K-Nine

Agreed, but do you think he will be brave enough to post a real biography Come to think of it, only Haytech, Ice and myself have actually written our introduction pieces so far. With over 400 members in this forum, there must be some more out there who could expand on their profiles slightly ... I mean I'm not expecting an autobiography from people

Surely if you can enter any number for a cue, palette etc without any numerical bounds, there are bound to be certain displays or windows etc that are going to be screwed up by not being able to show the number entered. Imagine a cue list displayed in a window on a touch screen or monitor display where most cue numbers will be typically in the range 1 - 999 with perhaps insert cues as well (eg 12.7), and then for whatever reason ( :twisted: ) you decide to enter the next cue number as 253657845145452369854785456325698547125 ... tell me that won't f 8O 8O k up your displays ! There's also the real concern of internal data structures where if a number is 0-255 it can be stored in a single byte, 0-65535 is stored in a word (two bytes) etc. Not forgetting that if you have for example seven segment displays indicating page number of submasters, playbacks etc. then the number of physical displays limits the page numbers you can have, for example a single display allows you up to 9 pages (or 10 if you include 0), a two digit display gives to page numbers 1-99 etc.

So Paul's mini-biography was in fact plagiarised from a film then

I guess in theory it would be nice not to have to put limits on the number of items (cues, palettes, macros, pages etc.), but in reality you usually have to impose some constraint, so that the software can range check entered numbers and validate command lines etc. Otherwise you could enter silly numbers and really mess up the layout of your screens etc 8O The physical memory available on a desk also affects how many different cues/palettes/submasters etc... can be programmed and stored.

Well, 'officially' ultimate is a non-contact sport ... but then again so is basketball 8O Maybe Guts Frisbee is more your style Graham Guts frisbee is a frisbee team sport, similar to murderball. Five team members stand in a line with two teams lined up parallel to each other. One team starts with the frisbee after "flipping the disk", an action similar to a coin toss, but using the frisbee itself. One member of the team is then selected to start play. That member then raises their arm to indicate they are ready to throw, at which point the members of the opposing team "freeze". The thrower then throws the frisbee as hard as possible at someone on the opposing team. If they miss the "scoring area" (roughly the area of the opposing team) the receiving team scores a point. If the throw is within the scoring area and the receiving team drops the frisbee, the throwing team gets a point. The receiving team then picks up the frisbee and becomes the throwing team.

Films :?: ... Please explain

I'm not sure what Paul has been drinking, but can I have a pint please

They used to have a full 18 'hole' course around the campus at Warwick University. I used to spend many happy hours throwing plastic disks around the grounds trying to hit posts. Made it even more interesting when they turned the cow field next to one of the holes into a lake There was one chap in my year at Warwick who was actually a British and European champion at frisbee golf! A quick Google search provided the following links: DEREK ROBINS 1 DEREK ROBINS 2 ... it looks like he is still playing and has even built his own golf course in Warwickshire 8O There was also a team game called Ultimate which could be played outdoors, or indoors in a sports hall ... a game of possession and trying to reach the end-zone, a bit like American football but without any of the violence

Precisely, some people did have problems with the way we had fade up/down or fade in/out times on the Sirius 250/500 so we deliberately changed them when we designed the Illusion 120/240. There were no major problems reported re fade times so we continued the fade time philosophy onto the Frog Series and the Illusion 500 desks. It is much simpler to have the definition of the transition to the state of a cue/memory stored in the one memory. I agree that it could be made clearer in the manuals, but I have attempted to explain it in more detail in other posts in these forums ... it's really not that difficult to follow ... Fade Up - relates to HTP channels going from a lower to a higher level. Fade Down - relates to HTP channels going from a higher to a lower level. LTP Fade relates to the transition to the new value of the LTP parameter (colour, movement, position). LTP action can be set to snap or fade, where it uses the LTP fade time. If you think that's complex, then compare it to the following times that are defined for the Illusion 500: Delay Up, Fade Up, Delay Down, Fade Down, Colour Delay, Colour Transition Beam Delay, Beam Transition Position Delay, Position Transition .... and in future products it may even be possible to define individual delay/fade times for each individual fixture parameter 8O

Good idea .. I'd like to think that after producing 6 issues of the Frog Series Manual (and 3 Issues of the Mambo Frog Manual) that there are some people out there who read them

You will have to ask NZ88 about that - I'm sworn to secrecy, but I can say that this topic makes very interesting reading ... maybe some of the posters are psychic 8O

There are always those who would prefer more physical submasters (ie faders and flash buttons) and those who want more programmable submasters, ie more pages. Adding more physical submasters obviously involves increased material cost and adds to the physical size of the desk, which to some is no problem, to others it is a major factor if they are short of space. Adding more pages is relatively simple, providing there is enough memory in the desk to store the additional data - hence why we increased the number of submaster pages to 20 in Release 9

This would appear to be the case I have just tried an example: Select fixture 1 and set brightness level to 25%. Deselect fixture 1 Select fixtures 2-12 Hold down Brightness button Press fixture selection button 1 ... Fixtures 2-12 now have a brightness level of 25% 8)

I have just tried this on a fat frog and it also works If you copy a submaster with a transferred memory to another submaster, it retains the link to the channel data in the memory. Therefore if you edit the memory, all the submasters which reference that memory will be updated automatically. So I guess it's just a question of what you can do quicker - transfer the memory to sub 1 on each page you require, or transfer it to one submaster and then copy the submaster to each page

Sam's suggestion is probably the simplest solution: Program your 'white cover' as a scene memory (use a high number, eg 990, if it is not part of the normal memory stack). Transfer the memory (with/without time, as required) to submaster 1 on each page of submasters. I appreciate that this will take longer than before as you now have 20 pages of subs, but that's progress for you

Obviously, now you have explained the type of effect you mean I can see how such an effects engine or automatic chase generator would save a lot of plotting time. The example you have given above is not a random chase which was mentioned originally and therefore confused me 8O What you describe is a specific algorithm (effect) based on a number of fixtures (presumably of the same type), a single colour parameter (?) and a number of different values (in this case two - white and yellow). Such an 'effect' would presumably be plotted as a 24 step chase on the current desks.

muck savages - Is this an Irish term :?:

If you download a copy of the Fixture Type Editor from the Zero 88 website, you can create your own fixture type as required. What you are suggesting would be relatively simple to create, for example; Manufacturer = K-Nine Fixture Type = My Smokies Parameter 1: Smoke1, Beamshape, Channel 1 Parameter 2: Smoke2, Beamshape, Channel 2 Parameter 3: Smoke3, Beamshape, Channel 3 Parameter 4: Haze1, Beamshape, Channel 4 Parameter 5: Haze2, Beamshape, Channel 5 Parameter 6: Haze3, Beamshape, Channel 6 Save the fixture type to floppy. Assign one of the fixture buttons on the desk to this new fixture type. Patch the start address of the fixture as required, for example, if you patched the fixture to 201, then you would set up the individual smoke machines and hazers as follows: Smoke Machine 1 - DMX address = 201 Smoke Machine 2 - DMX address = 202 Smoke Machine 3 - DMX address = 203 Haze1, Beamshape - DMX address = 204 Haze2, Beamshape - DMX address = 205 Haze3, Beamshape - DMX address = 206 If you ask me nicely, I might create the above example and send it to you

Tone Deafness Tone deafness means that everything sounds exactly the same. You can't tell one note from another, but even worse... you can't even hear the different inflections in someone's voice. It can make communicating difficult just like being color blind can make it hard to follow traffic lights. People make jokes about being tone deaf, but it's really very rare. Not being able to carry a tune in the shower doesn't qualify 8O

Various effects on brightness, colour and beamshape is something we will be looking at for the next generation of desks ... I don't have any further details at the moment as we are still in the specification/design phase of development. Hopefully, if we get the user interface right we can then add other 'effects' in later software versions

This sounds like a different type of effect altogether than simply transferring what we do with movement onto colour or beamshape. I don't think we are likely to add much in the way of new functionality to the existing Frog series of desks at the moment, but these suggestions are very useful in determining the types of functions we should be thinking of including on larger desks :wink:

Random white/yellow colourchase ... can't be too random with only two colours can it ... or am I missing something here :?

If your fixtures have CMY colour mixing you could always try the FROG function on thsose parameters ... since that would provide a random colour chase

What would expect such effect generators to do ? Would there be different effects engines for brightness (which is processed HTP) and colour and beamshape (which are processed LTP) ? Would these effects work on single fixture parameters or several fixture parameters at the same time ? How would the user interface look for such effects ?

The following items relating to functionality of the external keyboard are logged in the Frog database for review: Frog Reference 5369 - Trigger Remote Switches via external keyboard. Frog Reference 5400 - The Backspace and Delete keys should work when text editing using the external keyboard. Frog Reference 5419 - Modify the action of the cursor keys, and other keys where necessary, on the external keyboard to relate to the monitor screen rather than simply mimic the front panel cursor keys. Frog Reference 5424 - Provide the facility to enter Super User from the external keyboard . Frog Reference 5440 - Go button press from external keyboard. Frog Reference 5488 - Naming of Submaster Pages.