Overview
Click Effects comes with a variety of Tools that make media management easy. In addition, there are tools that will help perform certain tasks such as managing hotkeys, finding media buttons and basic repair functions.
Hot key: Overview
Click Effects PRIME provides a set of Keyboard Shortcuts to perform common tasks. Click Effect PRIME’s Hot Keys and Command Keys provide a powerful feature with which you can tie Media Buttons to keystrokes on the keyboard. Even without knowing the Media Page and Media Bank in which the Media Button is located, a keystroke on the keyboard can quickly play the associated Media Button(s) in Program.
Hot keys
Using a Hot Key is similar to using the mouse to click a media button.
The first time a Hot Key is used, a video item goes to Preview.
The second time a Hot Key is clicked, the item goes to Program and is shown on the output of the Click Effects Workflow.
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Note: If desired, the user can enable the “Send Items Directly to Program” option and then Hotkeys will act like Remotes and send buttons to Program with one click. |
Command keys
Command Keys are special Hot Keys that perform system commands such as STOP ALL and other media controls.
Assign hot keys to workflow actions
You can assign hot keys to fire specific Workflow actions.
To assign a hot key:
- Right-click a media button and
- Select Assign Hot Key from the context menu.
- This displays a window that shows the same media button
- Enter a keystroke on the keyboard. Single keystrokes can be used as well as combined keystrokes such as CTRL-T and even CTRL-SHIFT-T.
- Click OK and the Hot Key is saved to the list of Hot Keys.
Or,
- From the Click Effects main menu, select Edit > Edit Hot Keys.
- This displays a window with all Hot Keys and Command Keys assigned in the system.
- Drag-and-drop any media button from the media pages onto the Hot Key assignment window.
- You will be prompted to enter a keystroke. Enter a keystroke and select OK to save the Hot Key assignment.
If a keystroke is already assigned to another media button, you can choose to either replace the existing assignment with the new assignment, or to share an assignment. When a Hot Key assignment is shared, one keystroke will fire multiple media buttons at once. It can be useful to combine media buttons or trigger media buttons on multiple channels to fire at once.
Click Effects comes preconfigured with a set of Command Hot Keys. Common commands such as STOP, PAUSE and LOOP are linked to keystrokes on the keyboard. Command Keys can be a valuable shortcut and can save a considerable amount of time when immediate action is required. For example, if at any point, you must stop video in Program, pressing the ESC key acts the same as using the mouse and clicking the STOP transport control button.
The following Command Keys have been assigned by default on Click Effects:
| Hot key | Workflow |
| Esc | Stop All Media [ALL] |
| F10 | Loop Video Toggle [ALL] |
| F5 | Clear Preview [ALL] |
| F6 | Clear Graphics [ALL] |
| ENTER | Trans [ALL] |
| SHIFT + SPACE | Stop Graphics [ALL] |
| SPACE | Stop Video [ALL] |
Change hot key or command key assignments
At any point in time, the user can change Hot Key and Command Key assignments for the Click Effects PRIME Workflow.
- From the Click Effects main menu, select Edit > Edit Hot Keys.
- A window with all Hot Keys and Command Keys assigned in the system displays.
- Select one of the Hot Keys or Command Keys and double-click the selected Hot Key or Command Key to edit the keystroke assignments previously made. Enter a new keystroke on the keyboard and select OK to save changes.
- Send Items Directly to Program – This control allows Hot Keys to act like Remotes and go straight to Program.
- Locate Media – With a Hot Key selected that calls a Media button, this tool will move the Media Page to the button’s location and highlight it in teal.
- Assign Default Keys – This button resets all hotkeys for Commands to their original settings, overwriting what is currently assigned to that hotkey.
- The Media Finder is a particularly useful tool. With over 4000 media buttons available, it is sometimes hard to find a clip that is needed for playback or editing.
Search media items
The Media Finder has an entry field that performs an instant search of all media items.
- Start typing in the search field
- With each character entered, instant results are shown in the results field.
- Optional: Sort results by clicking the column headers. To change between ascending and descending sorting, click the same column header again.
- When the item searched for has been found, double-click the item in the results field, the Media Finder will close, and Click Effects PRIME automatically opens the page that contains the item selected. The media button searched for is now selected and highlighted in teal.
| Note: If only one media button matches the text entered in the search field, then the Media Finder automatically closes and redirects the user to the media button. |
Open Media Finder
To open the Media Finder:
- Press CTRL-F on the keyboard or select Edit –> Find Media from the main menu.
| Note: The Media Finder can be used in conjunction with the Playlist Editor to drag-and-drop search results directly into the Playlist Editor. |
Media marking
There can be times where media items may be played only once per event. The Media Marking option will identify which media buttons have been played at least one time.
- Enabled: When Media Marking is enabled, each media button that is sent to Program will be highlighted in red. To turn on/off Media Marking, use the shortcut combination CTRL-M on the keyboard or select Settings > Media Marking.
- Disabled: When Media Marking is disabled, the Click Effects PRIME system clears any state information of previously marked buttons. This means that the next time Media Marking is enabled; all buttons will appear as “un-marked”.
Create a database backup
Click Effects PRIME automatically creates database backups on a regular basis. To manually create a backup file of your database, select File –> Backup Database from the main menu at the top of the screen.
Restore from a database backup
In case something has happened to the database used by Click Effects PRIME, a backup copy of the database can be restored. Either select a manually created backup file, or a backup file that was automatically created by the system.
| Note: Restoring a copy of the database will remove the current database, including any changes made recently. Do not attempt a database restore without contacting Chyron Technical support. |
Create a user desktop shortcut
Because Click Effects can be set up with multiple users, it might be useful to bypass the User Select screen upon startup. This can be achieved by setting up a Desktop Shortcut for a user.
To create a Desktop Shortcut for a user:
- Select File > Repair > Create Desktop Shortcut to User
If there are Media Buttons that report as “File not found”, the Find Missing Files tool will search Click Effects PRIME for media files that have the same name but are in a different location. This works for Video, and Still files, but not for Graphics buttons that have images. The tool will do a quick auto-search, and then give the user the option to perform more detailed search and select local hard drives to be included in the search. When it finds a match, then the media button will automatically be updated to point to the new file location.
Hot keys report
The Hot Keys Report provides a way to print a list of the current Hot Keys and their definitions.
Play durations
Play Durations is a built-in clip-duration reporting tool. It has the following functions:
- Creation of Sponsors
- Assignment of Media Buttons to Sponsors.
- Individual Media Button time-in-program view.
- Sponsor time-in-program view based on aggregation of Media Buttons assignments.
- Creation of Target time-in-program and % progress per Media Button.
- Aggregation of Target time-in-program per Sponsor, based on Media Button targets and assignments.
Clips appear in the list as they are played in Program.
Sponsors
To add a sponsor:
- Click the Edit button to open the Sponsors and then add a sponsor to the list.
To assign a clip to a sponsor:
- Create the sponsor, right-click a media button in the list and select Sponsor->Assign.
To assign a Target to a media button:
Right-click the button in the list, select Set Target Duration, and then specify a target in seconds. The target time appears in the Target column and displays the % to target.
Use the view menu to toggle between Clip and Sponsor views.
- If a clip assigned to a Sponsor has had a target specified, then the Sponsor view also displays the Target number and % to target.
- If multiple sponsor buttons have targets, then the target data is aggregated in the sponsor view.
The Online/Offline button starts and stops the tracking of time, so clips may be played without affecting the time, target, or sponsor data.
The Play Durations function is enabled via System Settings.
Modules (Optional Tools)
Media Finder
The Media Finder is a particularly useful tool. With over 4000 media buttons available.
The Media Finder has an entry field that performs an instant search of all media items.
Start typing in the search field, and with each character entered instant results are shown in the results field.
You can sort results by clicking the column headers. To change between ascending and descending sorting, click the same column header again.
When the item searched for has been found, double-click the item in the results field, the Media Finder will close, and Click Effects PRIME automatically opens the page that contains the item selected. The media button searched for is now selected and highlighted in teal.
| Note: If only one media button matches the text entered in the search field, then the Media Finder automatically closes and redirects the user to the media button. |
To open the Media Finder:
- Press CTRL-F on the keyboard
- Or, select Edit –> Find Media from the main menu.
| Note: The Media Finder can be used in conjunction with the Playlist Editor to drag-and-drop search results directly into the Playlist Editor. |
Trigger settings
Click Effects contains an automatic action function, Triggers, that is based on rules created by a User. It enables a more productive workflow requiring less user interaction for specific tasks, allowing operators to focus attention where needed.
You can create triggers to automatically send media to Program when specified data changes or conditions are met. A typical example is to create a trigger to transition a specified graphic into Program when the home team scores. The operator no longer must worry about sending the correct graphic to Program every time the home team scores.
Play duration
The Click Effects Play Log Admin tracks and reports the duration that the media was in Program. It is possible to observe real-time the accumulated time the media is in program, by enabling Play Duration Logging.
The duration can be viewed in the Play Duration window by clicking the options button in the Play Log Settings window or from the Edit Play Durations option under the Edits menu.
Play Logs can have many entries after a short period of time. Click Effects systems can automatically purge log entries older than a specified number of days to maintain a sensible log.
If metadata is associated with specific entries, then it is possible to add metadata fields to the log entries. Simply click add to add a data source and data field to the log file entry.