[QLab] Video Cue

[Geoff Peck]

Hello Everyone,

I've downloaded the video cue beta and done some minimal testing with  
it, so far I haven't had any major problems. I thought some feedback  
would be useful though. It's works fine with any video I can playback  
through quicktime and it also works with still images.

I have a few things I'd like to see in the video cue, but first a  
little background on how I'd like to use it: I work for a small  
children's theatre company and I've been using Qlab to run the sound  
for our shows since last september and with the Pro Midi license I  
also have all the light cues on the cue list as well. It's amazing to  
have a simple, single, unified cue list for an entire show. It leaves  
me to handle the microphone levels and my assistant can fire all the  
cues with a single go button. In the past year we've been adding  
digital projection to our productions. Mainly we use the projector  
for backdrops for certain scenes, or as a sort of animated gobo  
(we've done snow and rain that way). Last year we did a show that  
involved an entirely projected set that used four projectors to  
project animated backdrops that we're timed to go with the music (the  
show was School House Rock Jr.) but it involved a lot of work to get  
the timing correct with the lights, sound, mics, and projection.  
Obviously this is where Qlab would come in.

I love the fact that I can select which screen to output the video  
to. I have a MacPro with two nVidia 7300s, so I can have four  
different outputs. I've tried all different combinations of video and  
still images on the different outputs simultaneously and I have not  
had a problem. The start and stop cues also work fine with the video  
cue. I set my desktop image to plain black, so when it drops out of  
the video clip it goes to black. This is where my first request comes  
in: a video fade. The beauty of having a timeline that can work on  
the fly is that timing in live shows is never the same, so if a scene  
ends early I want to be able to fade out the video early. Obviously  
if I had still background, I could make a short video clip of the  
image fading to black and put that in the cue list, but if I have  
dozens of images to show that's a huge hassle to "pre-create" all the  
fades. Obviously an even better option would be to be able to cross- 
fade two video clips. Want to fade to black? Just cross-fade with a  
still image of black or any color for that matter.

The second request I have is that there be some way to set the size  
and position of the video clip. The selection for whether or not to  
maintain the aspect ratio or stretch the video is nice but what if I  
want it to be just a small image on the left of the screen? Once  
again that's doable now if I pre-compose all the images, but the  
problem is when a director says can we make this a little smaller and  
move it over here and it takes a few minutes to re-pre-compose the  
image or video.

That's it, all I need is cross-fading and positioning/sizing and I  
could do everything I want with this. In the past few months I've  
been looking for software to do just these simple tasks and I keep  
finding things that do too much and as a result cost too much and  
still require me to come up with workarounds to get the software to  
respond to midi signals so Qlab can control it. In the mean time I'll  
continue to test the new video cue.

Thanks, Chris, for making a great piece of software and keep up the  
good work!

-Geoff
___________________________
Geoff Peck
Lighting, Sound, & Web Designer
Starting Arts
(408) 504-6350
geoff at startingarts.com
http://www.startingarts.com



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