Beware the Simple Show Builder! NEWBIES READ THIS!

[George Simmons]

I had a rather disturbing experience a while ago.  The show, which has worked flawlessly the past three weeks, failed to start at it's appointed time.  I immediately [Foul Language Used] a brick and made a beeline not for the bathroom, but the Clearwater Lights Control Center, where I started the show on demand.

 

After my blood pressure and pulse settled down a bit, I started checking to see what went wrong.  I checked the Schedule Editor and it's empty!  Except for a show last night between 10:30 and 11:30.  Every other day was empty!

 

Here's what happened.  Last night I used the SSB (for the first time in 3-4 years) to create a simple little show with the sequences I wanted to video.  (I almost always use Show Editor because it has 100 times the versatility but I thought a quick simple show would be right up the SSB's alley.)  When it wanted to know what days I wanted the show to run, I unchecked all days except yesterday.  Because that's the day I was running it, right?

 

It appears that the SSB - when you use it to create a show, removes everything in your schedule in favor of the show you just created.  So NEWBIES BEWARE!

 

IMHO, and it's a very strong opinion, this is totally boorish behavior by the SSB, and it should either be changed, or it should be CLEARLY stated somewhere in the SSB process (not to mention the help files that haven't been updated in years) that using the SSB will wipe out your existing schedule!

[k6ccc]

Warning noted, but that is the behavior I would expect. There can be only one schedule that the player uses so any update would update the one schedule.

Note that I have never been looked at the SSB, so I could be totally full of something that smells bad...

[rwertz]

It sounds like more than newbies should be aware   I agree that someone new would likely expect this functionality. But after all these years of using the Show Editor I would have never expected a simplified version of it to wipe out my schedule. Funny how perspectives change.

[LOR Staff]

Not to disparage either group, but LOR users really only come in 2 flavors;  There are those of you who have 8 quadrillion channels and know more about the software than I do  , and then there are the people who have 32 channels who just want to 'string and go'. 

 

Simple Show Builder is for those string and go type folks.  It's quick/dirty/and does exactly what a newbie would expect, just like the others have pointed out.  

 

With that said however, I too would be upset if I lost my schedule simple because I was looking for a quick and dirty show.  I'm already doing a lot of work in the SSB for a future release, and I think there is room for some middle ground.  I'll see if I can put some kind of prompt in that says something along the lines of 'Hey!  You already have scheduled shows.  Are you SURE you want to remove them for this new schedule?'