timer countdown on a surface in Qlab

[Erik Rietman]

Hi,

I'm looking for a solution to show a one hour countdown timer on a surface in Qlab. I was thinking of a video file but that will take a lot of cpu power, so not my preferred solution  

Does somebody has an idea for a alternative?

Regards,

Erik

De inhoud van dit bericht is alleen bestemd voor de geadresseerde en kan vertrouwelijke of persoonlijke informatie bevatten. Als u dit bericht onbedoeld heeft ontvangen verzoeken wij u het te vernietigen en de afzender te informeren. Het is niet toegestaan om een bericht dat niet voor u bestemd is te vermenigvuldigen dan wel te verspreiden. Aan dit bericht inclusief de bijlagen kunnen geen rechten ontleend worden, tenzij schriftelijk anders wordt overeengekomen. De Leercompany aanvaardt geen enkele aansprakelijkheid voor schade en/of kosten die voortvloeien uit onvolledige en/of foutieve informatie in e-mailberichten.

[micpool]

A 1fps video at the size of your countdown timer will consume very little cpu resource and will have a small file size. 3600 frames in total for the hour.


Or adapt the script and cues in my posts in the thread
Real Time Clock Video cues

To get an hours clock that uses minimal resources

Mic

[Erik Rietman]

Thanks Mic,

I saw your earlier post, excellent!

Thnx

[micpool]

Here's an hour of digital countdown I made for a space show a couple of years ago. You can recolor it using color controls in video effects

Mic

[Erik Rietman | KIRENTIS]

That's nice Mic. 

Thanks. 

--
--
Change your preferences or unsubscribe here:
http://groups.google.com/group/qlab
 
Follow Figure 53 on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Figure53

---
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "QLab" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/qlab/oI9Og-ZcAOs/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to qlab+uns...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

Hartelijke groet,

Erik Rietman

Maandagstraat 36

1335 LE  ALMERE
T + 31 (0) 36 844 69 22
M + 31 (0) 6 244 04 822
I www.kirentis.nl 
E er...@kirentis.nl

[Lucas Krech]

Or do it with text cues for full control over font and color.

Full Disclosure: the workspace is still running so I can not guarantee the stop loop works right. But that's what you get with 15 minute of free time..

Lucas Krech
Light & Video Artist

www.LucasKrech.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"I think it's essential for artists to have a seat at the table for determining the future trajectory of technology" ~Golan Levin 

[micpool]

You can do it with a single TITLES cue (which you can set color font and size in) , a script and 5 other cues in a group

Setting the font is a bit finicky. 

Go to the Titles cue and open the text box in the inspector and click in a non text area. 

Then Select All (cmd-A). 

Then set your font size and color.  

Set the number of seconds in the countdown in the first script cue

For AppleScripters there are a few useful things here:. 

Using a SCRIPT CUE  to set an OSC cue to set the text of a TITLES cue.

set thecustommessage to "/cue/TIME/text \" " & theTimeString & "\""

set the custom message of cue "OSC" to thecustommessage

Note the backslashes to allow the string within a string.

Using a MEMO cue as a variable holder.

Mic

[Lucas Krech]

That seems far less stable than the workspace I attached. But perhaps I am overly shy of Applescript. 

Lucas Krech

Light & Video Artist

www.LucasKrech.com

646.263.8439

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Dancers live in light like fish live in water"

~Jean Rosenthal

--
--
Change your preferences or unsubscribe here:
http://groups.google.com/group/qlab
 
Follow Figure 53 on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Figure53

---

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "QLab" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qlab+uns...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

<countdown titles.jpg>

<countdown titles.cues>

[micpool]

Do you mean it's crashed?

What I couldn't work out in yours was how to change the font

Mic

[Lucas Krech]

Just general skittishness. Perhaps misplaced. Applescript may be more robust than I was led to understand. But running a constantly iterating script for two hours seem risky.  

Mine would either need font changed  per cue or using some script to set at the start. Not nearly so elegant as yours. 

Lucas Krech

Light & Video Artist

www.LucasKrech.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Dancers live in light like fish live in water"

~Jean Rosenthal

[micpool]

On Wednesday, January 7, 2015 10:30:51 PM UTC, Lucas Krech wrote:

 But running a constantly iterating script for two hours seem risky.  

I'm not

I'm running a tiny simple script  once  every second. There is no iteration within the script.

I'll run it overnight and see how stable it is.

Mic

[Lucas Krech]

I certainly trust your judgement being the script guru that you are. Plus yours has the benefit of being able to reset easily to an arbitrary point in time. Which is awesome. 

Lucas Krech

Light & Video Artist

www.LucasKrech.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Dancers live in light like fish live in water"

~Jean Rosenthal

--

[micpool]

On Wednesday, January 7, 2015 10:47:12 PM UTC, Lucas Krech wrote:

yours has the benefit of being able to reset easily to an arbitrary point in time. Which is awesome. 

You could expand the script to  display  days (and months and years) for a countdown to a monumental  event or opening.  Every time the program was started the first script could calculate the number of seconds to the event time from the current system time and restart from there. Could be handy for signage applications.

Although the most useful lesson from doing this is I've found out how to script title cues. With this and the script that I made a month or so ago (and Rich improved)  which generates a set of crossfading cues from a bunch of image cues, I think I can now automatically generate a complete working subtitles cuelist from a text document. (without Python)

Mic

[Lucas Krech]

I know a lot of people who would pay very good money for that. 

Lucas Krech

Light & Video Artist

www.LucasKrech.com

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Dancers live in light like fish live in water"

~Jean Rosenthal

[micpool]

No need for money. I'm starting a new thread!

[Erik Rietman | KIRENTIS]

Thank for all the feedback! Good en nice solutions.

Erik

--

--
Change your preferences or unsubscribe here:
http://groups.google.com/group/qlab
 
Follow Figure 53 on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Figure53

---

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "QLab" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/qlab/oI9Og-ZcAOs/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to qlab+uns...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[talkingtobrian]

once again, amazing work, Mr. Pool!  however, I am finding that the time is running off into two lines. why is that? All I did was change the color of the text in the Title cue.

[luckydave]

On September 10, 2016 at 7:49:04 AM, talkingtobrian (echostatio...@gmail.com) wrote:

once again, amazing work, Mr. Pool!  however, I am finding that the time is running off into two lines. why is that? All I did was change the color of the text in the Title cue.

It sounds like you've set the width of the Titles cue. Try "auto", or just add a few pixels, and the text should fit, and so won't wrap. You may also want to use a fixed width font or variant (if you're not already), so the text won't jump around while the numbers change.

--

luckydave

[Aurel Jahnke]

@ Micpool

I'm trying your script. We had problems with the video version. also this should be a little bit better on the hardware. i made a little change which opens a prompt that lets you fill in the time you need. also made it so that you just need to type the minutes and it converts it to seconds. if somebody has use for that let me know.

thanks for the script

[Aurel Jahnke]

I‘m also looking for a solution that the countdown is triggering other cues. so when half the time is up (if start was 60 after 30 but if start was 30 after 15 so that it changes with the time) play cue x and when x minutes left trigger cue y  (static triggers when 2 minutes are left). Any ideas for that ?

On Wednesday, January 7, 2015 at 12:53:27 PM UTC+1, Erik Rietman wrote:

[micpool]

If you've written a script that allows you to input the time of the countdown then you just need a few more lines to:

set theHalftime to theCountdownTime x0.5                               --theCountdownTimes the time in seconds entered  in your script dialog

set the pre wait of cue "3"  to to theHalftime                           -- change  the cue number string to whatever cue you want to trigger at half time

set theBeforeTheEndTime to theCountdownTime -120         --set the number of seconds before the end of the countdown here

set the pre wait of cue "4" to  theBeforeTheEndTime 

Mic

[Aurel Jahnke]

Hi Micpool,

thanks, didn‘t know that it would be this simple :D Thx i will give it a try. This gives me max flexibility with my setup.

On Wednesday, January 7, 2015 at 12:53:27 PM UTC+1, Erik Rietman wrote:

[Aurel Jahnke]

Just need one more tweak. I want the countdown to have a reset to 60 min each time it runs, but if i want to make a change in time i can open the dialog. i'm looking for a way so that the normal reset won't overwrite the dialog.

[micpool]

You can't really can you.  Even if you had a script to reset the time to 60  at the end of the elapsed time set by the dialog there is no guarantee the execution might have been halted by a stop command or use of the ESC key etc.

Probably, the  best you can do is make a reset to 60 cue with a hot key trigger that runs a similar script to your  dialog but just sets the time to 60 and your halftime predate to 30 and your 2 minutes to go wait to 58minutes.

You could also get QLab to run this cue when it opens each time (settings/general) so it starts with your standard times.

Mic

[Aurel Jahnke]

Yeah that was my concern too. i found a relativ safe solution. added a extra memo var that will not be changed. the var from countdown will get his value from the other. so every time you start the prog it has a fresh start. then die dialog can be opened if needed an change the extra var. also i added the 60 min as standard value in the dialog. so it can be easy set back to 60 min. for extra comfort i added a disarmed wait at the top. which will get the pre and post wait set to the countdown time. helps me to see the overall countdown at the top and in post wait the actual time which was set.