Thanks Joris, this news made me very happy! I've been keeping an eye out for updates on the topic of using the full Retina resolution from another post (//resolume.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10457&p=41263&hilit=gui+retina#p41263).
Two additional questions:
- Will the updated UI engine allow for using the higher resolution to make some of the UI elements smaller, allowing to fit more on the screen?
I'm specifically asking about displaying more layers at once. Please see below for an explanation.
- Will Avenue get a v5 which includes these changes?
More details about the 1st question:
I'm using a 15" MacBook Pro (2015) and often use a 'freestyle' deck setup which uses 8 layers and 16 columns:
- layer 7 and 8 : Multiple different sources, for effects, one-shots, etc.
- layer 6 : Only one clip slot is used, with a layer router on 'layer 4'.
- layer 5 : Multiple different sources, acting as the 'background' layer.
- layer 4 : Only one clip slot is used, with a layer router on 'composition'.
- layer 3 : Monochrome sources, used for masking. Layer blend mode set to '50 Mask'.
- layer 2 : Multiple different sources, assigned to bus B.
- layer 1 : Multiple different sources, assigned to bus A.
I copied this 'technique' from another forum post about track mattes (//resolume.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=11766&p=48916&hilit=layer+router+mask#p48916). It works amazingly well, but with the way I use these decks I need to see all the layers at once. Layers 4 and 6 contain only one clip and are wasting screen real estate...
My setup includes a monome grid to trigger clip slots, which also indicates which clip slots contain sources and/or are active. This is combined with the Akai APC40 mkII for everything else I don't want to control via the keyboard/mouse (clock, column triggers, layer controls, composition and layer effect controls and composition and layer dashboards).
Apart from layers 4 and 6 all layers contain 16 sources, as well as composition- and layer-specific effects. Content selection and controling effects happens on the fly.
From the monome grid I know which slots are avialable/active. However I won't know which sources are assigned to the slots. So I need to have layers 1,2, 3, 5, 7 and 8 visible on the screen.
To achieve that, the top part of the UI is expanded vertically to remove the scroll bar, sacrificing screen real estate available for the bottom part of the UI.
At the same time I need to have the control panels (bottom part of UI) visible to know which effects are assigned and what the dashboards are used for. Otherwise I won't know what the controls on the APC40 are linked to. There's no way to memorise the entire setup for each deck...
Blah blah blah, TL;DR - so, what...?
- If I could have anything I wanted in the UI, then I'd put in a feature request to have a toggle to 'minimize' a layer to the height of the layer button (with the layer name) to save screen real estate. That way layers 4 and 6 could be minimised to only show the layer name and names of available clips on the layer.
- The next best thing would be to have the interface use the full Retina resolution which would make some UI elements smaller to allow more to fit on the screen.
- The alternative is to find a way to split the Resolume UI across two screens, which I've experimented with, but doesn't really make me happy...