K-Nine

Frog Reference 5430 Allow previewed memory/submaster/SX to be changed without closing preview window.

However, when pressing Preview you must have already selected a memory, as you cannot preview an unprogrammed memory. Therefore you are previewing the selected memory which is a valid operation in its own right. The desk cannot tell when you press Preview, if you wish to preview the memory or are subsequently going to edit it blind 8O

I can see how this may be useful, but it is not a simple change to implement at this point. See also my comments in the Edit Blind topic .. CLICK HERE

I don't think this is something we can simply change at the moment as it has been one of the fundamental ways that the Current/Next and memory selection philosophy has worked from the very first issue of the frog software. When the user selects a memory it could be for any of a different number of reasons: to output it next on pressing Go, edit live, edit blind, preview, copy, transfer to a submaster, transfer to an SX button (Mambo), clear. The desk has no way of knowing why you have selected it, until you carry out the next operation.

Frog Reference No 5469 - The Transfer with and without time buttons are reversed on the Phantom Frog - Bug.

In order to edit a memory blind, you first have to select it. The act of selecting the memory makes it the NEXT memory automatically.

I have just tested this on a fat frog desk here and there are a couple of bugs in Edit blind: The save options on exiting edit seem to be in reverse. The edited channel values are not shown on the Preview screen after exiting Blind Edit. We are looking into these bugs at the moment and should have a new software version with them fixed shortly.

This was written by Brian from The Blue Room The Four LX men The Scene: Four men dressed in black tee-shirts are sitting together in the Control Room of a brand-new fully funded theatre. 'Life for Rent' is playing in the background on a mini-disc. FIRST LX: Aye, very passable, that, very passable that new Martin 2000. SECOND LX: Nothing like a good moving light, eh, Josiah? THIRD LX: You're right there, Obadiah. FOURTH LX: Who'd have thought ten year ago we'd all be sittin' here operating Martin moving lights, eh? FIRST LX: In them days we was glad to have the use of a VL1. SECOND LX: A secondhand VL1. FOURTH LX: Without colour or gobo wheels. THIRD LX: Or lamp. FIRST LX: With a cracked lens, an' all. FOURTH LX: Oh, we never had a lens. We used to have to make do with the bottom of a milk bottle. SECOND LX: The best we could manage was a piece of strawberry jelly. THIRD LX: But you know, we were freelance in those days, though we were poor. FIRST LX: Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Freelancing doesn't buy you happiness, son". FOURTH LX: Aye, 'e was right. FIRST LX: Aye, 'e was. FOURTH LX: I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to light a whole show with a single 63 Amp feed. SECOND LX: 63 Amps! You were lucky to have 63 Amps! We used to light a whole show, all 13 Amps of it, no extension cables, 'alf the dimmers missing, and LX and Sound were all 'uddled together in one Control Room for fear of electricution. THIRD LX: Eh, you were lucky to have a Control Room! We used to have to work in t' corridor! FIRST LX: Oh, we used to dream of workin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to work in an old water tank above the green room. We got disturbed every evening by a load of drunken actors leaving the bar! Control Room? Huh. FOURTH LX: Well, when I say 'Control Room' it was only a hole in the ground covered by an old cyc cloth, but it was a Control Room to us. SECOND LX: We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and work in a skip. THIRD LX: You were lucky to have a skip! There were a hundred and fifty of us working in t' shoebox in t' middle o' car park. FIRST LX: Cardboard box? THIRD LX: Aye. FIRST LX: You were lucky. We worked for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get in at six in the morning, clean the stage, eat a crust of stale bread, working in t' theatre, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got to work our Technical Manager would thrash us wi' 15 Amp extension lead. SECOND LX: Luxury. We used to have to get to the skip at six o'clock in the morning, clean the stage, eat a handful of broken lamps, work twenty hour day at theatre for tuppence a month, and Technical Manager would thrash us at end of day with a broken lantern, if we were lucky! THIRD LX: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get in t' shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick stage clean wit' tongue. We ate two bits of cardboard left over from props, worked twenty-four hours a day at theatre for sixpence every four years, and when we got to work our Technical Manager would slice us in two wit' Leatherman. FOURTH LX: Right. I had to go to work in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, light a show with nowt but two candles, work twenty-nine hours a day, and pay theatre owner for permission to come to work, and when we got to work, our Technical Manager and our Stage Manager would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah. FIRST LX: And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you. ALL: They won't!

... including range checking every parameter that is found in the show data.. and update it every time we add a new bit of data or modify the format, range etc. that is stored in the showfile ... and ensure that the show file is valid when saving back to disk ... otherwise the desk software would have to validate the show file data when it read it. :twisted:

The Phantom Frog isn't so much an offline editor trying to be a simulator, but the other way round It was originally developed as a development tool to aid in software testing of new functions/bug fixes etc. as a means to speed to coding and testing across the range of desks When Sales/Marketing saw it they decided, that with a few tweaks, it could be used as an offline editor as well, and so it was released

Yes, I can see what you are getting at now, a sort of 'subroutine' of memories Unfortunately, I don't see how you can do this at the moment with the current implementation of jumps The Frog desks only have a single memory stack playback and I very much doubt this will change - due to the nature of the design of the desk, it's feature set, and the sector of the market it is aimed at etc... (I'm sure NZ will give you a full explanation if you ask him nicely ) What you are describing with processing several fades at the same time, and active/inactive channels sounds more like the sort of features you would find on a (more expensive) theatre style consle. The show file format is a proprietary one and I don't think we have any plans to release details. Have you tried our current offline editor/simulator for the Frog Series of desks called the Phantom Frog ?

I don't think there is a simple way of removing a channel from all scenes in the current software. Something similar has been mentioned in other topics, including a Topset function: Frog Reference 5417 - Topset Check the following links for further discussions: Pre-Heat Setup Topset As to splitting a couple of paired lanterns, such they end up have the same values in all scenes - I would suggest that you patch the generic channel to the two different DMX addresses that the two lanterns are now on - see Manual Patch - Generics and Adding Duplicates in the Operating Manual (page 6-7). The long fade is presumably between two memories on the playback stack ? If you want to run a chase over the top of this - then you need to program the chase as a memory and transfer it onto a submaster. Raise the submaster at the point you wish the chase to run and lower it again when you wish the chase to stop. The only time you may get 'interference' is if the same channesl are programmed in both the chase on the submaster and in either of the current or next memories which are crossfading on the playback X, since the generic channels (and fixture brightness parameters) are mixed HTP. I'm not sure what you are saying here :? Jumps can be used in a variety of situations where you don't want to step through the memory stack in strict numerical order and wish to reorder your show for whatever reason. They can be used to skip over part of a show which may not be required but you don't want to delete the memories as they may be reuired another time. When used in collaboration with automatic triggers they can be used to create 'loops'. When playing back shows on a frog box, by using timed triggers, auto triggers and jumps you can have several 'mini-shows' all stored within the stack etc..

Hopefully the blind edit function (Frog Reference 5379) and the ability to adjust chase modifiers live while the chase is running which are in Version 9.0 will make you happier. Live adjustment of chase modifers (Direction, Attack, Drive and Speed) applies to all desks in the Frog series See the Version 9.0 Release notes for full details.

Full marks for observation Illusion Reference No 4735 - Floppy Disk - File Utilities - The Desk Type and Version columns have no data displayed: either display the info or remove the columns - to be reviewed.

Thanks for your comments, I will try and answer them individually The Function keys on the external keyboard should simply mimic the function keys (F1 - F4) on the front panel of the desk. If they don't, then you have discovered a bug, and we will investigate further :oops: This function has been suggested elsewhere in these forums and one possible solution would be a 'Topset' function. Frog Reference 5417 - Topset Check the following links for further discussions: Pre-Heat Setup Topset Is the desk in full or partial mode ? Even in partial mode the generic channels and brightness parameters for moving lights are ALWAYS recorded into the chase. You should always ensure that any generics or fixture brightnesses that are not required in a scene/chase are set to zero before pressing the Program button. As brightness is mixed HTP then with two chases running simultaneously, you will get the HTP value of each channel being output. If all smoke machines operated in the same manner and used the same number of DMX channels, with the same values doing the same operations, then we could write a 'generic' smoke machine fixture personality file, but if they are anything like moving light personalities, albeit with much fewer channels, then that simply won't be the case 8O If you could send me details of the particular machine you are using and it's DMX control details etc, maybe I can start adding smoke machine 'fixtures' into our library. If you want simple manual control of smoke machines you can always use one/two generic channels and control the output values with the preset faders. Check out THIS TOPIC While this may sound relatively simple from a user point of view it would require some major changes to the software to provide this functionality. Although the memories/submasters screens etc may look like a table/spreadsheet on the monitor screen, the underlying data structures are much more complex and so the sort of functions you could do on a PC are not simply translatable onto a lighting desk. However, it is these sort of suggestions that we are noting with regards to future projects :wink: The number of fixtures provided on each of the Frog series of desks is fixed, and there are several reasons for this which have been covered elsewhere in these forums. See THIS TOPIC for details, especially the post from NZ The only desk which has pages of fixtures is the Mambo Frog, because it was designed specifically to be a fixture based desk. I guess this will be on the list for the next update package However, you will need to ask NZ as to when this might be. We have already made a significant number of functional improvements to the series of desks, since the frogs were released a few years ago, and we are now looking to develop the successor to Frog. If we release any more Beta versions, I will add you to the list of testers

I think that this topic has been covered before, and therefore my previous response still applies: Compared to the time required to program the actual chase, the additional time and key presses required to transfer the chase memory onto a submaster is probably quite minimal. In the current software submasters can only contain a single set of channel/fixture data or a reference to a transferred memory. To enable the user to program a chase directly onto a submaster would require a significant change to the internal data structures and user interfaces on the desk.

I have just programmed a 4 part multi-part scene here which included brightness/colour/beamshape/position parameter values for a different fixture in each part. (eg Part 1 had values for fixture 5, part 2 for fixture 6, part 3 for fixture 7 and part 4 for fixture 8 ). If you have just programmed say beamshape for a fixture in each part, you need to make sure that you have correctly programmed the Beamshape Delay and Beamshape Transition times for each part. The Memories screen only shows the delay/fade/transition times for one attribute at a time, therefore you have to change the screen to display the attribute's times that you want by pressing the corresponding attribute button (eg BEAMSHAPE). I admit that I forgot that at first and wondered why all my LTP parameters all snapped on pressing GO, but the brightness fades were staggered as expected :oops: Check that the Beamshape delay and transition times have been set correctly for each part. If there is still a problem, please let me know and I will investigate further

Illusion Reference No 4768 - Corruption of Brightness Section of PW - to be investigated.

There does seem to be some inconsistency with the indication of the Primary Fixture on the Palettes section of the PW. On several occasions there was no indication at all of which of the selected fixtures was the primary and sometimes, it was as you described above. Illusion Reference 4767 - Wrong primary fixture indication when on the Palettes Tab.

The command line syntax is a complicated part of the software and I understand if it is not always how you think. By necessity it has to be logical and consistent or it wouldn't work at all. All the new commands relating to fixtures, attributes, parameters and palettes were implemented using the same 'rules' as were already in place in the Illusion software prior to the introduction of the moving light functionality. We saw the new commands as extensions to the original command set and did not want to change the syntax of any of the original ones so as not to confuse users. One of the major problems in designing an interface such as on the Illusion is that there are numerous methods of entering commands and they all have to work together (ie front panel keys, external keyboard, mouse operations on buttons, tabs etc). Sometimes, I guess it comes down to learning the 'rules' or syntax of the command structure. Some are common I guess, such as entering a channel level, but we have also implemented many new commands which may not at first be obvious, but hopefully with some practice they will be. With a lot of the command/operations there are often about three different ways to achieve the same result. The attributes are an interesting case, as sometimes you just want to change attribute to look at a different section of the Program Window; other times you want the attribute (eg COLOUR) to be part of the actual command itself. If we could make the software read your mind and predict what you are trying to do then everything would be fine ... I know there were some cases where you had to erase a command on the command line to continue etc. and we have removed some of these during development. Trying to handle every possible combination of command and decide which are sensible and which not is quite a task and hopefully there aren't too many places where it causes annnoyance. ... and this was supposed to be a quick reply :shock:

There is also a command line syntax which you can use to toggle the tagged state of one or more channels. For example, say that you have adjusted channels 1-20 and they are all currently tagged, and you want to untag channels 16-20. Enter the command: CHANNEL 16 THRU 20 BRIGHTNESS ENTER

Note: If you take a show file from a desk running version 9.0 software, load it into the current Phantom Frog, modify it, save it to floppy, and then reload the show back into the desk, some show data may be lost.

Because the Phantom Frog simulates the front panel controls of the real desks, then the only way to adjust fixture parameter levels is by using the wheels, so I'm afraid the answer is no.

Press and hold the Brightness button for approx. 1 second should tag/untag all the selected dimmer channels and fixture brightness parameters in the Program Window.

The 'ON' button on the front panel of the desk is also the 'HOME' button when used with fixture parameters.