Am I right in assuming that there’s no visual indication when AUTOMATION 1 BREAK has been activated ? I can’t see any change in the GUI when using it. Perhaps have the red “AUTO” button change to “BREAK” ?
If you have activated flashing in the config, the AUTO button will stop flashing when a BREAK is issued.
Internally, the “you must be playing” flag is removed from the playback control. Then it’s in the same state as when you have switched an idle instance from ASSIST into AUTO but before you click PLAY. Do you think “BREAK” would be an appropriate label for that situation?
Ah, the flashing button! I’m not sure about this - I have always associated flashing buttons with a warning that something will (or not) happen. Perhaps it should flash to indicate the Break - that’ll confuse people!
On my keyboard, I have Auto On/Off as a hotkey - so I mainly use that. My “Next” button also activates Automation On so it’s quite easy to pause the Auto whilst talking - although I really think a flashing display should serve as a warning and not as a mode of operation.
I sort of agree with Charlie that most hardware which uses flashing/non-flashing lamps tends to use flashing to indicate ‘armed’ conditions like a flashing PLAY lamp on a CD player which indicates ‘cued and ready to go,’ which changes to a non-flashing lamp when the unit is in play mode.
… but of course, some CD players work in exactly the opposite way!
Perhaps there should be a config. option checkbox named something like Flash while running (uncheck to flash while paused) (default=checked)? I believe most users/stations will have a definite preference for one way or the other.
BFN
CAD
There already is such an option - Charlie’s point is that the visual feedback for the non-playing condition (after a BREAK) is missing then, as this is usually indicated by not flashing the button any longer.
That’s right - there isn’t really a visual indication of Automation Break being “active”. Taking the Denon DN9xx units as an example, the buttons only flash when cueing up a CD/MD or when the EOM is reached (configurable in 5s increments). During normal “play mode”, the lights are constant.
Perhaps we could have a simple “traffic light” colour-scheme for Manual, Break, and Auto ? Say: Red, Yellow, Green ?
The other idea I had was changing the State Playlist column from “On Air” to “Break”, but I don’t know if that on it’s own would be visual enough…
Red - yellow - green sounds like a good idea, I suppose.
Was anything ever decided about this? It’s something that has been bugging me!
My idea would be to change the icon of the currently playing item to the same as a break one, and change the colour of the item too? Or maybe even just simply insert a break item below the currently playing item?