Outline Newton, the patent-awarded FPGA-based digital signal processor, tasked to control, optimize, and interface with the most diverse PA- and FOH setups – in touring productions, entertainment festivals, fixed installations, and civil or religious events with mission-critical requirements – is about to ramp up its user experience with the launch of a new, just-released Bitfocus Companion native plug-in for integration with any Elgato Stream Deck hardware control interface, the de-facto market champion among most diverse communities in creative- and media production environments.
“With application-specific features aimed at a simpler, quicker, and safer access to most relevant functions of Newton’s workflow, users upgrading their setup to include any Elgato Stream Deck model device can now add one further layer of interaction rooted in both the physical and visual domains, complementing their desktop or tablet experience with the popular graphical push-buttons interface”, offers Andrea Ippolito, software development dean at Outline.
“As the plug-in sits at the crossroad of Newton’s and Elgato’s respective control protocols, the addition of any Elgato Stream Deck device provides a substantial improvement of operational safety, with a nod to the proverbial ‘show-must-go-on’ usage scenario: shall an asteroid ever hit Control Mothership between Newton and Isaac, any command imparted via Stream Deck push-buttons will reach Newton and produce the intended effect nonetheless”, elaborates Paolo Calza, application engineer at Outline.
“Under close scrutiny, it’s only fair to say that Elgato Stream Deck is but one of the many different control platforms that Bitfocus’ Companion framework can effectively address and link, albeit arguably the most popular one; in this light, while a number of functions can be user-programmed also via the Elgato proprietary software suite, Outline’s native Bitfocus’ Companion plug-in is released at public level, hence realising straight-out-of-the-box functionality with no tweaking or guesswork needed (for the presets included in the current release, of course)”, adds Gabriele Maucione, software developer at Outline.
Patch monitoring and re-arm, source- and clock redundancy, snapshot recall, as well as discrete action-feedback indications are but a few of the functions that will take current Outline Newton’s users to the highest level of operational peace-of-mind ever realised before: “It’s a seamless, straight-forward, transparent integration devoid of any coding- or programming effort… not only it’s like having a pair of extra dab hands at hand (pun intended) – they’re firmer, and safer, too!”, closes Ippolito.
