kgallen

Hi Thierry, A Happy New Year to you too! In the thread below, Jon suggests a workaround for a DMX Universe with fixtures who do not behave in the presence of RDM packets. See the section on DMX address: Regards, Kevin

Hey - you're never that quick on my questions! Edward's answer is much better than mine, though - he uses the correct terminology!

This is because when you drop the fader it "releases" the playback. This means that the playback stops having any control over the lights. If you have no other playbacks active then there is nothing else controlling the lights, so given they have to have "some" position, then the desk will drop back to the fixture default - which is the same as Home but with zero intensity. What you need to do is to stop the action of lowering the fader from releasing the channels. On FLX this will be Setup+PB button then under Raise and Lower, turn off Release. I suspect FLX S will be the same. If not, Edward will be along any moment to put the story straight, but this information might get you going in the interim...! Regards, Kevin

Hi Edward. Brilliant explanation - thanks for taking the time to explain that for me, much appreciated! That’s one for next year’s Advent Calendar! Cheers, Kevin ps Ooooo FLX T- shirt...

Hi Edward, Thanks for your comprehensive response to my additional queries - I shall try those! For (3) I'm really surprised this isn't "Allow Stomping" - when you say you reported ZOS-8389 can you elaborate on the issue you found - I read your reply as you found an issue with stomping, rather than with Intensity LTP - maybe I misunderstand which part of (1) you found an issue with! I thought "stomping" would mean that the playback could "stomp all over" another playback and thus if my PB1 has "allow stomping" then it could "stomp all over" what the Master PB wanted to do (even LTP) and thus would support what I was looking to do in (3) i.e. PB1 keeps control of the HTP and LTP channels. Thus I'm not sure I understand what "Allow Stomping" actually allows! The FLX manual says "“Stomping” occurs when a playback takes control of all the channels from another playback" - but clearly I misunderstand here too - maybe related to the "release" part. Could you give me a deeper explanation of what stomping actually is and how the "release" part factors in to the operation? Maybe the manual could have a better explanation as it seems a more complex concept than the one sentence in the manual would have me believe! Thanks again! Kevin ps That's another couple of ZOS's with my name on. Tell Jon I'll take a zero88 t-shirt (XL size) and a couple of those zero88 USB sticks .

Hi Edward (and ziglight), Thanks for your response, suggested workaround and other options - I'll have a play with an Effects Palette (not used those before) and the Speed Override. Also are you able to comment on my (2) regards colour fade time and (3) regards whether this is "stomping" and why I can't get the PB1 to keep control of the colour? Cheers, Kevin

Hi Jon/Edward, Any help/update/comments on this thread at all? I'm in Tech this weekend, so if you can comment if my usage is incorrect of if you think it's a bug that would help me out. Thanks, Kevin

Following on from having this effect chase, some other queries/observations: (1) So if I play my PB1 Effect chase over the top of my Master PB cue stack, I want the PB1 chase to take control of the intensity. From playback setup, I chose Intensity Mixing - LTP. This seems to do the job. Is this the correct way to achieve this? (At first I tried Allow Stomping from the Advanced tab, not knowing what "Stomping" is but it didn't do anything!). (2) When I raise the PB1 MFF, the colour fade time into the Effect chase can be altered in the cue view. However I find that when the MFF is released, the colour snaps back to that in the Master Playback - no fade there. What I'd actually like, is when the PB1 MFF is raised, the colour snaps to my Effect chase colours, but on release of PB1 the colour fades back to that in the current Master Playback cue. Is this possible? (3) If my PB1 Effects chase is running and I advance my Master PB, the colour of the chase moves to that in the incoming cue of the Master PB. So this makes sense for LTP of the colour. However if I want the PB1 Effect chase to retain control of the colour (and intensity) despite what the Master PB incoming cues have, can I configure the PB1 to do this? (Again, tried "Allow Stomping" but this didn't help!).

Hi, Sorry for yet another "basic" question on using the effects engine! I'm confused about how to update the speed of the chase, once I've programmed it to a Playback. This is my scenario: I have 4 identical RGBW LEDs, Fixtures 1-4. I select them one at a time and turn them on to @@ and set each one to a different colour using the colour palettes. I select 1 THRU 4. I go to Effects, chose Chaser, Random Offset, set the speed as (I think) I want. I Record this to Playback 1. I edit this playback to set the Colour fade time to 0. I clear the programmer, raise PB 1 and I get my Effects chase. All good. However I now decide the Effect speed is not what I want. Say it's too fast. PB1 is raised and the Effect is running. I select 1THRU 4. I go to Effect. I adjust the Speed and the output effect slows down. I now want to update my recorded PB1 with this new speed. I press Update. The chase stops running. I press the MFF key for PB1 to perform the update. I drop the MFF for PB1 to release the PB and then raise it again to retrigger. I have no chase effect. I have the static condition as output at the point I pressed Update. So what am I doing wrong? How do I update the speed in the recorded PB cue? This is not a "Chase" playback, so Global Tempo and Tap Tempo are not relevant (although I'd be interested if the Effect chase speed can be coupled to e.g. Tap Tempo). If prior to pressing Update I re-select the Chase effect and re-select Random offset then adjust the speed, I find the Update as required can be performed - but is it really necessary to re-select the Effect type and setup just to change the speed of an existing effect? I can re-record the PB from scratch (i.e. using Record rather than Update), but then I have the pain of having to set up the PB again and re-edit the colour fade time. Not something I want to be doing at the tech when the Director just wants a change in the speed of an Effect they are otherwise happy with. ...actually what I really wanted was some random flashing colours to use for a disco effect on these 4 LEDs... Thanks, Kevin ps Did have a dig through the Forum to see if I've asked this before but didn't find anything. Of course if I look again it will be staring at me...!

....and to end these advacan-advacan-advacan-advacanada videos... we'll do it all again next year... ! ...oh this is all just taking too long...!

Sorry Edward, I was being a bit flippant with the historical behaviour. Actually since installing 7.9.3 the other day I haven't done much "encoder bashing" so I'll have to give it a go and see what you chaps have been up to. Previously my observations were that the "acceleration curve" wasn't very good (i.e. there wasn't one) - at the slow end there would be jumps of 3/4/5 counts per "click" (particularly noticeable on effect speed which changes a lot with a count at the low end) and then when you wanted to get a shift on, you'd be frantically winding the thing round and round. Anyway we digress onto FLX, this is a Solution thread I've seemingly hijacked!

Oh we FLXers have our own encoder sensitivity issues - although at least they don't spin on their own! Strange that one, the (same?) wheels on my Fat Frog have always been quite stiff...! There seems to be a lot of variability in them as other users reported theirs as quite free-running as you have on your Solution.

Sorry James, I wasn't having a pop - I was just confused how a software change could help if the "wheels spin by themselves when the bass is booming". No software algorithm could filter that out, more that the wheels needed to be "rotationally stiffer" and hence a "hardware" issue. Kevin

How can physically loose wheels be fixed by a software update?

Poor guy! Tell him from me he did a great job (on the videos - I've no idea how well it went in Dubai, I'll let you be the judge of that!)

Day 12 - Edward plays a blinder! Just a smidge of hesitation though as he pushes up the fader after the blind edit of the 6-bank stage right down lights. Has it worked... yes it has, hurrah! Edward breathes again...!

I want to know if Tyler has eye makeup on in Day 9 or if you had a team night out the day before

Day 10 - full marks to Edward for being able to say "with a ZerOS Show file you can load a whole show" without getting his tongue wrapped around the desk and just about getting away without saying "Zerosh"!!! I bet you all had a bash at that script and Edward was the only one who could say it and get through the whole "ZerOSh Showfile with ASHKII" without laughing his socks off!

That will mean iPad4 (2013, Lightning connector), iPhone 5 and earlier won't work and iPad Air and iPhone 5s and newer should. 10.3.3 is the last iOS release for the 32-bit platforms. Platforms after that are based on 64-bit processors.

Woohoo - Day 8 Edward, you get your first starring moment on the Calendar! ....and the boy plays a blinder! Great video! I'll have to start an in-office sweepstake on who gets Day 9 etc... Has Jon not given you a zero88 t-shirt yet?

Well if you did them fully in-house then all credit to you all - very professional! As usual I'm just being a bit picky! It's a great idea - and having an edit of outtakes for Boxing Day is genius! Actually, I loved Tyler's (scripted) line from 0:52 on Day 3: when describing the new Add Fixtures: "if you want your fixtures to start every 10, I can actually say Patch Offset of '20'' "

These are great, Jon. I’m thoroughly enjoying them and learning. Tyler is doing a great job and you’re just a natural. Edward comes across on the FLX S videos like he’s been doing it for years! Great work guys! Kevin ps sometimes sound goes a little muffled when the presenter turns towards the desk - maybe a lower lav mic placement on the shirt and a little more compression and make up gain?

This is one downside with "one" codebase, "ZerOS", needing to support many hardware platforms that have quite diverse control surfaces - Frog2, LeapFrog 48/96, SCD Server Pro, Orb, Orb XF, then FLX, now FLX S 24 and 48, and that's not including any internal hardware variations within these platforms. Checking against all of these platforms for input then conditioning the output accordingly must be quite a burden on the CPU and a real headache for the software team! And that's before we start running any lighting related tasks like cue stacks and FX engines. It seems, and frustratingly but quite rightly, the CPU effort is prioritised to generating the DMX stream. The usability though sounds just disastrous for your (ziglights) typical use cases. The tricky choice for the Zero88 team is like what just happened with Frog2 - do they continue to try to support the "older" probably "slower" hardware platforms or do they start to drop off the supported list. This is clearly tricky if the products are still current range like Solution! At some point in the future, the FLX processing power will be the "slow one" - although I'm hopeful that there is a little more headroom there with the quad-core implementation - and no LCDs (note to those users who want LCD scribble strips!). The other option is to diverge the software to be more specific to the hardware platform. But that then becomes an engineering headache supporting all of the branched streams of code development. I sympathise with both the users and the developers!

Lovin' (no 'g') them so far! (If you're not of a certain age... http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03048pd)

Hi Jon, it’s possible the answers are less ‘black and white’ than the poll allows. I use my FLX in several different configurations depending on the complexity of the show. It’s likely Solution users are similar. Maybe you need more detail like ‘always use a mouse’ or ‘happy to always require a mouse ‘? Kevin