images and made great use of them in my shows. Would it be possible to, along with moving from x,y to x,y position on the matrix be able to specify the angle of the image over time? For example, maybe I have a large snowflake that I would like to make slowly rotate as it falls down the screen...if it started at angle 0-degrees and ended at angle 359-degrees it would rotate in a full circle during it fall down the matrix.


This would be a desirable feature, but is very difficult to implement. At the low resolution we are working with it is difficult to rotate an image and have it still look like the unrotated image. It sounds easy, but it is not.


 


Image flipping....I love that I can flip and image left to right or up and down...but how about about shifting the image at some arbitrary angle, too.


Again this would be a desirable feature, but is very difficult to implement. At the low resolution we are working with it is difficult to rotate an image and have it still look like the unrotated image. It sounds easy, but it is not. I can have the computer rotate each pixel and then use the pixels that the rotated pixel most nearly matches but it typically would not look good. I suppose I could put it in to give an image to start with, but you would typically want to touch it up manually. And in many cases, you just wouldn't do it because no matter what you do, you can't get the rotated image to look good. But I could put it in because people want it, but I think people would be disappointed with the results. To get an image to look good at such low resolution you have to take advantage of subtle hinting by each pixel. When you rotate the image, the hinting becomes different and it becomes impossible to make the image look good. I have experimented with simple things like stars and bells and I can only get them to look good with a few rotations. For example, in "God Bless the USA" i have some stars go across the screen, and the stars are rotated at an angle. The reason I do that is because that is the only angle I could get them to look good. At any other angle they don't look like stars.


I'm going on a rant because I get a lot of requests concerning images relating to importing jpg and rotation etc. If I was working for a big company its the kind of thing marketing would make me put in the product simply because the public wants it and if you list it as a feature people will buy it. But they would be disappointed at how well it works.


All that said, I could go ahead and put in an image rotate to give you something to start with, but I expect in most cases you would find that you just can't get the image to look good at most rotations.


 


Image section copy and paste.... is it possible to allow, perhaps with a shift or control click and drag to select a "chunk" of an image and then paste it back into the image at a different location?


This indeed would be useful


 


Continuous morphs across several lines...is it possible to allow for selecting a morph's 1a position in one "column" of the sequencing grid and then select it's 2a position in a different column? For example if I want a morph to run across all of my arches from left to right I could set 1a as the left end of the left arch and 2a as the right end of the right arch. I doubt this would be useful in a matrix situation, but would be great in using a series of arches.


I have had requests for this, and I would love to have this ability as well. Can't promise I will do it next year, but hopefully I can


 


 


The primary things I plan on working on first next year are:


 


1) To be able to have multiple sequencing grids. Now that I have the "floating windows" I can have multiple floating windows for the sequencing grid and then you can put props in their own grid. This would be particularly useful if you have one or more large pixel trees. You could then put each tree in their own grid and their sequencing becomes independent of the rest of the grid.


 


2) Rework the way visualizations get imported. Currently I attempted to make it "automatic" and ended up with a bunch of rules that are hard to predict. I will keep the current method of importing for backward compatibility. But I want to create a new import mode that has some simple rules that make how a visualization gets imported more predictable, and then provide ways to move props around from within superstar to get things placed where you want.


 


The above two things are my top priority, after doing them I will work on other things.


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I see what you mean about rotating and wouldn't put it in.

Hadn't thought about the overlapping effects issue...in my thoughts I guess I figured this feature would only work or be applicable to contiguous not overlapping segments ...but ...if I click it now you "do something" to all selected segments/effects so continue to do that same thing but maintain the same relationship between effects....if they overlap that overlap would perhaps change but that would be up to the user to watch for (as the gaps or overlaps now are).

In a way I guess I am suggesting a combo of nudge and nudge time...clicking it once in either direction would maintain the start position and shift all effects toward or away from that position by the appropriate number of spaces.

Thanks again for you time and efforts!!!! It is GREATLY appreciated!!!!!!!!

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  • 3 months later...

While fixing a SUP file that was out of sequence for some reason, it ooccurred to me that a drag and drop with the mouse with be a lot easier when moving an effect around then having to use the arrow button. Might be an easy upgrade, or maybe not.

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16 hours ago, jerry72 said:

While fixing a SUP file that was out of sequence for some reason, it ooccurred to me that a drag and drop with the mouse with be a lot easier when moving an effect around then having to use the arrow button. Might be an easy upgrade, or maybe not.

That would be fantastic

 

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