TRIGGERING CONCEPTS IN CHANNEL BOX

There are many different ways in which items can be triggered in or from Channel Box scenes. These include Intelligent Interface commands, VDCP commands, GPI triggers and manual button presses. Items in Channel Box scenes can even be triggered by other keyframes within the scene itself in addition to items in other scenes as well. This document describes some best practices to consider when creating simple and complex scenes that contain simultaneous triggers for multiple events.

Since Channel Box is essentially controlling Lyric PRO, it is important to understand how Lyric PRO handles these multiple types of triggers with regards to Channel Box.

When you create a message in Lyric PRO, each transition you create adds a button to the Playout tab in the Properties panel. If you want to trigger the ‘Bug On’ transition in Lyric, you would navigate to the Playout tab and press the ‘Bug On’ button. The transition would then activate. Channel Box works in the same way. Each Action in Channel Box equates to a unique Transition in Lyric PRO. Channel Box has the added capability of being able to stack triggers together into a single Channel Box control panel control, such as a button press. If you create a button on a Channel Box control panel that is configured to trigger multiple actions, what you are doing in effect is pressing multiple buttons in rapid succession on the Lyric PRO playout panel.

When users create a scene in Channel Box, each Action will eventually become a separate Transition in Lyric PRO when the scene is loaded. Because of this, a complex Channel Box scene with many different objects can have a large number of transitions in Lyric PRO…many of which will need to be triggered simultaneously.

LYRIC ACTIVATION EVENTS AND CHANNEL BOX

Lyric PRO and Channel Box both have the ability to have a single timeline event trigger multiple events. In Lyric PRO this is done using the Activation event, whereby a timeline for one item (for example, a crawl appearing on the screen) can trigger something to happen in another transition (for example, causing the bug to slide up out of the way of the incoming crawl). Similarly, the use of an External Activation in Lyric PRO can cause that bug to slide out of the way even if that bug is contained in a completely different message altogether.

BEST PRACTICES

When Channel Box is commanded to send an action trigger request to Lyric via a button press on the control panel, Channel Box will package a list of transitions to activate to Lyric. Lyric will activate these transitions sequentially, but as quickly as possible. This will simulate the same behavior as clicking multiple transition buttons on the Lyric Playout tab in the Properties window. While this is possible, it is not the recommended way of triggering multiple events simultaneously.

It is recommended that you make use of keyframe triggers to accomplish this. Channel Box keyframe triggers make use of Lyric Activation Events and these have proven to be more reliable.

Consider the following example. You have created a credit squeeze scene utilizing a background clip, a DVE move and a credit roll in a Lyric LNO. Instead of adding all three of those items to a single button in the Channel Box control panel, add just one. In this case, make the button in the Control Panel trigger the background clip. Then, in your Action triggers, set the Credit Roll and DVE to be triggered by the first keyframe of the Background clip. In this way you are utilizing Lyric Activations to trigger the other events rather than a rapid succession of transition triggers which may, on rare occasions, fail to activate.

SOME LIMITATIONS TO EXTERNAL ACTIVATIONS

Currently there is a limitation that only one external activation can be triggered from a single keyframe in Lyric PRO. Channel Box, since it is utilizing Lyric PRO as its’ render engine, is also under the same limitation. Therefore, when creating an external trigger in Channel Box you are only able to trigger a single event in another scene per keyframe. The workaround until this limitation is lifted is to add another keyframe immediately after the first keyframe and create a different external trigger on that keyframe as well.

eFX OBJECT TRIGGERING

It has been found in testing that simultaneous triggers of multiple eFX-based objects (clips, DVE & Video Templates) can result in occasional non-activations of those events. As with the ‘Best Practices’ section above, it is recommended that users cascade these activations off a single trigger to avoid this problem. Therefore, if you’ve created a scene that will include a Clip and DVE create a control panel button to trigger one event (the clip) and have the other item (the DVE) triggered by the first keyframe of the clip. Visually there will be absolutely no difference in when the events actually trigger…we’re simply routing the command differently through Lyric PRO.