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In my world (music, concert, theater production) we depend on a lot of equipment which is basically a computer and a custom physical control surface, retailing

In my world (music, concert, theater production) we depend on a lot of equipment which is basically a computer and a custom physical control surface, retailing for 10x the price of the computer. The keyboard and mouse interface is simply not good enough to replicate faders and knobs. The tablet interface, on the other hand, is. This has important implications for light boards, sound boards, and DAW controllers. For many of them the domain-specific IO by itself isn't actually that expensive and the software can run on commodity computers. We were only locked into custom hardware because we needed its control surfaces to work efficiently. Existing desktop workflows may not be improved, but existing custom-control-surface workflows can be made vastly cheaper and more flexible, consolidated onto relatively commodotized hardware, and in some niches this is happening.

soylentcola 11y ago
There's a lot of this sort of thing showing up in the DJ/VJ space and with visual and audio performance in general. I think there are definitely strengths and weaknesses to the use of touch-oriented control surfaces. On the negative side, they require you to look at the control surface a lot more often than a setup featuring jog wheels and sliders. But on the positive side, being able to customize the control surface and allow a level of more "analog" control compared to pointing and clicking or typing. There are a lot of less expensive options that use more common USB interfaces to map hardware controls to software functions which can really help if your only other option is that pro (read: expensive and proprietary) gear you mentioned. Still, you're always limited by the number and layout of pads, buttons, sliders, and dials that can be mapped to software functions. I've played around a bit with software like TouchDesigner which is meant for creating custom touch interfaces and programming the ways that each control affects parameters in software. It's like a more open and flexible alternative to the old Crestron and similar systems where you could define the control surface in software but were limited to their processors and peripherals. It's something I don't really do much in my work (since we use those aforementioned Crestron-type systems) but in my spare time, I like playing around with using software-defined interfaces to make interactive audiovisual projects.
prawn 11y ago
I'm surprised that no one's made a small add-on control with faders/knobs to work with Photoshop for font-sizing, opacity, and all the other things usually done with the tiny palette interface.
- prawn 11y ago
  Someone pointed me towards this: http://palettegear.com/how_it_works http://palettegear.com/how_it_works

soylentcola 11y ago

There's a lot of this sort of thing showing up in the DJ/VJ space and with visual and audio performance in general. I think there are definitely strengths and weaknesses to the use of touch-oriented control surfaces. On the negative side, they require you to look at the control surface a lot more often than a setup featuring jog wheels and sliders. But on the positive side, being able to customize the control surface and allow a level of more "analog" control compared to pointing and clicking or typing. There are a lot of less expensive options that use more common USB interfaces to map hardware controls to software functions which can really help if your only other option is that pro (read: expensive and proprietary) gear you mentioned. Still, you're always limited by the number and layout of pads, buttons, sliders, and dials that can be mapped to software functions. I've played around a bit with software like TouchDesigner which is meant for creating custom touch interfaces and programming the ways that each control affects parameters in software. It's like a more open and flexible alternative to the old Crestron and similar systems where you could define the control surface in software but were limited to their processors and peripherals. It's something I don't really do much in my work (since we use those aforementioned Crestron-type systems) but in my spare time, I like playing around with using software-defined interfaces to make interactive audiovisual projects.

prawn 11y ago

I'm surprised that no one's made a small add-on control with faders/knobs to work with Photoshop for font-sizing, opacity, and all the other things usually done with the tiny palette interface.

prawn 11y ago
Someone pointed me towards this: http://palettegear.com/how_it_works http://palettegear.com/how_it_works