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TriCaster’s two DDRs are powerful Media Players, and can greatly enhance your live productions. (DDRs have siblings that we’ll discuss a bit later – the GFX (Graphics) and the Sound players.)
1. Show DDR 1 by clicking its tab beneath the Switcher.
The tabbed pane shows two players side by side – Figure 66.
Hint: DDR stands for Digital Disk Recorder – a bit of a misnomer since TriCaster’s DDR’s don’t record; Still the term continues in popular use to distinguish Media Players that can play ‘clips’ from those reserved for still image or audio-only tasks.
Let’s add some clips to the playlist.
ADDING FILES
2. Click the + (Add Media) button in the DDR 1 pane (Figure 67) to open a Media Browser.
3. Click the heading named for your current TriCaster session (Practice Session, if you’ve been following along) beneath the Clips header in the Locations column at left in the Media Browser.
Hint: Double-click an empty spot in the playlist instead of clicking the + button. When using either method, hold down the Shift key to view a standard system file window instead of the custom Media Browser.
4. The file pane at right displays icons for recordings made in the session. It should list the file you recorded earlier (in Section 4.8.1) under a group header labeled Capture – click the icon to select it, and then click OK.
5. You may wish to add several more files to experiment with – sample files are provided. DDR 1 and 2 also support most popular audio file formats.
TRANSPORT CONTROLS
6. Select DDR 1 on the Switcher’s Program row.
7. Click the newly added icon in the playlist, and press the Play button in the player’s footer (to the right of Stop in Figure 68). The video clip you recorded should play on the Program monitor.
8. Click the Stop button.
Notice that if you move the mouse pointer over the Speed slider (shown as a numeric percentage) it changes to a double-headed arrow, indicating you can drag the slider to a new value if you wish.
1. Instead, try this: simply click inside the Speed slider (engaging direct edit mode), type “50” and press Enter to change playback Speed to 50%.
2. Click Play again, and observe that playback is now in smooth slow motion.
3. Adjust Speed again – notice that you can even modify Speed during playback.
4. Click Stop.
5. Hold down shift, and double-click the Speed value to reset it to its default.
TRIMMING AND SCRUBBING
Let’s spend a moment learning how to trim a clip in the DDR. To do this you will use tools in the Scrub Bar immediately beneath the playlist pane (Figure 69).
Drag the Scrub Bar’s (square) knob left or right to change the current play position.
Trimming is accomplished by dragging the start and end points for the clip using the blue ] and [ bracket controls at either end. (The mouse pointer changes to a double- headed arrow when you move it over a trim control.)
6. Click the first (top-left) clip in the playlist, highlighting it.
7. Drag the trim controls to shorten the clip’s runtime to 10 seconds (watching the Duration display to the right of the Scrub Bar helps when trimming).
8. Record a few more clips, if you haven’t already done so, and add several to the playlist (either automatically or by using the + (Add Media) button).
SINGLE AND AUTOPLAY
9. Click the Single switch (Figure 70).
10. Double-click the first clip in DDR 1’s playlist to play it (double-clicking is another way to engage Play). With Single mode engaged, playback automatically stops at the end of the current clip.
11. Select Camera 1 on the Switcher’s Preview row (DDR 1 is already selected on the Program row).
12. Enable the Autoplay switch for DDR 1.
13. Play the first clip in the playlist again. This time, just as the clip approaches its end, the Switcher automatically performs a transition (the sources on Program and Preview are automatically swapped), leaving Camera 1 on Program output.
14. After a few moments, click either Take or Transition in the Switcher’s
Transition section.
Notice that a transition is performed (returning DDR 1 from Preview to Program) and, more importantly, the next item in the playlist begins to roll automatically. When it ends, another automatic transition occurs, restoring Camera 1 to Program output.
Let’s try Autoplay without Single mode:
15. Click Stop (if necessary).
16. Uncheck Single, leaving Autoplay engaged.
17. With DDR 1 on Program, and Camera 1 on Preview, highlight a fairly long clip (say, a minute or more).
18. Click Play.
19. After a few seconds, perform a Take and watch what happens:
a. Naturally, DDR 1 and Camera 1 are swapped on the Switcher.
b. DDR playback is stopped at the current frame of the current clip.
20. Perform another Take.
a. As expected, DDR 1 is restored to Program output.
b. Playback re-commences at the next frame of the current clip; DDR 1
did not automatically jump ahead to the next clip this time.
You may find Single mode your favorite way to use Media Players, but it can be useful to turn it off (as just described) at other times. Perhaps a live speaker is presenting a long clip, but wants to be free to interrupt it with live commentary at any time. Turning Single off (with Autoplay on) works perfectly in this scenario. The TriCaster operator can click Take or Auto freely, confident DDR playback will resume at precisely the right frame.
MEM SLOTS
Let’s consider one more powerful feature common to TriCaster’s Media Players – the MEM slot bin.
MEM slot bins run vertically down the outer edges of the various Media Player and Audio modules, providing instant access to custom playlists and configurations.
FIGURE 71
Normally hidden, the bins fly out when you move the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen.
MEM slots store other information about the current state of the module, too, including playback position, selection status, and so on. In many ways, MEM slots act like additional Media Players.
21. Move the mouse to the extreme left of the screen to open the MEM slot bin
for DDR 1.
22. Click an empty MEM slot, and use the + (Add Media) button to populate its playlist.
23. Switch back and forth between presets, noting as you do how various attributes are retained.
Hint: Right-click a MEM slot to open a context menu offering a number of useful features, including Rename.
24. Try copying and pasting playlist icons between two MEM slot (right-click to access the context menu containing Cut, Copy and Paste).
TriCaster provides dedicated graphics players (labeled GFX 1 and 2) for displaying still images and titles, including TriCaster’s native (live-editable) title pages. Different TriCaster models provide either one or two such dedicated players.
Graphics players are quite similar to the DDRs, just discussed, but do not provide full motion clip playback. Otherwise, the type of media files they support remains largely the same.
All of these Media Players, regardless of title, can display TriCaster title pages and most if not all popular still image file formats.
Hint: The DDRs can play all of the above media types as well as video clips and sound files.
EXPLORING AUTOPLAY AND SINGLE
The controls of the graphics players are identical to those of the DDR apart from the omission of a playback Speed control (which would be superfluous and possibly confusing). Rather than cover these again, let’s have a little fun:
25. Select an icon in the GFX 1 playlist and press CTRL + a on the keyboard to select all playlist entries.
26. Press Delete on your keyboard, clearing out the all playlist entries (this is a non-destructive deletion, never fear).
27. Repeat the two steps above for GFX 2.
28. Add some image files (a dozen or more) to GFX 1 (you can use some of the images from the NewTek group under the Still location heading for this example).
29. Click on one the icons about halfway through the playlist, highlighting it.
30. Hold down the Shift key, and click the last icon in the playlist. This will multi-select all of the files from the first one you clicked to the last one (the icons are given a lighter outline to show their selection status).
31. Right-click anywhere in the playlist, and select Cut from the context menu.
32. Right-click in the playlist area of the GFX 2 and select Paste.
33. Hint: Instead of using Cut and Paste, we could simply have dragged the selected icons from one playlist to the other.
Let’s pause to review. To this point, we've prepared two Media Players with similar
playlists consisting of a series of still images.
Hint: Still image files default to a fifteen second duration when added to a playlist.
Fine, but ‘what about the aforementioned fun’, you ask? Indeed, let us press on:
34. Turn Single and Autoplay on in both players, and make sure Loop is off for both Media Players.
35. Select GFX 1 on the Switcher’s Program row.
36. Select GFX 2 on the Switcher’s Preview row.
37. Click the first entry in both playlists (to set the current position).
38. Press GFX 1’s Play button, and watch the ‘hands-free’ slideshow. Let’s consider what is happening:
When playback of the first GFX 1 playlist entry reaches its end:
o The Autoplay setting invokes an automatic transition to Still, and stops GFX 1 playback.
o Then, unseen on Program output, GFX 1cues up its next playlist item.
Simultaneously, the GFX 2 player’s Autoplay setting initiates playback of its
first playlist entry.
When playback of that item is reached:
o GFX 2’s own Autoplay function performs another transition, returning GFX 1 to the Program row
o And stops GFX 2 playback
o Then, unseen on Program output, the GFX 2 player cues up its next playlist entry.
Next, GFX 1’s Autoplay setting automatically starts playing its next playlist item. The cycle repeats until all items play through or is interrupted by user actions.
TITLE
TriCaster title pages can actually be added to any of the Media Players (apart from the Sound player). Media Players can also display bitmap files exported from third- party graphics applications (or overlay them in DSK channels, especially valuable when the files are either keyed or have an embedded alpha channel).
TriCaster’s native title pages have some distinct advantages over a common still image, however. Let’s try them out:
1. Click Add, and use the Media Browser to select a few of the prepared title pages from the NewTek location listed under Titles in the Location List at left.
2. Click an icon to highlight it in the Media Player playlist.
3. Display the title page on Program Output by selecting the correct Media Player on the Switcher’s Program row.
4. Move the mouse over a different title page icon, and click the Configure
button (gear) that appears in its lower-right corner.
5. The Title Page Editor shown in Figure 72 will appear.
6. Move the mouse over the default text shown in the Title Page Editor’s preview pane, and notice that a white bounding-box appears as you locate editable items.
7. Double-click inside the bounding-box for a line of text to open a text entry field; type something different, then press Enter on the keyboard to accept the changes.
8. Notice that you were able to edit a page without disturbing the title already displayed on Program Output - Click the Close button.
9. Repeat your text edit operation but this time editing the title displayed on
Program Output.
Notice that, this time, the display updates immediately.
10. Try changing the Font, Size and other attributes for a line of text, using the tools in the Title Page Editor’s titlebar (Figure 73).
11. Click the Close button.