Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Introducing - Artiste Director: SongSync, StopWatch, DanceDisplay


StopWatch
Sometimes I am excited by little things. I love the StopWatch feature on the front of the Artiste HUD. Yes, so simple anyone can code it and add it as a feature to their tools, but sometimes less is more. Press the circle inside the HUD face and it gives you a time readout in owner-only chat from start of pressing the PLAY arrow. (Sometimes I also call it the START button. Same thing) ADDENDUM: The StopWatch gives approximations into a sequence and is not meant to be used for anything that requires precise timing. It gets you to the relative position but then you must eyeball where you really want to be.

SongSync
Sooooo...how many of you practice your routines by pressing PLAY on a YouTube video? *Raises hand* I used to. No more. The Artiste flagship is its timing engine 4-yrs in Q&A, and accurate syncing of multiple events down to 1/10th of a second.  We try to automate/sequence everything we can. This allows us to get inside animations and make them come alive.

So why not the music too? Now you can. Here are all the note-cards to make this happen. I will begin to show a bit of 'how' things are done so you can again see the different pieces involved and how they work together and the scope of your involvement in 'getting the Artiste to accomplish a task for you;.

Here is the autofx line: - Music starts 2.0 seconds after pressing PLAY
*autofx
1,r=s%PlayYouTube%youtu.be/9k8ic3W4OYA
2,r=s%StopMedia

Here is event #1 & #2:
*events
1,"PullDown",2.0
2,"End It",16.0

Here is the dance sequence nc - We shorted the dance time for demo.
*sequence1
bottoms down copy | 16.0

Here is the key config entry - Sequence 1 starts upon pressing PLAY (the 1)
*config
SequenceOnPlay,1

We also enable (toggle green) the AutoFx and AutoSequence lights on the HUD.


In this case Event #1 fires 2 seconds into the routine (after PLAY). You will see that the dancer does a pull down tease motion at the exact same time every time. I will run it 5 times in a row. and show how they look in a video editor so you can see the start of the YouTube video and the same spot in the dance routine. 

Artiste Director
ADDENDUM: I forgot to add that the Artiste Director must be owned by parcel owner or assigned to same group that land is deeded to, assuming the parcel is indeed deeded to a group.


I should mention the introduction of the Artiste Director. It is simply a check-point device that allows 1 and only 1 person to control stage stuff...things that should only be controlled by one person; that being person (or group leader) of the present show segment/ dance routine. 

Examples are:
Curtains, lighting, song-play, maybe a shared set-rezzer, applause sounds or other sounds, etc.
Other examples are: Group Stripping, Group Adorning, Groups Outfit Change, even Groups Syncing of Multiple Artiste Performance HUDS doing similar and/or different tasks

How it works is: the soloist or group-leader logs into the Director. (Now you can log in directly from the Artiste Performance HUD.  A nice new improvement)...keeping with our motto, ONE HUD does it all. The person can also be "forced off" by any group manager as indicated on a *managers nc inside the Director, in case someone crashes or makes a mistake.

Now only this person can control stage-specific items. We used to have so many issues with too many hands on the curtains. Problem solved.

Also this solves a problem of when to start the music. I've seen countless times where the DJ and dancer were out of sync...either starting the music too soon or too late. Now the performer controls the start and it will always start in sync with their HUD PLAY. You can play media from: 

1) Website URL
2) YouTube
3) MP3

This demo uses YouTube.

If not YouTube for show time,(maybe for various reasons you choose not to use media for your live show)  this still saves a lot of time when you play your song in practice (assuming it exists on YouTube),  as many of you play songs 100s of times in order to perfect your routine. One less thing to do...and always in perfect sync.

DanceDisplay
Wow seems this is a big deal for many. I was asked if we display the current dance. Well we currently do in the  chat log. You also get a stop/start time-stamp. Useful in syncing dances to other eventful functions. If more is needed I will consider adding a list with highlighted dance but so far no current users have requested it.

Watch the demo video below





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