Question about intensity settings

[danj]

I tried setting start intensity 100% and end intensity at 0% on my AC single color models today and I got a response I did not expect.   Each model appeared to "cycle" from (something like) 100% to 75% then 100% to 50%, etc.   I had expected a "smooth" transition from 100% to 0%.   So, I went the "fade out" route instead...  Another conceptual error on my part here??    Thanks

[JonB256]

Was there a timing mark line in the middle? If so, it was probably reacting to that.

[danj]

Jon--I tried that--there were indeed timing marks "in the middle", but I deleted them.   The effects "looked" different in the sequencer--they were long continuous effects--but they still "acted" the same in the sequencer mini-preview and the main preview screen even after re-rendered and saved.  That is why I was figuring maybe I had a misconception on how this should work....

[Gilrock]

Timing marks will have nothing to do with how an effect behaves.  That was more of an XL3 behavior when you crossed rows.  In XL4 timing marks are only to assist in dropping effects.  The render routines have no idea of the existence of timing marks.

That being said I think there is a problem as described.  I have a single channel model and put an On effect ramping from 100% down to 0 and it appeared to ramp down to zero too early.  At about the 80% duration it was at zero and jumped back up to 100% or something fairly high and started ramping back down again and then cutoff abuptly as the effect duration ended.  So there is a problem we need to look into.

[Gilrock]

Ok a 30 second look at the code and I see what's happening.  You gotta click the "Fit to Time" checkbox otherwise it looks like its coded to do a 1 second rampdown and then pulse back on and repeat.  I'm not sure I like that behavior since the effect background is not being drawn to represent what's really happening.  Maybe we were trying to support legacy behavior.  I've not been a big fan of the "Fit to Time" checkbox because it XL4 you just drag the effect to any duration so I have found a case where I wanted to use it.  All my new effects are hard-coded as Fit to Time.  I'd lobby that we need to remove that option unless I hear some good arguments for it.

[kevinp]

I for one use the fit to time option quite frequently with some effects.  Maybe it's because I'm a rookie at sequencing and I have not found a different way of doing the same thing yet.  If the fit to time option could be hard coded like the new effects, sure get rid of it.  But until then, my vote is for keeping it.

[Gilrock]

If we delete it then yes it becomes the default behavior for effects.  What we would have to do is provide options for people to accomplish what effects do when it's NOT checked.  Like for the On effect if you really want it to do the repeating ramp up or down we could accomplish that with a Repeat Count option inside the effect panel.  The developers are saying the only hiccup is dealing with importing V3 sequences.  It seems like half the time we are prevented from making something better because we have to keep from changing your existing sequences that you may have put a lot of time into.

[JonB256]

Because of the wealth of new features and methods in xl4, and knowing that I have 2 seasons of sequences from prior Nutracker programming that I'll be importing and upgrading soon, I must say that "100% backward compatibility" is not a big concern. Improving xl4 is much more important to me.

[danj]

I'm with Jon on this topic..    We will all kind of have to "unlearn" some xl3 things...

I tried what Gil said (set to "fit to time") and my RGB multiple element model and a single channel AC model both ramped down smoothly.

Thanks so much Gil!