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Audi  
#1 Posted : Sunday, June 30, 2019 7:48:05 PM(UTC)
Audi

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Hey Martin, Tim, & everyone else browsing! I wanted to share some feedback I had after getting to use vMix pretty extensively over the last few months. I realize my opinion is just that, but I’m hoping my experience in the industry can add to the conversation and development going forward. First off, a little background about me. I’ve been working in live production for almost a decade now as a TD, Director, and Producer, mainly on gaming and esports shows, as well as some music and entertainment. I’ve worked with essentially the whole spectrum of production environments from small to large studio and live events. Technically, this has meant everything from using single computer software based setups (obs/xsplit/livestream) all the way up to production trucks and studios with extensive training on large 3M/E Ross switchers, and lots in between, like Tricaster, Carbonite, and Atem. I’m hoping to turn my experiences with all of this into some more practical general feedback, feature requests, and overall strategy ideas for vMix in the future.

General Usage Impressions
I want to start by saying how awesome vMix overall has been to work with. Even with very little experience using the program, I was really able to start doing valuable and time-saving stuff within just a few days of using it, including manipulating inputs, working with video, and “designing” multiview layouts. I was immediately impressed by the versatility of inputs and formats, along with the ability to create very useful dynamic shortcuts and scripts. Especially for hectic production environments (read: all of them), being able to tell a producer “yeah, we can do that” to most requests is a godsend. I’ve been so consistently excited to just play and explore in vMix, always impressed by the next set of features and the thoughtfulness that has gone into them - whether it’s vMix Social, Call, Multicorder, or Instant Replay. Realizing there is so much more to scripting and shortcuts that I haven’t even touched is also really fascinating to look forward to. Finally, I was greatly helped by lots of the videos and documentation that accompanied vMix, as well as the community based on the forum, thanks for making all of this happen as well! It’s clear that there’s lots of passion and talent that has gone into vMix as well as the surrounding community. It’s that passion which inspired me to organize and draw up this feedback. I hope that it’s useful.

Specific Feature Requests
I realize there’s a while section for feature requests, but I didn’t want to flood that forum with a slew of these. Instead, I figured I’d post here, see what people had to say, and then add some of the more popular requests over there after. These are sort of scattershot across all of the features I found myself trying to find or thinking would help in designing and operating a show. They’re organized more by theme rather than importance at the moment. I did try to search for most of these requests on the forum, or find alternative ways of doing what I’ve listed here, but my apologies if I’m duplicating requests. I’d love feedback on ways anyone has accomplished what I’m trying to do in other ways, or feedback if I just missed something entirely!

Shortcuts / Triggers
Shortcut Recorder
Shortcut recorder is one of the biggest features that would help. Tricaster has really executed this well, and it’s valuable because of how quick and easy it makes reliably creating macros. I’m guessing this would be a pretty big project, but in the TC world, it really does make designing and operating shows significantly easier.

Named shortcuts
I’d love to be able to use the advanced shortcut triggers to be used without hotkeys in the advanced triggers shortcuts menu as well as an input’s ‘event’ triggers (on completion, ontransitionin, etc)

Hover
Using Hover in shortcuts is one of my absolute favorite features within vMix. It’s just brilliant for so many purposes, and I love its versatility in creating entire control “principles”, rather than individual shortcuts. I would love to see this extended in three ways. First, I’d love to have it active on the preview and program windows. This would mean not bouncing as much on shows with large asset lists for transitions out, for example. Second, I’d love to be able to use hover over the title box when an input is minimized. Often I’ll have a set of thirds I don’t need to see, but would want to bring in and out without taking up the space. Third, I’d love to see SetMultiViewOverlay to accept “hover” as an input reference within the value parameter. The main way I’d like to use this is to switch the source of a PiP. (Or has someone else thought of another way to do this dynamically that I haven’t thought of? I had a very hacky workaround that took up an overlay channel with the overlay trigger that kind of worked for this purpose, but I wouldn’t want to go live with it.)

OnOverlayX, OnOverlayXIn, OnOverlayXOut for each channel
Adding OnOverlayX, OnOverlayXIn, OnOverlayXOut input trigger events. This would add a little more customizability that I found myself looking for a few times. Not a huge deal.

Color Correction toggle shortcut
I may have missed this, but I would love to use a shortcut to toggle between color correction presets, or to toggle the effect on and off.

Event Shortcut triggers on Record, Stream, External, or Multicorder
I’ve had a few instances where I’ve wanted to start timers on record, swap an output to multiview on external start, etc. Not huge, but I think it could be useful. I’m also imagining studio wide API uses for this - turn on the “Live” light in the studio when stream gets pushed.

vMix Social
Social Editorializing
I’d appreciate having the edit content within the vMix social page. Lots of times tweets / chat may need to be edited before going on air. Whether it’s simply editorializing for clarity, brevity (as in highlighting part of a tweet), removing profanity, or filtering out twitch poggers that don’t render outside of twitch chat, this would be super helpful. I also think this is an important part of a larger expansion strategy where brands and studios on bigger shows get pickier about what goes on air.

GT Title Designer
Sound designing graphics is what I keep coming back to for graphics in vMix. I’ve found workarounds, like triggering mp3 inputs when the graphic goes up as an overlay. It works, but it’s a little clunky to control and tweak.

UI / General / Misc
Option to Lock on Record / Stream start
I’d love to see an option in settings to toggle the lock when “live”. I forget to do this, and it would have saved my butt a few times. (Also adding a function for locking/unlocking to use in shortcuts could be cool - but that’s the main use I could see that shortcut being useful for anyway.)

Transition: Dip to black, flash cut
I’d love to see a dip to black / white / color added. I’ve accomplished the intended effect using a stinger, fades, and transition, but it’s a bit more roundabout to design and difficult to change than it could otherwise be. These are one of the more commonly used transitions that I’ve had producers ask for.

Symmetrically crop multiview Horizonally / Vertically
Lots of times when I want to crop a multiview element, I want to do so evenly. I’d love a cleaner UI to be able to accommodate it.

Search on function finder
Lots of times I have a hunch at what I’m looking for, but don’t know exactly what it’d be called. I’m getting more used to it as I’ve learned more, but still a search could be helpful here.

Stinger Cut point selector
I’d love to see an option to visually select the timing for the cut point using a scrubber with the video.

Input Thumbnail Selector
Same as the visual selector above for finding the cut point, but instead to generate a thumbnail to be used as the input representation. (Especially useful when all of your videos have black starting frames.) I found that you can sort of accomplish this by leaving the scrubber on videos, but I still find myself wanting to use the quick snapshot feature as a thumbnail.
Production Comms
This one really is just sort of pipe-dreamy, but I would love to see a conference call style hub like vmix call, where camera guys, producers, TDs, and PAs, etc could call in and have a party-line setup to talk to each other during a show. Yes, I realize they can already do that by just jumping on a call, but having the control within a hub - seeing who’s connected, turning people up/down, automatic voice muting / unmuting when talking would be one piece that would get rid of an otherwise very expensive purchase / rental. I might just be crazy with this one, I realize.

vMix Strategy
Graphics controller and playout
I downloaded and used the vMix UTC to see how this works in this area, and it’s particularly impressive. Ultimately, I feel something like this (possibly more like xpression playout controller) is an important toolset to have as a natively within vMix. With replay, social, video playlist, and audio already setup to “breakout” onto different monitors, this would be a very useful way to break out what is often the most attentionally difficult operation to produce well during a more complicated show where a TD simply can’t manage graphics and keep up with the show effectively. More on how I see this being useful strategically below.

vMix Training and Certification
Not really a feature request so much as an ecosystem suggestion. I would love to see a vMix certified operators hub supported by a training ecosystem. This would solve one of the main challenges I have in designing workflows and systems for my clients. This would help give confidence that there is an adequate talent pool to run shows, as well as a reliable way to find them. It’s particularly important for vMix imo because vMix is unusual when compared to traditional switchers, which makes me less confident in putting out a general call for TDs that will be effective on day one with vMix. The hope would be that over time, a network of certified operators would be a powerful asset in not only getting producers and studios comfortable with the talent pool, but also develop skills within operators as well.

vMix Long Term Strategy - Second Operator
This is just sort of spitballing, but since you guys (Martin/Tim) have already designed towards this direction, I thought it might be helpful. (Also, it comes with a pretty big caveat of self-awareness, I realize, that I really don’t know how you see vmix in terms of product and market dynamics, or what your personal goals with developing the business is, so I know I’m projecting how I imagine I would feel in your guys’ shoes. Nonetheless, here goes.) Strategically, I think it might make sense to consider how vmix scales beyond single operator environments. There’s obviously a clear opportunity to use it to replace many more expensive studio setups as well as reduce staff requirements of what are now pretty large control rooms. However, in doing so, just because one computer or TD can technically accomplish a great deal alone, the attentional limitations of one operator producing a live show become a meaningfully important bottleneck to consider. vMix is in a unique position to tackle these challenges brilliantly - and already does to a certain extent. vMix Social, the web controller, and replay already have impressive integrations, some of which can be operated beyond the PC running the system. Moving these into a more cohesive second controller position- and possibly adding other controls, like audio and asset management could be one expansion strategy. As I said above, graphics design and operation becomes one of the larger bottlenecks as shows get bigger. I’m envisioning a whole class of shows and studios that would otherwise need one of those more expensive systems to produce, but that vmix could otherwise handle with this kind of secondary controller. TLDR; a long term strategy focused on a partner operator environment might make a lot of sense for control, training, and expanding to capturing some of the next tier carbonite/atem/tricaster environments.

Wrap Up
So this ended up being quite a bit longer than I expected to post - you probably deserve some sort of reward if you made it this far. Thanks for reading and considering these ideas! I’m not going to be offended in the slightest if the response is “hey...that would be a crazy waste of time for what we’re trying to do”, or anything like it. I appreciate anyone who took the time to read through and I’m very interested in hearing your feedback or learning other ideas on what I’ve suggested. Once again, a huge thanks to you guys - Martin, Tim (and anyone else that may be behind the scenes who deserves credit) - for your talent and dedication to creating vMix!
thanks 2 users thanked Audi for this useful post.
RingsideReport on 8/13/2019(UTC), sinc747 on 5/3/2021(UTC)
Jeremy G  
#2 Posted : Sunday, July 14, 2019 2:18:15 PM(UTC)
Jeremy G

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No comments on this?

LOTS of good stuff here!
richardgatarski  
#3 Posted : Monday, August 12, 2019 11:03:02 PM(UTC)
richardgatarski

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Yes Jeremy G, a lot of good stuff indeed!

Thank you very much for putting it together. Many have read it, including the vMix staff I am pretty sure.

I can only speak for myself when I say it is simply too much for one topic. Combined with that, being a long time user, much what you discuss have already been discussed. Including that some of the suggested features have already requested.

For new features I try to evaluate my own needs, and guess others, as well as asses the development efforts required before I post a new request and/or vote for other´s. In any case, the basic rule is one single topic for one new request. And check first if it, or something similar, has already been requested.

For example, I think your "Named shortcuts" is pretty close to https://forums.vmix.com/...soft--virtual--and-named

Again, thanks
Audi  
#4 Posted : Friday, August 16, 2019 7:04:13 AM(UTC)
Audi

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Thanks Jeremy and Richard for the feedback. I can definitely appreciate that this is just too dense for one thread. One of my intentions here (that, in retrospect I don't think I communicated) was to figure out which of these areas people might find valuable, and only turn those into real feature requests. On that note, if anyone finds any particular point from the first post here interesting, let me know.

Beyond that, lots of the strategy and pipe-dream stuff in it I realize may have nothing to do with the vmix roadmap. As you mentioned, I realize there's lots of conversation (both on and off the forum) that I'm just not going to be up on. If a few ideas in here help with some features or strategy going forward, that's where I hope this may add to the conversation!
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