Hi Martin, Tim and the rest of the vMix team, and ofc also all you vMixers.

My case
I've been trying to setup a scoreboard with a game clock countup from 00:00 to 20:00 (20 minutes), and two penalty countdowns (one for the home team and one for the away team).
All countdowns is therefore: game clock field + home penalty field + away penalty field

The requirements I wanted for the shortcuts that I wanted to bind to the scoreboard was as following:
- One button for starting all the countdowns
- One button for stopping all the countdowns
- (Alternatively a toggle start/stop for all countdowns)
- One button to (re)set the penalty of the home team to 02:00 (two minutes)
- One button to (re)set the penalty of the away team to 02:00 (two minutes)
- One button to remove the penalty of the home team if there's one present
- One button to remove the penalty of the away team if there's one present

The case is, that the penalty should only be present when they are needed.

I created a custom XAML title where the penalty countdowns are only visible when the text of the field is NOT equal to 00:00.

My initial idea was to use only button to start all of the three countdowns.

I achieved 90 % of what I wanted, but I stumbled upon some problems:

Proposal to new function: RemoveCountdown
When trying to reset/remove a countdown (using the function StopCountdown) on a field, the countdown will restart when I start the countdown again, which is not expected, since I want to remove the countdown. Therefore, my proposal is that a new function is needed RemoveCountdown, which totally unbinds all information regarding the countdown on the field.

Sync of the countdowns (reset tick when countdown is suspended/paused)
Another proposal is that when several countdowns are running, the ticks of the seconds on each of the fields are very likely to be out of sync. And my proposal is therefore that when a countdown is suspended or paused, the tick should be reset to the start of the second, and by that, enabling that when the timer is paused, and a penalty is noted and the timer is started again, the timers are synced on the tick.

Alternatively, this option of resetting the tick can be implemented as a tickbox under the countdown settings window for the title.


Thanks!

Jens Stigaard

Thanks Guillaume,

I already looked into vMixUTC before, but didn't try the timers, and have now tried to achieve what I explained in my original post, but was not able to achieve it. As in vMix, I'm not able to reset and disable a countdown timer, and still being able to have it bound to the same shortcut key as the other countdown timers.

But thanks for referencing to vMixUTC, I see that it really has some great features.

I see that you have a button called "Pause Active Timers" in vMixUTC, can you please explain/show how you set that up? I have tried to setup a similar button, but without luck.

It's quite easy to this also with the "SetImage" command in buttons. We'll discuss about this later if you want.

PS : If you check carefully my Tennis UI screencap, in the NDI PGM windows, you can see "Break Point" just under the score bug... This is displayed only when needed, just like your penalty timer... I can manage that with my green section called "Score Bug Xtras" in the middle, each button modifies the score bug according to the game.

This can be done easily using the "timer" command that you can add in the scripts of your buttons

command 1 : display title with timer penalty 2min
command 2 : timer 2 min
command 3 : remove title

@ stigaard

My best recommendation for using start/stop game and penalty clocks with vMix is to use an actual camera shot of the official clock if at all possible within your workflow.
I realize this isn't always realistic, but the task of managing various clocks within vMix can quickly become a "fulltime" job during a live broadcast (I have yet to accomplish an error free production when managing clocks manually).
I have tried similar custom XAML titles as you with all clocks (in my case 5 -> 1 main and 4 penalty clocks) on one Input.
I quickly discovered that any discrepancies or errors were not easily recovered from and why I chose to abandon the single XAML Input approach.
I instead opted for multiple clocks from multiple Inputs and simply overlay On/Off the appropriate clock when needed.
Activating/de-activating each timer is accomplished with the "Pause Timer" function as opposed to the Start and Stop functions and resets can also be accomplished with "SetText" but I usually found resetting manually was the best solution.
Although your request is valid and may assist in managing clocks during a "Live" broadcast, the reality is, the clock is generally a minor detail to the viewer that you will undoubtedly spend too much time focusing on compared to more important aspects of the broadcast and why I suggest capturing to official clock if you are able (use multiple Virtual copies to crop appropriate clock for placement on your graphic).

Just my thoughts.


Ice

I wouldn't do that either. I don't think it's possible to manage complex score boards graphics (TV-like) without a dedicated person for it.
I designed this UI in vMixUTC for allowing an assistant on another PC to handle entirely this aspect of the production while I focus on switching only. This is why I consider vMixUTC a good companion for vMix as it allows to split responsabilities over several people.

You can name it the way you want in functions.xml and besides you can also add any function you want regarding vMix API capacities.