[ANSWERED] Sequencing of scenes
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Morning!
Welcome to the Isadora Community forum.
What you describe is something what we call a Master scene, basically the master scene will have the setup of starting / stopping the sequence. Which will then activate the sequence, or the next step of the sequence.
Isadora's creator Mark Congillo made an entire Guru session about Scenes on YouTube that might give you some insights :)
Regarding actors:
- Activate Scene
- Deactivate Scene
- Midi Note Watcher (or any of the other MIDI actors to give the initial trigger)
Let us know if you have any follow-up questions
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also - check out the Jump actors - these can be triggered by something within the scene to take you to the next (or any) scene
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Thank you for the information. I watched the video you suggested, and I did find a couple of new tricks, but nothing regarding master scenes. My project is simple yet effective. I want to be able to play various videos in a scene or set of scenes that are timed to play throughout the sequence and fade out. Example, I open with the logo on all three screens, as the presentation begins all three screens begin playing different videos that are 7 seconds long. They fade in and out on the various screens at different times. The last three videos are 15 sec, 12, sec and 9 sec. The times are delayed so all three videos stop at the same time and fade to black. Is that possible? I want to hit one button that plays the entire scenes in sequence. I have 5 sections in the presentation that have slide, bullet points and videos. Im trying to get more creative than just a power point single slide presentation. I know this can be done with a server and layered in a timeline. I dont believe I need to go that high end, but until I can find a software that can do simple layers and timing, I may be stuck with that option. Where would I begin?
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your description is a little confusing, but, if i understand correctly, it seems like something that would be super easy to do in Isadora using a series of scenes. if you have 3 movies playing on different screens, you need 3 Movie Players and 3 Projectors in one scene. use the End Trigger output of one of the Movie Players to Jump to the next scene. The next scene could be blank, just containing an Enter Scene Trigger and a Jump. You can set fade times in the Jump actor, and if you want a longer black gap between movies, you can use a Trigger Delay in the blank scene.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'they fade in and out on the various screens at different times' but you can build fades into scenes by using Envelope Generators and triggers. -
If I get it right, your issue is the separation of the three screens. What you want is three sequences, one for each screen, which on the other hand are connected time wise.
There (as at most situations) are several ways to achieve this in Isadora.
One way would be to program a kind of complex mechanics, with 'video mixer', 'envelope', and some logic actors, to switch between two movie players per screen and automatically change the source video after cross mixing.One other way is the way you use scenes. As you saw in the Guru Session video, there are those 'Background' scenes you can activate. I'm not sure if the video does it make clear, that you can activate as many scenes at the same time, as you need.
This could result in the following scene sequence:Scene 1:
3x movie Player for all three screens running in parallel
End of movie player 1 triggering the activation of scene 2
End of movie player 2 triggering the activation of scene 3
End of movie player 3 triggering the activation of scene 4
Scene 2 - 4:
Each only containing the Actors for one screen.
Scene 2 will be activated when movie 1 in Scene 1 is ending, only fading over the video in screen 1, triggering scene 5
Scene 3 will be activated when movie 2 in Scene 1 is ending, only fading over the video in screen 2, triggering scene 6
Scene 4 will be activated when movie 3 in Scene 1 is ending, only fading over the video in screen 3, triggering scene 7Scene 5 - 6:
Representing separate sequences for each screen.
Sc 5 will be triggert by Scene 2 only fading over the video in screen 1
Sc 6 will be triggert by Scene 3 only fading over the video in screen 2
Sc 7 will be triggert by Scene 4 only fading over the video in screen 3, triggering scene 8 for all screensScene 8:
Contains again content for all three screens like in scene 1, will be triggered by only one of the three running Scenes 5 - 7, overwriting all scenes and fading over all Screens ran before.To keep the load low, don't forget to put a 'deactivate Scene' actor in each following scene, triggered by an 'enter scene actor' and a time delay.
A third way could be one 'Main Scene', where all the controlling happens by timing. It only contains the logic, which scene will be activated when.
This could be done just by timing, or you could send back the play positions of the movie players in each scene via broadcaster or global value actor.
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Thank you for the explanation. I'm going to give that a try. I really want to see if this works. I see the creativity that can happen with Isadora. In my normal line, we would use a server where I would just layer the videos, slides,etc, in a timeline an hit play. In this scenario with Isadora, I would play three different videos on three different screens. I hit go or trigger for the scene to start, right screen projector starts the video, 3 seconds later screen left starts to play a video, 3 seconds later center projector plays a video. This back and forth goes on for about 7 minutes and all three screens fad to black to end the opening of the presentation. The speaker talks for about 5 minutes, then we move to sections two of the presentation. Section two of the presentation is the same thing as opening, but may have slides, bullet points and videos. That is all I need it to do. I'm sure as I get better with the software, I can get more creative, but for starters, that's all I need it to do. For me, that is more interactive then a single screen power point presentation. Can I use multiple computers with Isadora on them to network into a hub and control them all with Midi, DMX, or a control button? I believe that could really take the presentation to a new level.
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its pretty easy to set up Isadora to control multiple screens from one computer, but if you want to control each screen from a different machine, you can use a Net Broadcaster to send data between them. last year i made an installation using 2 machines, each with a sequence of scenes. one machine worked as the control and sent triggers to the other machine whenever the scene changed.
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I see where you are coming from and there are pro's and con's for a timeline based programming. This is and was always a point of view and depending on the needs and goals.
Isadora is meant foremost for interactive and scene based programming. One big drawback regarding timeline based programming is the missing (or at least complicated) possibility of spontaneous and flexible changes in mid show.Some Media server tools already implement both modes, where you can put a nested timeline composition into a scene/cue based sequence, combining both worlds.
There are some solutions to have a similar functionality in Isadora. Have a search in the forum for e.g. 'timeline'.But I think for now, your best way to go is the activate scene way.
To simplify it, do an automated sequence for each display. (Numbers here are just an example)
Sequence 1 for display 1:
Scene 1 - 3Sequence 1 for display 2:
Scene 4 - 7Sequence 1 for display 3:
Scene 8 to 11----
Sequence 2 for display 1: Scene 12 - 15
Sequence 2 for display 2: Scene 16 - 20
Sequence 2 for display 3: Scene 21 to 23
leave Scene 24 blank using it as starting scene.
In scene 25 only put the 'activate scene' actors which starts the first sequence for each display ( 1 + 4 + 8)In Scene 26 put the 'activate scene' actors which starts the second sequence for each display (12 + 16 + 21)
Go on with as many sequences you need. Then you can trigger the sequences with the classic 'space' go next scene, starting with scene 24.
PS: You can put Scene 24 - 26 to position 1-3 as well, scenes for the sequence following those. This is up to you, I just chose this order for simplified explanation.
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Here is another way to go on a single computer, simulating separated instances. But this is kind of unorthodox and might bring unknown issues. Therefor without official support and should be well tested! I only did a quick testing on macOS. So no guaranty for this to work without flaws, especially on windows!
Program a patch/project for every screen each. You can set the stage setup for every patch separate, resulting in:
patch 1: Stage 1 output 2
patch 2: Stage 1 output 3
patch 3: Stage 1 output 4
(You can rename the stages in each patch, to reflect the output)Keep all three projects open in parallel. This way each patch will project on its own output.
The main go trigger key (default is 'space') will work for all patches, which are open at that time. Triggering it, will trigger a scene jump for all open patches, even those in the background/ not in focus.
Giving the patches a different trigger button each (Menu 'Scene' -> 'edit go triggers'), you can trigger every patch/sequence independently. -
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@diggable said:
The times are delayed so all three videos stop at the same time and fade to black. Is that possible?
Triggering Things in a Sequence in the Same Scene
- Enter Scene Trigger actor > Timed Trigger Actor > Sequential Trigger actor
- Alternatively: Enter Scene Trigger actor > Timer actor > Comparator actors looking for each time when there's supposed to be a trigger.
- Set the 'mode' of the Comparators to greater than or equal to ("ge")
- Initialize the first value input of each Comparator at '0'.
- Connect the output of the Timer actor to the first value input on each Comparator actor.
- Note that the Timer actor outputs milliseconds, so if you want a trigger at 3 seconds, put "3000" into the second value input of the Comparator actor
- Alternatively: Enter Scene Trigger actor > Timer actor > Comparator actors looking for each time when there's supposed to be a trigger.
- Fade in and fade out within the same Scene can be handled by Envelope Generator actors hooked up to either a Video Fader actor, a Video Mixer actor, or the 'intensity' input of a Projector actor.
Triggering Things Across Multiple Scenes/With Scene Transitions
- Enter Scene Trigger actor > Trigger Delay actor > Jump actor if you want a scene to automatically jump to the next one
- Fade in and out while transitioning between Scenes can be handled by the Jump or Jump++ actors' fade inputs.
- Fade in and out of background Scenes can be handled by the Activate Scene Amount actor in combination with Envelope Generator actors.
- Enter Scene Trigger actor > Timed Trigger Actor > Sequential Trigger actor
