Are layer groups and/or scenes coming? I know I asked about this last year and was told it was a feature in active development, and here we are 7 versions later and I’m still not seeing it, unless it’s hidden or something?
I’ve been getting around this by just assigning multiple layers to the same hotkey, but would like a more fleshed out solution if possible.
I currently use a workaround to achieve this functionality, using the Control Surface feature. What I do is I create “Scene” buttons. Each scene button configures the following:
(1) Turns off all un-needed layers for the scene
(2) Sets “Live” all layers needed for the scene.
Note that I do not use layer toggles, I explicitly set layers to “off” or “live”. This means that I don’t have to worry about which scene is live before I switch to the other scene, as any layers that aren’t used in the scene are definitely going to be turned off no matter what their prior state.
I also have a button assigned to set ALL layers to “off”. This is my failsafe “kill switch” that I can use to reset everything, after which I know that if I hit a scene button I’ll just get the layers I need. This is useful for those occasions where you have added a layer and forgotten to add setting it to “off” in your various scenes.
Of course this method either needs some good planning, or some careful attention to detail. You want to have all of your layers added to your document, then create a scene plan that specifies what layers must be on or off, then create all of your scenes. If you create your scenes as you go along, then each time you add a new layer, well, you have to remember to go into all existing scenes to configure the desired state for that scene.
Personally I would love the Control Surface function to have a single option for, “Set all layers to OFF”. This can then be added as a single item in each scene button instead of having to add all layers one by one and setting to off. I thought the Document control function would do this, but it doesn’t seem to.
Another thing that would be useful would be for hotkeys to be assigned to “set Live” and “set off” for layers in ML. Currently you can only assign a hotkey to the /toggle/. Initially I was doing what RedZephon was doing, assigning the same hotkey to all layers for a scene, but because it’s a toggle, sometimes if a layer was already active in another scene, it would be set to off because of the toggle when I changed to another scene.
The control surface feature is the iPad web app thing if I’m not mistaken? I’d like to get something setup with the actions app for iPad too.
@RedZephon Thank you for giving mimoLive a try!
The Actions app (now called Quadro) is quite useful. However, it only emulates key pressing. This has the disadvantage that it doesn’t know if the action was actually performed.
The Remote Control Surfaces communicate with mimoLive in both directions. The Remotes send a command and mimoLive reports back if the command has worked.
We’re also able to send back video and update the button labels in real time with useful names, thus reducing the time needed to configure the Remote Control Surfaces.
Last but not least, you can use multiple differently configured Remote Control Surfaces on different devices to control the same mimoLive document.
Here is a quick video showing the concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJrWneCkCw8
Also worth pointing out that the control surface is just a web page so a tablet is not required. Loading it in a tablet’s browser, however, lets you use the control surface with touch, which is most useful.
Just tried the surface control and it can multiple layer settings to one button and allow you to set layer on/off directly. This solves my problem of having to remember how to set a pre-designed layout directly without regard of existing settings.
But setting this for every control is time consuming so it would be nice if we can remember the current state of all layers and assign to a button. Kind of like a snapshot of the current state.
@“Jason Lee” I actually think the simplest solution would be to have a global “all layers off” button that can be added to a control surface button. Then you just need the global-off together with the specific layers you want to turn on.
I will definitely look into the control surface feature, however having proper scenes is a must in my opinion to be competing with other software like Wirecast and xsplit.