Video Transcript
The Right-Side Pane
9m 11s
00:07
Let’s continue our walkthrough of the Designer software
00:11
we’ve poked around at the Audio Components branch of the Schematic Elements library,
00:15
now let’s look at some of the other components.
00:17
We’re not going to dig deep into the functions of any of these components here,
00:22
I just want to show you were they can all be found.
00:24
Some of these we’ll cover later in Q-SYS Level One Training,
00:27
and others are covered in some of our additional advanced courses,
00:30
so I’ll be sure to point those ones out as we get to them.
00:33
Let’s start by looking at all of our available categories.
00:37
In this version of the sowftware, in addition to Audio Components I also have Control Components,
00:43
Monitor Components, Scripting Components, Video Components, Layout, and UCI Buttons …
00:50
and you never know, future versions might have more categories as well,
00:55
so if you see something in your software that you don’t see in this video,
00:59
just dig into the Help file for information about it.
01:02
The Control Components provide a number of objects that affect the flow of your control wires,
01:09
in much the same way that Audio Components affected the channels of your audio wires.
01:13
You’ve already briefly seen that nearly every control inside a component can have its control pin exposed,
01:20
allowing that control to have an effect on something beyond its original purpose.
01:25
Some of these are fairly obvious:
01:27
a Control Delay, for instance, will delay the passage of a control signal by a specific length of time.
01:34
I could use a Gain Ramp to fade out my Audio Player,
01:38
and then use the Control Delay to Stop the Audio Player three seconds later to reset its file, for instance.
01:44
Some of the other components however, like the LFO, or low-frequency oscillator,
01:50
might not have such obvious applications.
01:52
If you’re interested in this branch of components,
01:55
I’d highly recommend that you take a brief look at our online Control 101 course.
02:00
While a lot of that course deals with some advanced scripting that might not interest you right now,
02:05
there is one early lesson that just focuses on these Control Components,
02:09
and that could be really valuable to anyone who wants to accomplish some simple control tasks
02:13
beyond what’s already possible in any given control panel.
02:17
The Monitor Components have some components that are specifically useful
02:21
if you need to monitor the health of non-native devices in your network,
02:26
especially if you’re sending that information along
02:28
to the Q-SYS Reflect Enterprise Manager for remote monitoring.
02:32
You can find more information on these in our Enterprise Manager Technician Training,
02:37
which is also available online.
02:39
At the risk of sounding like an infomercial, the same is going to be true for the Scripting Components branch.
02:45
The Block Controller, Control Script, and Text Controller provide you methods
02:50
of building more complicated programming to create custom coding
02:54
or two-way communication with third-party devices.
02:57
You can get your feet wet in both of these languages by completing the entirety of the Control 101 online course
03:04
I mentioned earlier, and advanced classroom control sessions as well.
03:09
Next is Video components!
03:11
Well, in this particular version of the software,
03:14
this title is a little misleading, as it should say Video Component – singular!
03:19
as it only contains the Camera Router.
03:22
This is used to route any of our networked PTZ-IP cameras to a USB video bridge
03:29
to be used by your teleconferencing soft-codec.
03:32
However, as I’ve said several times before, the Q-SYS platform is always growing,
03:37
so you may find new components in here as new devices are offered.
03:41
In fact … oh, you knew I was going to say it, didn’t you, you knew this was coming…
03:47
we offer an online training course called Video Training 101
03:52
which will get you up to speed on our networked video endpoint devices for HDMI distribution.
03:57
The Layout branch has some tools to help keep your design organized.
04:02
The Container, for instance, is sort of like having a new schematic page hidden inside a component.
04:08
You can wire something to the Container’s inputs and then through any number of components inside this
04:15
new workspace, and then to the outputs again, allowing it to come out the other side of the Container.
04:21
This is a great way to hide-away a lot of EQ blocks so they don’t clutter up your design, especially considering
04:28
that you can put a password on that Container to make sure nobody makes any changes.
04:32
Access Denied
04:34
The Channel Group performs a similar function,
04:38
but it will apply the signal path of this workspace to every one of its input channels.
04:44
So rather than repeating the same adjustments to eight different EQ channels, you could choose
04:49
to use a Channel Group and only make that adjustment once, which will be applied to every input.
04:55
In addition, you still retain the ability to make specific changes to individual channels
05:01
rather than all of them by selecting which channels are affected by a change.
05:06
Next is the Popup Button, which works very much like the Container, except on a User Control Interface or UCI.
05:14
This is a simple way to hide a bunch of buttons away and have them appear
05:18
or disappear when you press the button.
05:21
We’ll see a lot more tools for building UCIs in later sections of this course.
05:26
Also, here you see the Signal Snake Input and Output,
05:30
which we saw earlier as easy ways of grouping multiple wires together.
05:35
Moving on to the UCI Buttons branch, these are buttons that are only able to be added onto your UCI,
05:42
and are used for things like navigating to a different UCI page
05:45
or launching a web browser to a specific URL if you’re on a phone, tablet, or a PC.
05:51
You can also log the user off of that UCI, or temporarily deactivate the UCI,
05:57
allowing you to physically Clean the Screen without accidentally hitting any buttons.
06:01
There are a few other categories and tools here in the Right-Side pane to explore.
06:05
Plugins gives you access to our Asset Manager,
06:09
which is an online repository of plugins that have been developed for common third-party devices.
06:14
It’s always a good idea to see if we have a plugin for a device you’re integrating,
06:18
which will make it much easier for you to control that device.
06:21
We have a full video on Plugins in our Control 101 training course.
06:27
You’ll also see User Components here,
06:30
which can store components or groups of components that you would essentially like to “save” for later.
06:35
If you have a series of EQ components for a common microphone that you’ve tuned just right,
06:41
for instance, you could add those components to your User Components,
06:45
and Q-SYS Designer will create a new object that you can then recall at any time, in any design,
06:52
that is already wired and configured exactly as you saved it.
06:55
Whether you use this for common functions that you use frequently,
06:59
or rare functions to save yourself the trouble of hunting down something from an old design,
07:05
using User Components can save you a lot of time.
07:08
User Components are stored in the “User Components” folder where your Q-SYS Designer software is installed,
07:14
letting you easily share these files with other engineers or add others to your own library.
07:20
Finally, let’s end with some really simple features: the Graphic Tools.
07:25
These create visual elements to either your Schematic or your UCI, to help keep you organized.
07:31
The Text Block lets you add some text, along with some visual options on the box that surrounds that text.
07:39
You can change your font, change the color, you can add alignment here in the properties,
07:46
as well as the block’s color, its corner radius, and border or stroke properties.
07:53
If you don’t see any color, be sure to adjust that color’s transparency to make it visible.
08:00
The Header is a similar tool but rather than putting a box around your words,
08:05
it builds a horizontal line surrounding your text to create some visual separation.
08:11
The Group Box is just another variation of this,
08:14
in which your text will be contained to a tab at the top of the box,
08:18
which is a very handy way to label a bunch of components and,
08:22
once again, create some visual distinction between different areas of your design or UCI.
08:28
The last tool here is the Polygon Tool,
08:31
which lets you build a custom shape just by clicking the vertices
08:35
of your shape and then double-clicking to close it off.
08:38
You could then drag a control onto this polygon and hold the control key
08:43
to give the polygon the power of that original control.
08:47
This can be particularly useful on UCIs with groundplans,
08:51
letting you select a room to mute it, or send a page, or combine it with another room, etc.
08:57
Alright, so you’ve seen everything that's in the Right-Side Pane now.
09:02
In the next video, we’ll check out all the features that are available in the Left-Side Pane.
09:06
Take a quick break, and move along whenever you’re ready.