[QLab] Video Cue Update

[Christopher Ashworth]

Hi All,

Instead of forcing you to wait for the release candidate, I've  
decided to throw one more beta release of the Video Cue up for your  
inspection and review.

That link again is:

http://figure53.com/qlab/downloads/plugins/video/VideoCue.QLabPlugin.zip

For this version you'll see the following additional features:

- Option to play the videos back in a resizable window.
- Fade Cues can now be used on Video Cues to fade their audio.  (Only  
the master channel applies.)
- Some important bug fixes that make it more stable and make the  
preview window work better.

You'll see there is also a control to set the opacity of each video.   
The last feature I'll be adding before the official release is a  
"Video Fade Cue" that will allow you to fade that opacity just like  
you do the audio volume.

*** IMPORTANT:  Old Video Cues you've saved prior to this will load  
with an opacity of zero.  You won't see them until you adjust it back  
up to full visibility.  New cues will of course start out completely  
visible. ***

There is one other important change in the way the Video Cue works:   
loading a cue no longer captures the display.  That is done when you  
actually fire the cue.

Why make this change?  For one thing, this makes it much less  
confusing when you open up a workspace that has a Video Cue in the  
first slot.  (No more "Holy crap my screen just went black and I have  
no mouse!!! WTF!!" )  But I also believe it is a cleaner design in  
terms of how you build your workspaces.  It removes the confusion  
about how to keep a display "captured" over a series of video files  
by reducing your options to one simple approach:  just pick an image  
file (JPG, PNG, GIF, whatever) you want to be your background and  
drop that in as your first cue.  Walla: instant static background for  
all your videos.  You can go with simple black, or whatever you  
want.  And of course you can change it as you go by dropping in other  
images.

You'll see that Video Cues can layer on top of each other, so you can  
build up a series of images and movies, and have picture-in-picture,  
etc.  Go wild.  Be creative.  You can even use all those animated  
GIFs from your old 1990s web pages that you've been dying to put in a  
show.  Go on, you know you want to.

I'm pretty excited about the possibilities here, and will try to get  
the final version (with video fading) done as soon as I can.  In the  
meantime I am eager to hear how it goes and if you have any suggestions.

Cheers,
Christopher

P.S.:  For you brave souls that already started using the Video Cue  
in live shows, I've left the old version of the cue in that folder:

http://figure53.com/qlab/downloads/plugins/video/

Just in case I screwed something up, you can always fall back on a  
known set of bugs.  ;)