Showbook
Every show file for your switchers, with its history
What it does
A switcher's show file is the record of an event's video system — the patch, the screens, the layers, the presets — and it lives in one vendor's tool, in one vendor's format, on whatever laptop last backed it up. Showbook is a library for them. Each show is read into one brand-neutral model, kept as plain files with a content-addressed version on every save, and the file it came from (an Event Master backup archive, a LivePremier .awc) is kept beside it byte-exact, so what the vendor tool needs is always there.
Once a show is in the model it can be looked at: the chassis with every connector and what is on it, the patch tables, each screen drawn to scale with its outputs tiled on the canvas and the layers of any preset over them, the multiviewer layouts, the cues. The same drawing goes into a PDF — cover, patch, one page per screen and per preset, a glossary of what the settings mean, the notes the importer left, the version history — and into test patterns: one labelled PNG per output at its own raster, with arrows to its neighbours, to play from a media server before content arrives.
Conversion is where a brand-neutral model earns its keep. An Event Master show becomes a LivePremier one, or the reverse, re-keyed in the target's own spelling and held against the target model's capacity, and the report says which features carried, which were adapted — a multi-destination preset becomes screen memories and a master memory, layer capacities are re-costed in 4K units — and which were dropped because the target has no home for them. Capability tables cover Midra 4K, Alta 4K, LiveCore, PDS-4K and PixelHue as well.
It also talks to the hardware: pull the running show from an Aquilon, a Midra 4K, an Alta 4K or an Event Master frame; recall presets, master memories and cues and TAKE from the app; push labels over AWJ and restore an .awc on a LivePremier. And it writes a Companion page for the barco-eventmaster or analogway-awj module, and reads one back to check which of its buttons still match the show.
It is a desktop app rather than a browser tool because the devices speak raw TCP (AWJ on 10606) and plain-HTTP JSON-RPC, neither of which a hosted page can reach.
- A library of plain files with a version on every save — diff any two, restore any one; the vendor files kept beside the show
- Import Event Master backup archives, the frame's xml/ folder or a bare settings.xml; LivePremier .awc files and saved device stores; Showbook JSON
- Pull the running show from an Aquilon (device store plus its .awc), a Midra 4K, an Alta 4K or an Event Master frame
- Recall presets, master memories and cues and TAKE on a device; push labels over AWJ; restore an .awc on a LivePremier
- Chassis with every connector and what is on it; patch tables; each screen drawn to scale with its outputs and the layers of any preset, editable by dragging
- Multiviewer layouts with drag-and-resize windows, grid fill and UMD labels
- PDF documentation: cover, chassis and patch, every screen and preset to scale, multiviewers, cues, a glossary of the settings, the import notes, the version history
- Test patterns: one labelled PNG per output at its raster with arrows to its neighbours, and one per screen
- Conversion between Event Master and LivePremier with an honest report — carried, adapted, dropped — and capability tables for Midra 4K, Alta 4K, LiveCore, PDS-4K and PixelHue
- A Bitfocus Companion page per show for the barco-eventmaster or analogway-awj module, and a read-back that checks a page against the show
- Mirror the library with a folder or over the Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive APIs
Where it stands
In development; v0.1.0 is the first tagged build. Everything was built against the vendors' own simulators and protocol guides, and nothing has yet been run against a physical switcher. What is verified: Event Master store parsing on the Encore3 10.0.2 and E2 9.2 simulator stores and a backup archive round trip; the LivePremier store, REST, an .awc downloaded, uploaded and extracted, and AWJ reads and writes on the LivePremier simulator 6.2.73; the Midra 4K and Alta 4K simulator stores read live; and the desktop app itself pulled the LivePremier simulator and wrote the PDF. What is not: Event Master JSON-RPC and the Encore3 backup endpoint — the Barco simulators do not serve the API; any Event Master preset or cue file, because none has ever been seen and the parser reports what it cannot place; applying an .awc, which reboots the device; deep capture; the three cloud providers against a live account; and a generated page imported into a running Companion.