This potentially extremely useful feature could sure use a bit of love.

• Each image has information about the fixture in a single sentence at the bottom of the image, with no key.
• For example:

53, Selecon Pacific 12° - 28° Zoomspot, 1.78 - 20°

        This means :

Unit 53 / fixture name / lens / lens type / patch / actual focused zoom.

• This is good reference, but as the designer, and for archive purposes, I’d like to also know the channel, and any colour filter information.
• In order to be able to export the images, the program insists that the UNIT field is filled in, AND that each entry be unique. This is understandable, but it’s a bit rich since Capture allows anything to be entered in the unit field generally , doesn’t insist on it being globally unique, and also allows any object to have ‘unit’ information.
• Further it’s not even necessary since every fixture is automatically assigned a unique id internally already, which is normally hidden, but is exposed if you export a csv file. So why in this case isn’t the unit field optional?
• For example, if one followed American practice here, with the unit numbers being relative to the hanging structure, and unique only on each hanging structure, then one wouldn’t be able to use the tool without sequentially renumbering all the fixtures, which would then make little sense in the overall show context.
• The images are automatically numbered 1.png thru 999.png or whatever, but the single digit means they don’t sort sequentially by name in a target program. - ie it should be 001.png , 002.png etc.
• In any case, I would expect the image to get its name from show + channel number, or unit number etc rather than an arbitrary numbering sequence with no reference to the show.
• The two options in the save dialog “humans up” and “fixtures up” mean nothing to me, and it isn’t explained in the documentation, but it hardly matters anyway because they produce identical images…?
• The images are wireframe, with a large crosshair denoting the centre of the beam. However, there is no representation of the beam footprint, and no shutter-cuts, so the whole exercise is of very limited use.
• (As an aside, it would be useful to optionally superimpose those crosshairs through the centre of the beam when focusing. Also, why is Capture lacking a through-the-lens focus anyway? It’s obviously not hard, since other programs manage it, so there must be some particular reason it’s lacking here? )

Anyway, what is of enormous use is a coloured rendered image of the fixture’s focus, including beam footprint, shutter cuts and information about the unit, such as already displayed on screen during focusing .

All that’s needed is to get a camera view through the lens and it’s done - all the pieces already exist in the program, they just need to be assembled into a complete tool…

cheers

rabbit