Barco has released an update to their A/V Show Control product Medialon Manager 6.7.0, with a full stack of features to simplify user experience and allow show control programmers to create intuitive user interfaces for non-technical end users. New features include enhanced Windows 10 compatibility, an updated look and feel, streamlined workflows for finding and writing device drivers, and dynamic Graphical User Interface properties.
“We are excited to share these great new features in this release. To start off, Medialon Manager now has a modernized look and feel which supports high resolution displays,” said Eric Cantrell, Sales Manager for Barco’s A/V Control Experience and Medialon Show Control Division. The updated programming interface has a modern “flat” design that can be resized using Windows’ DPI settings to make it easier to work with on high resolution displays and laptop screens.
Medialon Manager’s device drivers and resourceful files have been moved to a file location that keeps the drivers together in one easily accessible place, instead of buried in read-only directories that require administrator access to edit or update.
“With the various types of device drivers available for Medialon show control systems, deciding whether to use an MxM, a Low Level Communicator driver, or a JavaScript driver could send programmers on a scavenger hunt to find the right driver,” said Cantrell. “So we harmonized the New Device wizard to include all the different types of drivers and added a search feature to make finding the driver you’re looking for easy.” With the New Device creation wizard, Low Level Communicator and Medialon Script drivers are presented alongside MxMs, saving steps and putting all your drivers in one interface. MxM Medialon Script has also been improved so that scripts can communicate directly with devices on the network or using Medialon resources, making it possible for device drivers to have internal logic. Low Level Communicator drivers and Scripts can also be shared with other Medialon users on the Medialon Driver Hub.
Show Control systems are typically a “hidden” technology with end users only familiar with the custom user interfaces the programmers create for each project. Medialon Manager V6.7.0 enhances the programmers’ creative options with the addition of dynamic properties to user screen elements. Buttons, sliders, gauges, text displays, text edit fields, and LEDs can now be modified dynamically while the show is running, making it possible to change the color of text or backgrounds, disable elements interactivity, or hide elements altogether. ”A single user interface can be built for multiple levels of user access, and the elements for higher levels of access can simply be hidden from view unless a privileged user logs into the system. Being able to dynamically update user screen elements unlocks a lot of creative possibilities for interface design,” said Cantrell.
Medialon Manager V6 has always provided lots of information about the devices it controls through variables, and with version 6.7.0, new variables have been added to provide information about the PC or virtual machine running Medialon Manager, such as CPU usage, memory load, host name and IP addresses. Now programmers can see not only how many WebPanels have active connections from client machines, but also the IP addresses of the devices viewing the WebPanels.
“User experience is always top of mind and this latest release really hits on key requests from our users,” said Cantrell “so we are very happy to share all the great features packed into this release.”
Click here for a video preview of the new features or to download Medialon Manager V6.7.0 and try out the new features yourself in the software’s Demo mode.
