IceStream wrote:@ jeregan
Very cool, thanks for sharing!
Really like how you've configured the x-Keys, can you elaborate on what you did?
Ice
There are three Xkey units in total. One T-Bar 124, and two XK-80s. Two XK-80s were cheaper than one XKE-128 and gave me 160 keys to work with (20 wide) instead of 128 keys (16 wide).
I tried to emulate a commercial switching console, as I have worked with those in the past (a loooong time ago while volunteering for a local cable TV station) and found them easy to work with.
Bottom row: preview bus
Next row: program bus: same presets in the same virtual position on the board as the preview bus.
3rd row: Title buttons identifying the persons name/title (press and they overlay for 5 seconds), and further down the row fixed toggle ones such as the Bug logo in the bottom right corner, etc. Finally the double wide button is a means to mute the audio if you needed to quickly.
4th (top) row: same layout as the bottom row, but these send the feeds to the projectors in the worship space. The additional one button above that is a 'program follow' button which ties the projectors into following the program feed.
So the buttom row is the preview bus as mentioned... The first buttons are the base cameras... i.e.: no PTZ movement. Camera 1 is the north camera (with blue label) and Camera 2 is the south camera (with red label) and they are both PTZOptics 20x. Camera 3 is a fixed wide shot PTZOptics.
Buttons 4 thru 20 are PTZ presets for camera1 or camera2. When you press them, they tell the camera to move, but then automatically switch to the camera 1 or 2 button. (The reason for this will become apparent). So pressing, say, button 4 for the Pew Mic shot, lights up button 4 and then half a second later lights up camera 2.
When camera two is transitioned to be up on the program output bus, additional checks and balances are done in the background to make sure the operator doesn't accidentally call up the same camera to a different PTZ location via the preview bus. They get an X in the Preview window, the shot is then called up in preview (while it is still up in program), but no PTZ movement occurred. If the user wanted to override this movement, they would directly select that PTZ button on the program bus, causing the camera to move, but generally that is probably not desired.
The code also checks to make sure the X is not in preview (because all I am doing is calling up a graphic for .5 second) such that if the person tries to transition it to program via one of the Blue transition buttons on the right, it is just ignored.
This code tied to triggers and shortcut keys, really saves from user error, since in the real world there is a director, a camera operator, and the switcher operator, so there are human checks and balances... in our case one person is all three.
The rest of the buttons beyond button 20 are: a Gopro over the Baptismal Font (wide and slightly zoomed) which is used a few times per month, as well as a second for a similar use elsewhere on the font; buttons set up with Camera 1 and Camera 2 side by side, as well as one with Camera 2, Camera 1 and Camera 3 on one screen; some programmable buttons for videos, stills, etc., along with NDI inputs that are usually tied to a PC running Worship Him or PowerPoint elsewhere in the worship space; an input called 'Risefeed' which describes what is going on in the church (taken from a feed created via Risevision using HTML5 that is used to display information, pictures, event schedules, etc. on TVs in the hallways around the facility), as well as the required colour bars and black buttons. We don't use the FTB button because that really confuses users when they don't see it fade out on the program window.
In the upper right hand corner there are buttons to stop and start streaming with various messages that appear first on the stream or at the end of the stream before stopping.
I think that about does it. If that didn't answer your questions, let me know. :)
Jeff
