Basic Edit Functions

Overview

Editing a sequence is one of the most important aspects of creating your light show. The sequencer is intended to facilitate rapid creation of content and also to feel at home with standard conventions you have used in other applications.

Cut, Copy, and Paste

The Cut, Copy and Paste features of the sequencer follow the well established patterns in the OS world. You can select any effect with the mouse and cut/copy it using the normal Ctrl C, Ctrl V and Ctrl X keyboard shortcuts or the right click mouse conventions. Selected effects will have a white dotted line around them whereas non selected ones will have a solid black outline.

Pasting works like it does in most all other applications. Standard keyboard and context menus are provided. To paste effects that are on the clipboard, select the row and time position in the timeline you want to paste and invoke the paste function. Effects will paste in the time and row spacing they were copied in. For example, if you copy effects from two side by side rows, they will be pasted at the new location in the side by side rows starting with the one you selected to paste to. If there are skip rows when it is copied, those same skips will occur during pasting. You can paste an entire row or rows of data copied from the row selection. They will paste at the entire row level. To copy an entire row, select the element name label and the enture row will be come selected. Use the keyboard shortcuts to copy or cut it. Then select the new row in the same manner and use the Ctrl V shortcut to to paste it. Effects can be copied between two open editors or even two open instances of Vixen.

Copy / Paste with Layers

Layer information will be copied along with the effects if they are located in a layer. The same is true when copying between two sequences if the same layer exists in the target sequence. You must have the layer created in the target location for this to work.

Effect Multi-Selection

Multi select of effects can be done by holding down the CTRL key while selecting the effects you want. You can select multiples in a range on the same row by clicking the first one to elect it and then SHIFT click one further before or after it in the row. All effects in between will be selected. You can click on the element name in the row and this will select the entire row. It will be outlined in blue and all effects will show selected.

Clicking the timeline and dragging the mouse with the left mouse button held will create a rectangular selection lasso that will select all effects inside or touching the lasso. You can also utilize the drag box filter by clicking the drag box icon in the toolbar to choose which effects the drag box will select. This will filter the selections to only those effects matching your criteria.

Additional capabilities for selection are provide by the Draw Mode. See the section on Draw Modes for further details.

Editing Effects

Effects can be edited in many ways. Clicking on any effect will bring up it’s settings in the Effect Editor. You settings can be changed and the effect will render the changes on the fly. If you have multiple effects of the same type selected, all their settings can be edited at the same time. There are also some basic settings that may be the same for multiple types of effects. These can be edited at the same time as well. The Effects section details the settings for each Effect.

Effects can be resized by clicking on the start or the end and dragging them to the new length you desire. Multiple effects can be selected at the same time and resizing them works in unison. See Snap Points for more info on getting effects to align to specific things in the Timeline.

Effects can also be dragged from one element to another by clicking on them and dragging while holding the mouse down. Multiple effects can be selected and dragged at the same time. By holding the Ctrl key down while dragging the effect(s) you can create a copy of them and drag the copy to the new location. Holding the Shift key down locks the dragged effects in the same vertical time so you can move them up or down to another element. See the Timeline section for more details.

Clicking on the left edge of an effect while holding down the Alt key and moving the mouse will cause the effect just left to adjoin with this effect. Continuing to move the mouse while the Alt key is depressed will jointly size both effects. Similarly, clicking on the right side of an effect while holding down the Alt key and moving the mouse right will adjoin the immediate right effect. Continuing to move the mouse while the Alt key is depressed will jointly size both effects. Holding the Alt and Shift keys down together will work similarly, but only Effects at at the same Layer will be affected.

Effect Replacement

There are times when you want to replace one or more effects with an effect of a different type. This can be tedious when you have to delete them and create new. On top of that you likely want them to occupy the same time slot and duration of the original effect. Fortunately there is an easy way to accomplish this.

Existing effects can be replaced with another effect type directly in the editor. Select the effects you want to replace with a different effect. Hold down the Control key and drag the new effect you want anywhere on the timeline. You will be prompted to confirm you want to replace the selected effects with the new effect. Once you agree, all the selected effects will now be replaced with the new effect set to it’s default. All of the effects will still be selected and you can edit them all at once.