Greetings All,
So I have been having an issue with ION as of late and had many posts in the 'Help with Displays' thread. Sadly, the issue I have not been able to resolved as I am not sure the software is able to do what I ask, at least currently. I was hoping I was just being a dumbass and not able to follow directions, but we just had our factory training and our lovely factory rep confirmed that I was not able to view follow times(well where we are in a follow) on a second cuelist in ION. He tried a bunch of things and concluded with ... huh, well on Eos you can see it, so on and so fourth...' No biggie, I am just glad I am not crazy.
It was mentioned that the addition of tabs to the ION line of consoles might fix this. That would be lovely.
Basically at this point, even to put in an animation similar to that of the main playback display in the currently running cue/cue stack would be a GREAT addition. I know that I could just program that cuelist I have with a 7:00 follow in it onto the main fader, but I know undoubtedly I am going to have more and more situations where this is just not going to be a reasonable answer.
Other Feature Requests:
Tap to Time: Yes I know you can adjust rate by doing just that, tap to time would still be REALLY handy for live stuff, particularly effects. You don't always know what BPM people are playing at and when you are forced to busk on a show, adding effects and tapping the speed of the effects steps is a HUGE help. Just needs a four count... tap...tap....tap...tap which then takes the average time betwenn the taps and sets the rate at that speed, then you can adjust from there.
Fan: I know its already on its way. Any way we can get a preview how it is going to work, what we can fan, what we cannot? What the syntax is going to be, etc. I am really interested to see hwo this is going to pan out and am SUPER excited to hear that it is coming down the pipes.
Submaster as Intensity Master for a cuestack: I would love the option to be able to independently control the intensity of a cue stack using the sub fader I have the cuestack mapped to. I know this seems wierd, but it is a feature I have picked up off several other consoles and for the live stuff I have to do sometime it would be HUGELY helpful. I figure enableing this would make me lose the ability to run a cue in on that fader, but ultimately I am okay with that.
Mouse Control of Moving Heads: One of my favorite consoles allows you two right click and grab control of moving heads...its really neat, and the express line always had it... I sort of wish it didn't go away.
Right click functionality and SHIFT or CTRL click functionality. We really could unlock ALOT more potential if we have more mouse functionality.
Media Sever interface beyond just using it as a a moving head... the MSEX protocol written by Arkaos/Chamsys is brilliant for this. Currently on HOG, GrandMA, and MagicQ the MSEX protocol allows for the console to pull down thumbnail images and previews onto the console to make programming with media a little smoother. MSEX2 as far as I am aware is currently in development and is rumored to even allow you to change A media server's flash texts and animations from the console. (I don't know much more beyond what tidbits I pick up from various forums though).
Anyhow, just some ideas I had floating around after training.
Other than that, after the factory training I am REALLY excited about having the ION desk in-house now. I was very leary at first but now that Josh showed us some of the more powerful features, I have ALOT to look forward to with this new tool.
I do apologize for the lengthy post, AKA WALL OF WORDS!!! But I do hope this all makes sense in someone elses brain besides my own.
Warm Regards,
'D'
