[quote="Curt"][quote="AJR"]Dante, You could always embark on a covert operation and run a loopback or two yourself. Not that I would know anything about doing any such thing :rolleyes: Just a thought...[/quote] nope..never done any covert operations here either....Bill? ;)[/quote] I have no idea what you are talking about. :)

[quote="AJR"]Dante, You could always embark on a covert operation and run a loopback or two yourself. Not that I would know anything about doing any such thing :rolleyes: Just a thought...[/quote] nope..never done any covert operations here either....Bill? ;)

Dante - there is also the bus link solution. I was reading another thread comment from Bill D about sideflags. Anyway, you could simply have two keyed, compressed DME boxes on two separate keyers. One key bus is LINKED to the M/E3 A bus and the other keyer contains the clip player. When you hit cut on the M/E then the key source will change also because its linked to whatever the A bus source is. Now you wouldn't want to have the bus linked ALL THE TIME, but you can link it temporarily using a menu macro which is available in your version of software. Include a menu macro to start the link in your effect macro, then another menu macro to turn it off.

Thanks again for all the great replies!!! I am going to use all the suggestions and see if I can get them to work. I truly appreciate the input. You guys are great and very generous. Hopefully in the near future...it will be the latest software with more options. Not related to this...but I have to give Mike P. at Sony a huge amount of kudos for all his efforts on our behalf. Dante

Personally I'd set it up so one of the MEs to handle the the vision and set up a macro for the clip transition. That's fairly easy to do. Then use one of the keyers on another ME to handle the DME box, I like to use Key 4 because I never usually use all four of the keys at one time, attach a DME channel to that key and set up the effect. Then feed the first ME into the keys Me utility 2. Finally set up the one of the MEs Key outputs to have Key 4 only constantly on over utility 2. Then you can re-feed that output into where ever you need it.

(sorry if I just repeated what someone already said - I didn't read up!) Dante... I then refer you to the DME wipe cheat that's worked for me (knock on wood), but your friendly Sony representative may frown upon it. You'll build 2 DME wipes, one "flip-tumble" and one "compress". You may be able to use an existing switcher DME wipe for the compress if your box is simple. 1: Build a simple 3 keyframe "flip-tumble" wipe. Doesn't have to be fancy since you'll never see it. Instead, after you've finished saving it, go to the first keyframe and position the box where you need it then mod-all. Then, when you call it up on M/E3 you'll notice the "A" bus video already compressed in the box and the background is most likely the edge matte color found on page 1354.1 (was for me when I just built it). This gives you an M/E3 A and B bus cut inside of a compressed box. 2: Build a "compress" wipe by calling up the "flip-tumble" you just built, then deleting all but the first keyframe so you get the same box position. Insert zoomed down keyframes on either side of that to get the "compress" effect. Don't forget to insert a pause on keyframe 2 and to change from "flip-tumbe" to "compress" at menu 6114. THEN, on M/E3 select this DME user wipe on one of your keyers - this contains your clip player. Key your Deko background with a hole in it (or fill the hole with a chroma-keyable color). Have the macro cut the keyer on, play the clip player, do a cut on M/E3, then cut the keyer off for safety. This takes two channels, but since they're wipes they'll take whats available so be careful. You could build the box containing your clip player as a specific DME snapshot or one-keyframe effect if you'd rather have more control over it. So to recap, your building a flip-tumble wipe thats already comperssed (super-cheat), then another box compressing the clip player to the same size. This should work without any multi-program or re-entry cheats.

Dante, You could always embark on a covert operation and run a loopback or two yourself. Not that I would know anything about doing any such thing :rolleyes: Just a thought...

Thanks Bill and Jbs Appreciate the input. I think it's easier to walk on water, than to get engineering cooperation at times. Thanks again Dante

Pre-version 7.22 way around the same-m/e reentry is to wire up a few loopbacks. We have four routable loopbacks as sources on our switcher - we call them DX1 through DX4 - just for miscellaneous solutions like this. We made them routable for flexibility. If you have multi-program 2 you can set up another output with another program or a key preview in video mode and have ONLY key 4 linked. (by default a key preview is on output 4 but you can change that to anything if you know where it is in the engineering menu) On M/E 3 turn off keys 3 and 4, but leave 1 and 2 on to layer the Deko and the DME. Key 4 is your clip player that you'll macro to turn on and off. Keep in mind that these are snapshot-able and keyframe-able operations if you have "m/e recall config" turned on in the engineering menu. The DME contains a DX with Output 4 (containing m/e3 key preview 1). So - assuming you have multi-program - then it'd be good to get your paranoid engineering to wire you up some loopbacks. You could just get one done and hold out for version 7.22 (we're waiting on that one too - paranoid engineering!). The other way I know and use is more complicated and involves DME wipe cheats and its a two channel operation. First, I have a "flip-tumble" DME Wipe, but I have all three keyframes compressed to the size of the hole. Then I take a keyer with another DME wipe the same shape of the hole for the clip player, but its a "compress" or "picture in picture"... can't remember right now. Then apply another keyer on top of all that with the Deko background - hole keyed out of course.

You can do with one ME. I would think going up to an ME makes more sense rather the doing a video box dme link on the pgm bus. Build a dme link effect. One channel effect save in the 100's, 200's for 2 channel. Not sure if when you are using a 1 channel if you undercut in the ME, whether it will cut to full video (b bus) or stay with same size as the A-bus. Not in front of the switcher right now. So it will either be one channel or two channel effect. Since just a position could probably steal one of the canned pre made effects and modify it. On your ME double punch DME button in trans module. Pick your effect under user or modify one of Sony's. Setup any keys or whatever. Learn your snapshot (or effect). Build your macro to call up your snap or effect and then pause or if you hate zero pauses, have another macro that just does the wipe, key on/off and undercut. No pgm flexi really does not limit you to anything but another flexi. Any kind of wipe or dme wipe you want to save you can do by copying it from another ME to pgm. So if you have a DME blurr as a dme wipe . Save it to dme wipe flexi in ME 3, copy it in the menu to pgm. Then build a macro to recall that dme wipe and do a dme link, auto trans, etc. So one button macro becomes pgm/pst blurr, etc.

Thanks Jbs... Unfortunately we have not installed 7.22, took forever just to get 7.11...paranoid engineering management. If you could skin that cat on 7.11 I would greatly appreciate it. I'm pretty familiar with the switcher, have built multiple effects using macros, dme, etc... We don't do a lot with DME wipes, most all effects are clips keyed over with dissolves or wipes under. We use DME for flying stuff or static double boxes. The only thing I've used the utility bus for is flags on 4:3 stuff. I'm not that familiar with utility bus to feed DME (4 channel). Soooooooo.....the effect I'm looking for is this under 7.11: Clip from Deko has a 16x9 hole in the middle (background/or foreground clip)...not sure...working on it this week...either a key over or under. Video is in the DME..in the 16x9 box, cropped, wiping xpt to xpt (have to be flexible, not tied to effect, have to be able to choose on the fly, but preset). The wipe will be another clip wiping over and transition xpt to xpt. We do all are wipes on the PP bus with macros this way, as it allows us to put a chyron in with the wipe or leave it out at will. Unfortunately, they didn't buy the flexpad for the PP, therefore we fire the macros on one of the MEs...usually ME-3. I would like to build this using only one ME...and would like to do it all using macros, in keeping with the rest of the way we do things. The only other way I can think of doing it (snapshots in macros)...is to tie 2 MEs...one with the DME keyed on one ME...and using another ME to do the crosspoint switches, with that ME in the DME. Hope that makes sense....?? Thanks Dante

This might be REAL easy with these two things: Multi-Program/Multi-Program 2 AND version 7.22. Can you tell us what version you're on and whether or not you have any multi-program options? Version 7.22 is supposed to allow same-m/e reentry - hopefully that would work with internal DMEs. If you have 7.11 or earlier like us then there are some other ways to skin that cat.