Scripting & FavScene files - 2024 update?

[josh]

I wonder if @MikeKobb or @J.Green would be willing to provide an update and answer some questions about the scripts and favorite scene capabilities in the latest KEAOS versions.

A few specific questions:

• Is the whole scripting and scenes system still considered an active and important feature of KEAOS, or is it sort of loosely supported for users who know how to get to it, but officially deprecated? I just ask this because it got harder to access it for a typical home user starting with the Strato line of equipment vs. the older Premier systems.
  • If it's the former, are there any plans to make improvements or changes to the UI for scripting and favorite scenes?
• In a co-star system, it doesn't seem possible to access scripts created on the Premier side. Is that correct? Is there any sharing of FS's or scripts between Premier and Strato? (e.g. if a FS or script is made on the Strato side, will a user on a premier-system player have access to those, assuming the movie is downloaded in both formats?)

Thanks in advance!

 

[JohnJ]

I wonder if @MikeKobb or @J.Green would be

• In a co-star system, it doesn't seem possible to access scripts created on the Premier side. Is that correct? Is there any sharing of FS's or scripts between Premier and Strato? (e.g. if a FS or script is made on the Strato side, will a user on a premier-system player have access to those, assuming the movie is downloaded in both formats?)

I can answer this last part. On a co-star paired system there is no way to access Premier scripts nor anyway to access scenes to use in a Strato script. Once the co-star solution was available (a really well thought out solution, in my opinion compared to the original solution) I needed to add an additional m300 player in order to access my Premiere scenes and also all my loaded music CD’s.

At the time this wasn’t a problem since all of my concerts were on the Premiere since they were all HD downloads or BR discs. With more and more 4K concerts being added to the Store, I need to figure out how to split my concert scripts between my Premiere and my Terra systems.

I am sure that K will chime in with additional comments (or corrections, as needed) and how the Strato V fits in.

John

 

[josh]

I needed to add an additional Strato C in order to access my Premiere scenes and also all my loaded music CD’s.

Probably wrong place for this, but can you elaborate? I didn't know the older CDs were accessible at all anymore. My premier server still has tons of CDs on it, but my main rooms are both co-star systems so i didn't see any way to play music CDs.

 

[JohnJ]

Probably wrong place for this, but can you elaborate? I didn't know the older CDs were accessible at all anymore. My premier server still has tons of CDs on it, but my main rooms are both co-star systems so i didn't see any way to play music CDs.

Had a typo. Should have said “additional m300 player”. I had to add an additional un-paired player on the Premier side in order to play scripts and CD’s from Premier system. Sorry for the confusion!

I updated previous post.

John

 

[Rengozu]

Probably wrong place for this, but can you elaborate? I didn't know the older CDs were accessible at all anymore. My premier server still has tons of CDs on it, but my main rooms are both co-star systems so i didn't see any way to play music CDs.

I keep my Cinema One (loaded with CD's) hooked up the Co-Star along with my Strato-C and Terra, but I don't have them unified together on the same system. Basically makes the Co-Star a toggle switch on the same source input and it will switch to whichever K unit I turn on. If I turn on the Cinema One, I can still access my CD's and Blu-ray's.

 

[MikeKobb]

I wonder if @MikeKobb or @J.Green would be willing to provide an update and answer some questions about the scripts and favorite scene capabilities in the latest KEAOS versions.

A few specific questions:

• Is the whole scripting and scenes system still considered an active and important feature of KEAOS, or is it sort of loosely supported for users who know how to get to it, but officially deprecated? I just ask this because it got harder to access it for a typical home user starting with the Strato line of equipment vs. the older Premier systems.
  • If it's the former, are there any plans to make improvements or changes to the UI for scripting and favorite scenes?
• In a co-star system, it doesn't seem possible to access scripts created on the Premier side. Is that correct? Is there any sharing of FS's or scripts between Premier and Strato? (e.g. if a FS or script is made on the Strato side, will a user on a premier-system player have access to those, assuming the movie is downloaded in both formats?)

Thanks in advance!

They're definitely considered important. Here's how we arrived at the current state of affairs:

• When the Encore line players were created, the browser interface was substantially re-written with a new look and feel. This was a big project, and while the scripting interface was updated to the new look, there are a number of rough edges in it that meant that we did not consider it to be up to full production quality at the point where we frankly ran out of time. So, we elected to hide it by removing the direct link from the browser interface pages.
• That decision was made easier by the fact that scripts are used by a tiny fraction of the customer base. This low utilization also means that investing time to go back and fix those rough edges ends up getting prioritized below things that will have a more substantial impact either on the existing customer base, or on expanding the customer base.
• As already noted, there are a good number of limitations in the scripting system related to Co-Star. This again was a time/resource constraint situation. These limitations simultaneously make the feature less "production quality" and also make bringing it up to full production quality a bigger lift that is even harder to justify from a priority standpoint. So, the decision to hide it is reinforced.
• We do recognize that there are users who enjoy or even rely on scripts for certain things. Scripts are also often an important part of dealer demonstrations. So, we have kept the functionality there if you know the URL.

The same factors driving those decisions still exist today. Scripts are important for dealer demonstrations, and we want to continue to support them for customers that use them. But it's enough of a niche feature that the likelihood of enhancements to the scripting system rising to the top of the priority list in the near future is pretty low.

 

[josh]

Thanks Mike. I appreciate the explanation and understand the need to prioritize features by their impact on current customers or potential new ones. Makes perfect business sense.

However, I just want to point out the obvious circular logic in this... the feature is hidden, hard to use, has "rough edges" and real UI issues, so of course people don't use it. Most don't know it's even there I suspect. So then saying "we've looked at this and very few people are using it" is kind of circular or self-fulfilling.

That said, we know that the company is resource constrained and has to make its bets as to where it focuses its efforts. There's no denying the current set of product choices and features are doing very for the company, so we can't argue with how the decisions get resolved. I just miss this feature and how key it was to the early days of the customer community here on this forum. Trading favorite scene files and scripts is the reason this forum was started and was the reason most people joined in the early days. So theres some sentimentality from the OGs here about it.

As always, we appreciate your ability to jump in on this forum and give insight as to how things are being done at the company. Keep up the great work!

 

[MikeKobb]

the feature is hidden, hard to use, has "rough edges" and real UI issues, so of course people don't use it.

Yeah, but this was also the case on Premiere, which had the feature right up front, didn't have the UI rough edges, and (obviously) had no Co-Star limitations. It's unfortunately just a niche feature that is really cool for people who "get it" but there aren't that many of those people, present company obviously excepted.

Also, I meant to say in the original reply, user-created scenes are very definitely still supported. On my personal wish list for that feature is to make them resilient to updates and such, so that you wouldn't need to re-create them if you updated a movie. This would improve scene portability for sharing as well, of course. I have no idea when/if that will be implemented, but I sure hope it happens.

 

[josh]

It's unfortunately just a niche feature that is really cool for people who "get it" but there aren't that many of those people, present company obviously excepted.

Also, I meant to say in the original reply, user-created scenes are very definitely still supported. On my personal wish list for that feature is to make them resilient to updates and such, so that you wouldn't need to re-create them if you updated a movie. This would improve scene portability for sharing as well, of course. I have no idea when/if that will be implemented, but I sure hope it happens.

that would be awesome. it does suck to carefully dial in a scene and then have it vanish when the movie is updated. Add in my vote for that to get addressed!

 

[JohnJ]

1. Also, I meant to say in the original reply, user-created scenes are very definitely still supported. On my personal wish list for that feature is to make them resilient to updates and such, so that you wouldn't need to re-create them if you updated a movie. This would improve scene portability for sharing as well, of course. I have no idea when/if that will be implemented, but I sure hope it happens.

+1 for wanting a solution to this. It’s even worse that the updates over-write the current version so I can’t “see” the scenes that I marked originally. On the plus side, so far, all of the start/stop times have been identical so my flow is:

1. Take a screenshot of my scenes in my current.
2. Get the start and stop times of each custom scene.
3. Update the movie.
4. Mark the scenes using the start/stop times from 2.
5. Reliable the scenes.

If/when I add a Strato V, this is going to be a big effort as most of my concerts in HD have scenes marked.

I understand that it is a lot of effort and decisions have to be made based on priorities. Also, kudos to the Kaleidescape team for the drawbacks on changes that were coming so I never went into something like this blind! I always knew the trade offs so I could make the best decision for me.

Communication has always been excellent over the years!

John

 

[josh]

2. Get the start and stop times of each custom scene.

do you have some method to get the exact start and stop times for each scene? I haven't found a way to retrieve that... especially frame-accurate.

 

[JohnJ]

My control system gives me my location (in seconds) from the start of the movie. If I play a scene and immediately hit pause, I get the start time. I then go to the end of the scene to get the stop time. I use the “GET_PLAY_STATUS” command and one of the responses is “title_loc”.

Details are in the ControlProtocol Reference Manual (Page 111) which I have attached in case you want to look further:

https://support.kaleidescape.com/article/Control-Protocol-Reference-Manual

John

 

[thrillcat]

do you have some method to get the exact start and stop times for each scene? I haven't found a way to retrieve that... especially frame-accurate.

Since scenes are imported with scripts, perhaps it’s possible to export a script for each film you create custom scenes for, then after a title is updated you can reimport that script, and perhaps it will overlay on top of the new download? I feel I may have inadvertently done this when I added a larger Terra and re-downloaded all my movies.

 

[josh]

Actually, that gives me an idea... since scenes (and scripts with embedded scenes) can be exported as .DAT files, I wonder if i can open those files in a text editor and see the actual timecodes for a scene's start and end times. will try it when i have a minute.

Since scenes are imported with scripts, perhaps it’s possible to export a script for each film you create custom scenes for, then after a title is updated you can reimport that script, and perhaps it will overlay on top of the new download? I feel I may have inadvertently done this when I added a larger Terra and re-downloaded all my movies.

@JohnJ have you tried this? seems like it would work. probably better than taking screenshots and then recreating them.

 

[josh]

Actually, that gives me an idea... since scenes (and scripts with embedded scenes) can be exported as .DAT files, I wonder if i can open those files in a text editor and see the actual timecodes for a scene's start and end times. will try it when i have a minute.

Welp, that's a big 'no'. Not human readable.

​

 

[josh]

Since scenes are imported with scripts, perhaps it’s possible to export a script for each film you create custom scenes for, then after a title is updated you can reimport that script, and perhaps it will overlay on top of the new download? I feel I may have inadvertently done this when I added a larger Terra and re-downloaded all my movies.

you could actually just export the scenes if that's easier, rather than making a script also. Scenes are exportable into .DAT files.

 

[JohnJ]

Since scenes are imported with scripts, perhaps it’s possible to export a script for each film you create custom scenes for, then after a title is updated you can reimport that script, and perhaps it will overlay on top of the new download? I feel I may have inadvertently done this when I added a larger Terra and re-downloaded all my movies.

No, it doesn’t work - one of the first things I tried. When you download an update it is a totally different version. It is also the reason that if you try to load an “old” Script file and you have movies that have been “updated”, those scenes won’t load in the updated movies.

John

 

[MikeKobb]

Yes, what JohnJ said. The reason for this is that scenes are, frankly, kind of too smart. When you mark a favorite scene, it saves all kinds of information including what audio language you had selected, what subtitle track you had selected, and so on. Since that sort of thing often varies between different versions of a movie, the scene engine can only apply that saved information to the exact same version of the movie.

I think, if we had it to do over again, we'd build this differently, but you have to remember that it was architected literally in the days when there was was typically a single DVD release of a movie in a given country.

 

[Transepoch]

• In a co-star system, it doesn't seem possible to access scripts created on the Premier side. Is that correct? Is there any sharing of FS's or scripts between Premier and Strato? (e.g. if a FS or script is made on the Strato side, will a user on a premier-system player have access to those, assuming the movie is downloaded in both formats?)

Are you looking for the ability to create a script/scene having downloaded to the Premiere side and then bring it over after re-downloading the same version to the Encore side, or am I misunderstanding the problem?

 

[josh]

Are you looking for the ability to create a script/scene having downloaded to the Premiere side and then bring it over after re-downloading the same version to the Encore side, or am I misunderstanding the problem?

yes... either scripts i've made or downloaded that were first made for a DVD-quality movie from the store or disc. but now a larger issue seems to be that scenes don't even survive a store-based "movie update" that gets delivered. Both issues are affecting me.