Updating button background thumbnails (for PTZ presets etc)

premultiply commented 1 year ago

Is this a feature relevant to companion itself, and not a module?

[X] I believe this to be a feature for companion, not a module

Is there an existing issue for this?

[X] I have searched the existing issues

Describe the feature

After working a while with companion as preset shotbox in live situations with multiple ptz cameras I thought about a way to show visual preset information on the stream deck buttons. This would make operators live much easier because you do not have to remind ordinary preset numbers from multiple cameras for visual scenes. This sometimes feels like playing memory card game with a child... you simply get lost.

The cameras that I use (Panasonic AW-UE150) save a thumbnail at every time a preset is saved or updated. These thumbnails are shown on the camera config web UI for every preset. They can be fetched via HTTP API directly from the camera (http://CAMERAIP/cgi-bin/get_preset_thumbnail?preset_number=X on Panasonic AW-UE150 and others).

The request is to show and automatically update background thumbnails on preset recall buttons each time a preset is saved (or overwritten or deleted). This wont be limited to cameras presets. Even other sources like video mixer scenes, cg titles, crossbar inputs may be a target for this feature.

Part 1 may be a general infrastructure (trigger?) for fetching background thumbnails from devices, scale/convert them, save them on disk and show/update on button background. Part 2 may be the device specific integration (panasonic ptz module in my case).

Usecases

PTZ camera presets
Video inputs / outputs from routers or mixers
Scenes or mediapool from mixer like OBS, ATEM vMix, CasparCG etc.
CG, Clip or image playout server

dnmeid commented 1 year ago

This request is nothing we will do in Companion core. If you are looking for this functionality with the Panasonic PTZ cameras, you should ask there. If you want this to be included more general, it should go to the generic http module. I transfer this request to the http module, @premultiply please say if you do not agree.

peternewman commented 2 months ago

There's an image from URL feedback added since you mentioned this, will that do what you need? https://github.com/bitfocus/companion-module-generic-http/commit/2bf5e8a35373281bc6dabcd9740e50e6d74e15ea

premultiply commented 2 months ago

Yes, already implemented in https://github.com/bitfocus/companion-module-panasonic-cameras

Will be available soon.

peternewman commented 2 months ago

But there is also a means of doing similar things within the generic HTTP module too...

bitfocus / companion-module-generic-http