13: Designer

The toolbar has some quick pick shortcuts based on PRIME's use case pricing model. Select the options you would like to enable. You can load/save these settings.

Live mode

The Designer can be output to any of the defined outputs in the Playout Configuration.

This allows for Realtime output previews. Select from the list of outputs. The currently selected output is “Program”.

Designer Settings

To access the Designer settings, 

1. Click on File.
2. Select one of the following
   • New Scene: Use the selected scene whenever a new scene is created. Useful to have a base scene and its elements when new scenes are created.
   • New Base Scene: Create a “Base Scene” to be referenced by normal scenes. Refer to the Resource object “Base Scene”.
   • New Edge Scene: Prime Edge Scene has a .pes extension. Toolbox will only display graphics, effects and resources supported in Edge. Options to save a Prime scene to an Edge scene type by using File Save .pbx as .pes. If the Prime scene includes any unsupported graphics, effects or resources for Prime Edge a warning prompt will appear. Unsupported objects will be removed from the edge scene if you choose to proceed.
   • New Master Control Panel: Opens up a new Master Control Panel canvas
   • Application Logic: See the separate “Application Logic” Section for more details.
   • Save as CAMIO File: .CRD files are currently generated when ‘Saving to CAMIO’ from the Prime Designer. This process automatically exports the file into the Chyron CAMIO Context and Folder defined by the CAMIO export settings in Prime.
     • To allow users to have more control over the upload process, and to prevent on-air content being accidentally overwritten, users can manually upload the .crd file using CAMIO Asset Manager.
     • In addition, users using the CAMIO Render Engine outside of a CAMIO environment, with the Chyron Media Engine API requires a .crd file in order to specify jobs to be rendered.
   • Import FBX: Allows for importing FBX models.
   • Import SVG: Refer to the Polygon object.
   • Import AE: Allows importing of After Effects Projects.
     • Refer to the “PRIME_After_Effects_Guide” for details.

Editor Settings

General

• New Scene: Optional to define a default scene whenever New scene (ctrl + N) is created .
• Layout: Auto Save Layout enabled will save all layout changes to the currently loaded layout. With this setting disabled, you must manually save any layout changes to the specified .wxel file.
• Default Region of Interest: Define numeric values for Top, Left, Bottom and Right for the default region of interest guideline that will be displayed for each new scene. (0,0,0,0 is fullscreen)
• Thumbnail: Default height of thumbnail image

Canvas Settings

• General: Allows for visual control of selected objects.
• Color: Allows setting background color, region of interest color, ruler guide color.
• Safe Title: Allows for visual control of the canvas safe title guides.
• Ruler Guides
  • Creating Guides
    • By default, objects will snap to ruler guides. You can adjust snapping settings in the Tools menu.
    • You can also lock all guides from the Tools menu. This can be handy when you have lots of objects in your scene and you don’t want to accidentally select a ruler guide.
    • To begin creating a ruler guide, open the designer. Next, open the tools menu and choose “Create Guide.” This will open the Guide Form, from which you can define the dimension and position of your new guide. The default shortcut to open this form is Ctrl+Alt+G.
    • Alternatively, you can create guides by dragging them onto the designer canvas. First, make sure you are in the designer and that rulers are shown (Tools > Rulers/Ctrl+R). Then, click on a ruler and drag your mouse onto the canvas. A new guide will be created and placed wherever you drop it.
  • Deleting Guides
    • To delete a guide, simply drag it onto a ruler and it will automatically be deleted. To delete all guides, go to Tools > Clear Guides.
    • If you want to hide all of the guides temporarily, you can go to Tools > Show Guides to toggle them off and on.
  • Align (Smart Guides)
    • Determines if the built-in alignment tools (Smart Guides) should align text objects by its bounding box or the bounds of the text itself.
• Copy/Paste Mode
  • Renumber Parent only: When you copy and paste a group, only the pasted parent will autoincrement the suffix number value of the group name.
  • Renumber Parent and Children: When you copy and paste a group, the pasted parent as well as all children objects will autoincrement the suffix number value of their node name.

Control Panel Settings

Scene Tree

• Filter: With filter selected, only objects that meet the search criteria in the scene tree search bar will be displayed in the scene tree.
• Highlight: With highlight selected, all objects in the scene tree will remain visible, and those that meet the search criteria of the scene tree search bar will be highlighted.

Action Settings

Timeline Move Cursor with Keyframe:

Animations

Background:

Parent

Hide

Show

• Default State: Expanded or collapsed
• Show Expanded when Keyframes Present:
• Show Expanded when Selected:
• Keyframes
  • Default Interpolation: Set the default keyframe behavior.
  • Show Gridlines: Show or hide canvas gridlines.
  • Auto Default Keyframes: Add keyframes to the default action when keyframes are created in other actions.
    • Example: Add “PositionX” into the setting, then create a new action and you will see “PositionX” in the timeline. Add as many properties as you need. Separate properties using commas: “PositionX,PositionY,ScaleX”
  • Default Ease Length: When a new ease keyframe is added, set the default ease to some value.
• Properties
  • Show Properties: Define which properties you would like to be automatically added to the Timeline Editor when a new action is created.
  • Behavior
    • Never: If a second object of the same type is added to the action, the properties will not show.
    • Empty: Remove properties defined in Show Properties that have no keyframes.
    • Selected: Show the properties with or without keyframes from the selected object.
    • Always: Always show the properties when the object has no keyframes.
• Save
  • Video Format: Select the video format when saving actions to a clip file. Right-click on the Action tab to record the animation to file.
    • Action is saved using first output channel and certain restrictions apply based resolution of the Output Channel.
      • 4K Support: Only DNxHR codes supports resolution higher than 1080p
      • ‎Interlace Support: DNxHD does not support.
  • Save Action to Clip will only honor auto follow source mode on the first frame of the selected action. If auto-follow expressions (including position and size) are evaluated after the initial keyframe then the render will not evaluate.
    • Example: If the source object's position or size changes during the animation, then auto-follow will not evaluate on the target object.
  • Default Location: Set the folder where Action clips will be stored
• Copy/Paste
  • Paste Mode
    • Create New Actions:
    • Paste in Existing Actions:
• Node Coloring: Enable color coding in the scene tree will also color code the shaded areas above/
  • To enable Node Coloring, right-click on the toolbar left of the Scene Node where the Lock icon is located.

Project Settings

Text Settings

• Default Style: Select from the list of Styles (Refer to the “Text” section on Styles). This style will be the default style each time a new text object is added to your scene.
• Enable Tab Key to Cycle Text Objects: With this option enabled the tab key will cycle to the next text object in the scene tree and automatically places focus in the properties text field. This allows you to quickly and easily update text fields within your scene in Prime Designer. Focus must be on either the Scene Tree, Canvas or Text Editor for this feature to function. Shift Tab cycles to previous text objects.

Canvas Properties

Axis Mode

• Axis mode: Toggles between Local and World Axis View modes.
  • World Axis View: When you move an object using this coordinate system, you are moving it relative to the space of the viewport.
  • Local Axis View: Uses the coordinate system of the selected object.

• Before Load: Executes once before a scene is loaded into either Preview or Program
• Effect In: Triggers when a scene is transferred to Program. (See Layer In)
• Effect Out: Triggers when a scene is transferred from Program to Preview or Scene is closed. (See Layer Out)
• Layer In: Triggers when a scene in Preview plays to Program replacing another scene in the same layer. This supersedes the “Effect In”.
• Layer Out: Triggers when a scene in Program is played off by an incoming scene in the same layer. This supersedes the “Effect Out”.
• Preview In: Triggers when a scene is loaded into Preview. Supersedes the Effect In for Preview.
• Before Load: Triggers before a scene is loaded into Program
• After Load: Triggers once after a scene is loaded into either Preview or Program
• Before Play: Triggers before a scene is played from Preview to Program
• After Play: Triggers after a scene is played to output
• Before Update: Triggers before the elements of a scene are loaded.
• After Update: Triggers after the elements of a scene are loaded.
• Before Stop: Triggers when a scene is taken off Program
• After Stop: Triggers after a scene is taken off Program
• Before Close: Triggers before a scene is closed. (Cleared from both Preview and Program)
• After Close: Triggers after a scene is closed. (Cleared from both Preview and Program)
• Style Changed: Triggers when the scene’s Style Property is changed (See Style Property)