Macro / Macro editor

The macro engine seems quite primitive to me, is there any work being done on this part of the software?

If I manually record a macro and adjust the timings to speed up the macro sometimes the desk does it correctly and sometimes not. The only solution is to slow the macro down. The desk should be able to "follow" each step in a macro by itself instead of just waiting a preset time after the previous step started.

To me it seems the desk gives some other processing a higher priority, which is fine, but the other processes running shouldn't have influence on the end result of the macro.

If I could just put all the wait times to follow I would be shure each step has been executed.

Also adding and moving steps in the macro editor isn't possible?
You can record manually and ad steps to the end of a macro but if I just want to add a line in-between in the editor I can't seem to find how to.

For me it would be the preferred way to completely make a macro, no manual recording but typing it in line by line.

There's also limited acces to functions, if I want to record and replace a pallet or a cue I have to add screen down and screen up steps in the macro while it should be possible to just ad an option "merge, insert, replace,..." after the record step.
This would bypass the pop-up.
I know you can select that option just after you pressed record to bypass the pop-up but that still involves screen down and screen up steps.
The screen up and screen down functions are the most annoying because the macro has to recall view to be sure these functions work good.

But while I'm busking I don't want my view to change, even if I recall my busking view at the end of the macro.
  • In the macros you also select your desired commands like merge, etc direct without the usage of the onscreen commands so that you dont need to recall your view
  • Just fondled around a little bit with the merge function and what I didn't expect was that I had to select my fixtures. (because the colour pallets I want to merge are global pallets)
    This is probably why that didn't work yesterday. (I had never used merge on pallets before)

    Anyway that seems to work now but still with the same problem of it being keystroke macro's.
    I have to slow the macro down to work reliable. (like in 0.06 total time per step, which adds up fast)

    If there could be something like real command macro's (not keystroke) that would be really useful. More like a scripting language.


    This is an example I would like to have working faster for my "busking" setup.

    colour pallet 21 (Bump), 22 (Base 1) and 23 (Base 2) are pallets used in cuelists.
    colour pallet 1 thru 20 are my colours I make before the show, not used in cuelists straight away.

    I have 3 rows of macro's with 20 columns
    1st row sets one of my 20 colours as Bump colour
    2nd row sets one of my 20 colours as my Base 1 colour
    3rd row sets one of my 20 colours as my Base 2 colour

    Pressing any of the 60 Macro keys should ideally set that colour to be one of my 3 busking pallets almost instantly (not half a second later)

    Other Macro's I like to use don't have to be that fast as I use them in preparation for the show. (making cuelists automatically from groups I make by hand with the fixtures I have that night)

    Edit:
    Just got my old Hog 1K out of it's case to see what desk would do the busking colour macro pallet quicker. Guess what... The 1K does it faster dan my own Nano Hog and the RoadHog4 I currently have here.
    That's something that could be improved.
  • Macros are at the moment keystroke-macros
    Has been like that since HOG3/HOG2

    Step time of 0.01 should work depending on your button press length.
    I´m using most of the time 0.01
  • With 0.01 my macro's don't always execute correctly. (same on Nano Hog as on RoadHog)

    Example of one of these macro's:

    Clear Command Line
    Group
    1
    Colour
    1
    Merge
    Colour
    2
    1
    Enter
    Clear

    Sometimes the second keypress Colour gets lost.
    In that case the desk wants to merge in cue 21 of the selected master.
    If I increase the wait time for that step then it executes like it should (most of the time)

    I know my Hog 1K is keystroke macro aswel but there you can set the wait time to follow.
    There even was an option to record macro timing or not, If you would not record the timing all steps would follow automatically. (which was my preferred way of doing it)

    And I'm not really sure, I should check it but I believe I could add steps in the macro editor on the Hog 1K, instead of recording all over again. (not so bad for a short macro, very irritating for long macro's I use to make cuelists)
  • Make sure that you edit also the keypress time and that these times fit

    You dont to to select a group by the way:

    Colour 1 Colour 21

    Merge is selected after pressing copy in the toolbar, less buttonpresses for your macro
    Instead of the virtual screen press you can edit the macro and select the merge

    See the screenshot here:
    www.dropbox.com/s/am5z9e0zodvbogj/Bildschirmfoto%202014-06-16%20um%2023.11.25.png
  • Just tried it all again on the Hog4 PC (for the moment the Nano is with AED for repair and I have a RH4 I'm using for the shows)

    PC does it all good with 0.01 times now, same show on RH4 doesn't do good at all with the same macro's. I might try a full reinstall on the RH instead of just the V2.3.0 update I did because I don't know what happend with this RH before.

    I just had a crash on the RH a few minutes ago trying out these simple macro's. (black screen, only cursor left) That's when I switched to my PC.

    The softkeypress step on the RH4 for instance in the macro didn't work (it still gave me insert, merge, replace, cancel popup) on the PC it works as it should.

    Anyway, not to let this thread get lost into a useless request for a better engine (as it is likely to be good, only a problem with this specific RH)

    I would like to have the possibility to add a step to a Macro, in the Macro editor itself.
    Would be useful when you forgot to clear the programmer at the beginning of the macro you just add that step.
    Or if you made a Macro with a single digit group or pallet in it and you want to change it to a double digit or tripple then you could add a line for second and third digit.
  • Blackscreen is only a desktop crash:

    pig+open+backspace opens the "Launched Processes" window.
    There right-click on the desktop process (on a RH4 pig+set) and restart this process.

    Hmmm... Crazy with the timing problem. Have used 0.01 timing on several consoles
    Try to make the wait time of the softkeypress a bit longer, with 0.01 time I had the same thing happening in Hog PC

    I´m totally with you with the options to manually add steps.
    Has been requested quiet often.

    When I store macros with digits I always make a "master" macro with 3 digits and copy this when using just 1 digit
  • Thanks alot for the tips!
    Especially the launched processes hotkey, I have to print a cheat sheet with these hot keys to put underneath my nano.

    Everything running as good as can be for now (most important of all: reliable) on my own PC system.
    The RH4 is gone now, it ran a little bit better with the full reinstall of 2.3 but still not great.
  • Have a look on the facebookpage of PreWorks (austrian distributor)
    They have a cheat sheet there