Bitfocus Companion

[cookieguitar]

I just stumbled upon this software as I am working on a project where the budget is tight and QLab isn't an option. Liveplay is great. Downloaded it and I was ready to play some sound files in under 2mins.
Only thing that would be neat (even better than the integrated shortcuts and stuff) is support for bitfocus companion.
You know like, adding a button within a companion setup to control liveplay on the same Buttonpage as Sound and Video... feedback about current state of playback.. et cetera

So maybe for a future update-idea to keep in mind ;)

[tdoukinitsas]

I would love to look at bit focus companion integration :)
This might take a while as I have other professional commitments, but if someone wants to give it a go the server API is fully documented.
Also if anyone has any ideas about how the integration should work, this is a great place to discuss it.

[bowntowr]

Hi! I might take a crack at this when I have some free time. I'm not the most experienced programmer, so it may take me a bit to get familiar with everything, but the Companion integration sounds like a nice addition. I'll take a look at the server API and see what I can figure out :D

[bowntowr]

After some research, I discovered that this can be done by creating a Bitfocus Companion module that wraps LivePlay's REST API—no changes to LivePlay itself needed. Since the server API is already fully documented, this should be straightforward to build. Might give it a shot when I have free time!

[tdoukinitsas]

Cheers :) Any help you need feel free to send a message.

[bowntowr]

I'm going to start working on the Bitfocus Companion module locally this week. One question on logistics: should the companion-module-tdoukinitsas-liveplay repo live under your GitHub namespace (to keep it alongside liveplay), or should I create it under mine? Thanks.

[tdoukinitsas]

I honestly have no preference so feel free to do whatever you feel is best. Once published I would like to include it on the docs-site as a download or point to an official way on how to get in installed.

[aspinwalld]

I've got a working development build (requires LivePlay API enhancements submitted in PR #39) here: https://github.com/aspinwalld/companion-module-liveplay

Open to discussions on feature enhancements, better presets, etc.

[tdoukinitsas]

Thanks for this! Will look in to merging the PR in to the main branch on the 27th of July when I'm back from leave. Cheers!

[tdoukinitsas]

Hello, the PR has now been merged. I've also forked the companion module and made some improvements to how the server reports back the cue names and colours, and you can now select playlist items via companion (0.2.0), I've made a PR to merge back in to your repo :)

[aspinwalld]

Thanks, your fork has some great UX improvements! I've confirmed the changes and your PR is part companion-module-liveplay v0.2.1

I'm planning on marking all of these releases as pre-release until the LivePlay's northbound control API development settles a bit. I also plan on holding off from submitting the module to BitFocus until that point (which will be 1.0.0)

[tdoukinitsas]

Cheers, thanks for that. And good idea to hold off submitting for now as there will probably be some additions to the LivePlay API, as well as some improvements. If you want to see what could be in the roadmap, in the LivePlay repo there's an improvements plan document: https://github.com/tdoukinitsas/liveplay/blob/main/IMPROVEMENTS_PLAN.md

As you might see the document is a bit old as it had some initial thoughts of a companion plugin, so need to update it.

Any suggestions or recommendations to either LivePlay, or if you want me to explore the companion module, just let me know!

[aspinwalld]

Yes, the plugin's basic functionality was based off that doc. I'll concede you're much better with UI/UX than I am, so very open to you exploring the module to see how things on that front can be improved.