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Old 02-14-2012, 07:32 AM   #17
airon
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Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Berlin
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FR

Smart control resource management.
Nobody can anticipate how many control resources you need for the next mix, which is why consoles have things like focus sections, plugin maps, custom fader groups, group spills(members of group spilled on a set of controls).

In other words, control resources are being reused in different contexts. This is a more general FR, but it applies to OSC as much as it does to midi control sources as well as any natively supported control surface.

The present control resource management is slow to setup because it is buried in submenus and can only be changed one at a time through access to several submenus per parameter.

Default plugin maps can be saved, but you can't use all control resources at your fingertips to do so. If the Mackie control universal is used a control surface, a custom plugin takes over, and the possibility of setting up a default plugin map with that control surface is gone.

I propose to abandon any custom development on your part for control surfaces and instead focus on getting whatever control resources there are available used in a more efficient and useful fashion, and that goes especially for OSC control resources.

The simpler method of accessing plugin parameters is to have a couple of simple methods and controls. You need direct access to these modes plus at least two sets of banking switches in addition to the ones used for track banking(sets) and nudging(single). Each mode access switch toggles in and out of the mode.
  • Mode access switches for changing control access of a bunch of control resources to control
    • Sends
      Bank switches A control access to the next/previous set of sends on all tracks. More stuff in regard to access to control parameters like send mute, prefx/postfx/postfader, send type, send source/target,phase,channel count has to be figured out.

    • Plugins
      Banking switches A control access to the previous and next plugin
      Banking switches B control access to the plugin parameter pages
      Usually this type of parameter access is limited to the knobs of one channel on control surfaces.
    • Custom plugin maps
      Banking switches A control access to the previous and next plugin on the channel(not all channels)
      Banking switches B control access to the previous and next pages of plugin parameters.

      This kind of plugin control usually takes over a large set of control resources. Most often all controls on sets of four or eight tracks are used.

    • Group spills
      Spreads all members of group that the currently selected track belongs to on to all track control resources.

      Banking switches A control access to the previous and next group.

    • VCA Masters
      Access all VCA masters and thus give access to
    • VCA Master Group Spill(accessed from the VCA Masters mode)
      Access the members of the VCA master. This has proven to be highly usefull in almost any show I've had the chance to use this.

    • Custom track configurations
      First layer picks the track configuration via any control resources selected to do so. It could be any OSC message, a button or touching a fader.


Ok, so this all looks like hardware control surface stuff, but OSC is actually way more flexible.

With OSC, you can setup commands to go along with the mode switches, to flip to a specific page for TouchOSC for example.

The difficult thing here is presenting this to the user so they can set this stuff up, share it, customize it and back it up.

OSC is just perfect for this, since all the feedback stuff is setup anyway. The hardware control surface folks will require one plugin to present the control resources and the feedback paths correctly to the system.

The editor, that you, Cockos, need to provide for this to work, is a difficult project. I realize that it's asking a lot.

The payoff is that nobody will need to be a programmer any longer to create exceptional control solutions. You will multiplied the number of people that can do this by at least a thousand.

All the MCU folks will be able to share setups for plugins, VCA group spills, custom fader maps. Behringer BCR2000 and BCF2000 can share their most efficient setups, without having to become programmers.

Cockos provides the tools to manage the control resources and control feedback, and the users make the rest happen.


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