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TomJosephSmith

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Everything posted by TomJosephSmith

  1. TomJosephSmith

    Print Patch

    No problems at all, Edward. I’m just updating our venue tech spec doc and fancied including the default patch as a table for convenience. Won’t take 2 shakes to type it out as we only have a small rig. Thanks as always Tom
  2. TomJosephSmith

    Print Patch

    Hi Edward Just wondering if this feature is now included, and if so how do we go about exporting our patch sheet? Many thanks Tom
  3. Ok brilliant That's great. This will be an excellent use of space on the desk as I only ever use a handful of palettes for beamshape / position. Really pleased you've mentioned this feature too because I think I'll find myself falling back to an empty 'patch+palettes' showfile quite often and building up playbacks from there for a specific show. I can store common 'looks' on palettes that I use regularly and just tweak them ready to create playbacks/cues for different shows, another great speedy programming tool. I think I'm going to have a good first year with the console. It was a good time to buy as this years calendar seems to be filling up with a nice variety of different events to put the FLX S24 through it's paces. Yes definitely. I'm sure you'll be hearing from me again very soon. Have a great rest of your weekend, Edward. Tom
  4. Edward, I knew you'd save me!!! Excellent tips. Why on earth didn't I think of using cuestacks for these things? That's actually given me a few more ideas now....hmm. I think a big improvement for my busking showfile would be to use a cuestack for my movement effects also...... and come to think of it I could use cuestacks to create groups of looks that incorporate effects that I could 'go' through during songs, selecting cues on the touchscreen. As long as I name things properly I could cram quite a lot in. Typing as I think here but yes, this tip will unlock a lot for me and free up faders, and I can't believe I haven't been using the desk in this way. This is interesting and something I haven't delved into. So if I understand correctly, I can set a state using any fixtures on the console, use SHIFT - RECORD and store that state in an available palette regardless of wether the palette is colour / beamshape etc? What if I have lights in my state that don't have that attribute, for instance if I have generics in the state, do their intensities still get recorded if I store the look to a colour palette? I quite inconveniently chose to start this thread when I don't have the console in front of me so can't play right at this minute unfortunately. Will be back in front of the desk on Monday. Huge thanks! The support is top. Tom
  5. Hi guys Loving my FLX S24 so far! What I'm about to ask would be pretty much solved if I had purchased the S48 instead as admittedly I appear to be right on the limit of the playback capabilities of the S24, but budget was the main consideration and I couldn't stretch to the S48 given the lowish number of events I do every year. My question revolves around 'less used' elements of the rig, things that you may need to access only 2 or 3 times or possibly even once during a performance. All of the below are things I currently dedicate faders to but wish I didn't have to. Below are a few examples from my particular scenarios:- 1. Houselights We have 6 houselight circuits powered from an 8 channel Anytronics dimmer. I have 3 dedicated wall panels that support presets for houselight control, so when the lighting desk is in the control room, I typically don't patch houselights to the console and instead use the wall controls as it frees up fixtures and playbacks on the desk. If however I want to take the console out of the control room and position myself elsewhere, I can patch DMX into the dimmer and control houselights from the desk. As we have 6 individual circuits, I find that making a 'full look' and a 'low look' for the auditorium is most affective and all I really need. This however absorbs 2 valuable faders on the S24, just for houselights. I can't put all circuits at full and dedicate only 1 fader, as the 'low' preset requires some circuits to be completely off and others at lower intensities, so it's minimum 2 faders to get the desired range of looks. 2. Auditorium uplighting / architectural stuff Around the auditorium I have some LED PARs uplighting wall features. For some events they get left on depending on the requirements of the event. They're not part of the 'main rig' so I don't need control of them at my fingerprints, but they're still part of the DMX universe and I still need to be able to set them a certain colour and leave them, or instead fade them down in conjunction with the houselights etc. 3. Hazer I have a 2 channel hazer. Similarly to the houselight situation, I have a custom combination of the 2 channels to achieve my own desired 'full haze' and 'half haze' output. From time to time I need to swap to 'half' if the stage is getting a little too thick, then toggle back again once it's cleared a little, maximum 2 or 3 times during a performance. Again, same thing, faders dedicated here to this fairly trivial task which is a waste of a valuable fader. There are a couple more things but these are the best examples. I'm already using some good tips such as using the programmer in conjunction with palettes and the programmer fade time live for things like colour, position and gobo. Also if I could sneakily request someone at Z88 has a think about a soft button playback window as part of the OS..... I understand why the limitations are what they are for the S24 and S48 and I'm fully aware that the majority of this comes down to the fact that bluntly speaking, I should've bought a larger model... but I think everyone would benefit from some non fader controlled playbacks to fall back on for basic / less important control aspects of their rig. For those of you wondering why I seem so precious about faders...... like a lot of us I often don't get the chance to see a show or even speak with the organisers prior to the event itself, so I like to have a toolkit of as much variety as I possibly can, spread across the playbacks in a logical manor that's easily recalled to create the widest possible range of looks and effects as smoothly as possible on the fly. For the rare times I do get some details on the show, I rarely get programming time as the venue runs cinema 7 days per week so there's very little downtime for the auditorium. Also, I do admit that the sporadic and ill-advised approach to equipment purchase over the last 30 years at the venue has not helped the situation as I'm trying to control so many different types of fixtures from different eras / using different technologies all mashed together, you can quickly run out of playbacks this way I find while trying to get the best out of the not so best fixtures. Any help / hints / tips greatly appreciated for someone trying to do way too much in a perfect way when nobody even asked them to in the first place lol Many thanks Tom
  6. Alex / Edward - thank you very much for your help. I now have a new profile for my fixture including a reset macro which I will test with the fixtures themselves next week. I took delivery of my console yesterday and I've been playing with it for hours. Even though I haven't connected a single light yet, I couldn't be happier. The hardware is very solid and the software is so snappy. My first show of the year isn't until February 15th so I've got loads of time to get used to my new desk. I'll be taking it into my venue beginning of next week to have a proper play with a full rig. I'll probably be back in the very near future with questions. So far I've been able to find my way around very easily thanks to my previous Leap Frog experience, and the fact that the S24 is extremely intuitive. Thanks again for all your help guys. Tom
  7. Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas! So I'm hoping to order my console 1st week of Jan. In the meantime I've been playing around with Phantom ZerOS and it's given me a great feel for the OS, which by the way has improved in so many ways since I last used it. Quick question regarding fixture profiles for movers and how they work with macros. I patched my venue rig and noticed that one type of mover we have did not display the macro tab when selected. I downloaded the fixture type editor software to inspect the fixture profile and indeed there are no macros set up for this particular fixture. Based on the values in the fixture manual, I've created a reset macro setting channel 13 (function) to 201 (the reset range of the fixture is between 200-209). The Edit Macro window looks like this:- Command: Set Channel Level / Data: Funct to level 201 Command: Wait / Data: 10000 ms Is this all I need for an effective fixture reset macro or have I left something out? I won't be able to test it until I get the console and patch in but I'd like to get everything ready in advance if poss as time at the venue for fiddling around with things like this is minimal. This fixture doesn't include remote lamp on/off so it's only the reset macro I'm after. Second question and I really hope it doesn't sound stupid....... I've now saved this modified fixture as it's own file, so I have a .ift file with my new profile sitting on my desktop. I've fiddled for ages in Phantom ZerOS but I still can't figure out how on earth to import a custom fixture type that isn't part of the standard library to the S24. I feel like I'm missing an obvious button. When I tap 'Add Fixtures', it sends me directly to the list of manufacturers. If I tap 'Load' in the sidebar, it seems to only be looking for showfiles. Your help is greatly appreciated. Tom
  8. Pic very much appreciated along with the list of items. Many thanks!
  9. That's fantastic, Edward. Thank you for that. Do you know of any FLX S users using iPad stands that give a nice working height behind the desk? Something that clips on to the console would be even better, like the mount included with the Chamsys QuickQ. Tom
  10. Edward, thanks so much for such a speedy response and answering all of my questions! I really appreciate the explanation regarding colour. that all makes total sense. Ahh excellent! If I was to page lock a fader, am I right in thinking this essentially then occupies 2 playbacks, one on each page? How many effects palettes are available for effects I modify on top of the 45 included? One question I forgot to add to my original post. I remember on my Leap Frog there were various options to change the window layout on the external monitor. If I was to use an iPad as a secondary monitor with FLX S24, how configurable are the displays? Could I put for instance all of my palettes on the iPad for handy live use and use the internal screen for output view or fader view? Yes deffo I'd love to have a play in the new year. I'll keep that in mind for sure. Many thanks! Tom
  11. Hi everyone This is my first post so thanks for having me 😀 I'm looking at purchasing an FLX S24 in the new year and I have a few questions before I do. For the past few years I've been running a Martin M-PC setup with an M-Play faderwing. It's great kit but I want to swap back to a dedicated console for a few reasons. I'm tired of laptops with separate bits and bobs and cables everywhere etc, I just want a nice clean / simple console to plug in and go without worrying about Windows updates and all of that mundane stuff. I also can't stand the way the touch faders take the 'feel' out of the show. For instance, on a proper desk I can spend the majority of my time looking at the stage and simply 'feeling' the faders. This is impossible with the touch surface so that's been a huge gripe of mine. Lastly, it's simply too much for me - it's good software and all but I'm not a full time lighting guy and don't need 90% of the features, so I find the whole thing a bit cluttered. I run probably between 8 and 12 shows a year at my venue and then around 5 or 6 events out and about, mainly bands and very small festivals, so I need a desk that can adapt very quickly and easily without too much fussing and ducking. Prior to the M-PC stuff, I had a Leap Frog 48. The main reason I moved on was the general size and weight of the console. At the time I needed to be able to carry my desk around with me on foot and public transport. The Leap Frog was a no go for this so that's why I ended up switching to a setup I could fit in my backpack. While looking for a new console, I was delighted to find the FLX S, specifically the S24 as it's nice and small. I've looked at all of the shows I've done over the last 3 years and to my delight I've never used more than 48 fixtures simultaneously (43 at my largest show including hazer), so that's that worry out of the way. I do however have some questions so hopefully some of you guys will be able to help me out. 1. Colour behaviour with HEX LEDs etc When I had my Leap Frog, I seem to remember that the colour picker and auto created colour palettes only took advantage of RGB. I have a stock of RGBWAUV fixtures and I'm curious.... does the FLX S take advantage of all colour parameters when using the colour picker / auto palettes / mood boards? More importantly, does the effects section take advantage of White and Amber from a HEX fixture when creating effects such as rainbows? My last ZerOS update was probably around early 2015 so I expect a lot has come on since then. 2. Effects section Since switching to M-PC, I've learnt to rely on the effects section much more heavily. In the Leap Frog days I manually created chases for the vast majority of my needs and only really used the effects section for movement. I've read up as much as I can about FLX S and of course watched the training videos but I'm still after a little more info about the effects section. I'm nervous that I'm going to back myself into a corner with effects if I can't create my own or heavily manipulate what's included. Can someone give me a rundown of what I can and can't do? For instance, if I load a rainbow effect and it's not using the Amber parameter of my fixture, can I tell the console to incorporate that parameter into the effect or am I restricted to the effect controlling only the channels defined by the console? As you can probably tell, I'm a little worried about the colour side as this ties into my first question. I'm not worried about movement as the basic shapes with offsets will be fine for my needs. 3. Grand master / tap tempo / effect speed This may be a silly question but I'm just trying to imagine how I'm going to adapt my operating style. I've sussed that I need to sacrifice a playback to be my grand master, another playback for tap tempo / chase speed and another for effect speed. How does the desk behave when the page is switched and these functions are being used? I'm struggling to imagine a grand master on a fader that's pageable for some reason... my head can't work it out. Is it possible to set the master playback as the grand master, and if so, what does the Go button then do? This is specific to my festival shows where I need on the fly control of these things to busk smoothly. 4. Inhibitives Something I do a lot on M-PC is set up inhibitive faders for groups of lights, using them as intensity masters for certain types of fixtures. It basically allows me to kill all LEDs and movers intensity without affecting front light or blinders at all, then when I bring it back up all of the effects are still running and it's very easy to make big impactful bumps, trading blows between LEDs and movers, dropping to black on the offbeat, bringing it back up at the start of the next bar.. you know the score. What would be the best practice to achieve this sort of operation in ZerOS on the FLX S24? As the weeks go on and I think more about this I'll probably have more questions but these are the main ones that stand out right now. Huge thanks for your help in advance. All the best Tom
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