kgallen

Hi Edward, Thanks for your quick replies. OK, I'll check this, thanks. Yes, in the end I used Clear+F/F. I did try some "SmartTag off" but I think I'm still a bit of a novice on this one! (Yes I agree there should be nothing to worry about, just tag the stuff you want, but I'm not sure I always get quite what I expect!). I think my mistake was I *selected" the fixtures I wanted to remove, and missed out the "(Untag [Intensity])" step. I need to practice the Remove process at home I think as I never get it to work when I need it (user error not desk error!). Yes now I've had a good play with it I understand it more now - I can see it's powerful, I'm just not always sure which "base effect" to start with and what then to adjust. Your detail earlier in this thread was a great help. I've not needed to use it recently but the Waveforms tab is the worst for me - the touch boxes are just way too small for me to use reliably. Looking forward to seeing what you guys have come up with - I'd like to use the Effects feature a lot more... Aha... I'm not going mad then! Regards, Kevin

One (ok maybe more than one it seems...) other question from my plotting. So I have a stack on PB0 and I also have some chases on other PBs that I trigger from PB0 (as discussed above). So with some fictional cue/PB numbers for ease: PB0/1 triggers chase on PB7 PB0/2 adds some conventionals in When I've GO on PB0/2 I decide I want to tweak the level of the conventionals, so I select them and tweak the levels. I now want to update PB0/2, but of course I don't want to capture the current state of the chase running on the "unrelated" PB7 into PB0/2. How do I do this? -> When I was plotting I had an "issue" where I was RECORDing this cue, and it captured not only the fixtures I'd added in but also the current state of the chase that was "running in the background". This captured a "freeze" of the chase into the new cue. Try as I might, I could not use "Remove" to get rid of those chase fixtures. In the end I had to delete the cue, release the chase manually (Clear+Chan/PB), then record the state changes for that cue (without the triggered PB7 chase running), then go back to the trigger cue and run through from there to check. Now I guess this kind of makes sense, but I wasn't expecting it and I wondered if there was a "better" way. Other than that the show is looking good and I'm very much appreciative of your help... and I've learnt a lot more about the desk and especially the Effects engine. I would like to note (as others have) that the documentation is very weak here - I ended up going through a lot of the (colour) effects and with the insight you gave me earlier (on Blue Rainbow etc), work out what e.g. "Red Step On" actually did - how the base colour was formed and what the effect waveform modulated on top. So I understand a bit more now how I can e.g. get a red base and swoosh a yellow through it... One other thing - I think I noted it a while back: I set up a number of Groups, with the selection order carefully defined. So 1 THRU 5 and another 5 THRU 1. I expected 1 THRU 5 and "Forward Individually" to go 1,2,3,4,5 but it always seemed to go 5.4.3.2.1. Likewise "Backwards" did 1,2,3,4,5. Random did what I expected! Thanks, Kevin

My comments relate to PB0 - I'm not sure about the others. It gets me every time! I press GO and nothing happens and I scratch my head wondering why the lights aren't coming on... then I remember... However hold the thought, we have a Dress Rehearsal tonight, so I will do a cold boot and see if PB0 GO will get the house lights/stage preset up without me needing to cycle the PB0 fader...

Hi Edward, Thank you for your replies! (Hope term has started ok too!) Tomorrow we are doing the LX plot, so I'll be filling in the gaps of cue 1 etc - but this detail is useful, because I think some of those earlier cues are going to be busked, so I might well need to do the encoder business you detail above - thanks! Thanks for the explanation. I must find that console cue fade default you identify above! Ok - thanks for confirming, I suspected this might be the case! I will have been whizzing between all sorts of windows - at the time I didn't have an external monitor, so doing everything on the internal screen. At least with View or Z or with my usual show setup with Mouse and Keyboard this should be less of an issue! It's a known "issue" - actually it's probably not a bug as such as PB0 behaves the same as other PBs in that you need to raise the PB fader from 0 to trigger the PB - pressing the Go button with the PB0 fader at full (from power up) is not enough. My FLX usually has the PB0 fader left up at full as I'm generally using a cue stack on PB0 (and effectively it's just like the Frog Playback X fader to me, although I know it is "so much more" on FLX). What this means is when I start playing around I get no output then scratch my head for a while until I realise I need to drop and re-raise the PB0 fader to actually get some output. There is a ZOS for it and I do tease Jon every now again that it's not "fixed". I probably understand why that is ("not a bug") but it is a bit annoying nontheless! Much appreciating your help this week or so. Within a couple of days I should stop asking dumb questions (for a couple of weeks anyway!). Cheers! (Not sure how to send you a real or virtual pint, so that will have to do for now! I've been rigging all day, I could do with some refreshment too!) Kevin

Hi Perry, I'm not sure the ZerOS Release Notes come bundled for all releases. Probably best if you email Jon/Edward or the generic Zero88 email address (support@zero88.com) and ask for them. I don't think there is much back-catalogue on the Download site, I can only find 7.9.4 and 7.9.3. Kevin

Hi Edward, In the attached showfile, I am using playback triggering from the master playback. [1] In cues 7 through 10 I am triggering playback 3 or playback 4 (and releasing the other). I am observing a 3s fade for each of these cues: Why is this? None of the playbacks have a fade time other than zero, and I've also disabled MOD, which is the only other anything I can find with a non-zero time. You can see this on the Outputs Screen on fixtures 59 thru 63: they drop intensity to 0 and fade up to 100% over about 3s. [2] Also when I step between pb3 and pb4 I get a brief 100% flash, like the cue briefly snapped to full. [3] In this show file, I now use pb3 to release pb4 and vise-versa. This is because when I did this in stack 0 in the cues, e.g. cue 8 triggers pb4 and releases pb3, I saw a delay again of about 3s between pressing GO and pb4 taking effect - this is not ok! This is all a little confusing... [4] Also I find with pb3 and pb4, which are rainbow effects using Fan-V (as we've been discussing), I can't get Global Tap Tempo or Tap Tempo button to make any difference - can't set the Effect speed. Should I be able to? I can get Speed Override to work. You can see in this showfile that I've assigned PB13 to this function. Change the function to Global Tempo and it doesn't do anything. Same under the Z key - speed override works, Global Tempo encoder changes nothing. [5] I'm also having lots of occasions where the cursor keys have no control over the Next bar or "Spreadsheet" cue edit boxes: I think the console has locked up (it hasn't). I find I need to press the Z key twice to get them working again. [6] Of course having to initially drop and raise the fader on PB0 tripped me up yet again... 🤬 Thanks, Kevin MMCsetup2.isf

Hi Dan, I don't think you can on FLX... at the moment it doesn't have configurable screens 😞 I would like some reassignment flexibility too, like the groups screen, so hopefully this will come along sometime soon... Kevin

Good work - sounds like you are in business now! Enjoy 😊

Thanks Edward - yes, this is what I did in the end (see "Bug?" report in the Software Test forum!).

It’s possibly the replay tag off. Once you hit PROGRAM all the tagging is cleared (this is noted in one of the release note entries I seem to recall) and because replay tag is off when you play back the state no tags are set. This means only changes you make get tagged. When you were programming states did you get any pop up message saying nothing to record? Their term playback stack will refer to the cues programmed under the GO button and possibly also any chase in a memory or transferred to a sub master. Maybe try programming your chase with replay tagging on. Regards your question with mem1 and mem2, yes the yellow would be ‘tracked’ from mem1 because it isn’t recorded (tagged) in mem2. (You do say tracking is "off" but I can't remember what this means in partial mode - because for any state where some parameter is not recorded, the desk needs to have "something" to output on the DMX stream and practically this would be Home or the last value programmed - I'd have to re-read the Release Notes to remember the difference!)

Hi Leon, This doesn't ring any bells with me - I know there was an issue a bit like this in 10.10 (maybe 10.9) but that was fixed in 10.12. Are you in Full mode, rather than one of the Partial modes? With having a read of the Release Notes for the desk, there is quite a bit of detail in here for the changes from 9.2 through 10.12 (you don't say what version you upgraded from). https://eaton.nanorep.co/storage/nr1/kb/2AD62C9/3879A76B/3A210339/32/FrogOS Release Notes v10.12.pdf Good idea to change the battery - always a good start! Kevin

Hi Nigel, Glad you're up and running! Good move! Don't rely on the "Battery OK" indication on the screen - if you ever see the time go funny, get the battery changed quick. Now you know how easy it is, probably worth changing every 2-3 years. Yes, all of the attribute buttons (Colour, Beamshape, Position) will page through the available options if there are more than 3. You can define the wheel assignments how you like in the Windoze Fixture Editor - use the "3 Wheel" tab for the Fat Frog. If you load in your fixture you will see on that tab multiple lines under the colour attribute, so hence multiple presses of the Colour button on the desk to cycle around them. There are no fans in the Fat Frog - the only motor is that in the FDD. As Ian says, those LEDJ Performer fans are a bit noisy - I have some of the Quad version (I've had them a few years) - they are very bright, but also a little on the noisy side! Good luck with your show - sounds like you have your hands full and it will be a little bit of a baptism of fire! But the FF will be up to it! Where are you located? (Worth adding to your profile in case you need "local" help). Any more queries, just open a new thread on this part of the forum and one of us will be along quickly to help out. I'm in get-in week, show week next week, so I'm a bit busy too in my own "village hall", but I'll try to get to you if you're stuck. Kevin

Hi Edward, With this Example and using an Effect, how can I get this to run once only (black->red->yellow) i.e a single sunrise? As you later suggest for better colour control, using a chase instead would allow this single run. Also if using a chase, I guess I need to do the "Fan-V" mechanism manually to stagger the builds. i.e. the chase would have something like 6 steps: 3=red -> 2+4=red -> 1+5=red -> 3=yellow -> 2+4=yellow -> 1+5=yellow... However I seem to recall an earlier thread from another user where you say that the chase can't track between steps. This would thus imply that 3=red would have to complete before I could start 2+4=red etc rather than them overlapping smoothly with their fade-ups overlapping so the colour looks like it "grows" out from the centre, rather than coming up in "columns". Maybe I need to do somthing like: 3=red[50]% -> 3=red[100%],2+4=red[50%] -> 2+4=red[100%],1+5=red[50%] -> 3=yellow[50%],1+5=red[100%] ...etc... Have I misunderstood here or if this is correct do you have any other suggestions? Thanks! Kevin

Hi Sai. Unless you're specifically interested in Zero88 dimmers, your question is probably better suited to a more generic theatre forum like www.blue-room.org.uk http://www.blue-room.org.uk/index.php?showforum=2 Kevin

Hi Nigel, You only really need virtual intensity support (as in FrogOS 10.12 [actually it came in 10.10, but use 10.12]) if the LED fixture doesn't have a DMX channel for "dimmer" - I'm sure both of your LEDJ LEDs will have, they look reasonably recent as they are pent and hex LED fixtures. However you suggest you want to run them in their 6 or 5 DMX channel mode which is where you would use virtual intensity. So your options are: - set your fixtures into one of their higher channel count modes and use their built in dimmer capability - use the "minimum" channel modes and upgrade to 10.12 and use virtual intensity. However you will need to confirm that the fixture definition has defined the virtual intensity channel for the min-channel option. If the Z88 chaps built the fixture definitions I'm sure they would have done, however it's worth checking in the Fixture Editor tool ( You say you've patched your fixtures into the FatFrog, which is the "hard" bit. To record into the memory stack just set them up the same way as you would one of your 48 generic channels, then press PROGRAM. Of course when using "complex" beast like LED fixtures you have some other considerations, like whether to use Full or Partial mode. For now, stick with Full which means the desk will record everything about every dimmer and fixture in each cue. You talk in your post about mapping to faders - you don't do this with the 12 non-conventional fixtures (those controlled from the right hand side of the desk). You will dial up the LED fixture brightness with a wheel after pressing the Brightness button. The latest manual is here: https://eaton.nanorep.co/storage/nr1/kb/2AD62C9/3879A76B/3ACE27E9/6/Frog Range Manual.pdf But realistically you'll also need to have a good read of the 10.12 Release Notes here: https://eaton.nanorep.co/storage/nr1/kb/2AD62C9/3879A76B/3A210339/32/FrogOS Release Notes v10.12.pdf And of course the 10.12 software for the desk here: https://eaton.nanorep.co/storage/nr1/kb/2AD62C9/3879A76B/3A210339/31/FrogOS v10.12.zip I hope that gets you started. Drop another query on the forum if needed (maybe start a new topic) and I'll help you out. Good luck! Kevin Some other threads that might help you out:

Sorry yes, "Special" not "Detail". OK so to reiterate: fixture swap-out can map parameters of the fixture type used at programming time to comparable parameters in a replacement swapped-in fixture for the same fixture number however, CBP palettes recorded on one (say RGB) fixture type can't be applied to a different (say RGB) fixture type this is where I've been going wrong, because I thought I could! Thanks!

Hi Edward, Thanks again, good explanation. I notice your use of "same fixture type" (where type => same manufacturer/model) so it seems the "remapping/morphing" doesn't work as I had thought - my understanding was the Detail entries in the Fixture Profile of e.g. "Red - Positive" was there to support this "morphing" to a different fixture type, but your explanation suggests not 😞 But that's clear, thanks! Kevin

If I create an effect palette based on one select set of LEDs can I apply that same effect palette to a different select set of LEDs of the same number with similar capabilities? (eg say I set up one of the effects we’ve been discussing on 5 cyc LEDs, record the palette, can I then apply that same effect palette to 5 backlight LEDs?) Is there anything particular I need to do to make this work? In general I understand a C/B/P palette can be ‘morphed’ to a different selection set and the desk will do a ‘best fit’ based on the information from the fixture definition. I’m not sure I’ve always have this work for me with a colour palette so maybe I’m mistaken. Can you elaborate a little for me? Much appreciated as ever!

Touche! 😆

Ah, ok so I should select 1 THRU 5 (or a GROUP thereof) not 3,2,4,1,5 [*]. Thanks for the clarification - that would have confused the bejesus out of me trying to get the Fan-V to work! Thanks for the description of the various "Rainbow" settings - that should go in the manual!!! 👍 [*] Yes I can see I'm being dim here, because 1 THRU 5 would of course be the natural way for "forward"!

I was looking at the Knowledgebase for articles and I notice the Orb and Orb XF are not mentioned any more - not in the "Consoles" list and neither the "Legacy Consoles" list. Have they gotten lost in a page reorg? I was looking for Orb/XF because there used to be more (ZerOS) articles listed there - maybe they've all been ported over to FLX now? - (in which case I'll just look at the list under FLX, which is what I want anyway!). Having written this I just wonder if there is real benefit maintaining different "current product" and "legacy product" threads in the Knowledgebase - just means folks have to hunt around more - I know I struggled to find AlphaPack2 when looking a few months back - ok I had problems with the search then too (I did raise a Forum post somewhere - oh, here: ).

Wow, Edward, that's brilliant - thanks for the detailed instructions - just what I need 😊. Makes me want to get 5 fixtures out and have a play at home... I suspected it would be an Effect with a Fan, I just wasn't quite sure of the details, and how it would differ between an "Intensity Effect" and a "Colour Effect". I'm intrigued by the "Blue Rainbow" - whenever I've played with these I've just gotten confused by them. What was the reason you picked that one - and I guess what does "Blue Rainbow" (Green Rainbow/Red Rainbow) actually mean? Just on the "select your fixtures" bit, I know order can be important. So how do I get the pairs (2+4) and (1+5) to behave identically, rather than getting discrete 3+2+4+1+5 behaviour - or actually thinking about this, I bet that is handled by the fan rather than the selection order? (Sorry, dim question probably!). Cheers, Kevin

New scenarios, probably with the Effects engine: Example 1: I have 5 fixtures across the cyc, 1-2-3-4-5. I want to create a intensity build from the centre outwards like an intensity fan (of a single colour). All fixtures start in black and build to a defined maximum intensity (could be FF). How would I do this? Example 2: Same setup, but now I want to do a colour fan, a bit like a sunrise, where the cyc builds from black to a red (using Example 1) and then a yellow builds from the centre outwards. How would I do this (similar to Example 1 except it's a colour fade effect rather than intensity?) Example 3: Same as Example 2 except I want the colour fade to start on one end and bleed to the other. Thanks! (At some point I'll take the plunge and buy Capture so I can work this stuff out without needing a whole rig of lights!... It's just it's 350 quid...)

Prices for these things seem to vary wildly. Make sure you get some proper quotes rather than looking at web prices! CTS seem quite competitive (my FLX came from here): https://shop.centraltheatresupplies.co.uk/zero-88-flx-s24512-lighting-console-5473-p.asp Which ever one you get I think you'll like it! Don't rule out the "full" FLX though...! https://shop.centraltheatresupplies.co.uk/zero88-flx-4285-p.asp (these are ex-VAT prices)

That's the "key" information I was after! Thanks! I think it will be perfect for the application (as long as my finger doesn't slip!).