Are there any plans in the future to enhance the way that EOS handles fixture timing channels? As far as I can tell at the moment, the only way to apply a value to a timing channel is via the command line - which requires carrying around or memorising a mapping table of DMX values to time values - it's not even settable by encoder using default profiles. (though I guess I could create customised ones?)
The reason I'm so keen on timing channels is that they overcome DMX limitations, particularly for fixtures with 8-bit attributes. For example, take a VL2000 spot which has 8-bit control of color wheel and gobo wheel. There are only 18 DMX values separating adjacent colors or gobos - therefore a slow fade between 2 adjacent colours or gobos is unacceptably jerky. Whereas by using a timing channel the same change can be handled by the fixture extremely smoothly.
In this respect Virtuoso is great in that it abstracts timing channels from the user completely. If a fixture supports timing channels and all attributes covered by a timing channel have the same time, the desk will set the timing channel automatically and snap the attributes to their new values. This works when playing a cue forward or backwards, and also when attributes change in effects. So as a user you don't even have to think about the timing channels; just set the attribute times and the console takes care of the rest. This also means that when you set a 10 second colour change on a VL2000, say, that timing value is displayed in cue data and you know how long the cue will take. On EOS, I have to set the colour change time to 0 and the colour change timing channel to DMX 50 - but this means on the playback displays the colour is showing as taking 0 seconds when in fact it is programmed to take 10.
So from my point of view it'd be nice to see something similar in EOS; even though I've been able to manually use the timing channels with EOS it hasn't been nearly as elegant as on our old desk.
