Sliders in VC should be able to act like Simple Desk sliders, i.e. overriding the current cue level

[siegmund]

Just let me add a small inconsistency (I'm certain you worried about but maybe someone else has an idea to solve this): The middle of the handle is apparently connected to the top of the green bar. So in this case the center bar in which the handle is moving and the level bar could not have the same size. I see the point that it looks better if they are at the same height but it's not as much consistent as the other controls are.

Nevermind, I saw that the level bar is not directly "physically" connected to the handler. But I still consider this a bit inconvenient.
Anyway, since is not a big issue maybe this is at least something for the to do list.

[shortylight]

Hi,

I am a little bit confused by the behaviour of the sliders in “OVR test.qxw”

If I do the following steps I see a kind of inconsistency:

1) Move a scene slider, I see the expected behaviour.

2) Move a slider in level mode, I see no action of the related monitoring slider (not expected, but seen before)

3) Use a monitoring slider once and reset it. From now the monitoring slider behaves in the expected way for both, scenes and level mode sliders. (This would be expected from the very first beginning and is not consistent to point 2)

Beside this I see two further issues, first is that the indicating bar is invisible after loading a qxw file until you use a monitored scene for the first time and second is the missing refresh of the bar as reported earlier.

I hope these issues are only minor bugs and can be fixed easily.

Martin

[mcallegari]

Alright, some more changes:
- now the "shadow" level bar is always shown if the slider has monitoring activated
- now the monitoring continues even during overriding

- immediately request a high priority when the monitoring is activated

If you mean this:

I could make a simple change so when switching from design to operate mode, every monitoring slider will request a higher priority.

I mean both actually. The highest priority is requested either when switching from design to operate mode and when activating the overriding, so that different VC Sliders can override each other

Windows build available here (4.10.6.40): https://dl.bintray.com/mcallegari/qlcplus/

Please test

[mlohrey]

I have been testing the latest version on Mac OSX and it seems to be going fine. I have had the odd time when sliders have become unresponsive but DMX is still be produced accurately. I am having trouble reproducing the errors but will see if I can find the pattern.

I like the green level indicator that you have added but wonder if it could be somehow merged into the other. Do those graphics have opacity capability? I was interested to see what it might look like if it was on top of the central slider with some opacity so both could be seen.

That said, it is fantastic and a look forward to using it live...

[mcallegari]

I like the green level indicator that you have added but wonder if it could be somehow merged into the other. Do those graphics have opacity capability? I was interested to see what it might look like if it was on top of the central slider with some opacity so both could be seen.

Trust me, it can't be done. Right now the monitor bar is painted first and then the whole slider (level + handler) is painted on top of it, so there cannot be a mix of the two.

Others tested it ? Can I merge it upstream for everyone ?

[shortylight]

Hi,

I am not quite sure if I got that priority issue of the widgets right.

With the latest version it is still a question in which order sliders are created when you start a workplace. If you create just level sliders that act on the same channel, then everythig is fine as long as the monitoring slider is created after the non monitoring one. If it is the other way round, the expected behaviour occurs for the first time when you used the monitoring slider first. I thought from the posts before that the necessary increment of the priority of the monitoring sliders would be done with the switch to operation mode. As to now this is not working in such a case.

Regards Martin

[shortylight]

Hi Massimo,

yes I tested the Windows version. As posted before I think there is still one issue.

As a feature I would like to ask for external control of the reset button. With this it would be possible to create a kind of master reset or even a frame reset by using the loop feature of QLC+ and also the use of external controler like BCF 2000 would be supported perfectly.

Again thank you for this work. It was a lot of fun to see things growing!

Martin

[siegmund]

Hi Massimo,

I just tested as well and I appreciate the latest changes!
But unfortunately I don't see that monitoring sliders are following non-monitoring sliders without applying the workaround with using overriding at least once as you said:

The highest priority is requested either when switching from design to operate mode and when activating the overriding, so that different VC Sliders can override each other

So obviously requesting highest priority when switching to operate mode doesn't seem to work with my workspace (try using a non-monitoring slider after switching to operate mode, the monitoring one will not follow).

As soon as this is fixed I would say this could go upstream.

Just as Martin proposed, I would appreciate external input, too.
And you still not commented if you consider support the two overriding options I described?

As soon as monitoring is enabled, it is possible to pick from two radio buttons:

• Override the selected channels until the Reset button is pressed
• Stop overriding and fade [jump] to the new value if a new value is applied to the selected channels

[mcallegari]

Guys, please don't exaggerate with the requests now.
I have already invested a lot of time on this, because I understand it is important for you, but that doesn't mean we need to build a castle over this feature.

To answer Lukas: I believe I have already expressed my opinion in adding new options. QLC+ 4 is becoming uncomfortable, either in using it and in maintaining the code. Too many things to consider means an inrease of risk that touching something will cause regressions somewhere else.
Plus, the more I add to QLC+ 4, the more work I have to do to port it to QLC+ 5, thus the longer you need to wait for it.

That said, today I've done other 2 changes:
- priority request should now be fixed, no matter what the sliders order is
- added external control for the reset button

On the other hand, I noticed a very very bad thing happening on the slider after using it for a while. It becomes completely unresponsive, and I suspect the cause is the additional level bar.
I definitely need to find an alternative, because this is no good at all.

For now, please test if everything works as expected, including saving/loading external control info in XML.

Windows build available here (4.10.6.44): https://dl.bintray.com/mcallegari/qlcplus/

P.S. Where's Matthias (Baer) by the way ?

[siegmund]

Guys, please don't exaggerate with the requests now.
I have already invested a lot of time on this, because I understand it is important for you, but that doesn't mean we need to build a castle over this feature.

Don't worry. We just wanted to mention everything that has been discussed in this long thread. I'm sure everyone was aware that most probably not everything will make it to the release. So from now with only the fade and an alternative overriding functionality unimplemented it went quite far and got better than I personally imagined
I also see that you've been working very hard on this, so thank you!

To answer Lukas: I believe I have already expressed my opinion in adding new options. QLC+ 4 is becoming uncomfortable, either in using it and in maintaining the code. Too many things to consider means an inrease of risk that touching something will cause regressions somewhere else.
Plus, the more I add to QLC+ 4, the more work I have to do to port it to QLC+ 5, thus the longer you need to wait for it.

I totally see your point here. Since with the new slider you already introduced a new feature to QLC+ I just wanted to make sure that you decided to not implement the alternative overriding option instead of forget considering it.

That said, today I've done other 2 changes:
- priority request should now be fixed, no matter what the sliders order is
- added external control for the reset button

I tested this and it works great (as far as I can tell also XML saving), I found only one minor issue:
External input dialog is visible when creating a new slider which is not in level mode by default. Everything is fine as you put it in level mode and check/uncheck the monitoring option once.

On the other hand, I noticed a very very bad thing happening on the slider after using it for a while. It becomes completely unresponsive, and I suspect the cause is the additional level bar.
I definitely need to find an alternative, because this is no good at all.

I already noticed this, too. But since I wasn't yet able to reliably reproduce it I thought it was some kind of my fault and didn't report it. But to me this seems to occur completely random, just always needs a small amount of time to occur.

[tested on Xubuntu 14.04 64Bit]

[mcallegari]

Last batch of changes, and then I would like to merge this upstream
- fixed the visibility of the reset button external control group in settings dialog
- fixed monitoring level in inverted slider appearance
- attempted to fix the rendering issue causing a slider to deadlock. Not sure about this but I think there are still cases where it happens. However, I'm not 100% positive this is related to the latest changes. I've got the impression this was already there and related to the monitoring feature in general

Windows build 4.10.6.46: https://dl.bintray.com/mcallegari/qlcplus/

[shortylight]

Hi all,

just did some quick tests as this weekend I am quite short of time. I found no issues, better to say I am absolutely lucky with this solution.

@Massimo: Thank you for jumping into this. Only with your large amount of work this great new feature could be implemented into QLC+ (V4.x). Once again I want to say "Thank you". I will have my next large event in April this year and with this feature in QLC+ I am looking forward to do my job with a new quality of tool.

If there is anything I can help with the further development of QLC+ (I am not a developer), please let me know.

Have a nice rest of the weekend!

Martin

[siegmund]

Last batch of changes, and then I would like to merge this upstream
- fixed the visibility of the reset button external control group in settings dialog
- fixed monitoring level in inverted slider appearance
- attempted to fix the rendering issue causing a slider to deadlock. Not sure about this but I think there are still cases where it happens. However, I'm not 100% positive this is related to the latest changes. I've got the impression this was already there and related to the monitoring feature in general

I tested this and it works pretty good. So from my point of view this could be merged.
Again I want to thank you for all your work. I'll be able to test this in detail at a venue next weekend but I'm confident the new feature will do a great job!

[mcallegari]

Very good !
Thanks everyone for testing and reporting with feedbacks.
Tomorrow I'll merge the changes upstream, together with documenting it

[Baer]

Thank you Massimo for your great work.

I was very busy the last week and not able to test it, but the comments here sound very promissing.

[siegmund]

Please don't mind me to bring this up again. In preparation of an event next week I played around a bit more with the feature and so far it looks great!
I noticed that the new behavior is also applied to knobs, which I really like because I can use everything all over my BCF 2000. The only thing is, that the level bar is not displayed at all (which absolutely makes sense because a knob is a radial not a linear control) but I wondered if there could be a way to display the actual monitored level, too. Maybe one of you has an idea?

Regards,
siegmund

[Baer]

So after that long time i was able to test the whole thing.

The implementation totaly fits my needs, so i can return to current git master branch on my self made lighting desk.

For the first quick test everithing seems to be smooth and stable
Will test it under real circumstances next weekend, have some workshop there, and can test current git version in live environment without ruining the show if something went wrong

Thanks again massimo for taking over and integrating this feature, was really a showstopper for me.

[mlohrey]

I have just had a chance to build a Mac OSX version from the latest source and am finding that the screen is freezing if I enable more than 2 or 3 sliders.

See this video. https://www.dropbox.com/s/eme8xq7y60czu ... s.mp4?dl=0

You can see that DMX is still being produced but the slider graphic isn't changing.

I am using the lastest version on MAC OSX and using the attached workspace.

I am away on holidays and don't have access to other operating systems to test.

Newslider Test.qxw

(10.04 KiB) Downloaded 489 times

[mcallegari]

Please try now. Deadlocks should be fixed.

[mlohrey]

Built a new version this morning.

Testing was better, but was able to reproduce the same locking behaviour.

See this video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7zdp13n457j6b ... 2.mp4?dl=0