K-Nine

Sam has summarised it quite nicely If there are more parameters for a particular attribute than will fit into one wheel group, the LED in the Wheel Group button will be lit. Pressing the Wheel Group Button will cycle through the wheel groups and the corresponding fixture parameters will be displayed on the Wheel LCD.

You should be able to save your show from the phantom frog onto a floppy disk on your PC. Go through the same procedure as you would on the real desk. Load the showfile into your desk - go into desk setup and patch the fixtures to the correct DMX addresses - it should be OK

As far as I am aware, any new or modified functionality should always be accessible via the front panel controls, as you cannot guarantee that the user has an external keyboard connected. However, if the functions can also be acessible via the external keyboard, then all the better The most likely candidates for using external keyboard overlay would be the function keys. F1 - F4 should mimic the Function keys F1-F4 on the front panel but I'm not convinced that they all work :oops: (This would be one to fix in the next update, if this is the case). That still leaves function keys F5 - F12 on the external keyboard. The question is - which would be the most useful front panel keys to map onto the external keyboard - I would guess possibly MEMORIES, SUBMASTERS and OUTPUTS. What would others like to see being accessible via the external keyboard :?:

All the various ideas, suggestions etc are logged in the Frog Database and given Frog Reference Numbers. It is then up to the Sales, Marketing and Rand Ddepartments to review these items and make a decision as to which items progress to being designed and implemented. Resource availability and time scales are also a factor in deciding which items get implemented in the feature updates. Graham has a good idea of where the frog series is aimed at in the market and that also influneces the functionality which we put on the desks. The Frog desks have come on 'leaps and bounds' since the first release of software several years ago. Try putting version 3 software or earlier on your desk and see how many wonderful features you now take for granted, that you didn't have back then 8O

If you take the time to name the submasters, then there is always the Submasters screen on the monitor :wink:

I'm not sure about the PDF versions of the manuals. The actual manual is written using Corel Ventura and then converted to PDF format - a full uncompressed version for the printers and a compressed version which goes on the website.

The Frog Series and Mambo Frog Operating Manuals have been updated and now contain all the new and modified functionality up to, and including Frog Series software version 9.0. The manuals are in PDF format and can be downloaded by clicking on the links below: Frog Series Operating Manual CLICK HERE Mambo Frog Operating Manual CLICK HERE

As far as I know all pan/tilt calculations in the desk are done as 16-bit. The resultant values are then sent to the fixture as 8 or 16 bit depending on the fixture data personality. Coarse and fine parameters are treated as a single 16 bit value which is then output on the two separate DMX channels. If a 16 bit fixture is moving slowly you would expect the coarse channel values to be moving slowly, but the fine values will be changing very quickly between 0-255.

There could be a difference when using a movement effect in a position palette, since there is no way to directly edit a palette, in the same way as you can a memory or submaster.

I have just tried this on a fat frog here and this does not appear to be the case. Maybe this was a bug in an earlier version of software ?

Check the outputs screen or the fixture outputs screen and see if the DMX outputs for the pan/tilt parameters for the fixtures looks jerky or smooth. If the DMX outputs appear smooth on these screens, then it is probably something in the way the fixtures themselves are set up. Do they have a movement speed or pan/tilt speed parameter ?

I have just checked this out on a fat frog and if you have a scene memory or submaster data with movement effects and you EDIT LIVE the memory or submaster, the movement effect does appear on the outputs, and if you select one of the fixtures with an effect, you can see the movement effect parameter values on the wheel LCD in the 2nd and 3rd wheel groups of position. Sounds like you must be doing something different - are you just playing back the memory/submaster and then expecting to see the movement effect parameter values on the wheel LCD.

Please could you clarify what you mean by "try to go back into a memory". Are you actually editing the memory or just outputting it via the playback x or a submaster, and then adjusting it's position via the control wheels ? As far as I remember, if you EDIT a memory with a movement effect, then you should see the movement effect live on the outputs and if you select a fixture which has a programmed movement effect, you should see the movement effect parameter values on the wheel LCD. I will check this as soon as I get the opportunity

What you are seeing is the result of the way LTP processing works on the frog desks. For further explanation see THIS TOPIC

On Page i of the manuals under the Issue number and date, and the manual stock number, is the desk operating software version that the manual relates to. If the software in your desk is later than the version specified on the manual, you will need to refer to the release notes that accompanied the later software releases for descriptions of the new and modified functionality. New issues of the frog series and mambo frog manuals should be available soon.

I'm sure this has been mentioned several times before in these forums and if the search facility worked properly I could probably find it quite quickly :? You can achieve a similar effect by linking together a number of scene memories with auto triggers and having a jump at the end - takes a bit more thought on the part of the operator, but then so would adding a load of extra timing information in the programming of every step of a chase :twisted: Frog Reference No 5347 - Individual wait/fade/dwell times for steps in chase memories - to be reviewed.

You should be able to edit a show created with version 7 software on the latest Phantom Frog (9.2), without any problems. Any information that is not present in the older show file should be set to default values automatically (eg number of shots on chase memories, new submaster/SX defaults etc.) As long as you don't edit any parameters which are new in version 9 software, then you should also be able to reload your show file into a desk with version 7 software, although obviously it would be better to update the desk software as well

When you first enter the save show screen the cursor appears in the list of filenames. Presumably this is to allow the user to update or overwrite an existing show file if he wishes. If you simply press Enter, the cursor will move to the Filename text field, and you can start entering a new filename straight away

An interesting point. As you are probably aware brightness levels (generic channels and fixture brightness parameers) are displayed as percentages and fixture LTP parameters (colour, gobo, shutter, pan, tilt etc.) are displayed in DMX values (0-255). Should there be an option to display LTP values in percentage as well? What about displaying brightness levels in DMX values, or do users always expect percentages ? Displaying percentage values is better for the monitor screens as you only require 2 characters per channel (with FF representing Full or 100%)

Posting images and photos in the Frog Forums is allowable as long as there are only a few images per post, the files are compressed, and the images are small enough to load at a reasonable speed for our dial-up users and do not fill a screen several times over. You will need to have your image stored as a jpg, gif etc on a website. The maximum size of the image should be 640 x 480 pixels. You can then link the image into your post by putting "[img}" and "[/img]" around the address of the file For example: "" Note - There should not be any spaces between the img tags and the address of the file. You can also use the "Img" button to insert the image tags for you. If you have a large number of images, or the images themsleves are large, then please use hyperlinks to the URLs of externally-hosted images.

Of course it would be easier ... just offering an alternative solution which you may like to try ... if you have the time Naming of shows is one of the many suggestions still in the database. If, and when we decide to do another functional update to the frog series software, it will be considered and reviewed along with all the other ideas and suggestions. Meanwhile our efforts are being concentrated on developing new products :wink:

Apologies for late reply ... I only just read this :oops: According to Ventura (in which the original manual is produced) the font for the text down the right hand side at the beginning of each chapter is: Arial Black (size = 30pt).

New issues of both the Frog Series and Mambo Frog manuals are going through the final checking stages. As soon as the new issues are available I will post an announcement on the forum.

I have recently been updating both the Frog Series and Mambo Frog Manuals to include all the functionality that has been introduced since they were last issued. The new manuals will contain everything up to and including Release 9.0. Therefore, it is very unlikely that any changes or additions will be made to the actual manuals at this late stage. However, there is no reason why questions and answers, or hints and tips cannot have their own forums on this site. I am continually monitoring the forums and moving topics around as appropriate, so the same subjects appear in the same forums.

When you output colour, beamshape or position fixture parameters via a submaster (or any other playback method) the LTP channels are triggered and go to their programmed values. The LTP channels will remain at those values until told to do something else by the desk - this could be by outputting a memory from the playback x, raising a submaster, pressing an SX button (mambo) outputting a palette, homing the fixture, or adjusting the parameters with the wheels. With LTP channels the desk does not record a history of what causes the channels to go to what values and therefore there is no concept of undoing the LTP actions. When you raise a submaster, the colour parameters (for example) will go to their programmed levels when triggered - lowering the submaster will NOT affect the colour levels. The submaster does not know - or in fact need to know, what values the colour parameters were before it was raised - it only contains information on what to set the parameters to when raised.