richard

The standard for edinburgh venues is that there is a fixed General cover, with back-light. You are sometimes allowed to re-colour, but that's usually about it. Mostly you can then suppliment with whatever you need. Your best bet is to contact their office and speak to Mandy I think (their production manager). I work for one of their competitors so probably can't help greatly! Cheers Richard

Did one at Dome 1 last year, and I know a few people who work there. Mostly nice venues, with good staff. Which space are you in?

I think that his meaning of a captured channel is something that stays at a specific level, whatever the rest of the desk does. ie: You say [capture] [1] [@] [5][0][enter] whatever you now do, whether it be to push subs up/down, run cues, run effects.... channel 1 will stay at 50 until released. It would be up for discussion as to whether the grand master would affect the channel, as well as whether captured channel levels should be recorded in cues (I would say no). It would also be nice to be able to type: [capture][dimmer][1][@][5][0][enter] meaning that dimmer 1 (ie DMX1 channel 1) is set to 50% - irrespective of the current patch - very useful for fault finding etc... Richard

Is there any chance of you releasing a simple program to convert frog show files between ASCII (USIT format) and the desk, and vice-versa. Both strand and ETC, as well as others, will do this, meaning that shows can be transported between desks with ease, you could do it to the illusion too!! It would also be a way of allowing users to edit their shows from a PC Thanks Richard

I would rather not have this feature personaly, I know of various people who have leant on the keyboard for a 520 (which has this feature) and mistakenly run a load of cues. If it is added it should be able to be turned off!

Would it be possible to change the way that cue attributes are edited to something similar to the following: Scroll through as per now, however the current cue to edit is the current cue being output, moving the cursor to another cue the makes the newly selected cue the next cue and the cue to edit, so meaning that updating on the fly is easier. (This may not make sense but I think it can be made to work) When you scroll through cue attributes, could it be set so that each of the times are treated as one field, if you want to edit the Up time, you scroll there, then press enter, then select the part of it you want to alter. Also, pressing enter after modifying an attribute should first save the changes, and then, if pressed again, return the cursor to the cue number. I spent ages going backwards and forwards!! Richard

Could you not add something like the hogs macro language into the personality file, so, say that the unit needed reseting by sending channel 5 level 128 for 3 seconds and then returning to 0 (it should also start at 0) the line would read: RESET: 5@0, 5@128, W:3, 5@0; Obviously this would only work if the fixture has been set up in a standard way, but as this is usually in the mode settings for the most used fixtures it should be OK. It would be of a massive use!! Richard

You need to look in the manual and find out which channel is the 'reset' channel, then find that in the wheel groups, and set it to the channel specified in the manual for Reset.

If you did not need to have both sets of spots on at the same time, then you could bodge a new fixture personality for them which excluded the intensity channels, you then patch the two sets of fixtures to the same four handles (buttons, whatever), patch the eight intensity channels as either generic channels or int only fixtures, and you can now seperate out the two sets of fixtures. This would mean that you can just program one set of cues for the two sets of stages, and just bring up the intensity for the stage that you want... Might work!

The desk has (I think) the most recent version of the software, it has just come back from you after seeming not have anything wrong with it (before I sent it it wasn't loading, you changed the x PB pot, and it worked fine). I am talking about when re-recording from just normal PB mode (ie, just adding/increasing channel levels and hitting 'program' again Richard

Now, this may just be my imagination, or our dimmers, but I have a funny feeling that when I record cues on my Fat Frog, if I am adding lamps to the current cue, when I press record, the output is dipping ever so slightly (ie progressively getting lower and lower by less than 1%), it doesn't always do this, and I am yet to confirm it with my microscope, but it is slightly worrying. I have got the GM and X PB masters up at full. Has this been heard of before? Thanks Richard

Would it be possible for the 'beamshape', 'colour' and 'positions' to emulate the 'wheel group' button. ie, if you are already in the position page 1, and press position again (not holding ie time <0.5 sec) then it will change to the next position page. This would then emulate a pearl in a way, and stop me from getting wound up when I forget what I am doing

You should always terminate the DMX chain. You may find you have no problems without it being done for the first few days, but then during the show lights start to flicker! Just be careful on the strand racks, sometimes they have 'terminate' switches, make sure these are OFF unless they are on the end of the chain, and if you do have them on the end of the chain switch it on, and don't put a plug in (it does happen) otherwise things go wierd. I often try to have the dimmers on the second output of the frog, just means if one of the scans starts to play silly ducks the dimmers continue working Richard

When I am in techinicals or plotting I often need to jump between cues quite a lot, the problem occurs when I think I am going to go to cue 12 say, but then we change our minds, and I want to go to cue 15, so out of habit I press clear, then the pop-up appears and I have to waste a few seconds clearing that and starting again. The option to get rid of message boxes would be a good one, however I would feel that when deleting cues there should be some form of user confirmation, on most desks it just involves pressing 'delete' or something similar twice. For this a window would be fine I would feel. But preferably actuated in a different way!

What would be really nice would be the factilty to be able to set channel levels to those in a certain cue so, something such as: 1 THRU 4 @ CUE 12 would set channels 1 thru 4 to the levels they are at in cue 12. Cheers Richard

I don't see why they wouldn't work for direct entry, the way a strand works (which is one of the few desks that has a fully working rem dim feature) is that if you press the rem-dim key in direct entry mode, the last selected groups are assumed to be those you wish to alter. so it is effectively two steps a) 1 THRU 4 @ 5 -brings channels 1>4 to 50% REM-DIM -kills the output on all other currently live channels.

It would be good if there could be a nicer way of editing cue atributes, I especially don't like the 'windows' style of continuously asking if you want to 'save changes', if I type something in any move the cursor, then yes of course I want to save the changes. Message boxes are a bad idea on a lighting desk, they slow down plotting and can confuse people (I often don't look at the screen when I use a desk I know well). Also, the fact that you delete a cue when pressing clear on the cue number seems to go against the logic of the rest of the desk. There are many times I have been given an anoying box asking if I really want to delete a cue, when all I am trying to do is clear the field before entering a different one.

I personally quite like the strand way of thigs, where channels are held in the playback until the 'Go' button is pressed. This means that you can, when busking, bring up a chanel (such as a spot), fade out the state, then fade it back in and hit go, if you currently do this you slightly annoying results. RE rem dim key, would it not be possible to make one of the function keys do this, the feature would only be required when in the channel window, where I think only a few of the keys are in use.. Cheers Richard

It would be really useful to be able to set up dimmer curves on the desk from within the patch (especially to allow switching), I know that you may say that this is a 'dimmer side thing' but since many dimmers (such as the Betapacks) and most demuxes (such as the Z88 48 way) don't have this facility (especially channel specific). It would be ever so useful! Richard

Rem Dim (Remainder dim) will automaticallly 'highlight' the specified channel(s), see strand 500 series, similar to the 'solo' key on ETC desks or 'Highlight' on the Hog, the rem-dim key should however permanently take the channels out of the programmer. The Rem Dim key should, as said above, automatically bring the channels to 'On' or to a defined level. It would be particuarly useful for use when rig-checking as well as when plotting. It would be a subject for discussion as to whether this would take out channels held by submasters as well, I would suggest not, but that could be a setup option. On a slightly related subject, currently if you edit channel levels (just in 'channel', not 'edit' mode) and do not save them, the output remains with that until you move the 'X playback' fader. I would quite like the option to just keep the programmer the same with only the action of 'Go' changing it, which would allow easier 'buskability'. On the same subject, would there be any possiblilty of being able to 'park' a channel at a specific level? - Say that channel x got knocked and is pointing at the audience.. It would be nice to be able (quickly) to be able to set that channel to '0' and have it stay there for all cues, but not be programmed as such. (All without going into setup), This could be a function such as 'Topset' (which I can't remember if you have implimented) But I would prefer the option to be able to 'park' units 'On' or at a certain level. Thanks Richard

Rem - Dim: Useage: [1] [THRU] [4] ([@][x}) [REMDIM] result: all channels apart from channels 1 thru 4 are turned off, channels 1 thru 4 are set at the level specified by [x], if [x] is not specified they are put 'on' Does the enter thing work on the 120/240? Thanks Richard

A rem dem key would be Sooo appreciated. Also, the ability to select all 'on' channels Also, I seem to remember something odd about using groups, but I can't remember what!

Hello This has been going on through a lot of releases. If you have the GM below 100% and wheel a channel up, the channel will go to 100%, then realise it shouldn't be there, if you keep going up it will start to flicker, I assume it is checking things in the wrong order?? Richard

that would be really useful, however the issue would be how would this effect the references stored to palletes in cues, would they just be deleted, would they be altered to just actual values of the original palletes, would they be replaced with whatever is put into that new pallette ... However this would be really good when setting up a desk from scratch, it is annoying to have to continuously re-program all of your gobo palletes and such-like

I think this is right for the frog, I can't remember their exact use of it but: Full mode: Record all attributes for all fixtures, whether or not they are selected (can mean that a load of pointless moves are recorded) Partial mode: Only record those fixtures that are currently selected, meaing that the show can be cleaner, but can be confusing if some fixtures are not selected. Hoper I have this right and that it helps Richard