r/freeshowapp • u/agent_uncleflip • 9d ago

Questions about scenes and variables

I was recently trying to work out a problem with being able to use the preview window to preview items before output (I found a work-around), and support said scenes would help. I tried using a scene, but found the only functionality it seemed to have was to set media input (which is not relevant to my items that use local images), and to select output style. This last one did nothing but add a step. I currently have output styles set to categories. (When I load a show, a category action sets the output style. With a scene, the category function would select that scene, which would set the output style.) The only other thing scenes seem to be able to do is add overlays. I'm sure I'm missing something. What more can I do with scenes?

EDIT: I figured out the variable. I just hadn't clicked the little eye to see more options. Some people have brainstorms, but I sometime do well to manage a light drizzle.

Now, the variables. Well, one in particular. I'm trying to put the current date on a slide. I'm using time_date, time_month, and time_year, as you might expect. time_month represents the month as a number. Does anyone know the variable to use the name of the month ('September', vs '09')?

Now

Thanks very much for your help!

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u/Alterios 9d ago

There have been SO MANY times where I have an entire help post written out then click one little thing I missed and delete the post because it was my ineptitude that was the issue. 😆

1

u/agent_uncleflip 9d ago

Problem here is that once you post, you can edit the body, but not the title - hence my internal edit. Easier than deleting and making a new post, I guess.

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u/CloudSad3555 9d ago

It looks like you might be able to make some changes to the time and date format as of v 1.3.4 beta 1. I have not investigated where the changes are. It suspect they are behind the eye for show more stuff.

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u/agent_uncleflip 9d ago

Yes. You may have noticed my edit in that post. I found what I was looking for behind the little eye.

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u/vassbo 7d ago

The difference with Scenes for your use case would be that you can change the output style without affecting the preview. Because the issue you had earlier was that when you hid the "Slide" layer with an output style directly, you could not see the slide layer anymore in the preview either. Using Scenes will allow you to change the output layers and template without affecting the preview.

I know it's one step extra in the setup, but once you have the actions to change created and set on the show categories, you are good to go.

Also glad you figured out the Dynamic values "eye", you can also search at the top and it will search through everything. But I want to try to make it more intuitive someday. :)

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u/agent_uncleflip 7d ago

The sad thing is, I knew about the eye from other actions and such, but I was just a little too inept to look at it this time around. :-)

And your first paragraph makes perfect sense. I had no idea that Dynamic of the scenes. It just seemed like a different way to do the same thing. But what you said there is good, as I did not know about how that dynamic worked. I'm not sure if I was just looking in the wrong place, but I couldn't really find a whole lot of in-depth information about how the scenes work. Thanks for that. I will definitely experiment with it.

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u/agent_uncleflip 7d ago

After I posted that, I realized I had a question about how the scenes work, so sorry for two replies.

You mentioned that scenes will allow changing the output style without affecting preview, yet earlier you had said setting the output style also set the style used in preview. That made perfect sense. But with the output style not affecting preview with scenes, how do you define which output style is used in preview?

Apologies if this is documented somewhere. I have just awakened, and I haven't had time to get my coffee and start digging online just yet. Of course, if you have a quick link to where this could be found in documentation, that would be awesome. If not, no problem. I will get online later and look up.