ui Feature Request-Support for Animated .png images

[Base 57]

8 minutes ago, Mark MoreThan-Shaw said:

What is the perceived benefit ?

Umm... Blinky lights?

 

I can see a blinking Ripple Edit button being somewhat helpful. Anything other than that I would probably not use.

To each their own.

[Starship Krupa]

2 hours ago, InstrEd said:

No don't do that as then I won't won't to use it as Strobes light give be a headache.  You want me to use the DAW don't you?

Because the choice(s) made by one custom theme developer will force everyone to use that theme? Exactly. 😂

[InstrEd]

2 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Because the choice(s) made by one custom theme developer will force everyone to use that theme? Exactly. 😂

I'm trying to make you famous. 😀

[Matthew White]

12 hours ago, Mark MoreThan-Shaw said:

What is the perceived benefit ?

Some may find it of benefit as a more eye catching way to highlight particular buttons which are active amongst a screen full of static buttons although I know they're not all lit at once but still thought it may be useful/preferred for some, other than that.... oooh! Flashy lights! lol

 

Edited June 25, 2022 by Matthew White

[Lord Tim]

I do like the idea of having the option for this (I wouldn't want them on the stock themes but it'd be great to give theme builders the option for adding them in, and I'd certainly use one) but I'm wondering how easy this actually would be to incorporate into a Windows UI?

It looks like a lot of stuff being added to CbB is using a different framework (eg: the new arranger track, export dialogue, VST menu, etc) and there's a big push in general for stuff to dynamically resize and be vector based rather than bitmap based like CbB mostly is now.

Do we know how easy it would be to add this into the existing framework without a crazy amount of work? If things might be moving to being replaced down the track, it might not make a huge amount of sense rewriting something that might be getting retired.

(That's a genuine question, though - anyone know what would be involved in adding this to this kind of GUI? I did a very quick look around and didn't see much on it)

[Canopus]

An animated png is designed so that it should be backward-compatible with a traditional png. Only the first frame will be rendered as a static image if an app doesn’t support animation. In fact, storing an animated png in place of a static png is already possible in the Theme Editor and doesn’t crash or distort anything in CbB. I've tested. But of course, it will currently only show up as a static image.

Some sort of synchronization would be necessary so that all visible animated images with the same timing are animated simultaneously. That would be pretty obvious in Track View if e.g. the Mute button in a theme is animated and Mute is activated on more than one track. Without synchronization the result might end up looking like an angry (and chaotic) fruit salad.

Just my two cents. I guess @Ben Staton is the one who can say for sure.

As for a fully scalable vector-based GUI to appear in CbB, I wouldn’t hold my breath for that to happen.

[sjoens]

The alternative is for a  GUI to have 2 or more sets of graphic files for different screen resolutions as some DAWs already have.

Talk about a themer's nightmare! 

FWIW, CbB has already implemented size improvements. The current GUI displays a tad bigger than the X series.

Edited June 26, 2022 by sjoens

[Mark Morgon-Shaw]

21 hours ago, Matthew White said:

Some may find it of benefit as a more eye catching way to highlight particular buttons which are active amongst a screen full of static buttons although I know they're not all lit at once but still thought it may be useful/preferred for some, other than that.... oooh! Flashy lights! lol

Software tends to adopt the old pardigms of recording hardware which is where a lot of the design features for DAWs are drawn from.

On recording hardware things that tended to flash were because they were waiting for something to happen, and then went solid once it happened.

i.e. on my original black face ADAT the LED above the play button flashes whilst it's reading the time code on the tape and once it knows where it is it goes steady because it's locked on to it.

When you Record Arm a track or group of tracks they flash whiilst the machine is wating for you to hit Record and then they go steady.

They do this with good reason though, recording to a tape based ADAT although digital is 100% destructive.  You better be sure when you hit record because you'll overwrite whatever was previously there and it's never coming back. The flashing light is like a warning ...Are You Sure ??

As we also had to record with real mics and real instruments it was very different from recording into a DAW with virtual instruments.  Being able to see which tracks were in record mode from a distance was helpful if whatever you were recording was across the room and using the remote to operate the recorder.       

[Lord Tim]

On 6/25/2022 at 11:21 PM, Canopus said:

Just my two cents. I guess @Ben Staton is the one who can say for sure.

 

What do you say, Ben? Surely this is something you could whip up in an afternoon, right?  

[John Vere]

On 6/25/2022 at 6:21 AM, Canopus said:

Some sort of synchronization would be necessary so that all visible animated images with the same timing are animated simultaneously. That would be pretty obvious in Track View if e.g. the Mute button in a theme is animated and Mute is activated on more than one track. Without synchronization the result might end up looking like an angry (and chaotic) fruit salad 

This-  I really don’t think you can synchronize a bunch of GIFs.  But I will vote for a “ Rude”. Ripple edit button. Wasn’t that Mackie that used that term for the Solo light on their mixers? 

[Canopus]

22 minutes ago, John Vere said:

This-  I really don’t think you can synchronize a bunch of GIFs.  But I will vote for a “ Rude”. Ripple edit button. Wasn’t that Mackie that used that term for the Solo light on their mixers? 

To be clear, we’re not talking about GIFs, but I think it could simply be a matter of repainting all currently active animated buttons when one of those is activated to make them appear as synchronized. But I could be wrong.