drscoop

Just wondering - how "zero" does intensity have to be before SmartTag ignores it? I wonde rif it was at, say 1-2%, the lamp is unlikely to be visible, but SmartTag would then record an intensity, and so capture the fixture? And, if so, can the profile be edited such that the minimum value on the Intensity channel could be changed from 0 to a DMX value of 001 or 002?

Hi, On a current show we have a mix of effects (colour fades across the cyc, and a circle 8 on moving heads) running alongside a more conventional colour chase on some fresnels, all on the same cue fader. I know if I tap the relevant flash button the fresnels will change their timing to my tap, but is there a similarly easy way to change the effects engine timing in a live manner?

Hi Edward, I remember you helping me with this when we first got our FLX desk - it looks like this is a common frustration. I wonder if a later release might have a default/switchable option to home and reset the head on fading to zero? Or at least get Smart Tag to accept a zero intensity recording for moving heads, in a future release?

Thanks Edward, We’ll update the desk to 7.9.5 and play with palettes for the gobo positions. Using Capture with these two combined, the reliability looks better. Out pf curiosity, on a small rig, is there any reason not to just use Snapshot recording for every cue? I wonder if that solves any tracking issues we might inadvertently incorporate.... This might be better asked in the ZerOS section, but the 7.9.5 update brings options to add further universes, and the upgrade path to 2 DMX universes that was previously available, suggest there is a lot of functionality on the S24 that is simply software locked. Do you plan other unlock possibilities? We only need, really, a 48 fixture desk and a single universe but we found that having extra colour palettes for the various LED fixtures would be handy. Might we, one day, be able to pay to upgrade the numbers of palettes from 48 to 96? Or to purchase upgrade access to the gel library vs the mood boards so we can look up specific gels?

Edward, as always, thanks for the advice on all this. - for the moving heads, they do home with the tilt axis parallel to stage as power is applied, but then the fixtures rotate 90 degrees once DMX is applied so we were unsire if this was a fixture or desk home trait. We will set up a preset as you suggest. - the colour wheel explanation makes sense - we can set up some of the colours in palettes to offset this. We have a mix of Chauvet fresnels and profiles, plus some ETC LED and the RGBAL values for each virtual gel are different. I guess these need 3 different palettes per colour, one for each light type? We will therefore need to be choosy so we don’t exceed the 48 palettes available to us on the desk! Or is there a way to capture multiple light profiles in a single palette? - still a bit perplexed on the gobo issue - I thought we had hard-programmed the gobo index value by specifically setting the pan, tilt, colour gobo wheel and gobo rotation setting in each scene, as we programmed each scene from a neutral position. I guess the easiest way to check this is to export the show as a CSV and see which channels have hard-coded values? We had, we thought, successfully recorded the positions as a palette, but when recalling this it tended to come back in variable orientations. I think the plan will be to get he desk and a few heads put the venue and spend some time building experience with them together - I suspect a some of this is beginner’s teething troubles and so we’ll explore a]these suggestions in detail when time is less pressing and there’s not an audience wanting a show!

The local theatre group Iwork with and I are currently running our first show on the FLX S24 and our new lighting rig. Firstly, a bit]g thanks to Edward for answering many questions on setup etc. However, actually setting up a show for real has thrown up some odd behaviours that I suspect are our inexperience vs any desk capability issues. I suspect we’re simply missing some experienced thinking on best practice but I wonder if anyone can help advise on these problems? - we are running several Chauvet LED fresnels, with a virtual colour wheel. If we select a colour from this virtual wheel, then select to crossfade to a second colour wheel setting, cross fading from one to the other cycles through all the intermediate options, even with a colour fade time of zero. If we instead select similar hues from the colour picker, we get a smooth crossfade, as expected as this is fading from one set of LED values to another. Can we fade from one colour wheel setting to a other without the intermediate colours being evident? - we also have several Martin Rush MH-5 moving heads that cause us a few issues. Does anyone have advice on solving the following questions: The heads are rigged with the “Front -> “ markings pointing toward stage, but the home position sets the yoke at 90 degrees to the stage, so the yoke axis is up/downstage, not stage left/stage right. Tilt, therefore, tilts the head perpendicular to the stage. We could rotate the clamps by a quarter turn, but surely if the lamp is orientated to face forward as per markings, the lamp should home to have the yoke parallel to the stage? Is there a reason for this orientation that we’re missing? We have been using the effects engine on these heads. However, when the effect is not required, say on the next cue, if we clear the effect and set intensity to zero, whilst the heads stop moving etc during programming, when playing back the cue, the heads still move but with no intensity. To actually stop the lights, we have to program a cue with both a set position and some intensity, then an auto trigger cue with zero intensity to get the effect to stop. It works, but it is not graceful. However simply setting the next cue with no specific intensity and position on the moving heads, just an ‘effect off’ command does not record any positional information in the cue so the heads continue to move but with no light output. How do we get around this continued movement? We are also struggling with gobo indexing. On these fixtures, the rotating gobos do not continually rotate with indexed positions as far as we can find. The degree of rotation is about 280-300 degrees in total, so about 140-150 degrees of rotation. each way. On running our master cue list, whilst gobos were programmed to appear in a specific orientation, on playback the gobo display was not reliable, with gobos appearing upside down and not having sufficient rotational movement to get back to the right orientation. I think this variability comes from the random natureof where the previous head movement (e.g a chase or effects engine audience sweep) had stopped, coming out of an effect chase or other movement. Sometimes shortest path (perhaps moving using Move on Dark) to the next cue position was, say, a 50 clockwise rotation to give the yoke 180 degrees from home, rather than a counterclockwise one of 130 degrees to return to home orientation. On tilt, therefore, this led to the head being inverted compared to where we have programmed from and thus the gobo appears upside down or otherwise misaligned. How do we force a path to next position to give a specific orientation so all our gobo indexing then becomes robust and reliable each time, every time? (Other than requiring a “go dark” cue followed by a hard return to ‘home’ position”)? Hope these issue all make sense? Would welcome suggestions and advice on how we work around some of there unfamiliarity issues? Thanks in advance...

That profile works perfectly, thank you! Now just need to ask Capture to get the FXPars working in the visualisation package - I don't seem to be able to get them to come on with either the original or revised profile, though I can see the desk is outputting DMX.... Hope to see you at PLASA!

Hi, Is there a way of assigning the master cue fader to control the cue stack intensity, instead of releasing the cue list and returning to cue 1? I have a scene where I would like to repeatedly fade out the cue list to blackout, busk an impromptu section, then fade back to the prior state. I could insert a blackout cue, bring up the other cues on the playback faders, then swap back, but I need to do this several times in quick succession, and just dropping the fader would be helpful... Or is there another clever way around this? Thanks, as always, for answering all these questions!

Thanks Edward, that’d be very useful if you could advise. If I interpret you correctly, I could possibly have 3 custom profiles, so I could add the four FXPars three times over, with the same 4 DMX start addresses but with: - outer RGB LED ring, accessing the colour picker - inner RGB LED, accessing the colour picker - strobe function I’ve not used the fixture editor before, so an idiot’s guide would be great. Alternatively/additionally, we could muddle through this show and it’s maybe a good excuse to get to PLASA again in September with a USB stick and get some face to face training? This might not be the best place to ask this, but whilst I’m here, is there an easy way to quickly set an encoder to zero? I’d find it helpful when dealing with RGB colour mixing as things seem to default to 255. I’d hoped that a quick double-tap on the centre of the encoder or on the individual blue channel tabs at the base of the touchscreen might do it, but it didn’t seem to - could this perhaps be a future feature? Thanks for all your advice and help! PS: we had training on our new FLX S24 desk this weekend from TFG/Stage Superstore in Manchester - they did a great job and were a real pleasure to work with. Just thought I’d let you know your remote training teams are doing you proud...

Hi, I noticed that, when auto-generaing profiles, the rotating gobo profile on the MH-5 is slightly out from those in the fixtures - they're all offset by one position. So, Gobo 2 in the wheel is gobo 1 in the auto-palette, Gobo 3 as palette gobo 2 etc, with gobo 7 being gobo 1 in the palette. However, if I tap on the encoder, the renderings are correct - there seems to be a bug in the generation of the image capture in the profile generator? Screen grabs from PhantOS attached...

Hi, We've just taken delivery of some Chauvet FXPar9's for an upcoming show. Using the v37 profile and 9-channel mode, I can access all the colour parameters on the encoder wheels to manually dial in colours, but the profile doesn't let me use the colour picker or mood board to select specific colours. Could this be updated? Ideally, as the fixture has an outer ring of RGB LEDs and a central RGB LED, it'd be ideal to be able to pick either set, then tap to select the required colour for each group of three channels. Or is there a way I can enable this in the fixture builder? Returning to Zero88 programming after a bit of a break, so simple instructions would be very welcome! Thanks in advance.

Got it! Hadn't realised that hitting the "colour" attribute button repeatedly scrolled through the alternate channels associates with that attribute. Makes perfect sense! If the group go ahead with the purchase, I will seek out a thorough training course in the locality.... I noticed that the courses local to Manchester are after the show we planned to roll this rig out for, but also noticed you offer in-venue training. How would we get a cost for this? I'll also drop the fixtures team a line, as one of the lamps might be absent - whilst the 2K Chauvet Ovation fresnel is present (F-915FC) the newer, smaller version (F-415FC) isn't. The channel maps appear the same so it may well not be an issue, unless there are any odd idiosyncrasies. Thanks, again, for the on-going assistance!

Hi Edward, Slightly different question having played with the PhantOS PC software. It looks like the lights we are looking to acquire already exist already in the fixture list (big plus vs some of the other desks under consideration!) and control of most of these are self explanatory. The beam, colour etc palettes work fine for most lamps. However, one of the lights we're looking at for effects is a Chauvet FXPar9. I can patch this in on the desk and see how to access some parameters, but the light has 9 channels per fixture, for the two sets of LEDs, and a strobe control. These don't auto-generate in the palettes or offer independent control of the two LED light sources. How do I get control of the lights on a channel-by-channel basis? I may have missed this in the manual? Thanks, again, for the assistance...

Thanks Edward, that’s very helpful.... I will play around with the visualiser. You mentioned the unlock dongle - I assume Capture, therefore, comes with a USB key to activate, so we can install it on a clue of laptops for different users within the group, then just use the dongle as required to work alongside the console, depending who is programming that show.... Is that acceptable? And if I have this right, the PC and FLx S24 connect via Ethernet - if this Ethernet router is Wi-fi enabled, we can then use an iPad as external touchscreen too? So, console and iPad using zMonitor and laptop to see what’s going on? And for the size of rig we need, Capture Solo, at ca £300, should do all we require? Apologies for all the questions - spending someone else’s money so want to be confident in my recommendations!

Hope this question is OK for this group, but would appreciate some thoughts from the community - I'm returning to theatrical LD work after some time away, so my knowledge of the latest Zero88 range and capabilities is a little out of date... I have been asked by a local dramatics group to re-invigorate their lighting setup - they are looking to purchase an LED based rig and are looking at control options. One option suggested to us is to get a FLX S24. I quite like this option, and the ability to add an iPad as an external touchscreen, and it also has the benefit of fitting the budget, which is not extensive! One of the key constraints the group have with their venue is access time for programming - this is a shared facility and rig and tech time are highly limited. I wondered what cost-effective options might be available to us to link the Zero88 and a visualiser to programe shows off-line, either with or without the console? I saw mention of Capture as a posibility and wondered if this links nicely with the Phantom ZerOS to allow the bulk of presets to be constructed off-line and visualised? Capture Solo looks like it might fit our needs, though I wondered how it authenticates and whether it could be installed on different PCs, dependent upon which of the team were using it, i.e. is it donlge-authorised, or just single install licensed? I'd be grateful if anyone is wiling to share their experiences and advice of a suitable setup for the group, that will not break the bank. We're not going for a huge rig here - a dozen or so LED fresnels and ellipsoidals, a few LED PARs, 2-4 LED cyc lights and 2-4 small moving heads, dependent upon how the budgets are looking - so we don't need anything hugely over-specced. Be grateful for any thoughts and advice you might be able to offer.... Thanks in advance.