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WATCHOUT Production Custom Hotkeys - v2


Walter Soyka

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I've updated my AutoHotkey script for WATCHOUT, adding a couple more useful custom key bindings.

 

Borrowing from After Effects, this update adds - and = for timeline zoom, plus PgUp/PgDn for timeline navigation. PgUp/PgDn moves the playhead 0.1 seconds; Shift+PgUp/PgDn moves the playhead 1 second, and Ctrl+Shift+PgUp/PgDn moves the playhead 10 seconds. 

 

Personally, I find these time controls invaluable when programming a show. I'd love to see them eventually integrated into the application!

 

The keybindings from the previous version for the Windows Calculator, Add media file, Insert layer, New folder, Add new text, Add new composition, Add new video proxy, Duplicate selected composition (naive), and Y-rotation tween are all still there, too.

 

Enjoy,

 

w.

 

http://www.keenlive.com/renderbreak/2014/06/custom-watchout-hotkeys-v2/

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Hi Mike,

 

Yes, dragging folders into Watchout is undoubtedly the fastest but with the drawback, at least when building the show on a virtual PC, that media is linked with an absolute path (z:/network/folder/media/images/etc), while adding media through the menu links it with a relative path (media/images/etc) which makes moving shows easy, and without having to consolidate (which I know is good practice, but would overcomplicate matters when I just need to add a couple of media files to an existing project and send it back to the client).

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"that media is linked with an absolute path (z:/network/folder/media/images/etc), while adding media through the menu links it with a relative path (media/images/etc)"

 

Is this really a drag and drop issue?

I don't think so, when having a Show-folder with:

1 - the showfile in question

2 - a Media folder where one put/copy ALL intended media for the Show, before dragging them into the Show or project.

 

To me this is standard procedure, meaning relative links to all media content.

 

Any content added into the Show, from OUTSIDE the Show-folder, without copying them into that folder first,

will inevitably have an absolute path to the media, dragged in or imported.

Only way to get rid of that is of course to consolidate the Show in question to a new folder.

 

Or did I miss something here?

 

/jonas

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Hi Jonas,

 

Quick background: Clients have a bunch of different setups (WO5 on Win 7, WO4 on Win XP, for example) so rather than keep a bunch of PCs around, I run Watchout in a virtual machine while building the show before moving to the production machine. I realize that this may not be a common setup.

 

All the media files are in a 'media' subfolder of the folder where the Watchout project is saved. I often end up building or modifying shows remotely, and by carefully organizing the media it's easy to swap Watchout project files and new media, by FTP or Dropbox, without needing to consolidate.

 

I just tested this again and actually I got things the wrong way round in my last message: Dragging and dropping files from the 'media' folder into the media window results in a relative path (media/images/myimage.jpg) but using the 'add media' menu to import the same files results in an absolute path.

 

So there is a difference in behaviour between importing and dragging-and-dropping, at least in my case. Also if I refresh media, any updated files that were linked using a relative path are relinked with an absolute path.

 

Apologies for dragging Walter's original post a bit off-topic. My background is in video and motion graphics, where we tend to be a bit obsessive about keyboard shortcuts, so maybe user-defined keyboard shortcuts would be a good feature request?

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Adding media that's located in the same folder as the .watch file (or a subfolder thereof) always gives a relative path, regardless of how the media is added (by using Add Media command, by dragging the media files or the folder containing them to the Media, Stage or Timeline window). Adding media that's located outside the folder containing the .watch file always results in an absolute path. 

 

You can fix absolute paths after the fact by doing either of the following:

 

1. Consolidate the show to a new folder. This moves/copies all media so that relative paths are be used.

2. Manually move the media to the desired sub-folder, then replace the path by using the Find/Replace command in the Media window, replacing the previously absolute path with the new relative path (see the User's Guide for details).

 

Using a relative path to all media makes it easy to move the entire show by just copying the folder containing the .watch file. However, sometimes it's advantageous to use absolute paths during the production process, e.g. to access files on a shared file server, also accessible from other production tools.

 

Mike

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you Walter,

 

The AutoHotkey script tip.

I have written my own short-cut to to Watchout.

 

I love that you can make an executable file, to run off my thumb drive.

That way it works on any Control computer without having to install the whole program.

 

I will be using this a lot.

 

 

Thanks Again,

 

Richard Kamper

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  • 1 month later...

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