Any experience with external control surfaces

Hey Guys!

Quick question: Does anyone have any experience using Flame with Control surfaces OTHER than the tangent panels. I just stumbled upon the Loupedeck CT, which I personally find very intriguing. I’m looking for something to speed up my workflow with flame, but not just with flame but also with other apps. So something customisable for different apps would be a big help, as would be any insight you guys can give.

Many thanks in advance,

Christoph

I really dig my set of element panels. Works a treat in both Flame and Resolve. Is there a particular reason you’re looking for something different?

I have a resolve speed keyboard on back order. I’ll let you know if it works with flame!

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I am looking for a control surface that works in my usual suspects, e.g. Flame, Nuke, Mocha, Syntheyes and Adobe. Primarily I want to have some shortcuts and keyboard combinations sourced there in a clever and unified way. Just want to avoid having four different ways to zoom a picture.

I opted for the Loupedeck Live, with € 250.- it is dirt cheap. Should arrive next week. Looking forward to your report on the BM Editor, Andy.

The Element seems like a great option if you just work in flame and got the funds for that, but is not really what I was looking for.

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If zooming into your picture is your main request, you can set the wheel on your Wacom to do that. And that software is pretty stable which is something a lot of the other devices can’t say.

Thanks, but for me, the whole additional stuff in the Wacom
Is the first thing I turn off because it just gets in the way or I trigger it accidentally. In theory, it sounds great and i actually tried that out, but - at least for me - it was more trouble than it was worth. Also, the Zoom thing was just an example. There are so many keyboard shortcuts in each software I use, so what I am looking for is some unified muscle memory, so to speak.

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The obvious answer here is Streamdeck.

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Yeah Streamdeck could be something, however, I stumbled upon the Loupedeck Live via the Loupedeck CT, which would be great with it‘s Jog/Shuttle. However , that ‚ll only be properly supported via an API. The Loupedeck Live still has some Dials, if those could be mapped to things like adjusting Exposure or Gamma, or to Zoom in /Out of the Timeline or Batch, that would be icing on the cake. So I‘ll check out the Loupedeck Live first and if that doesn’t work out for me, I’ll return it and give the Streamdeck a spin.

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I’m going to chime in here with an extremely noob question, but what exactly are y’all using control panels for in Flame? Is it purely for adjusting Lift Gamma and Gain in Color Correct nodes? Or do you guys find it better than the Wacom for adjusting all sorts of values?

Well, I think a control surface for flame is more an exception rather than the norm. For me, it‘s just that I started on a tool, Quantel Henry, that made a lot of use of these Control Surfaces and I always wanted something similar for flame( and Nuke, and Mocha and all the other Software). A year ago I had the pleasure of working on a flame with a tangent elements attached to it? And that to me was really a fun experience- but the tangent is too expensive for me and also quite a bit of overkill because I don‘t do much color grading. Other Solitions like the Blackmagic stuff only work decently in one software, and as I jump quite frequently between different softwares, such a solution would quickly become a paperweight for me. But 250 € for a context-sensitive LED touch screen and six dials, all with tactile feedback- that Could make for a great work experience- we‘ll see…

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Word - Let me know how yours works out for you! I jump between different software as well, but since I’m doing Flame on Linux I’m wary of buying anything on account of compatibility issues.

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Would you pretty please do a little write up on it when you find out more?

Sure thing. Got the package yesterday, will put it through its paces today - Should be fun!

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Alright, first impressions so far. Build quality is impressive. Back is made of plastic, but the front is made of metal. Knobs and Buttons have a very nice, tactile feel. The touch screen is completely adequate, but don’t expect retina resolution. Looks really nice on the Desktop.

I started with building my Nuke Profile. Once you get a hang of the software, it‘s easy to set up a lot of functions, basically any thing that can be mapped to a short cut can be mapped to the Loupedeck. 12 touch screen buttons seem like a good number to group things together thematically. So one page for viewer settings, one for loading and saving operations, 3 for node graph operations, 2 for animation and curves. And that‘s really nice that you basically have an unlimited number of these 12 button pages. You can map these to one of the seven physical buttons on the Loupedeck or just swipe to the left or right to change these. And any thing that you can increment: Zoom, Exposure of the Viewer, increasing or decreasing a value can be mapped to a dial.

With all that being said, I just started to play around with this - I am curious to find out to what degree I‘ll use this on an actual job and I’m sure the Lay-out will heavily change in the process.

What about Flame, I hear you say: Right now, there is still a little roadblock: whenever I try to set up hotness that use a modifier ( Shift + R, for example) , this does not properly translate into flame. But as this is just the first day I tried it, I’ll not give up on this so easily - so any tips and tricks any of you guys can think of are greatly appreciated.

Will post more when I have a little bit more to share, but this is definitely a cool toy, and hopefully a nice companion piece for flame, too.

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My 2 cents.

Element panels are great. Really glad I have them.
If you are looking for keystrokes and buttons, it’s easy to create for any app I’ve tried.
The trickier ones to map are knobs, wheels and balls.

Very helpful in Flame when doing timeline centric work, not just color.

Analog controls honestly feel better to adjust than mouse/pen in many cases. Color, focus pull, even moving things around in Action…

Element panels are pricey, admittedly. If you were really looking to map hotkeys, there’s surely cheaper options.

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Is there a Key Repeat or Delay Until Repeating threshold for the device or your operating system that is contributing to this?

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There is definitely both of that - probably have to play around with both of those! Thanks!

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I too have the Elements set of panels and mostly use them for grading jobs I’ve now taken away from Resolve. The ability to adjust settings with two hands at once makes a faster grade session.

Let us know how you got on with Streamdeck. We’d like to use it on Centos 7.6 with Flame 2020…
The Companion app from Bitfocus looks interesting

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Hey @ChrZap , I feel like I’d love to have a panel too, it’s been a while now, would you recommend the Loupedeck?

Thanks,

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