Sigh....maybe LOR III

[David Barnett]

I guess I just need to vent a little. First off though, Thank You for the 2.88 update. I guess my hope, especially for noobies as myself; I can get a little more momentum for a feature to be added. I believe this feature would make LOR a very powerful program than it is now.

They have finally done it for the Show Director...Thank You!

I am speaking of a windows file explorer type of selection to use in the editor.

This all came about last year when I was trying to edit a sequence. (BTW, I also feel; you have more folks editing seq. as opposed to creating new ones. Mainly based on forum responses)

This particular seq. was an arpeggiated guitar part on Jewel's "O Holly Night", beautiful song. In 2008 I jsut had a section of lights blinking to the guitar part. In 2009, I wanted to break it up into actual guitar strings being plucked on my tree.

Well, I set up the new/old seq. to do my copy/paste stuff. After approx. 2 hrs I had the first high string done! Are you freeakin kiddin me...what a PIA!

I gave up after about 5 hrs, not even a third of the way through. Why so long.

Well let's go over the procedure LOR afford you to edit seq.

The section is way at the bottom of my new seq. So, I use the arrow keys and or mouse to select the cell/event of the first high guitar string section.

I then hit the Ctrl-C, well when you hit the left arrow key toclose your selection box to the beginning of your selection; it closes off at the end! So, now you have to either use the mouse, or scroll back to the begin with the arrow key. That first section had 50+ of those sectiion for that one guitar part.

After doing that for 2hrs +..I just gave up. I know, the pros will chime in and say something along the lines of why don't you work on a little at a time.

I understand, this was a little bit of a last minute descision. I also fly commercialy for a living, had a very busy flight schedule last year; as well as some personal things.

I have also had 2 back surgeries, if I sit for too long; things get a little cranky..including my wrist. After I worked on this a a while; my wrist was aching so much, I couldn't hold the mouse hardly at all. Took about 3 days for things to settle...again...PIA!

So, getting back to the jist of my thread.

Imagine now, LOR had the same type of selection tools that windows file explorer has. IE if you want to select a contiguous row of files/folders..you click on the first one, hold shift then click on the last one needed...walla...all selected at once.

If you want to select say every other folder, you select the first, hold the CONTROL key down and select the NON-CONTIGOUS files/folders needed.

Now, apply this to editing a seq. on LOR. IN my case, I had figured out that for the red light high string parts, it was every 7th event through out the seq.

Let's apply the NON-contiguous cell/event seelction. I click and select the first section/event needed...then hold down CONTROL...click and select ALL the rest of my 50 events to get my first red high string section..hit CTRL-C to copy....go to the beginning of the high string part....move the cursor straight up the row....hir CTRL-V to paste....ALL my red high strings are done...maybe took 30 minutes if even that.

Now apply this to lets say creating animations for a mouth. Using tapper wizard or whatever tool works for you, you now have your open/close timing marks, it's simply a matter of ctrl selecting every other timing mark...cutting it, and pasyting it below your open mouth section. In a matter of minutes, you have a foundation for open/closed mouth animations.

Finally, with the new power of LOR 2.88 you can really get some great things going.

Again, let's say you have painstakingly edited and or created a seq. Now as you go through and watch, you see several section throughout you feel would be better with another effect. Say you want a twinkle instead of a shimmer.

Right now, you would have to selct that tool, then select each individual effect to change. with non-contiguous, hold down the ctrl key, select the cells/events ALL AT ONCE...then use keyboard to select shimmer or whateve you wanted to change things too.

Sorry, for typos;this keyboard sucks.

I hope some can at least see the power of editing this change would give to folks editing and or creating sequences.....maybe if enough folks can see the benefit; perhaps Dan and Bob etal can too.

Thanks for listening, feel free to flame away.

Best,

David

[Guest wbottomley]

David, this is a fantastic idea.

It not only helps editing a sequence but it makes it quicker too.

[Paul Roberson]

Sounds like excellent idea to me.

I've been looking for that to be able to make multiple channel selections instead of having to do one at at time. Doing it one at a time makes it a pita for putting several channels into another track.

[LightORamaDan]

David Barnett wrote:

I guess I just need to vent a little. First off though, Thank You for the 2.88 update. I guess my hope, especially for noobies as myself; I can get a little more momentum for a feature to be added. I believe this feature would make LOR a very powerful program than it is now.

They have finally done it for the Show Director...Thank You!

I am speaking of a windows file explorer type of selection to use in the editor.

This all came about last year when I was trying to edit a sequence. (BTW, I also feel; you have more folks editing seq. as opposed to creating new ones. Mainly based on forum responses)

This particular seq. was an arpeggiated guitar part on Jewel's "O Holly Night", beautiful song. In 2008 I jsut had a section of lights blinking to the guitar part. In 2009, I wanted to break it up into actual guitar strings being plucked on my tree.

Well, I set up the new/old seq. to do my copy/paste stuff. After approx. 2 hrs I had the first high string done! Are you freeakin kiddin me...what a PIA!

I gave up after about 5 hrs, not even a third of the way through. Why so long.

Well let's go over the procedure LOR afford you to edit seq.

The section is way at the bottom of my new seq. So, I use the arrow keys and or mouse to select the cell/event of the first high guitar string section.

I then hit the Ctrl-C, well when you hit the left arrow key toclose your selection box to the beginning of your selection; it closes off at the end! So, now you have to either use the mouse, or scroll back to the begin with the arrow key. That first section had 50+ of those sectiion for that one guitar part.

After doing that for 2hrs +..I just gave up. I know, the pros will chime in and say something along the lines of why don't you work on a little at a time.

I understand, this was a little bit of a last minute descision. I also fly commercialy for a living, had a very busy flight schedule last year; as well as some personal things.

I have also had 2 back surgeries, if I sit for too long; things get a little cranky..including my wrist. After I worked on this a a while; my wrist was aching so much, I couldn't hold the mouse hardly at all. Took about 3 days for things to settle...again...PIA!

So, getting back to the jist of my thread.

Imagine now, LOR had the same type of selection tools that windows file explorer has. IE if you want to select a contiguous row of files/folders..you click on the first one, hold shift then click on the last one needed...walla...all selected at once.

If you want to select say every other folder, you select the first, hold the CONTROL key down and select the NON-CONTIGOUS files/folders needed.

Now, apply this to editing a seq. on LOR. IN my case, I had figured out that for the red light high string parts, it was every 7th event through out the seq.

Let's apply the NON-contiguous cell/event seelction. I click and select the first section/event needed...then hold down CONTROL...click and select ALL the rest of my 50 events to get my first red high string section..hit CTRL-C to copy....go to the beginning of the high string part....move the cursor straight up the row....hir CTRL-V to paste....ALL my red high strings are done...maybe took 30 minutes if even that.

Now apply this to lets say creating animations for a mouth. Using tapper wizard or whatever tool works for you, you now have your open/close timing marks, it's simply a matter of ctrl selecting every other timing mark...cutting it, and pasyting it below your open mouth section. In a matter of minutes, you have a foundation for open/closed mouth animations.

Finally, with the new power of LOR 2.88 you can really get some great things going.

Again, let's say you have painstakingly edited and or created a seq. Now as you go through and watch, you see several section throughout you feel would be better with another effect. Say you want a twinkle instead of a shimmer.

Right now, you would have to selct that tool, then select each individual effect to change. with non-contiguous, hold down the ctrl key, select the cells/events ALL AT ONCE...then use keyboard to select shimmer or whateve you wanted to change things too.

Sorry, for typos;this keyboard sucks.

I hope some can at least see the power of editing this change would give to folks editing and or creating sequences.....maybe if enough folks can see the benefit; perhaps Dan and Bob etal can too.

Thanks for listening, feel free to flame away.

Best,

David

This is not a trivial task so before we do it I really need to understand the benifit and honestly I do not see it yet... However I have been know to miss the obvious and have no problem saying I missed something, misunderstood, made a mistake, etc...

I see some of the merits of this but still I continue to have problems understanding why people want to do this. There is a seperate comment in this thread to be able to select multiple channels at once and that is different than selecting multiple cells and I do see how that helps. There was one example that where someone gave an example that made sense to me but I do not recall it at this time (I can however look it up because I know from whom and where the post was)

Now I am going to take your guitar example here where you were copy/pasting stuff... Doing what you want to do, you would hold down the CTL key and then select multiple sections of the screen then later paste that into another section. However you only want a subset of the events so a general copy/paste would not work for you.

However here is where I get lost everytime someone asks for this. In your guitar example, if you had placed the two tracks you were working on next to one anther, why wouldn't you (rather than selecting segments of one track) just draw directly in the track you were going to move things to.

Get one string done, then move that channel out of the way, move in the next string and then draw into that string, no copy/paste going on at all... You would be drawing just as many things as you would have been selecting so I do not see the efficiency.


-------

I did not quite understand the mouth amimation.


-------

Say you want to select a bunch of different effects that already exist and you then want to change them to another effect. Now if instead you had already chosen the tool and you simply drew over the existing effect with the new effect then when you are done. You will have drawn as much as it would have taken to do multiple selects and you would be done. So again I do not see the efficiency.

The only thing I can see where there would be an efficiency is with the multiple select when you change a bunch of things at once, a single undo would change them back to the original value verses doing multiple ctrl-Z to get back to where you started.

Overall I realize I am probably missing something but it gets down to the fact that if are selecting a bunch of areas and you could just as well draw what you want in the first place.

Dan

[Paul Roberson]

LightORamaDan wrote:

There is a seperate comment in this thread to be able to select multiple channels at once and that is different than selecting multiple cells and I do see how that helps.

Sounds like this capability should be coming very soon then huh?

[ainsworth]

In the case of mouth animation; since you want to paste 1 channel into another channel offset by one timing mark, copy the completed channel then paste it in the new channel starting the paste offset by 1 (or more) timing marks.

S2 already allows selecting multiple rows (or columns). With rows that aren't next to each other, drag them so they are, then do the select - copy. If you don't save the sequence that is being copied from, the drag changes won't be saved in the file.

If you dragged the existing channel right next to the string channel you are creating, would that make it easier for you? Instead of selecting the timing to copy, just put the effect into the new channel.

I probably don't have a good grip on your issues, it just seems if you going to have to select each cell to copy anyway, you can just put the effect in the new channel.

Sequencing takes FOREVER!! But seeing your display come to life makes it all worth while.

[jimswinder]

ainsworth wrote:

Sequencing takes FOREVER!! But seeing your display come to life makes it all worth while.

We would just like it to "come to life" in our lifetime...

[edge]

Dan and Bob,

Like the 2.8.8 update. Question, can you check out/correct the spacebar stop/start function. I am running video with dual dvi, dual monitors, dual soundcard. The previous version, I could hit stop with the spacebar and have to mouse to the stop key at the same time in order to stop the sequence. Now the space bar does not work and when I mouse the stop key, it returns me to the beginning on the sequence. Any work around? Suggestions?

Keep up the great work!

I thank you in advance for your assistance.

Cordially,

Edge

[bob]

I might be misunderstanding this particular part:

Imagine now, LOR had the same type of selection tools that windows file explorer has. IE if you want to select a contiguous row of files/folders..you click on the first one, hold shift then click on the last one needed...walla...all selected at once.

If I'm understanding correctly, you can already do this in the Sequence Editor. Click the cell you want the selection to start in, then Shift-click the cell you want the selection to end in, and the selection will become the rectangle defined by those.

That is, it would be the same as if you had click-dragged from the one cell to the other.

Or, if you have (for example) several contiguous rows that you want to select the entire contents of, you can select a small portion of each of those rows, and then "Edit / Select / Rows". The selection will be expanded to include all of each of the rows. There's also "Edit / Select / Columns", which behaves similarly, but for columns instead of rows.

To be clear, I understand that you're also asking for noncontiguous selection; that's not currently available.

[jimswinder]

bob wrote:

If I'm understanding correctly, you can already do this in the Sequence Editor. Click the cell you want the selection to start in, then Shift-click the cell you want the selection to end in, and the selection will become the rectangle defined by those.

You can also select the first cell (or cells from adjacent row(s)), hold down the SHIFT key and press END and it will highlight all the cells within that row(s) from the first cell highlighted to the last cell in that row(s).

[David Barnett]

ok..you.win.i give up.

i just can't seem to explain what i mean.

tried examples to show...but based on respones..others don't understand either.

just don't know how else to explain the benefit..so i'll stop trying .

best
david

[LightORamaDan]

David Barnett wrote:

ok..you.win.i give up.

i just can't seem to explain what i mean.

tried examples to show...but based on respones..others don't understand either.

just don't know how else to explain the benefit..so i'll stop trying .

best
david

David,

Perhaps if you explained why the alternative solutions were more cumbersome and less effecient than your suggested method we would have a better understanding.

Dan

[Randy]

Hi David,

I have tried to read your explanation (in words) above, and I don't feel that I understand exactly what you are trying to suggest.

I think it would really help us understand better if you could work up a small example of "Before" and "After" screen shots in the sequencer of a few channels that you are trying to modify. That would certainly better help me understand what you are trying to accomplish, and I'm sure the discussion would take off from there...

Thanks, Randy

[Paul Roberson]

Randy wrote:

Hi David,

I have tried to read your explanation (in words) above, and I don't feel that I understand exactly what you are trying to suggest.

I think it would really help us understand better if you could work up a small example of "Before" and "After" screen shots in the sequencer of a few channels that you are trying to modify. That would certainly better help me understand what you are trying to accomplish, and I'm sure the discussion would take off from there...

Thanks, Randy

Or better yet a video of your screen with the sequencer showing what you are trying to modify.

[David Barnett]

Bob, I understand what you mean re already able to do this in LOR. I was just corelating the file selection stuff on windows explorer, to how it would work with LOR; main focus was really on the non-contiguous selection stuff....evidently that is a major source of confusion for everyone...except William....I think he understands.

I'm flying a 4 day trip right now. Will give it some thought if I want to pursue this anymore with pics or video.

Best,

David

[LightORamaDan]

David Barnett wrote:

Bob, I understand what you mean re already able to do this in LOR. I was just corelating the file selection stuff on windows explorer, to how it would work with LOR; main focus was really on the non-contiguous selection stuff....evidently that is a major source of confusion for everyone...except William....I think he understands.

I'm flying a 4 day trip right now. Will give it some thought if I want to pursue this anymore with pics or video.

Best,

David

David,

I understand the concept of multiple select. It is the benifit that I have a problem understanding but as I said I am eager to learn.

You gave some examples and I thought I understood what you wanted to accomplish. I then suggested a different way to accomplish those examples. If those suggestions were incorrect or significently less effecient than the multiple select then I look forward to being corrected.

Dan

[PaulXmas]

David Barnett wrote:

ok..you.win.i give up.

i just can't seem to explain what i mean.

tried examples to show...but based on respones..others don't understand either.

just don't know how else to explain the benefit..so i'll stop trying .

best
david

David, let me see if I understand what you are asking...

You want to be able to select say channel 1 channel 5 channel 29 and channel 50.

Then copy or whatever?

The same way you can pick the 1st 10th 100th and 456th folder/file in Windows?

[LightORamaDan]

PaulXmas wrote:

David Barnett wrote:

ok..you.win.i give up.

i just can't seem to explain what i mean.

tried examples to show...but based on respones..others don't understand either.

just don't know how else to explain the benefit..so i'll stop trying .

best
david

David, let me see if I understand what you are asking...

You want to be able to select say channel 1 channel 5 channel 29 and channel 50.

Then copy or whatever?

The same way you can pick the 1st 10th 100th and 456th folder/file in Windows?

Paul Roberson asked for the ability to to pick multiple channels in a subsiquent post in this thread. You are saying what Paul Roberson is saying.

The original request from David Barnett (unless I am mistaken) is asking for the ability to select random cells throughout the sequence.


Dan

[jimswinder]

LightORamaDan wrote:

The original request from David Barnett (unless I am mistaken) is asking for the ability to select random cells throughout the sequence.
Dan

I thought that was what he was asking also...and it didn't make sense to me.

If you were able to select/copy multiple individual cells and then you went to paste them somewhere else, wouldn't they then be all together (I.E. you selected/copied the 4th, 10th, 15th and 20th cells in a channel and went to paste them into another channel, wouldn't they now be the 1, 2, 3 and 4th cells without the same spacing between them? (At least that's how it works in Excel)

Guess I don't see the advantage to that...

[LightORamaDan]

jimswinder wrote:

LightORamaDan wrote:

The original request from David Barnett (unless I am mistaken) is asking for the ability to select random cells throughout the sequence.
Dan

I thought that was what he was asking also...and it didn't make sense to me.

If you were able to select/copy multiple individual cells and then you went to paste them somewhere else, wouldn't they then be all together (I.E. you selected/copied the 4th, 10th, 15th and 20th cells in a channel and went to paste them into another channel, wouldn't they now be the 1, 2, 3 and 4th cells without the same spacing between them? (At least that's how it works in Excel)

Guess I don't see the advantage to that...

I figured that in this case if you had copied Cells (row/column) 1/4, 1/7, 2/5, 2/8 and then you were to paste them at cell 10/10 then they would be placed in 11/14, 11/17, 12/15 and 12/18 ...

And you would only do it this way if there were things in the area of the copy that you did not want included when you did the paste.

Now beyond a copy/paste situation, the multiple select would allow you to simultaneously select 1/4, 1/7, 2/5 and 2/8 then apply the shimmer tool to them all. However as I said before, the only advantage I see to that is an easy single step undo and I guess to add to that you could then try a different effect to that group of channels.

As I said, I hopefully understand what is being asked for but I (as do all companies) have limited resources and want to make sure that I put effort into those tasks that provide the highest reward. If this was a trivial task then we would just do it but it is not trivial and will take time away from other things that people have asked for and that I do see as a benefit.

Explain how this provides significant benefit over what can be accomplished in the software software today and I will be happy/eager to listen.

Dan

Dan