Editing Presets

Recently used version 4.10 m119 for a show, triggering presets using a USB to DMX Perperoni interface...

Is there a way to update a preset without destroying all the intesity fade times? If you snapshot a layer after making some adjustments, all the intensity fade times disappear.

Here is what I think might be a bug...When editing presets that are not loaded live, the file name does not appear correctly. It seems to list the correct folder name, and the correct file number, but the file name seems to be referencing something else entirely. Sometimes it references what is loaded live, but sometimes not.

Finally, is there a way to edit a preset completely blind? When editing a preset that is not loaded live, if you edit the intensity level, it changes the intensity live.

For a future project... Is is possible to split the single output in the single output version of Catalyst? i.e. can you hook it up to a Triple Head-to-Go box? For that matter, could you hook up two Triple Head-to-Go boxes and get six screens out of the full version?

Memory... The system I used was a 3.0GHz Mac Pro with a 15k SCSI content drive but only 1Gb of RAM. It appeared to slow down a bit when pushing several layers with high motion content. Will more RAM help this? or is it the processor and hard drive speed that are most important?

Thanks,
Kevin

How were the files encoded? And what playmode were you using? If you were just using the play loop forward mode, then you might have had a significant number of files playing back at the same time. If this was the case, then changing to play fwd if > then 0 will help. Hard drive speed is the most important thing here, and more ram wont help you very much (if at all). Unless you want a few specific files only to be played, in which case you can add more RAM, and create a RAM disk to play the files off of.

There are always a number of factors that can affect playing back multiple files. Also, with high-motion files, the codec and quality become much more important. Did you view the files outside of catalyst on the same computer and see how they played back?

Editing Presets Blind - Yes. In the presets hud, in a context menu, above all of the snapshot options, "edit presets".

TripleHead - Maybe. I recently did a project where we used 2 TripleHead's for 6 outputs. It worked flawlessly. Lots of people have had lots of problems trying to do this, depending on the abilities of their hardware. Search this forum for "TripleHead" or "TH2G".

Files encoded DV-PAL and played fine in QT. All layers set to mode 10 (play fwd > 0) or 12 (play fwd once > 0). The movies played fine on their own, it was when you had multiple layers at the same time. It sounds as if more RAM won't help, but that sounds counter-intuitive. Surely if the computer is being asked to do more, having more RAM will help?

Editing presets blind...Yes, followed the method you suggest. Try editing a preset blind and edit the intensity attribute. My system moves the fader live on stage, even though the preset I am editing is not loaded and has absolutely nothing to do with what is on stage.

However, updating a preset without destroying the fade times on the intensity attribute is the real time saver for me, if there is a way to do it. What I need to do is update the preset, not really re-snapshot it. Some kind of command similar to a lighting desk that will only update the attributes that have changed and leave everything else alone.

Cheers,

Kevin

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kmclights

Files encoded DV-PAL and played fine in QT. All layers set to mode 10 (play fwd > 0) or 12 (play fwd once > 0). The movies played fine on their own, it was when you had multiple layers at the same time. It sounds as if more RAM won't help, but that sounds counter-intuitive. Surely if the computer is being asked to do more, having more RAM will help?

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Here's the thing, adding more RAM will help the computer out, and it might improve your performance, but only VERY slightly, if at all. The computer really isnt being asked to do much in terms of what it can do, its the Hard Drive that is doing all of the work really. At what quality were these files encoded?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kmclights

However, updating a preset without destroying the fade times on the intensity attribute is the real time saver for me, if there is a way to do it. What I need to do is update the preset, not really re-snapshot it. Some kind of command similar to a lighting desk that will only update the attributes that have changed and leave everything else alone.

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Fair enough. Leaving the performance side of my enquiry, can someone answer my issue with editing/updating presets?

Thanks,
Kevin

I've accepted the fact that editing presets is a live process and that blind editing doesn't exist unless I want to turn Full Screen OFF or disconnect my outputs. But then it is not really blind editing in the lighting sense, it is just live editing without the output.

Kevin

I haven't had the chance to test this blind editing process, but if it really behaves in the illogical way you described above than that needs to be logged as a bug.

-Edit-

I just tried this out and it does behave as kmclights suggested. It seems to me that editing a preset in the preset editor should be completely independent of what is happening live. Does anybody else agree with me? Any way this could be changed, Richard?

Having just completed another show, I can see certain advantages to the way that it works currently. However, it is far easier to update a layer using the layer window in live than having to scroll down in the 'edit presets' popup window. Currently when the updates are complete, then your only options are to snapshot the entire layer, thus destroying any fades that have been programmed into that layer.

To preserve the fades, and to make updating presets far quicker, it would be helpful to have an "update all layers" and "update layer x" commands in the drop down list for each preset. This command would only update attributes that have changed from what is in the preset already. Some kind of comparison algorithm would be needed to compare what is live on stage and what is recorded in the preset. I've mentioned this before and I think someone else has recently put this request in the new features section.

Obviously all of this is to aid those of us using Catalyst as a stand alone entity. I'm sure all of this is not even on the radar of those who program Catalyst from a Hog 2 or 3.

Kevin