QLab and surtitles/large numbers of static video cues

[Dominic Hargreaves]

Hi,

I'm preparing for a production next month involving around 60-70
slides of surtitles (Thoroughly Modern Millie). I have a Mac mini on
which to control these with QLab, and I'm looking for the best way of
getting this set up. So far I have prepared the slides in OpenOffice
Impress (which seemed like a fairly good authoring tool for the purpose)
and have been playing with different playback options. There are a couple
of reasons I'm not convinced by running it as a straight Impress
presentation compared with using QLab:

- less control of exact sequences and being able to see what's going on
behind the scenes; recover from mishaps
- annoying hourglass on slide load (although there are documented hacks
I could use to fix this)
- less general confidence in its stability (through lack of experience
rather than anything else)

As I will be calling the show as well as operating the slides, QLab seems
like a much smoother operator interface too (clearly give numbered cues
and be able to see the playback status). However, whilst I can export
the slideshow as a PDF and then use a simple process to split the file
into individual PDFs[1], I'm wondering what options I have to make it
easy to apply consistent transition (animation) cues to each resultant
video cue. My initial trials have suggested that replicating basic
crossfade transitions are straightforward, but replicating them across
70ish cues is going to be rather tedious compared to how it'd work in
a traditional presentation tool, especially if it needs to be tweaked
during tech.

Are there any useful tips or tricks which might be of use here, to
assist with the bulk importing/configuring of video cues/animations
in this way? Am I barking up the wrong tree and should I be going back
to Impress or some other presentation tool? (Keynote seems cheap; do
people have any theatre-based experience of that?)

I realise there was a related discussion about Powerpoint recently
which I found useful although it didn't quite answer the question for
me (in the sense that it was more geared towards importing existing
presentations; I'd be interested in the bulk import/process
questions independent of their source). Hope that makes sense!

Cheers,
Dominic.

[1] <http://www.documentsnap.com/how-to-split-pdf-documents-into-single-pages-using-mac-osx/>


--
Dominic Hargreaves | http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/
PGP key 5178E2A5 from the.earth.li (keyserver,web,email)

[dan howarth]

dominic -- as you must know there's a ton of copy-paste shortcuts in qlab for this 

kind of workflow ... also i believe i saw a rich walsh script on the wiki for batch replacing data .. ? 

i use the SHIFT-COMMAND-C (copy) shortcut quite a bit for copying 

the video settings from a cue and then paste the settings into another video cue .. 

this might help speed up the crunching in your presentation. i believe this also does the AUDIO levels 

and things too .... that's great if you've just needed to .. transform every slide by 10 pixels .. 

as you probably know, you might enjoy using the MEMO cues throughout the cuelist, 

for visual spacing in your cuelist and for making notes and reminders .. 

70 cues isn't too bad .. you'll probably find that you need to invest a good initial chunk of time 

to get everything started and then a few minor adjustments during production. if i was doing your 

show i would use qlab. 

[Paul Gotch]

On 24 Apr 2012, at 19:40, dan howarth <theater...@gmail.com> wrote:

> dominic -- as you must know there's a ton of copy-paste shortcuts in qlab for this
> kind of workflow ... also i believe i saw a rich walsh script on the wiki for batch replacing data .. ?

Having done something similar for an amnesty gig I don't think you can speed this up without scripting. You can create all the video cues to start off with by just dragging the pictures in to Qlab but you'll need to write an AppleScript to iterate over the cues adding the fades.

Dominic mmm earth.li do I know you from somewhere?

-p

[Dominic Hargreaves]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2012 at 08:05:47PM +0100, Paul Gotch wrote:
> On 24 Apr 2012, at 19:40, dan howarth <theater...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > dominic -- as you must know there's a ton of copy-paste shortcuts in qlab for this
> > kind of workflow ... also i believe i saw a rich walsh script on the wiki for batch replacing data .. ?

Ah, yes, I can see quite a complex general purpose "Batch adjust" script
which could well help - the timings of the animation cues are one thing
I'm quite likely to want to tweak, for example.

> Having done something similar for an amnesty gig I don't think you can speed this up without scripting. You can create all the video cues to start off with by just dragging the pictures in to Qlab but you'll need to write an AppleScript to iterate over the cues adding the fades.

Okay. That might be an interesting learning experience if I can find the
time :)

Thanks both for your speedy and thoughtful replies.

Dominic.

[Andy Dolph]

What I've done for a quick and dirty version of this without scripting is make one cue with a complete set of fades, copy, paste the required number of times and then go through and retarget everything manually.  Not easy to adjust, but for something like tittles you can probably figure out what the fade time should be then keep it consistant...

for 70 cues it would be quite doable if a bit tedious, scripting it would be much slicker of course...

The one thing I wanted to mention is that I think you need to export the slides as jpegs or another graphic format rather then PDFs - at least that's how I've always done it.  

I would also drop the $15 on the mac app store and buy Keynote to generate the slides... it's so nice to work in, and it'll export a numbered stack of jpegs for you.

You also may find that if all Qlab is doing is tittles, that Keynote's presenter's view would give you enough information to just run it in keynote, which I also do all the time, even though I own Qlab - it's just a mater of which tool will be most convenient for the particular show.

For tittles, I doubt I'd ever do it in Qlab unless I wanted to be able to trigger it with midi from something else (like linking tittle cues to light cues or whatever...)

That's my $0.02 or what ever your local equivalent is ;)

Andy

[Dominic Hargreaves]

On Wed, Apr 25, 2012 at 10:54:39PM -0400, Andy Dolph wrote:
> The one thing I wanted to mention is that I think you need to export the
> slides as jpegs or another graphic format rather then PDFs - at least
> that's how I've always done it.

QLab can certainly handle PDFs, and this has the advantage of not needing
to know the projection resolution in advance, but you pay for it with
potential minor rendering delays.

> I would also drop the $15 on the mac app store and buy Keynote to generate
> the slides... it's so nice to work in, and it'll export a numbered stack of
> jpegs for you.

I took your advice and grabbed Keynote from the App store. It has plenty
of useful export options - thanks for the tip!

> You also may find that if all Qlab is doing is tittles, that Keynote's
> presenter's view would give you enough information to just run it in
> keynote, which I also do all the time, even though I own Qlab - it's just a
> mater of which tool will be most convenient for the particular show.
>
> For tittles, I doubt I'd ever do it in Qlab unless I wanted to be able to
> trigger it with midi from something else (like linking tittle cues to light
> cues or whatever...)

Yes, I had a play with Keynote with the presenter view and like it a lot,
so I'll go with that for this show. The clock and timer are a nice touch.

Cheers,
Dominic.