Problem with presets layout

[KevinBenstead]

Hi

I'm using Lumidesk to control some LED battens. They are Stairville LED RGD 252. I'm using the fixture already in the scan library "led bar rgb 252-10 ldl w rgb 001".

This has three RGB colour wheels, one control channel with presets to select the operating mode of the fixture and one speed control to control the speed of flashing.

When I patch this into a show I get two very large colour wheels at the top of the presets, with a smaller colour wheel underneath and the two other preset controls to the right of the smaller colour wheel.

The picture here shows the layout as it is.


The presets screen is so large that we have to scroll down the screen to access the bottom colour wheeel and the two preset controls.

What would be really useful would be a way of re-sizing and moving the controls around on the presets screen whilst programming takes place. For example in this particular fixture the would be nice to have the three colur wheels next to each other (across the screen) and the two other controls underneath them.

I've just tried creating my own ScanLibrary for the fixture and got the same results.

I'd guess that this fixture has more channels than most (11 DMX channels per fixture) so it may be something peculiar to this especially as there are three colour wheels but it would be good to know if a solution to this is possible. For example setting the size of the controls in the scan library.

[CMBDJ]

Kevin,

What is the size of your monitor? And what resolution are you running?

[KevinBenstead]

Hi

At home I have a 22" wide screen monitor running at 1440*900 whilst at the theatre we have a standard 19" monitor running at 1024*768.

On both screens the bottom colour wheel and the two smaller controls are off the bottom of the screen which means we have to scroll down the screen to get to these controls.

I'll have a look tonight to see if increasing the resolution improves things.

Thinking about it their doesn't seem to be any logic behind the layout. Refering to the picture in the original post.

The 'CONTROL' control is the channel 1
The 'SPEED' control is DMX channel 2
BUT (this is where it gets confusing)
The TOP RGB wheel controls DMX channels 3-5
The middle RGB wheel controls DMX channels 6-8
The small RGB wheel at the bottom controls DMX channels 9-11

Also why are two of the colour wheels so much bigger than the other one. If all three were the same size they would fit on the screen. (Two colour wheels at the top, one at the bottom with the other controls next to it would be ideal)

I don't think there's much that can be done on this version but I think it's something that need looking at for the future.

[CMBDJ]

I have a 22inch monitor here on my office computer, it's set at 1920x1080 and I don't have to scroll for that particular profile. In the field I have 17" laptops and 15" laptops, but in the field we're usually not doing too much programming, just triggering. But when we do have to make adjustments onsite, the smaller screens do pose a problem with too much scrolling to access the features.

[KevinBenstead]

I've done a little experiment since i got home.

I managed to resize the presets window which allowed two of the colour wheels to sit next to each other on the top row and the other coluor wheel and the other controls to appear underneath them. On my home PC with resolution at 1440 x 900 i get all the controls on the screen. I'll try at the theatre tonight to see what happens at 1024x768.

The colour wheels appear to automatically re-size them selves to fit the window. if there is enough room at their minimum size then you can get two across the window but if there isn't enough room then the colour wheel re-sizes it''s self to be the full width of the window. I guess that explains why there are two large colour wheels and a smaller one on the picture in the first post.

The amount that the presets window can be re-sized is limited by the Desktop window (mainly the Cuelist / Cue / Sequence section at the bottom.

Maybe the solution would be to allow the Desktop and Presets 'windows' to be un-docked from the main window so that they can be re-sized to any size we want.

[KevinBenstead]

I'm at the theatre now.

The monitor is running at 1280 x 1024 resolution.

I can't move the divide between the Desktop and the Presets windows far enough to the left to get more than one colour wheel across the width of the presets window.

[CMBDJ]

yeah I think that's due to the help boxed added in the fall release. It's not an issue if you have larger screens, but if you're using lower resolutions it can cause this type of issue. I can see that the help buttons are useful to beginners, but it's not anything that a beginner can't pick up on from demo video.

[lumidesk]

Hello, I can make a mode to enable or disable the help windows, what do you think about that?
Thanks

[KevinBenstead]

If removing the help buttons will allow the desktop side of the screen to be narrower than present then I'd say yes go for it.

Otherwise it would be more useful to be able to undock the desktop and presets so they can be re-sized as required and sit on top of each other if required.

[CMBDJ]

I agree with Kevin. I seem to remember having no problem dragging the desktop or preset panels left or right to allow for more room. But again, which ever works best.

[KevinBenstead]

Using the Feb 2011 version last night (which doesn't have the help buttons on the screen) I tried again to expand the Presets window as far to the left as I could.

As before I can't move the divider far enough left to be able to get two Colour Wheel side by side.

Screen resolution set to 1280 x 1024.

[CMBDJ]

well It may have actually changed in 2011. I have mostly all new laptops now with 17" wide screens. So I may have gotten away from that problem soon after it popped up and forgot. I know in a previous version sometime I could drag the screen left pretty far with a smaller screen. It may be the resolution. I don't know. Maybe connect a second monitor and duplicate the screens to solve?

[KevinBenstead]

Second monitor not an option. PC only has one VGA output.

I'm seriously considering replacing it as it's causing other problems as well (see Audio Analyser crashes posts)

[lumidesk]

Hello Kevin, I'm going to post a Release today, the Audio Analyser shoundn't crash, an I will post a beta to fix the preset problem
Thanks

[CMBDJ]

Second monitor not an option. PC only has one VGA output.

I'm seriously considering replacing it as it's causing other problems as well (see Audio Analyser crashes posts)

Ok I thought you were on a laptop. Just swap out your smaller monitor for a larger one.