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RESET command protocol


Myngus

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Hi all,

I'd like to stop all timelines except for the one that I'm currently using.

At the moment I have to add a stop cue for every timeline. I have hundreds of timelines, and it's quite cumbersome.

Is there a way to use the RESET command ( together with another command to kill all timelines, except for a specified timeline (the one that sends the command)?

Or is there an way to do this?

cheers.

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3 hours ago, matkeane said:

Somewhere way back in the epic Feature Request thread, Mike Fahl suggested that this is possible, but I've never quite worked out what he meant - perhaps he can chime in to enlighten us!

 

That would suggest the command description in the user guide is incomplete ...

RESET Stops all Auxiliary timelines (returning them to their inactive state) and resets the main timeline to itsbeginning.

and should read

RESET Stops all Auxiliary timelines (returning them to their inactive state) and resets the main timeline to its beginning except the calling timeline.

Wish I were somewhere In could test that, but I am on the road.

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I velieve what I recalled was that you could make an aux timeline (or composition) with a bunch of control cues to kill timelines. This "bunch of control cues" can include the aux timeline that's firing the bunch (allowing you to use the same comp from all those timelines). If it DOES include the aux timeline that's firing the bunch, that one will be ignored in this context.

However, it was quite some years since I put that in, and I doubt anyone have ever used it. I have no idea whether it still works that way. But that was my idea at the time. However, this is NOT a "shotgun" kill-all-but-me method. You still have to add an individual control cue for each target timeline in the bunch of timelines you need to deal with. This mechanism just saved you having to create a separate set of control cues for each timeline including all EXCEPT the firing timeline, which would makt the amount of duplication far worse.

Mike

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@Mike Fahl: That makes sense now, thanks!

I just did some quick tests and it works as Mike describes - but uses the STOP, not RESET, command. I opened up a recent project in which I had 6 audio jingle tasks, so I added a new composition into which I pasted a control cue, and then duplicated and modified it to create 6 cues to stop each of the audio jingle tasks. I pasted the composition into all of the audio tasks and now, starting any of those tasks will kill the other tasks, but not the task from which it was called.

Are control cues in compositions actually supported behaviour though? They can't be created directly in compositions, but can be copy-and-pasted into place and then modified. This has turned out to be extremely handy in the past, but I'm never sure whether it's supposed to work, or just a useful bug.

And, as Mike says, you still need to manually add a control cue for each task you want to kill, but at least the composition trick makes it reusable, and updatable in one place.

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On 1/26/2019 at 3:52 PM, Mike Fahl said:

it was quite some years since I put that in, and I doubt anyone have ever used it.

Well, now that I know about it, I'll use this all the time!

It would be really excellent if this were supported as an official feature. I'd hate to build a show that relied on it, only to have the behavior "fixed" in a future version.

Thanks,

w.

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Quote

Are control cues in compositions actually supported behaviour though? They can't be created directly in compositions, but can be copy-and-pasted into place and then modified.

The reason you can't create them in comps is that they can''t control the comp itself (since the comp is entirely governed by its enclosing timeline). Hence, to protect you from this potentilly confusing situation, I decided to not allow control cues to be created in comps. However, as you noticed, you can "cheat" by pasting control cues into the timeline. And if you're controlling another timeline (by name), then it can actually be  useful, as in this special case, where you're telling timelines to STOP. It then also make sense that the control cue would NOT be applied to its enclosing timeline (since control cues in comps weren't allowed for this very reason). So control cues in this context targeting the governing timeline are therefor simply ignored, which can be quite useful in this way.

If the behavior is still there, I doubt it will be removed (even though it is undocumented). And I did make it that way for a reason ;-).

Mike

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