So far the program has been very stable for me. Although I have not used it in a show setting, only offline using the CL Editor and no console attached I have not gotten to see it in full force. With that being said, I think without watching the tutorials there is a little bit of a learning curve. I wish it was somewhat easier to create different EQ’s per channel via Linking. With it being midi controlling the console, it might be nice for the YammieQ software to have soft keys of things one might want to do and then instructions/steps on how to do it with the console/editor instead of having to watch a video.
Thank you for the feedback. I agree that the program is pretty daunting at first. Even I, when coming back to it after a while, forget how to do things. I would very much like to simplify the operation, but I still would like it to be as powerful as needed. At this point, I’m still unclear how each person wants to use it, but if I see a trend, my thought was perhaps to create “wizards” which walk you through the process step by step.
I’ll take what you said and see what I can do to simplify or explain things better.
andy, is there a resource that simply goes through each control and explains what it does? Like explaining the different types of triggers. Or what some of the check boxes do. What I’ve found so far are practical examples of how to do specific things but no actual users manual style walk through of what the various controls do.
perhaps I ha end known where to look?
There’s a bit of that when you hover over controls, but a lot of them don’t have descriptions. The ones that do, the descriptions show up in the status bar of the window you’re in.
I guess I was thinking that while the program is still in alpha, I could explain things interactively with the beta testers, as I really don’t know if the interface will change significantly as I discover more about what people want to do with the program and how they will use it. Writing a manual and then finding out that it’s all going to change isn’t really what I wanted to do.
However, it’s not really working out the way I’d hoped, and it looks like I may have to take the bull by the horns and decide myself how the program is to work. In the meantime, I can at least make a bullet list of what each control is for, and then expand on any that people feel need more explanation.
It’s the first time I’ve tried to get collaboration from the community on my software, so I appreciate your patience as I figure how best to proceed.
My thought (in thinking about it more) was that I really wanted the beta testers to look at the program from the other way around (as you have done). Not “What can it do?”, but “Here’s what I want to do, so how do I do it?”.
If I DON’T explain everything and through seeing what people want to do, find out that nobody really needs such-and-such a function, it means I can simplify the interface in the future by getting rid of that function, or moving it at least to an “advanced” menu if it’s just a rarely-used function.
My idea was that I would make the program able to do almost anything, but to make it usable, I want to know what it is that people want to do with it. I really do want to simplify the program for new users, and it’s pretty complex right now.
Anyway, your suggestion of a video is a good one, so I’ll get to work on that video when I get a moment.
Thanks!
I’d second that video. I find I like to RTFM, play around with something and then let it percolate through my brain. Then I usually come up with the “it can do X, how can i make it do Y” or “wouldn’t it be cool if it did Z”.
Tim
To answer Andy’s question about what I am using the software for. The first things that came to my mind were to be able to have essentially “auto-update” on EQ’s but then on some cues it can be not in focus, so I can have a second EQ if someone is wearing a hat for a scene, and the rest of the show they are not. I have not really touched either the CL editor or YammieQ in a few weeks so I forgot exactly what I was testing. But I will start playing around with it again and hopefully more ideas come to my mind. But the EQ idea was the first thing that came to my mind.
Peter
Update - I’m going to do a description of the controls first. Videos take a lot longer to do for a non-video type like me!