Capture
A capture card or USB grabber: the picture of a fixed camera in the house.
Every preset,
photographed.
FINDUS drives the presets, cues, groups and channels of your show on the desk, one at a time, waits until each one stands, fires every camera you set up and files the photo under its name. The result is a documentation you can search, annotate and print.
01 / Workflow
Four tabs.
One documentation.
Plan, Record and View build on each other. Clean stands on its own and reads the show without desk or camera.
Three more pages sit in the corner: the manual, every camera side by side, and the settings.
| Tab | What for | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Plan | Import the show and decide what gets photographed, in which order | A saved plan |
| Record | Run the plan: desk, cameras, pauses | A folder full of photos |
| View | Browse, annotate, draw, correct, export as PDF | The documentation |
| Clean | Read the show file and tidy it up, independent of the rest | List PDFs |
Inshow.csv
Tab 1Plan
Tab 2Record
Tab 3View
Outpreset.pdf
Tab 4 · on its ownClean
02 / The run
Five beats
per step.
Every preset, cue, group and channel goes through the same chain. FINDUS waits exactly as long as the light and the cameras need, and stops at every pause the plan holds.
Wait, hold and buffer are set once and apply to every step. The delay is set per camera.
1
Sneak
The step fades up at the longest sneak time of the channels involved.
per channel
2
Wait
A floor, not a surcharge: only the part of the wait the fade did not already cover.
settings
3
Hold
Extra time so the cameras can re-adapt their exposure.
settings
4
Delay
Every camera fires on its own signal delay, not all together on the slowest one.
per camera
5
Buffer
A wait after the last camera. Then the step counts as documented and is released.
settings
What goes to the deskOSC · UDP · port 8000
/eos/user/0/cmd "Group Preset 12 @ Preset 12 Sneak 2 Enter" /eos/user/0/cmd "101 @ 85 Sneak 2 Enter" /eos/user/0/cmd "Group 7 @ 100 Sneak 2 Enter" /eos/user/0/cmd "Go_to_Cue 1/54 Time Enter" /eos/user/0/cmd "101 Thru 140 Sneak Enter" at the end: hand back
Plain command lines, the same text you could type yourself. FINDUS sends as the background user or a user you pick, never as User 1: that is the person at the desk.
03 / Cameras
Whatever already
looks at the stage.
Three kinds of source, and they mix freely. Every step produces one photo per camera, filed under the step's name.
The eye in the top right shows every camera at once. That is where the delay is set: blink a submaster and watch when it arrives.
Source 1
Source 2
RTSP
A network camera. Retina is built in and needs nothing else, but only speaks H.264. FFmpeg speaks every codec and has to be installed.
Source 3
Phone
A phone or tablet as a camera, through the browser. Scan the QR code, and in any pause you fire by hand.
Remote
Laptop, tablet, phone
On the same WLAN, any browser opens FINDUS: record, check, correct, annotate, export. Notes appear on the other devices by themselves.
DelayLeave a camera's delay at
0 while it delivers its picture late, and it photographs the previous step. Every source gets its own value.04 / View
From photos
to a document.
Browse the run, write titles and notes on three levels, draw on the pictures, correct what went wrong, and print it.
The original JPEGs are never touched. Drawings sit next to the picture and can be left out of the PDF.
Find
Filter
One field over everything: preset name, cue number, channel, camera. Arrow keys page, G toggles the grid.
Annotate
Three levels
The document, each step, each photo. All of it lands in the PDF, cover included.
Correct
Against the live picture
FINDUS puts the step back on the desk, you set the intensity with a slider, the file is replaced under the same name.
| Content | |
|---|---|
| Preset PDF | Presets only, plus the stage photos and everything unassigned |
| Focus PDF | Groups and single channels, plus stage photos and unassigned |
| Cue PDF | Cues only, plus stage photos and unassigned |
05 / Clean
Read the show.
Tidy it up.
Clean reads an Eos CSV export and shows what is in it: cues, tracking, channels, presets, submasters, timecode, groups, patch. No desk, no camera.
The clean-up pass: twelve sections, each with its row count. A section at 0 does not need opening.
| No | Section | What is in it |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Never above 0 % | Channels that appear in cues but get above zero in none |
| 02 | Blue zeros | Grouped by cue, biggest first, with how many zeros were written |
| 03 | Channels with an effect | Channels a cue drives with an effect, with their intensity |
| 04 | Effects in cues | Which effect runs on which channels in which cues |
| 05 | Effect only | Channels whose intensity is zero while an effect runs. No other list shows them. |
| 06 | Only on a sub | Channels on a fader and in no cue, with what the fader holds |
| 07 | Effects on subs | The same for submasters |
| 08 | Colour palettes | Colour palettes stored in cues, read from the reference |
| 09 | Presets in cues | Presets in cues, with how many channels they bring above 0 % there |
| 10 | Macros | Every macro, by number and name |
| 11 | Nothing uses them | Presets and palettes nothing references |
| 12 | Only on a fader | Like 06, but the channel list alone |
| On paper | Content | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Cue list | Every cue with times, flags, triggers and notes | Portrait |
| Rig | Patch, groups, presets and palettes, submasters | Portrait |
| Review | Tracking sheet, the channel lists, blue zeros, timecode without a cue | Landscape |
| Clean-up | The twelve sections, each as its own table | Landscape |
06 / Ground rules
What FINDUS
leaves alone.
It drives the desk the way a person would, and only that.
Everything runs on the machine FINDUS is installed on. No cloud, no account.
- 01Your show file stays untouched.Nothing is written into it, nothing re-saved, renamed or uploaded. Everything sent to the desk is a command line.
- 02User 1 belongs to the person at the desk.FINDUS sends as the background user, or as a user you pick.
- 03The channels go back.At the end of a run a
Sneak Enterhands exactly the channels it touched back to the desk. - 04It only knows what it sent.FINDUS never asks the desk what is standing there. Every command is in the log, exactly as it went out.
07 / Get FINDUS
Not for sale.
Just ask.
There is no download and no licence to buy. If you would like to use FINDUS on your show, write to me.
calvin@lubowskidesign.comTell meVenue, show and desk
Runs onmacOS · Windows · ETC Eos over OSC
FromCalvin Lubowski