Last night I did an event, where Easy Show was used to drive audio and lighting design.
1: The software did not reliably stop on marks as was selected in the show file. This NEEDS to be reliable. Sometimes it flat out would not do it. If there is a mark and you select "stop on marks", it needs to stop on the marks
2: Speaking of marks, this really angered me from a client perspective and then wasted time come show time. The client forgot to have a song in for whatever reason(who cares why at this point). so as we go through tech rehearsals, I discover "hey, where the beck did this come from" and had to quickly generate a scene and of course import all that stuff into Easy Show. That's not a big deal. The problem is the marks. I had to move a lot of stuff to put this song into the proper general place in the timeline, but then I had to spend many minutes removing marks one at a time from the end. It would be nice to have a right-mouse click selection and delete option for marks to speed this process up. I then had to re-add the marks back. In this case, since a single timeline ran the show, timings weren't critical. Marks were merely injected to provide safe stops so I didn't have to keep my eyes on the screen(as I was also mixing the show: audio, not DJ). I was able to quickly re-add the marks back in, which for me is faster than moving marks.
3: Audio. I really would like the software to have a method of directing where one wants the audio. In this case, it uses the main audio outputs as chosen in the sound control panel. In my case, I have a sound card/device(A Behringer X32 to be precise but I also use a M-Audio Firewire 410 with 8 outputs). I want to be able to choose where I route the audio from. I can have system default sound go to the internal speakers, then CompuShow on one pair of audio outputs, and maybe Ableton Live on another pair.
While MIDI was NOT used in this show, a show I have coming up will. Easy Show MUST have a selection for MTC formats, which will allow better and faster synchronizing to MTC. It's an extra step, but it's the proper way to do it.
EasyShow needs to properly handle file formats other than .wav. Personally, I prefer .wav, but everyone else loves crappy formats. I cannot do any sort of timeline work on Easy Show if it's not a .wav file. I have to convert a lot of files as a result of this.
EasyShow needs to properly work with file formats other than .avi. The .avi files are too darn big and doesn't provide me with any real advantage for my application.
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