SFX question

[ljstevens]

Hello folks!

 

Just a quick question has anyone used the SFX browser plug-in?

 

The reason for asking is my current show that im doing has 2 panasonic projectors which have a browser window which is accessed over a network. To access you just type in the projectors IP into explorer and access this controller window browser. Then from there you can adjust focus,keystone,shutters etc etc

 

Now what I would like to do is by using the SFX browser plugin trigger the shutters to open and close. Easy I thought just copy the full line of url and tell SFX to access this page. In theory great and having done this before with a programme called Catalyst which fires Applescripts it works great. But for some reason with SFX you have to send the same line of code twice but with a half second to a second gap between each time. This is really aint great if you want sound video and projectors to all go at once.

 

Any thoughts???

[charlyfarly]

Haven't the foggiest I'm afraid :) Maybe someone in the Video and Projection section might know?

[gareth]

I'm guessing you're talking about the SFX software from Stage Research, yes?

 

We've embraced this in a fairly major way at work - I'm not an expert, having only really scratched the surface of the software (I don't really do much sound), but if I think on when I see him on Monday I'll ask my colleague who is our SFX 'guru' to see if he knows the answer to your question.

[blackbird]

From a purely web perspective:

 

This is probably an issue with the projector's page using POST as well as GET, i.e. while there may be the command to open the shutter in the url itself, there is also some background information sent in the same way as you submit a form on a site like this one. In this case, by loading it twice you are effectively caching that info on the first pass and posting on the second.

 

A workaround would be to run something a couple of cues before the shutter related cue to visit the root url, then you should just be able to visit the shutter opening url when you need it. What I don't know is what sfx is doing with its cache to mess this up, since I assume you tested leaving more than half second gaps already?

 

Or... you could effectively spoof the projector page by digging around in the html a bit to see if there are any hidden or useful fields which might be posted, and writing a php/asp page to do this as well as loading the url. Bit of a trial and error hack though, although I'm sure there are some apps which allow you to poke around local POSTs.