Originally Posted by veldeman
Right! But you need the tool to be able to do it.
A layer can be:
- a video file (animated or not),
- or a BMP (animated or not),
- or a real-time effect like ribbons, real-time ocean, smoke etc...
Why would the the A/B system difficult to map?
It a 16-bit DMX channel and you make a transistion between two sets of layers.
[Hugh]
But how does the media server know what is happening in State A and what is happening in State B
Because the media server needs to know two things:
Your Preview State (or Mix A) and your Program State (or Mix B), and then how you wish to transition from A to B.
State A or State B can change at any time - instantly - as the programmer adjusts their programming or overrides playback.
If you are controlling this from a lighting board, that's an awful lot of channels, if you are doing it properly.
In Catalyst to do this with say a movie and a mask on layers 1 & 2, and a movie and a mask on layers 3 & 4 then doing a cross dissolve between them takes 160 DMX channels....