From: king@snoc01.enet.dec.com (Randall King, Sydney, Aussieland)
Subject: SCALA MM and my Fairy Godmother FIX/WISH LIST
Keywords: SCALA, Multimedia, Graphics, DCTV, Amiga
Organization: VisionSell MultiMedia
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 17:41:43 GMT

Summary:  General comment on SCALA/DCTV combination.
          List of desired SCALA MultiMedia fixes/features.

In article <RDNmwB4w165w@bbs.draco.bison.mb.ca>, mikel@bbs.draco.bison.mb.ca (Michael Linton) writes...
>Hi, I was wondering a few things about Scala Multimedia.  First of all, I 
>heard a while back on UseNet there was a new version coming out, that had 
>direct support for DCTV (i.e. you could edit text, make gradients etc 
>with Scala, and then display it all through DCTV).  I currently do this 
>using DCTV Paint, Dpaint, and a bunch of other programs, and then piece 
>everything together using Amiga Vision, and play it all back.  But, if 
>Scala allowed me to do all the text, without having to do it with Dpaint 
>first, it would save a step, and also speed things up a lot for me.  If 
>anyone could help me out, I'd appreciate it.  Also, how does Scala Multi 
>Media, compaire to Scala 500?  I have the Scala 500 demo, and it seems 
>like a great program, but if I'm going to get it I might as well get the 
>full blown version.  Is there a demo of Scala Multi Media out there 
>anywhere, and if so where can I get ahold of it?  Thanks in advance,
> 
>Mike.


Direct DCTV support will be great if and when it happens (can't be too soon).

In the meantime, dont be put off. I use SCALA and DCTV professionally in
my shopfront display systems quite happily.

You can easily interleave IFF pics & animations etc with DCTV pics as
separate slides. You just cant overlay IFF onto DCTV in Scala currently.
This takes a little more design discipline, but its still quite workable.
For example, you have to pre-title your DCTV piccies in DCTV Paint first. 
They look pretty good actually with colour fonts. So make the most of IFF
movement with text and brush wipes, and animations! (Actually, this
discipline helps in avoiding getting too carried away with text wiping!).

33 from 59 of the DCTV page wipes work with SCALA MM, including a
number of the fancy new wipes, when transitioning between DCTV pics.
However only 7 page wipes work transitioning from IFF to DCTV's and vice-versa.

Ya just gotta to be careful.

Yeah, SCALA and DCTV are pretty neat too.

SCALA's got the easiest user interface in the low end business (the
high end broadcast SFX editors drive pretty easily too for squillions
of $). But lets not get too carried away with the novelty. Like all
your best  birthday presents, the novelty wears off a bit when faced
with the cold hard realities of professional production on the fly. 

I phoned our Norwegian friends and gave them my vote for their
fix/wish list the other night. Here 'tis. SCALA, thanks for the main
course. Please bring on the dessert! (My config Player 44.4, Library
44.7, Device 44.14). 

THE LIST

0. Need El-cheapo SCALA Player Dongle.

   C'mon. A$500 for a full copy of SCALA MM to get another key (dongle)
   for player-only versions to run on delivery machines is really off.
   Sure, we like the software, but not that much! Howabout a SCALA
   player encrypted to work with its own key for $25 or something for
   registered SCALA MM owners? (BTW, the new AmigaVision Pro has a
   general player now for nix).

1. Stop playing musical chairs.

   Please DON'T stop da musak whenever a subscript starts! (ouch!!!)

   So for continuous musak, I consequently still have to call
   an external mod player, sigh.  MultiPlayer (Fish) is a good example
   of the functions needed for professional pre-cueing setup for a 
   playlist.

   Oh, and contrary to the manual,  SMU's/SONIX songs dont work. (doesn't
   recognise the instruments in INSTRUMENTS:)

2. A COUNTER, a counter, my kingdom for a unique counter!

   We need to uniquely and easily identify slides within their SUBSCRIPT's
   during test runs!

   Currently the counter that displays the slide number in the sequence
   resets itself to 1 every time a new subscript is en-countered.

   See, the way u do things for a living in this business is to build
   a library of predefined    subscripts.  But its murder debugging
   trying to find which subscript     that slide you've messed up happens
   to be in when running from the main presentation. 

3. Make DCTV a first-class  citizen.

	- real time DCTV text titling and brushes of course!
	- DCTV compatible shuffler please.

4. Give the CDTV Audio controller EX a brain transplant.

   Really. Only being able to play ONE track at a time is pretty
   moronic, and next to impossibe to synch with slide endings. 
   What about a programmed selection, "randomise" etc??  And a CDTV
   volume fadeout too thanks.


5. Who's in charge? Preserve User Logical Assignments.  Ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!

   When SCALA creates the script, the DRIVE options in S:SCALAMM-config
   are unfortunately automatically translated from the logical to physical
   path names. Then the scripts inherit the damm physical names. 
   This is archaic - physical translations should never be embedded in
   scripts, Sob. 

   Even though I use the PATH assign option in all my startups to defer
   assignment translation until invoked, SCALA still bloody translates
   it!!!!

   What's all this about?  I need to seamlessly switch between
   production and development versions. eg. I want to switch the same
   scripts from development to production on different delivery devices
   without all the present rigmarole  eg. development on a HD, and
   copy to a  SYQUEST for transfer to production sites.

   Instead all the scripts end up with physical names.  SCALA AS provide a
   utility called FIXSCRIPT to recode all references, but this is a BIG
   pain in the rear end when you have HUNDREDS of subscripts assembled
   in a library that need to go onto different delivery system media 
   in various directory structures.

6. SCALA goes to the movies?

   We seem to need a VERTICAL scroll text wipe a'la Movie credits?
   Am I missing something??. Aint no instructions anyway.

7. Eyeing a database.

   Need Run-time dynamic ascii text displayer/scroller directly off disk.

   SCALAMM has a great text load that provides for bringing ascii text
   in from a file onto STATIC pages during presentation preparation.

   We need a generic one that does the same thing during Run time!
   Then we dont have to reprocess external text
   into SCALA slides first. How else do we get the junk displayed out of
   a database when the user interactively selects it?

8. Prevent SCALA yawns. (Wake up!)

   a. Need Manual warning - Colour REMAP timing.

   I couldnt figure out a LONG unexpected pause for quite a while in
   one display. The problem was that text or clip colour REMAP's 
   are done at run-time and take FOREVER.

   b. Outline fonts are a potential speed death trap. Could these be converted
     to bitmaps optionally at the time the script is created, automatically
     calling FOUNTAIN or whatever?

9. Avoid Spaghetti Bolognaise Scripts.

   Need CALL function and CHAINING.

   GOTO's are useless for decent interactive scripts. CALL's and CHAIN's
   please (a'la Amiga Vision).

10. Please Interrupt.

   Need some programmable timeout/key interrupt functions a'la AmigaVision
   so we can run SCALA as a professional multi-media attract loop, with
   interactive options.

   Currently I'm forced to run SCALA from AmigaVision to do this.

11. Fix the SCALA Anti Anti-Alias.

    Ze anti-alias colour button, she no work! I presume the idea is
    to select the colour you want to antialias to, no?
    So, wotz the secret?

12. Need to automatically recognise a subscript for editing.

    When selecting a page that is a subscript (rather than a
    screen) please bring up the script editor automatically, instead
    of having to exit out of the main script to do it!


We look forward to the next Act in this SCALA performance. I volunteer to be
a beta bit player if anyone's interested.

Randall King             
VisionSell MultiMedia
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.multimedia