My clients and I love, love, love MultiView and use it for every show. MultiViews are at the core of virtual panel discussions which are more necessary and used in these pandemic times than ever before. There are a number of elements of multiviews, though, that are slow to set-up, don't work as expected or require work-arounds - some of which are, thankfully, available through shortcuts. Here's my short-list of problem descriptions and feature requests for consideration.

1. Copying position settings from one overlay to the next in the same multiview.
While there is currently this great feature throughout Vmix that lets one copy settings from one input to another, there is no apparent way to directly copy the settings from one overlay layer to another. Here's the problem, the current process is exacting, but slow. I find it necessary to use paper and pencil to capture and then manually input values rather than copying and pasting each individual value. A "copy from" function with a drop down showing all the other overlays in the current input's multiview might be one way to improve this.

As much as I would like to see related functionality like "align" and "distribute," I realize that this could require a greater architectural change in Vmix; working across all overlays in a single multiview simultaneously, I'm not sure this would be worth the time and effort.

2. Borders and their impact on merges
Sometimes you just need, or your clients want matching borders on the overlay boxes. The method of doing this in traditional production switchers is adding a border and controlling its type, width, color and softness or transparency from within the "key" settings of each overlay. In Vmix, this requires a bit more work; first creating a color background (the border color) and then adding an overlay with a slighly zoomed out image (typically video) - and then adding that composite as an overlay in another input. The problem surfaces when you try to merge that input with another. The backgrounds (borders) move independently of their overlays; they aren't bound together. So, you end up having to make a decision about whether to give up the merge capability in favor of borders or give up the borders in favor of the ability to properly merge.

I'd love to see Vmix adopt a similar approach to traditional production switchers for adding/managing borders; either including this functionality in the "position" interface for each overlay or in its own interface - complete with the "copy from" functionality described in #1 above. I would expect that taking this approach would also solve the issue with "unbound" borders moving independently during merges.

Also, over the last few years we've seen a semi-transparent beveled edge border become increasingly popular. It would be great if that border type could be included too.

3. Changing overlay inputs on the fly
In a fast-paced, live, virtual panel discussion, it's hard to predict how the conversation will go and what parings, tripplings or other groupings of moderator and panelists will be needed. It takes a lot of time to open the input to multi-view and change inputs used in the overlay. Thankfully, you can do this in shortcuts and I've used a Streamdeck to launch these shortcuts. The time it takes to set these up is non-trivial, though, as you have to plan for each possible combination of panelists in, for instance, the left box of a two-box layout or the right box - and with 7 panelists and a moderator, that's a lot of possible combinations. Then, if you have a three-box layout, with moderator always on top, you have to set up all those possible combination again. I tried to use mix busses for this purpose, but you can't have more than three.

Though I don't yet have a strong opinion on how to improve this, one thing I wonder is if we could have access to this through a web interface, so that an assistant can do this, rather than the technical director himself. I did have an assistant operate the Stream Deck for me as I called, "two box, Jake on left, Martin on right" and that worked pretty well, but the set-up time was significant.

How can we improve this?

Thanks.

-David

I think I heard there will be something coming in vMix 24.



That is a good example how the Dynamic Inputs feature could help in setting up and managing the shortcuts:
https://forums.vmix.com/...-Functions-for-Shortcuts

Maybe you want to +1 it. :)

Yes, but I believe only 3 are available at a time - which isn’t enough.

+1

+1 to everything that has been suggested here.

X-Y-Z axes? I agree, this is not a CAD software...

And many +1's to a Control Z (Undo) feature.

-L

+1

+1!

+1

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop adding new features to vMix !!!
WE NEED LAYERS/MULTIVIEW 2.0

We desperately want and need fixes, tweaks and improvements in the usability of the existing features, then add new bells.

The Layers/Multiview touches every production. It is the heart of vMix from a production standpoint.
Yet it gets little or No attention.

- Would be a lot of work to rewrite Layers - YES
- Would it change the way we all are use to building layers, - YES
- Is Layers broken and does cause users hours and hours of needless pre-production effort - YES

I can't say this strongly enough, Its time to suck it up and FIX LAYERS / MULTIVIEW.
I am sorry if I hurt Martin or someone else's feelings who wrote Layers but it looks and operates like it was written by someone completely outside of vMix development team.

CANCEL / UNDO
Really?? Can we please get an undo / cancel feature.
Every other module in vMix has a cancel function.
This is BASIC Programming 101, who writes a module without the ability to NOT write the changes ?
This is a BUG and should be fixed before any other updates to vMix.

LAYOUT REDESIGN
I have been in the PC / Software industry for a LONG time and Layers is the worse design for this type application that I have ever used. Anyone who knows anything about GUI design understands the goal is to be able to reduce the number of mouse clicks for any given function. But I think who ever wrote Layers tried to make it as complicated as possible and use more clicks than any application ever written.



FINALLY
I would be happy to mock up some GUI designs and I am sure there are even more talented GUI designers here that would be happy to help. But it should be obvious by now that I am frustrated by the lack of interest in the developers in making a good product an easy to use product.

I GET IT !
I understand, honestly. As a former programmer it a lot more fun to write cool features and the challenge of seeing if you have what it takes to write code that can handle 8 camera replays. Writing GUI code is boring and especially that is "good enough" and works.

But every product has a life cycle and you must be aware that the product is starting to reach an entirely new group of users. Us old dogs are use to dealing with clunky software and command line scripts. But as the industry matures and at some point if vMix does not address the usability of the product then it leaves an opening for other product offerings. And the usability will be rejected by those users who realize that time is money and the time involved in pre-production cost of a vMix system far outweights a system that easier to use. Even one that might not have all the vMix features.

The computer industry is full of dead companies that had superior technology. But the industry shifted or usability became more important than more bells and whistles.

I know there will be those of you who don't agree and with my perspective, which is fine. But, trust me there are those of who who do and remember many multi-billion dollar companies everyone thought would always be on top. And now they are not even in business.

+1 to all of that. Especially the names on the Position screen (not Main and 1-10). I always forget on which layer the source I want to change is, so I have to go back to the other Window to check. This would also be solved if the parameters and layers would be on the same page.

I also want to add the option to allign layers to each other with one buttom. Or to spread them evenly. If I want to have 3 croped layers on a background with same spaces in between this always takes so much time to set up.

Thank you!