Pangolin quickshow timeline

[Lasermad]

Pango latest RC Beta 263

Ok likely simply solution but its driving me crazy ..been trying to resolve for hours

Drag a cue , any cue into the timeline and it takes X amount of space on the timeline , that being X amount of seconds ... so lets take an animation that lasts 3 seconds ...BUT you want it to last 15 seconds , you want it to keep repeating until it takes up 15 seconds of show space ....... the cue are DRAGGABLE ... so you do that ..which seems the obvious thing to do ......... BUT ... BUT I find when i do that ..yes it lasts 15 secs but the entire animation SLOWS down , becomes jerky and useless ..its like it take the animationframes and divides them by 15 ! so slows it doen 15 times over etc

Grrrrr

What am I doing wrong

PAUL

[soforene]

Hmm... Quickshow hasn't been released for us paupers who splashed out on LD2000 but if it's the same as LD2000 then instead of stretching the event to last 15 seconds, just copy the 3 seconds event then paste it 4 more times so the total event = 3(seconds) x 5 = 15 Seconds.

Or is that too simplistic?

[White-Light]

With Atmoshperics this doesn't seem to happen but thats probably because they're made up of cycles anyway.

For Graphics your right if you stretch them you stretch the timescale of the playback so that the graphic slows down.

Soforene has the easiest solution and the one I immediately thought of, just add the animation multiple times to fill the time slot you have.

[Lasermad]

"Or is that too simplistic?"

Well kinda , yes or maybe just confusing !, lets say for example an animation that lasts 1.5 seconds , and you want to run it for 55 seconds , thats a LOT of copying and pasting ........ also WHY does the CUE .. " S T R E T C H " ...if its not to adjust the time in use .... the DURATION the animation repeats itself for

I agree a lot of the times it could be workedaround by copying in pasting , but with the stretch cue funcitionality its just confusing

i still reckon it should be easier !

PAUL

EDIT - while you guys are here :-) , when you import some music into the timeline , do you see a "wave" visuliasation of the peaks and troughs of music? ... as i dont ? yet an image i saw on web showed the waves , right clicking it dont help ..any ideas ..is it something i need to turn on

[Lasermad]

Al , from what i see you seem pretty good with quickshow

any advice on this also ............

Whats the functionality of buttons marked
"snapping"
"set marks by event"
"set mark in"
"set mark out"
cant find much intructions and little info around of its use

[White-Light]

Its all to do with how the cues are constructed I think.

Not a definitive answer but my interpretation based on what I've seen:

Most Atmospherics consist of a fixed static base cue with added effects that effectively animate and cycle several times a second. The result is if you stretch the cue you stretch the static base cue and the effect just applies to the whole cue so cycles as normal.

With an animation you have a cue that is made up of a large number of static frames. Just as with a film animation, the appearance of the animation is dependant on the speed at which these frames play back.

So, with an atmospheric you have a single static cue which you stretch to the entire duration of the selected time portion. However far you stretch it, its always a single frame so always appears the same irrespective of how long it takes to playback. The animation in this case is produced by the effect not by the cue itself and as its just a cyclic influence applied to the static frame, its unaffected by stretching because the cycle rate remains the same because the effect is something that just repeats over and over again at a set rate for the entire duration of any frame.

With your animation, you have a set number of static frames eg 40 and the animation is produced by the playback of the static frames over time, not by an external cyclic effect. The result is if you stretch those 40 frames over a greater period of time, then each frame has to fill a greater portion of time than it did previously. If it takes longer to playback, then the effect to the eye is that it slows down as the number of frames shown per second decreases.

[White-Light]

Al , from what i see you seem pretty good with quickshow

any advice on this also ............

I haven't used the timeline much as I've always found it a little simplistic for what I've wanted to create. Not a critisism of QS just a case of horses for courses or wanting pro features in a non pro programme!

Anyway, here's the little that I know:

Whats the functionality of buttons marked

"snapping"

Snapping determines if and how strongly the cue "snaps" to the time division lines on the timeline. The magnet strengths determine how strongly it snaps. If yoyu turn snapping off, then you can drag a cue between the time line dividers whereas with it on, they always snap to the dividers.


"set marks by event"
"set mark in"
"set mark out"

The markers appear to allow you to delineate a particular part of the time line for playback.

eg. If you click on a cue and select "Mark by Event", then you'll find the whole cue from start to finish turns yellow and playback will cycle through the yellow bit only. So even if there are other cues on the timeline, playback will cycle through the highlighted event only and ignore the other cues. If you start oplayback from before that start of the highlighted event on the timeline then what's before the start will play but once the yellow area has played through the cursor will return to the start of the marked event and cycle through that only. ie it won't go back to where you originally started playback from rather to the start of the marked event.

Mark In and Mark Out are basically the smae function as above, except they allow you to set the in and out markers by hand so that rather than selecting an entire event, eg a entire cue, you can instead set the markers to part of a cue or cues.

[Lasermad]

Loks like im going to have to do a lot of copying and pasting then ...some of the animations are so short theres little point in showing them once .. too quick to eye and distracting if your cycling through 20 animations in a minute methinks ! copy and paste it is !

Thanks for taking the time to feedback the other info


Paul

[White-Light]

Paul, I've got a more advanced solution for you.

Divide the total time for the 1 cue by the time taken for the cue to play through to give you the number of times it needs to be repeated.

eg. 100 secs duration required, animation lasts 20 secs, so 100/20 = 5 repeats needed.

Then when you've worked that out, drag the cue ONCE to the timeline. Select the cue. Then go to the "Event Properties" button (its the one on the far right of all the marker buttons that looks like a tv).

Click it and when the properties dialogue opens up, you'll notice at the bottom a dialogue that says "Number of Repeats" it then has a standard number box next to it. Enter into this the number of repeats required and press ok.

The cue now contains that number of repeats so if you play it back as its pulled onto the timeline once ie filling in the example above a 20 sec slot, it will playback at 5 times normal speed now and repeat 5 times BUT with the cue only playing throuh once.

This is because the 5 repeats are now contained in the single cue.

So to get the required 100 second animation in the example above that plays back at normal speed, you just drag the cue out to 100 seconds duration. When you play it back you will now find that the animation plays at normal speed 5 times over during the 100 sec period.

The advantage of using this is it stops you having to copy the cue 5 times into the space.

Obviosuly the numbers I used in the example through out will vary according to your particular duration requirements and the duration of the animation you select.

[Lasermad]

AL

Just tested that and it works ! many thanks

Not an elegant solution and requires some brain work but definately preferable to copying and pasting .

I still reckon the should be some software functionality written in that does this automatically ..i read you feedback betas to pangolin so please feel free to feed this back
to keep the programmers busy

thanks again

Paul