Ai 7.1 BETA

First topic message reminder :

Hi Folks.

Here is a link to download the first BETA release of Ai 7.1

https://aiforum.forumotion.co.uk/t166-ai-v71-beta#653

I thought I should bring you all up to date on exactly what is in it..

The final release version of 7.1 will be launched on the AvolitesMedia.com website once we have ironed any bugs out from this 7.1 BETA, brought the manual up to date with the 7.1 changes and we have brought the OSX version up to date, all of which we are planning to do in the coming weeks.  There is no further functionality planned for 7.1 now other than what is detailed below.  Any other feature requests and new functionality will be planned into our version 8 release which we are planning to have an early version of by Frankfurt (March 2014) with a full version release hopefully ready by around May 2014

There are lots of nice changes in 7.1 which we will attempt to detail below.

'Roller Cue' Superseded by 'Media Tiles'

So the Roller Cue was a labour of love for me around a year ago when I first designed it and it still has a special place in my heart, but it had to go.  As fun as it was it had a couple of drawbacks.  Firstly it had a performance impact on the Performance Page which was un-acceptable, many users were finding themselves running the system on the Stage Construction page or closing the interface altogether in order to get the performance they required on their project.  Secondly it didn't work very well with Touch screens and triggers would sometimes randomly be missed, both of these facts were obviously un acceptable going forward.


The performance hit was due a number of factors, but primarily due to some off screen rendering required in order to interpret mouse location on a 2D surface (your screen) overlaid on a 3D object (the roller cue).  Much optimisation of this has been tried over the last few months and it seems that although Nvidia cards were much more tolerant of the issues the AMD cards in our systems just didn't perform well whilst reading back the off screen rendered data from the card.  This seems to have been further compounded by optimisations in the latest W series driver required for the next generation hardware we're about to release.  So the decision was made to re-write the entire roller cue triggering interface into a much leaner and high performance version which we're calling 'Media Tiles'.  The good news is that we now have a far superior triggering interface with much better performance and a lot more functionality.  I am pleased to say that the performance page is now just as fast as the stage construction page in all the projects I have tested with so far.

Media Tiles

So essentially the look is similar to the Roller Cue, except there is no 3d cylinder for the clips to 'sit on'.  Clips that you drag in from explorer now just float in the performance page and tessellate nicely together into whatever shape you choose to make.  The concept is similar to the old Hexagon Cluster that many of you may remember from Version 6 and earlier, except with 16:9 rectangles instead of hexagons.  Also we now have the nice right click to edit clip properties thing which was introduced along with the Roller Cue.  Here is some further info on some of the additional functionality in 'Media Tiles'.

o Stored as banks - should hopefully be backwards compatible with banks made for the roller cue.
o Dragged in clips Snap to adjacent tiles
o Multi-select cells using a click and drag rectangle near to tiles dragged over multiple tiles.  Also shift click and ctrl A will multi select.
o Mouse scroll wheel zooms in and out of media tiles. 

o Click and drag tiles moves tiles into any area of the UI you wish to place them in.
o Drag and drop folders of clips in, or multi selected clips.
o Alt click and drag tiles (or ctrl X) will move them around (works with multi selected clips too).
o Ctrl C and move mouse will copy tiles (works with multi selected clips too).
o Right click tile to zoom to clip properties
o Arrow keys to navigate tile grid
o New lower dock site - move & copy and paste tiles to the bottom of the screen to line them up with Sapphire Media Faders or just to group them ready to be triggered manually.
o New 'Always on Top' triggering method when using the Sapphire Media / MSC-1 template project to cue Media from the lower dock site with the Sapphire Media - very nice way to busk live shows.

o Follow on actions in clip properties.  Allows users to set what happens when a clip finishes.  Current follow on actions include 'next', 'prev', 'left', 'right', 'up', 'down', 'first', 'last', 'goto___' & 'random'. Note follow on action will be triggered at the beginning of the cross fade period to ensure cross fades are automated correctly. 

Infinity Server Rear Connectors

I am pleased to report that the rear panel connectors on the infinity servers will now be fully functional with systems running this 7.1 release.  This includes LTC Timecode, DMX Output & Midi Input & Output.  The DMX outputs appear in the Artnet modules as adapter 1.2.3.4 which is now one of the options in the drop down list.  The midi input and output device appears in the midi modules as AiMidi.  The LTC support is now select-able in the system settings in the Midi Panel.

Updated Time Code functionality

New or updated entries on the Midi Panel in the System Settings include:

Use LTC TimeCode - can be set to either 'Using MTC' or 'Using LTC' - Please note that LTC is only functional on the Avolites Media Infinity server and S4/S6 systems.
Free Wheel TimeCode - can be set to Disabled or Active - this sets whether timecode triggering pauses or free runs when incoming time code is stopped or vanishes.

Use System Clock as TC - can be set to Disabled or Active - this allows the use to use the windows system clock as a time code source allowing you to trigger media at certain times of the day.  This will override MTC or LTC.

Added the Opti track module 

Added NatNet Client Module. Which allows you to stream rigid body tracking data from Motive (NaturalPoint's proprietary software) into Ai through a network interface.  This allows for you to track multiple 3D objects using the OptiTrack functionality in 6 degrees of freedom.

Calender Trigger Module 

For triggering events on certain dates and times

Added Shader Example Patches 

Including some nice Audio Reactive patches, all sourced from ShaderToy.com - very cool - check it out.

Added a String to Number module

Converts a text string into a number

Buffered Constant Select module

New module which takes in multiple values and outputs one value, looking for changes or the last value to be entered. This ignores zeros so if you are listening for a trigger and get that trigger briefly, this module will latch that value and keep that as the output until it receives a new value or has been reset. Because it also looks for changes if you constantly send the same value it will be ignored when looking for updates from other ports.

EDID list fixed for the Infinity servers

All Infinity EDID files shipped in the EDID Pool have been closely examined and changed, where before some were causing BSOD because of some corruptions to the registry. If a resolution is not supported by the graphics cards, then that EDID file has also been removed to improve stability.

Fixed Audio keeps playing from previous clip when still image is triggered

Fixed midi mapping of projector fixture next/prev object, vertex, screen

RFID tag support

Hi Guys

I've just updated the downloads page with a new 7.1 build for windows.

https://aiforum.forumotion.co.uk/t166-ai-v71-beta#653

Theres lots of nice little changes in this one:

  

fixed in 7.1.0.568

 DONE - Added optimal Speed = 1.0 playback setting to System Settings/General tab - uses the output refresh rate as a clock guide for optimal smooth playback when a system is performing at optimal FPS
 DONE - Added 'Last Frame Behaviour' setting to System Settings/General tab - selects what happens when a one shot or MTC triggered movie passes the last frame of a movie, you can select 'Black' or 'Last Frame'
 DONE - Added 'TGA Sequence Memory Path' setting to System Settings/General tab - sets whether TGA sequences use Pinned Memory on GPU or not
 DONE - Added 'TGA Sequence Frame Rate' setting to System Settings/General tab - sets the default framerate of a TGA Sequence
 DONE - Added 'Sync Offset' setting to System Settings/General tab - sets the audio offset if audio seems out of sync relative to associated video files
 DONE - Added 'Continuous Sync' setting to System Settings/General tab - sets whether Video should be locked to an associated audio clock or not. 0 = not locked, 1 = locked.
 DONE - Made sync offset module available to anjuna licensee's (and all other licences)

fixed in 7.1.0.568

 DONE - Added 'Always Draw Throw' button to projector Fixture - means you can see the projector throws on the performance page
 DONE - Added Moving Head Projector Skin to Projector Fixture, 'Always Draw Throw' button is shown on this skin
 DONE - Ensured DMX output from moving head fixture is linked with x and y rotation for pan and tilt outputs on channels 1, 2, 3, 4 (2 x 16bit ch's)

fixed in 7.1.0.558

 DONE - Added memory usage indicator to Title bar - goes red when memory usage gets scary.
 DONE - Added buffer count parameter to the HD SDI output module
 DONE - Fixed Automated LTC Triggering issue where it could miss first timecode cue after re-start of Ai
 DONE - Changed delete media tile from delete key to ctrl delete key to avoid accidental deletion of media
 DONE - Changed reset timecode offset on media tile from home key to ctrl home key to avoid accidental loss of timecode offset

Fixed in 7.1.0.536

 DONE - Tweaked Ethernet send and receive modules to allow continuous sending and correct behavior on multiple ports
 DONE - Added Highlight Colour Wheel to Soft Edge Free Edges patch to allow you to pick the colour of the edges - very useful when you have multiple systems / projectors
 DONE - Added Value History Module (keeps short term log of up to 1024 controller values) - very nice for generative graphics and graphs of incoming data

Fixed in 7.1.0.527

 DONE - Added 'Random' mode to Tap Widget - randomly selects Media Tiles - how did we get this far without this mode?  I have no idea..
 DONE - Fixed MTC triggering when using 'Media Tiles Triggering' mode over Artnet with Layer MTC Offsets set to zero and using the clip properties MTC offset instead.
 DONE - Made Clip properties persist when replacing media in a media tile by dragging media onto existing Media Tile
 DONE - Added Sync Source to HD SDI Output module

Fixed in 7.1.0.513:

 DONE - Added Midi Note Trigger Channel to System Settings/Midi - allows the user to select which channel to use for midi note triggering of Media Tiles.  The default value of 0 will allow triggering on any channel, entering channel 1 will allow triggering only on channel 1, entering channel 2 will allow triggering only on channel 2 and so on up to chanel 16

Fixed in 7.1.0.511:

 DONE - Significant playback performance improvement when system is under load and not idling at output refresh rate.
 DONE - Stopped triggering of last frame of previous timecoded clip when timecode is fired in gap between triggers.
 DONE - Improved Time code triggering across multiple fixture locked clips.
 DONE - Fixed issue where two instances of the same media file with different timecode triggers would not re-trigger
 DONE - Added 'Draw Scene Port' to /PixelAddictUI/StageView module

Fixed in 7.1.0.503:

  DONE - ping pong playmode doesn't work

Fixed in 7.1.0.500:

  DONE - media bank could be wiped if you save project file without selecting the performance page before you saved.
  DONE - couldn't create more than 20 media banks without system becoming unstable - I think the limit is now back where it should be at 255 banks

Fixed in 7.1.0.495:

  DONE - Canvas Editor should show 1:1 pixels rather than interpolated scaled image.
  DONE - button to stop artnet out of range random stimulation data
  DONE - Add quicktime 7.74 installer into build to support pro res 4444 playback
  DONE - Remove reference to roller cue in CITP options in the system settings
  DONE - Stop decks and layers scrolling off top of screen

Hi Guys!
I'm trying the ultimate software version and now I can't resize buttons, toggle buttons and faders for making custom GUI.   
Am I missing something?

Thanks!

im not sure which version you mean by "ultimate software version"

ive just tried resizing faders in the latest beta version available for download ( 7.1.0.568 ) and it works for me.

ArranAI wrote:im not sure which version you mean by "ultimate software version"

ive just tried resizing faders in the latest beta version available for download ( 7.1.0.568 ) and it works for me.

Ops! I refer to the latest version downloadable (7.1.0.568) but it still doesn't works..

i've just done a totally clean install - its definately working. once some space has been made on the backend of the forum i will be able to post an image which shows all of the controllers you mentioned being resized.

to confirm, you still hold the ctrl button and place the mouse pointer just off the edge you want to resize, then press the left mouse button and drag.

Ok, after a clean install works properly for me too. My bad!
Inside ControlProperties of a fader I found a new function (Background Image and Scroll Image), that's really great, but the load button of the background image doesn't open images folder.. (the other one works!)

thanks! bye!