The Lighting Controller

First of all, thank you for your answers.

Finally, it looks like the real problem is:
- when we want to use Timeline, we need to open Live
- when we want to trigger timelines projects from Live, we need to open Timeline
And we must admit that this is not very friendly.
So the logical answer of our question is: "yes, please join them together. Then this will be more friendly".

But there is another solution for this problem: make Live and Timeline totally independent:
- Timeline could play everything (multimedia files and light scenes), without Live to be open
- Live could play timeline projects, without Timeline to be open

Like this, friendlyness is similar than joining both applications together, and we see some better points:
- the user who needs exclusively Live or Timeline will not have to see always both screens and to use the tab function to switch from one screen to the other
- in our side, it will be easier (so faster) to improve these applications, if we keep separate source code files
- we keep the most possible voluntary "unsophisticated" Graphical User Interface, for Live (we mean just pages and buttons).

Any remarks regarding this are still welcome.

Personaly I like to be able to watch the timeline going past, just incase I programmed something wrong then I can take over manualy, so this would be nice to be intergrated in to Live.

support wrote:But there is another solution for this problem: make Live and Timeline totally independent:
- Timeline could play everything (multimedia files and light scenes), without Live to be open
- Live could play timeline projects, without Timeline to be open

Is this basically making 2 vertions of Live?

I see timeline's relationship with Live as Generator's is to Builder. It feels like they should work together. It just seems to make sense to have them in the same program.

Is this basically making 2 vertions of Live?

No, we will make one single "light scene and multimedie player" engine which will be linked to Live and Timeline. Then Live and Timeline will become only GUI (Graphical User Interfaces).

I see timeline's relationship with Live as Generator's is to Builder. It feels like they should work together.

In fact there are 2 ways to use Timeline:
1 - as a time show editor
Timeline is used only to create timeline projects. Afterwards, all timeline projects are triggered by Live.
In that case, you are right. Including Timeline into Live makes sence, like Generator into Editor.
2 - as a live show player
In that case, Timeline is a live show player like Live is. So it make more sence to keep it separate from Live.

Things to know:
- separated applications are easier to improve
- we like the idea to keep Live as simple as possible (think of people who do not use Timeline)

support wrote: No, we will make one single "light scene and multimedie player" engine which will be linked to Live and Timeline. Then Live and Timeline will become only GUI (Graphical User Interfaces).

So one program for making timelines, one for buliding pages of scenes and one for triggering both.

Have I understood this right?

Sorry im just interested in working out what you mean.

No.
Outwardly, Live and Timeline will not change (the user will not see any change).
But, behind what you see, the hard job of scenes transitions calculation, scenes layering, timeline playing, multimedia files playing will be done by an external "hidden" application. Live and Timeline will send commands to this "hidden" application. The main benefit of this is Live and Timeline will be independent.

Cool, ill go with what is easiest for you guys to make changes to so that the software can continue developing at this fantastic speed.

Finally, we give up the idea of two independent applications, mainly because of this issue: what should happen when you are using Timeline and, in the mean time, you trigger a timeline project from Live ? (this is not easy to consider all possible situations).
So, as proposed at the beginning of this thread, we are including Timeline into Live.
The application Live will have 2 tabs: one for buttons and one for Timelines.
We should release a beta version before the end of this month.

I second the idea of having waveforms on the Timeline, even if they are not very detailed as Serato; i think it helps tweak our the timeline shows to the bass kicks.