Oh, another thing would be more/better features for creating shows from home, for those who complain about needing more setup time. Imagine getting a list of effects from the director and being able to build them on your home computer or laptop before you show up on site. Get an engineering file from the truck and use it to get your sources patched. You wouldn't have a way to visually confirm that you're building things correctly, but I think if you know the switcher well enough you could get things in the ballpark to where you'll only need tweaks on gameday. I'd also like to see more documentation on effects reels with regard to things like where undercuts are intended to happen, especially on effects that don't go full screen, but this is obviously an art department issue, not a switcher issue.

I like that idea Stephan. In addition to setting the transition time maybe being able to change the transition type to a wipe as well, something like the Sony's key transition menu where you can select the type of transition. Some of the transitions I use have to have a vertical wipe or for example the Big 10 Network graphics I saw looked like they were designed to use the dreaded star wipe underneath.

Two features that I think would go over really well: Make "DDR" an actual transition type along with your dissolve and wipe. The DD35 had a DVE transition which allowed you to simply preview your next source, hit auto trans, and it would route your program and preview sources to the DVE, take the DVE, run it, then cut to your "preview" source all automatically. I want to see something like this for DDRs, I think it would save a lot of time if instead of having to build a timeline for every single DDR transition we could simply define a few things about the transition and have the switcher handle it. My imagined actual usage: During setup you clip all your animations in the lance like you do already. In the engineering menu you define the P-Bus address your Lance is sitting on as what will be used for DDR Transitions, and you also define your DDR sources in source patch. Behind the scenes the switcher should still send P-Bus commands to the Lance to maintain backward compatibility with hardware currently on the market, it's just that now those commands aren't tied to E-Mems anymore. Next you go into your DDR Trans menu and for each register, you define the number of frames before starting the underdissolve, the length of the underdissolve (0 for a cut), and the total length of the animation before the DDR is unkeyed (or if it should stay keyed afterward). For the show you can either select transitions from the menu or use macros to call them up. Then just preview your next source and hit auto trans. When you execute a transition, it looks for which keyer on your current M/E has the DDR in it. If no keyer has the DDR, it will automatically grab an unused keyer and set it to highest (or other user definable) priority for the duration of the transition. In case all 4 are keyed you define a keyer which will be over-ridden for the duration of the transition i.e. the telestrator. After the transition it restores whatever was in there before. This is mainly aimed at the poor dual feed TDs who have lots of stuff to key and not enough keyers. The other feature I'd like to see is the ability to define keyer states rather than button presses in macros. I want to be able to say "auto trans keyer1 off" and not have it turn on if it's already off. I think the Philips-based switchers already do this.

I know Geoff probably can't say who he's suggesting to, but it sure would help to know, because it always seems in brainstorming sessions that folks aren't necessarily coming up with new ideas, rather improvements for current products. One thing I'd like to see, especially as switchers have become much more PC-based, is a tiny basic menu for an internal character generator. I find myself making a lot of slates, to ease rushed gfx people, and an internal CG would help save time FTPing Stills or loading Frame Memory. It'd also be nice to have that be an engineering feature where you could internally label the switcher's test patterns. I know many will disagree, saying it should all be a function of GFX, and that any internal CG would be used for more than basic stuff, and suddenly be expected to build shows on it. *** To echo freelancetd.com suggestions of more keyers, and more internal DVE options.... I really work exclusively with Kalypsos, and would love to see somewhere in the area of 300-1000 macros available. Not sure if the Sony or Philips go beyond 100 or not.

HI Geoff, Why not start that thread here on Editsuite.com? Everyone's already here. We'd be glad to have the info alongside all the other great bits you TDs offer to the manufacturers. -John