richard

Dunno if this has been suggested before, but one thing I find very boring is having to click backwards/forwards to get to the current memory that is live on stage to edit it. This is especially annoying when I have left gaps in my memory numbers in case I add cues. What I would suggest would be that if you press and hold the 'memory' button then the next memory is set to the current memory. This would then also follow the same logic as the fact that pressing memory once jumps the cursor back to the memory number field.

I understand what you are wanting, and I know how useful it is. What some other desks do is they give you the option as to how the sub-masters each treat LTP channels, with 'snap' or 'fade' options. When set to 'snap' the LTP channels would snap to their new levels when the sub has gone past a certain point (as it does now), if set to 'fade' the sub would fade the channel through the levels - as it would an HTP channel - with the output being dependent on the level of the fader. This would remove the need to program it as a chase, and makes busking far easier as you can flip through colours/gobos more easily (without having to use the wheels which can take a while to set up).. Would be a nice feature to add I would say...

Regarding the whole lack of playbacks issue that has been raised, I would say that this is showing a lack of understanding how how such a desk is used. You can run a full show on a desk with only 10 faders, you just have to set the desk up differently. The hog II is often used for large shows without the expansion wing, as big shows don't tend to use the flash buttons that often. One thing that would be nice with the desk would be the ability to use a DMX input to trigger 'virtual' playbacks or just channels. This would mean that you could plug in a simple desk with loads of faders (such as the frog) and use it to trigger all of the generic channels and groups of generic channels. This is possible with desks such as the Hog and is a nice way to do this without having to buy an expensive playback wing!

At the moment neither of the explanations are very clear. I would phrase it as: The fade up/down times entered will be used on the run-in to the selected memory (so the down time will be the time taken fo the previous cue to disappear). The current frog usage is the industry standard, so it would be stupid to change it, one of the big complaints I hear of the old Sirius 24/48s was that the times were so odd.

I would think a main thing to consider for the new desk is to have a fundamental re-think on the way that channels work. I would think that it would be sensible for the desk to consider channels and fixtures as the same thing, it may be that channels 1-48 would be generics and 49- 60 being fixtures, but you would be able to do everything with all of them. This would mean that editing could be done with the wheels for all channels, it may also be nice to add a fader for each of the 'fixture' channels, meaning that you can treat them in exactly the same way as normal channels when plotting. I would actually suggest making it so that your fixtures can be anywhere on the desk (channel number wise) and you could then be able to buy more fixtures (ie, a frogII would be the same hardware as a fat frog II, but would just be software upgradable) This would mean that people can buy the smaller channel version and up them selves when they need to. My main point with building a new desk is that the developers should ALL go and play properly with the main desks on the market at this time, even employing someone who knows the desks to show them how they work. A vast number of the changes that have been made to the Frog OS since it came out should have been in the original release - things such as plotting to attribute level are an obvious requirement from anyone who works in the club/music/theatre lighting industry professionally, and are something that is available on all of the major (and most of the middle ground) desks. A few desks that should be tried would be: Avolites Pearl (most similar to Frog) WholeHog II and III Strand 520 (mostly theatre, but Frog needs to cater to that also I would think) ETC express/expression range (as per 520) Anyway, that's just my thoughts. Thanks Richard

doesn't answer the point Which is a very good point and is one of the reasons why the frog (and illusion) could never be used in large scale pro-theatre (due to the way that Lighting Designers and board operators work.

As I said, I would make it only applicable to the main playback, and have it optional - you would probably only use it in mainly theatre style shows which only use the x-playback. It could then completely ignore the subs

I would think that AMD would be quite easy to implement. In my eyes it should only work with the stack (playback) and should purely 'look ahead' to the next cues, and for any fixtures where the intensity is at zero, set them to the appropriate attribute values for the next cue. You should be able to turn this feature on and off from superuser. It does not need to be anything complex, and since it would probably only ever be used when using the 'go' button - so for theatre style shows - there would be no need to worry about the subs etc.. It would make the desk much much much nicer for using in theatre.

It is actually quite difficult to tell you how to plug the smoke machine in to the DMX cable - because it is one of the simplest things to do, but the exact method depends on your set-up. Basically you plug the DMX cable (which comes out of the desk) in to the DMX in socket on the smoke machine. However since you also need to plug the desk in to your dimmers and maybe your moving lights you either need to plug the smoke machine in before or after them. You should be able to go out of the 'DMX out' from the dimmers, into the 'DMX in' on the smoke machine, but that does depend on the dimmers. You could run a cable out of the 'DMX out (B)' socket (the empty 5 pin socket on the desk) and just plug that in to the smoke machine only - but this would depend on having a long DMX cable. With regard to patching, as was said before, just set the smoke machine to address '48' (don't ask how to do this unless you know the exact make and model of the smoke machine - read the manual) and then you can use channel 48's fader or flash button as you would if it was a light. I would suggest that you try to find someone with some experience to help you though as this is all pretty basic stuff and not very easy to describe in writing!

I would like it if you could use keys on the keyboard to jump to certain fields. For example F6 could jump to up time, F7 to down time etc etc. I also see no reason why you couldn't map every key on the front panel to a keyboard key (as per strand genius Pro), space could be 'Go' etc etc. Richard

A good idea is to use each sub for the same type of thing on every page - for example, you use sub 1 on every page to do movement looks, sub 2 to do colours, sub 3 to do gobo, then subs 5 and 6 to do various par can stuff (allowing you do cross fade these) then maybe sub 7 to do the intensities for your scans, you could then put a couple of overall 'looks' using everything on Sub 12, (things like a preset state or something) You can then make Page 1 maybe Fast stuff, Page 2 slow, Page 3 Medium etc etc etc. You then don't need to note everything down

It would, I expect be a temporary HTP output, so would treat the data on the sub as a 'held' HTP output (if that makes sense) You would simply be fading the colour value up - ignoring LTP triggers and such, so for example: Sub 1 contains a LTP chase with two steps ony of colour data - step 1 col@DMX128, step 2 col@DMX00 Sub 2 contains HTP colour data, with Col@DMX255 (FF) When Sub 1 and Sub 2 are both at 00 - output is not affected When sub 1 is at full, sub 2 is at 0, output is entirely steps from sub 1 When sub 1 is at zero and sub 2 is at full, output is col@DMX255 when sub 1 is at full and sub 2 is at full, output is still col@DMX255 when sub 1 is at full and sub 2 is at 25%, output alternates between col@DMX128 (step1 of chase) and col@DMX63 (level from Sub 2) So, in a way you would have two output areas on the desk, the LTP and the HTP processes, they would then be merged on at HTP basis. The other (maybe simpler) option would be to just make the sub set the output to the relevant level on an LTP basis - so whenever you move the sub the output would snap to that level, independant on whether anything else is running, this would have its uses, so it might be nice to have the option between these two areas - I dunno..

The way that some other desks do it is that they lay the HTP values over the LTP values - which may seem odd so bear with me!! The sub which fades would override any LTP subs/chases on an HTP basis, it would always have a out level of 0 and you would set the upper level as you stated. So, if you had a chase running colours on sub 1, then whenever that chase had a higher output level than your colour fader then the colour will go to that of the chase, however when your colour fader has the highest level it will stay at that.. The downsides to using the wheel are many and include: 1) The wheel will override any chases etc I think?? - to return it you have to release it in some way (although I can't remember exactly what would happen here so I may be wrong.. 2) When using a fader you can mark the different colours/gobos along the track, meaning that you can see what it will do.. The only thing with this will be that you will need to be able to record these subs at attribute level - as you would only want the one wheel on each sub, although one option would be that as it is HTP, you would just need to set other attributes to zero when recording it (so they would be saved but just would not affect the output.. I dunno if this makes sense, but let me know!!

That was the point I was making - what a lot of ops like to do is put their gobo wheel/colour wheel on to a sub (or any fader) so that they can just whiz it up and down to change the colour (in an HTP style) - this is what you cannot do on the desk!

Hoever it is worth pointing out that the just works as a 'snap' sub - in that as soon as you raise the sub it will snap the colour to the max level programmed in the state - at the moment you can not fade through the colours along the movement of the sub - although that would be nice!

You could operate a limited number of moving lights on the desk, but it isn't pretty! You would have to treat each attribute of the lamps as a different channel on the desk - ie channel 1 would be pan, 2 tilt, 3 colour etc (depending on how you set it up). You could then put the pan and titlt on to subs to help but it would be quite messy..

I think, although I may be wrong, that what John would like is the facility to control LTP channels via a fader and treat them as LTP in only that one fader - For example, to put the colour wheel on to a sub, and push up that sub to fade through the colour wheel (or the same for the gobo wheel), it is very nice for live situations where you want to be able to just whiz through the colours without thinking - I know it can be done using the wheels etc, but that isn't the easiest of things. The easiest way that I can see to implement this would be to have a field in the submasters screen where you can set each sub to 'treat LTP as HTP' or 'fade through LTP'. It would be a nice feature to have!

I would think that the easiest way to do this would be to have the possibility of triggering virtual bump buttons on subs - ie you could link cue 3 to sub 1.6, then when you run cue 3 (a static state) sub 1.6 would also be 'bumped' (a chase). You could have a 'bump_on' field and a 'bump_off' field, so a cue can turn one sub on and one sub off. Or you could 'link' to sub '-1.6' (the negative signifying that it should be turned off. Before someone points out that you can already put chases in to cues, this I am fully aware of, but if you are lighting theatre, an want, maybe, a light bulb flickering overhead for a whole scene, it is much better to have only the light blub plotted into the chase, and the state seperatly so that you only have to plot the actual state once and can mod it easily.

I like that idea, you could have the equivalent to the attribute F/S (fade or snap) in the cues, which would define what the movement of the subs would do..

Hello I would just like to make a small point. While using the strand 500 series, to build and record a state (scene) from the 'Live' screen (from where the show is usually run from) I do the following (assuming I am in direct 1 digit mode (*=enter): [1] [@] [5] (channel 1 @ 50%) [2] [@] [2.5] (channel 2 @25%) [3] [@] [4] (channel 3 @ 40%) [record] [1] [time] [3] [/] [5] [delay] [10][/][0] [text] [hello] [*] to do the same on the illusion series I have to do the following (assuming in direct 1 digit...) [channel] [1][@][5] [2][@][2.5] [3][@][4] [save] {select cue number] [1]{select /click 'OK'} [>] [hello] [>] [>] [3][*] [>] [5][*] [>] [10] [save] As you can see this takes far, far longer. (I may have got the number of >'s wrong) I know that the strand is far more expensive, but if you seriously want to break in to the proffesional market you need to take note of the way that the current standard desks work, I have used the strand as the example, but ETC desks use a similar syntax, and it is what people become to expect. At the present, while the illusion contains most of the features you would need from a lighting desk, the simple, useful features take far too long to access. There is far too much use made of seperate windows, which while nice and easy for a beginner to understand, they are not much use when you are trying to program a larg-ish show. If it is felt that all these windows, such as the CDW, CDD etc are really required (I don't think they are, but...) then I think that all the desk functions should be available from within the single 'channel' window - ie, from there you should be able to record cues, without exiting, you should be able to specify their times, and run them. You should be able to selectivly record specific channels (ie [1][thru][12][save][15] saves the levels of channels 1 thru 12 into cue 15). Most operators work with a seperate LD, therefore their job involves a lot of dictation. Most LDs call '1 at 50, 3 at full, record that as cue 12, with a time of 12 and 15 (or just 12). In order for this desk to be of any real use in a professional enviorment you need to be able to create cues at the speed of the Lighting designer calling them. So using a mouse or cursor keys is really not acceptable. I like the idea of the edit live, screens, and they are fine when you are working on your own as the LD, plotting yourself. But when you have only 5 seconds before the cue and you want to knock channel 180 up 15%, you really don't want to have to go through 20 odd key-presses to be able to do this. You should be able to run cues from the edit live screen, and have the cue number follow. So that you can be modding continuously... I do think that the illusion is good, and it does have a lot of promise, but it needs to conform with more of the current standards before it will be able to be considered anything approaching useful for a larger scale venue. Cheers Richard

Please note, the following is from memory, and may be for a vari*lite, but I think it works for a mac too: The rotating/indexing gobo wheel has two sets of ranges on the one channel - ie you go through the gobo wheel on the control channel twice, the first time the gobo will index, the second time it will rotate. ie: step 1 : gobo 1 index step 2 : gobo 2 index step 3 : gobo 3 index step 4 : gobo 1 rotate step 5 : gobo 2 rotate step 6 : gobo 3 rotate (I know there are more that three gobos, but hopefully this explains a bit) It may not seem very clear, but the dmx allocation thing in the manual should help.. Richard

Using partial programming you can put solely colour or gobo or position attributes into a chase, as you can with a memory. I usually merge the different fixtures into one for a lot of these chases, there is a limit to how much you can do, but I don't usually find it too bad. When you consider a pearl has about the same limit it really is not too bad! I would find that trying to use multiple memories would be rather confusing, as knowing what you have active at any one time would become a little difficult. If you wanted the functionality you say, I would have thought that the mambo frog would be more suited to your requirements. Richard

I find that the Submasters are usually OK for these things, I place different types of chases/scenes on each sub (ie movement on 1, colour on 2...) and have different 'moods' for each on different pages, since the frog has page overlay this means that you can easily jump between different moods, and combine whatever you like. I can then add to that by using the palletes, and put pre-programmed sequences on the memory stack. I do end up writing some stuff down on paper, but then I do that while using a hog, and since that is around 20x the price of a frog I don't thing that Z88 have too much to worry about!

I would be a little unhappy about having to use the navigation keys for a lot of this. It is a lot quicker to just be able to hit things and makle things happen, having a seperate programmer screen would be great though..

My suggestion for untagging the attributes would be to smiply hold down a button (maybe clear, maybe not) and move the encoder. To display tagged attributes a star or similar could appear beside the levels in the LCD to indicate tagged attributes. Does this make sense?? Thanks Richard