I have been using the @record group feature in my last gig extensively, and can see this to be one of the main things I will do going forward when it comes to recording position information for moving lights; However, I have hit a few speed bumps that prohibit it to be as fast, smooth, and reliable as I would need it to be to be a real performance booster.
Main Objectives
I find that in order to record positions, I want to be up close to the stage, to make sure I can get it right with ease and speed, thus using my ipad with a touchOSC layout.
In essence, I want to be able to record JUST the position (and/or beam) information of the selected channels/of the selected group of channels, no matter what else is currently live on stage, without having to go back and forth between the computer and the stage.
Current issues with that approach
GUI interference / command line/OSC driven selective recording is missing
While one can send the relevant commands via OSC to @record group (by sending the command keys "@" and "g" plus a number), you are now confronted with a popup window confirming with subchannels to include/exclude. In order to be really effective via remote, there would need to be a command line option (or combination of options) to select which channels to include; Speaking from personal need, I could think of these 5 or 6:
- Colour (all Colour channels, RGB but also W, A, UV, C,M,Y... would be recorded AND marked - not just the changed ones, as it would be important to mark all colour channels so that the same colour can be reproduced - say we did not modify Blue (from a standard 0), but next time we recall the group, Blue has been set to 50 - in that case, we would still want blue to be overwritten with 0)
- Position (Pan/Tilt/Fine, and see above in colour about consistency of related channels)
- Beam (Focus/Zoom/Gobo/Shutters..., and see above in colour about consistency of related channels)
- Position and Beam (this could be solved if there was a way to combine several options with command line shortcuts, but that might be a more complex syntax than just creating a combo shortcut for this)
- Intensity
- ALL
Unexpected inclusions
When currently doing the steps above, (and say we are in Intensity Channel Window mode), I would be working with the pop-up window (in case of trying to record only intensity, one has to click on deselect all first, then on Position - while I understand the logic, it does feel clicky/tedious), the following, unexpected (at least from my end) things tend to happen:
Channels that were modified any time between now and the last "unmark channels" (and were thus marked in live) are now marked in the newly created group, but with the level 0 - this causes, correct me if I am wrong, an overwriting of whatever subchannel/channel was marked, so if I recall the group, a lot of unrelated channels will be overwritten. In my example i.e. I had played around with channels 11 thru 13, had given them an intensity, played with the red, the green, the blue... all these would now be overwritten with zero when I recall the group with G to be included in a cue. Moreover, the actual channels I did want to record the position information for have also marked Intensity subchannels at zero.
What I would have wanted/hoped for/expected from the description instead to happen would be: No channels, No subchannels would be marked or recorded, except for the currently selected channels/groups, and for these only the pan / tilt / fine values (those four WOULD be marked, and those values would be recorded, but even the intensity channels of these fixtures would NOT be marked.
I hope what I suggest makes sense, and the value in enhancing productivity for the designer is apparent
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Wow! Very nicely solved!!!! Thanks a lot!!!! Downloaded it and seems to work just as it should!