[ANSWERED/EXAMPLE PATCH] Is there a way in Isadora to go straight to black in case of an emergency.

knowtheatre

shift-command-p on Mac will pause the engine. Not exactly a panic button, but might work for what you need.

Notdoc

touch the cursor firmly on the scene bar, but NOT on a scene. screen goes straight to black. pow.

Michel

Well you can do that yourself with the deactivate scene actor and a few others. See attached patch. The first scene has to be active all the time for it to work.

Best Michel

deactivate-all-scenes.izz

Juriaan

Hi there @thatmattrogers,

As @Michel and @Notdoc already explained you can either click between two scenes to go straight to black or use something called a Background scene that host your logic for a jump to a 'Panic' scene.

More information about Background Scenes and the Scene actors can be found in our KB article. https://support.troikatronix.c...

If you have any further questions feel free to reply

- Juriaan

thatmattrogers

@juriaan

I'm aware that I can pause the engine or click between scenes, but the specific problem I'm trying to solve is where I'm using a secondary scene running in the background for a music track for example. Neither of those solutions actually solve the problem ie. once the engine restarts all active secondary scenes will resume, and despite having no active primary scene secondary scenes will still play.

I know that I could place a "deactivate scene" actor for every one of these that I build in and place them all in a user actor that is featured in every single scene so that I can shut them down in case... but that does feel a little clunky from a setup perspective. So I was hoping for something as intuitive as QLab's press Esc to stop everything approach. Then again I use Isadora for flexibility and customisability so little things like this may be the trade off.

(note: I don't want to get lost in the weeds comparing different software. I'm aware that QLab is a very different beast with different strengths and weaknesses to Isadora but it's a useful example from another piece of show control software that a lot of people will have used at some point)

mark

@thatmattrogers said:

I'm aware that I can pause the engine or click between scenes, but the specific problem I'm trying to solve is where I'm using a secondary scene running in the background for a music track for example. Neither of those solutions actually solve the problem ie. once the engine restarts all active secondary scenes will resume, and despite having no active primary scene secondary scenes will still play.

I know that I could place a "deactivate scene" actor for every one of these that I build in and place them all in a user actor that is featured in every single scene so that I can shut them down in case... but that does feel a little clunky from a setup perspective. So I was hoping for something as intuitive as QLab's press Esc to stop everything approach. Then again I use Isadora for flexibility and customisability so little things like this may be the trade off.

What you're asking for isn't built in to Isadora, but It's a totally reasonable feature request -- especially since it's quite easy to implement from my (i..e, the programmer) point of view.

I am, however, a bit surprised that QLab would use the ESC key for this -- seems a bit risky since you could accidentally hit that during a show. I would think something with a the command key would be better so you don't hit it by mistake. But that's just me.

In any case, the immediate workaround I would suggest is as follows: in addition to your other secondary scenes, add one near the beginning that has all the Deactivate Scene actors you need. (Take note that you can use Deactivate Scene on the Primary Scene too!) That way you don't need a User Actor in every Scene.

Take a look at the example below, created in 3.0.8f12 (which can obviously be loaded in 3.1.1)

To start the show, hit letter 'a' to go to the first "Blackout" Scene. Note that the "Panic" scene was activated as a secondary scene by pressing letter 'a'.

Now, use the space bar as normal to go through the Scenes, which includes fading in and out the "Secondary Scene" at the end. At any point, if you press letter 'p' you will execute all of the Deactivate Scene actors in the Panic Scene, and jump immediately to the Blackout scene at the beginning.

Is that something like what you were hoping for?

Best Wishes,
Mark

panic-example.izz

thatmattrogers

@mark thanks mark that makes a lot of sense.

Woland

@thatmattrogers

Cmd+G (Hide Stages) & Cmd+Option+M (Mute Audio)

-or-

Cmd+G (Hide Stages) & Cmd+Shift+P (Pause Engine)

I also entered feature requests for:

An actor/control that can mute/unmute audio output
An actor/control that acts as a grandmaster fader for audio
An actor/control/keyboard shortcut that can deactivate all scenes
An actor/control/keyboard shortcut that can hide/show stages and mute/unmute audio (simultaneously)
An actor/control/keyboard shortcut that can mute/unmute audio & hide/show stages & pause/unpause engine (simultaneously)

Michel

@mark @thatmattrogers

Well that's similar to the patch I have added, only the first scene has to be active for it to work.

Best Michel

mark

Dear @michel,

Well that's similar to the patch I have added, only the first scene has to be active for it to work.

Oh my! I didn't see you'd already done it! Sorry to duplicate the work and for not reading more carefully.

Can we just say "great minds think alike"?

Best Wishes,
Mark