K-Nine

One day while walking down the street a highly successful Human Resources Manager was tragically hit by a bus and died. Her soul arrived up in heaven where she was met at the Pearly Gates by St. Peter himself. "Welcome to Heaven," said St. Peter. "Before you get settled in though, it seems we have a problem. You see, strangely enough, we've never had a Human Resources Manager make it this far before and we're not really sure what to do with you." "No problem, just let me in," said the woman. "Well, I'd like to, but I have higher orders. What we're going to do is let you have a day in duck and a day in Heaven and then you can choose whichever one you want to spend all eternity in." "Actually, I think I've made up my mind, I’d prefer to stay in Heaven", said the woman. "Sorry, but we have rules..." And with that St. Peter put the executive in an elevator and it went down-down-down to duck. The doors opened and she found herself stepping out onto the putting green of a beautiful golf course. In the distance was a country club and standing in front of her were all her friends, fellow executives that she had worked with. They were well dressed in evening gowns and cheering for her. They ran up and kissed her on both cheeks and they talked about old times. They played an excellent round of golf and at night went to the country club where she enjoyed an excellent steak and lobster dinner. She met the Devil who was actually a really nice guy and she had a great time telling jokes and dancing. She was having such a good time that before she knew it, it was time to leave. Everybody shook her hand and waved goodbye as she got in the elevator. The elevator went up-up-up and opened back up at the Pearly Gates where she found St. Peter waiting for her. "Now it's time to spend a day in heaven," he said. So she spent the next 24 hours lounging around on clouds and playing the harp and singing. She had a great time and before she knew it her 24 hours were up and St Peter came and got her. "So, you've spent a day in duck and you've spent a day in heaven. Now you must choose." The woman paused for a second and then replied, "Well, I never thought I'd say this, I mean, Heaven has been really great and all that, but I think I had a better time in duck." So St. Peter escorted her to the elevator and again she went down-down-down back to duck. When the doors of the elevator opened she found herself standing in a desolate wasteland covered in stinking garbage and filth. She saw her friends were dressed in rags and were picking up the garbage and putting it in sacks. The Devil came up to her and put his arm around her. "But I don't understand," stammered the woman, "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and a country club and we ate lobster and we danced and had a great time. Now all there is a wasteland of garbage and all my friends look really miserable." The Devil looked at her, smiled and said "Yesterday we were recruiting you, today you're staff..."

An Essex girl goes to the council to register for child benefit. "How many children?" asks the council worker "10" replies the Essex girl "10 ?" says the council worker. "What are their names?" "Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, Wayne and Wayne" "Doesn't that get confusing?" "Naah..." says the Essex girl "Its great because if they are out playing in the street I just have to shout WAYNE, YER DINNER'S READY or WAYNE IT'S TIME TO GO TO BED NOW and they all do it..." "What if you want to speak to one individually?" says the perturbed council worker. "That's easy," says the girl... "I just use their surnames."

And with that I declare this topic closed

Frog Reference 5463 - Allow duplicate patching of fixtures to different DMX addresses.

Do you mean the ability patch a single fixture to several different DMX start addresses, in the same way that generic channels can be patched to up to 10 different DMX addresses. If so, then this is something we will be looking into. :wink: If not, then please explain further 8O

The design for the palette lock function is as follows: The existing function that is used for locking the colour, beamshape or position palette screens on the monitor will be extended to include locking the channel flash buttons or SX selection buttons (Mambo Frog) to operate as the corresponding palette selection buttons. We are not planning to change the method of naming palettes in the next update, but this may change once people have got used to the additional functionality

I think most of the output information is available on various screens, so all we need to do is find out specifically what information people would like on this new 'outputs' screen, and in what format ... sounds simple :evil:

An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess. He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week." The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want." Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The engineer said, "Look I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool." 8)

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be ! ********************************************************** What is the difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers? Mechanical Engineers build weapons. Civil Engineers build targets. *********************************************************** The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?" The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost to make it work?" The graduate with an Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?" *********************************************************** Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet." Hmm, not sure the last one applies to engineers, sounds more like the sales guys or users to me :twisted:

Engineers are a funny species ... Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said to the other "Where did you get such a great bike?" The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want." The first engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit anyway." *********************************************************** A pastor, a doctor and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers ahead of them on the golf course. The engineer fumed "What's with these guys ? We must have been waiting for 15 minutes!" The doctor added, "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude". The pastor said, "Hey, here comes the greenkeeper. Let's have a word with him." "Hi George. Say, what's with that group ahead of us? They're rather slow, aren't they?" The greenkeeper replied, "Oh, yes, that's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime." The group was silent for a moment. The pastor said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." The doctor said, "I'll contact my optician friend and see if there's anything he can do for them." The engineer said, "Why can't these guys play at night?" *********************************************************** There was an engineer who had an exceptional gift for fixing all things mechanical. After serving his company loyally for over 30 years, he happily retired. Several years later the company contacted him regarding a seemingly impossible problem they were having with one of their multimillion dollar machines. They tried everything and everyone else to get the machine to work. Finally, in desperation, they called on the retired engineer who had solved so many of their problems in the past. The engineer reluctantly took the challenge and spent a day studying the huge machine. At the end of the day, he marked a small "x" in chalk on a particular component of the machine and stated, "This is where your problem is". The part was duly replaced and the machine worked perfectly again. The company received a bill for $50,000 from the engineer for his service. They demanded an itemized accounting of his charges. The engineer responded briefly: One chalk mark $1 Knowing where to put it $49,999 It was paid in full and the engineer retired again in peace. *********************************************************** Three engineering students were gathered together discussing the possible designers of the human body. One said, "It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints." Another said, "No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous system has many thousands of electrical connections." The last said, "Actually it was a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?" *********************************************************** An architect, an artist and an engineer were discussing whether it was better to spend time with the wife or a mistress. The architect said he enjoyed time with his wife, building a solid foundation for an enduring relationship. The artist said he enjoyed time with his mistress, because of the passion and the mystery he found there. The engineer said, "I like both." The other two said, "Both?" "Yeah", said the engineer. "If you have a wife and a mistress, they will each assume you are spending time with the other woman, and you can go to the lab and get some work done."

When we were developing the FROG function originally, we did include the brightness parameters for the fixtures, but because brightness is mixed HTP rather than LTP, to be perfectly honest it looked crap, so we dropped it from the function A similar argument would apply to the generic channels as they are also mixed in HTP. However, some kind of random chase function for generics may be worth looking in to for future updates

At present, a fixture can only have a single "Brightness" (HTP) parameter. In the future, we will be looking at changing this limitation, but this impacts significantly on the processor loading of the desks, due to the HTP nature of the mixing. Allowing more than one "Brightness" parameter will require changes in both the desk software and the fixture editing utilities which are used to produce the fixture personality files.

When selecting and setting levels on this 'fixture' would you want all 6/12 Pars to have (a) the same outputs or ( be controllable indvidually ? (a) We would need to add in the function of being able to patch FIXTURES to multiple DMX addresses (as you can generic/dimmer channels on other desks in the frog series). This is something we are considering for later releases. ( This would require the ability to define a fixture type with more than 1 HTP (Brightness) parameters - again something we may have to consider for later releases.

When you are adjusting fixture parameters and the wheel editing mode is one of the fan functions, you also have to bear in mind which of the selected fixtures is the primary fixture. For example in Fan First mode - if the first fixture in the selection is also the 'Primary' fixture, then it's value will be displayed on the wheel LCD. As the first fixture's values are fixed, moving the wheel should change the values of all the other selected fixtures accordingly. There is a known problem with the desk locking up if the auto-save occurs when programming blank palettes: Frog Reference 5510 - After programming blank palettes - "Saving Show, Please Wait... 100% Done." message stuck on LCD, requiring a reboot to fix. Bug.

Do you happen to know whether Recovery Mode was on or off when these problems occurred ? The recovery mode setting can be found under Desk Setup - Desk Defaults - General.

Which types of fixtures are you using ? Does this appear to be a problem with a particular attribute (colour, beamshape, position) ? Have you checked what Edit Mode the control wheels were in when you were adjusting the parameters ? If your wheel edit mode is one of the fan modes, and the Primary fixture (red flashing LED) is the same as the locked fixture then the values (and outputs) for that fixture will not change as you move the wheel, but the values of other selected fixtures will 'fan out' as appropriate.

The FROG function is a unique feature on the Frog desks that is used to output a range of random values for selected fixture parameters rather than absolute DMX values. The user defines the limits of the values output and how they are output via the various parameters displayed on the FROG Function screen. For position parameters, the user can define the max and min values for both pan and tilt, and their action (snap of fade). When a fixture parameter is set to FROG, the desk software effectively runs an automatic chase picking a random value from the 16 values it generates between the defined limits. This 'chase' can be triggered manually, automatically or via sound to light. For further details on the FROG function, see the Frog Series Operating Manual - pages 7-4 and 7-5.

I tried to reproduce this yesterday in our demo room and was unable to make the desk crash. I will be doing a lot with chases as part of testing the new updates and so will try some of the things that people have reported as making the desk crash.

Palettes are like partial 'scenes' which contain Colour, Beamshape or Position data for fixtures. They help speed up programming (or plotting) shows and can also be used for quick hands on effects when running the show. For example select fixtures 1-4 and change them all to red, give them a particular gobo, or move them all to a pre-programmed position. Once programmed, palettes can be referenced when programming memories, submasters or SX buttons (Mambo Frog). Therefore if you have several memories for example which reference a 'Red' colour palette, and the LD decides he'd rather have orange, you only need to reprogram the palette from red to orange and not all the memories. This feature is probably most used for position palettes, where you move the show around between different size venues etc. Imagine you have a position palette which shines four scanners on the drummer. In the next venue, the stage is a different size and he's a few feet further back; just reprogram the position palette to his new position, and all memories and subs which reference that palette will now shine the light on the drummer again A simple example of palette use is the scanners in our demo room: The scanners have a colour wheel with about 12 different colours, so I select all the scanners, set them to white and program as colour palette 1. Then change the colour to red, program as colour palette 2 etc.. for each colour on the wheel. The scanners have a gobo wheel with about 12 different gobos, so I do the same and program a beamshape palette for each gobo. For position I set up a number of different positions and program them into the position palettes (eg stage left, centre, stage right, in a horizontal line , in a vertical line etc.) You then have a number of colour, beamshape and position 'building blocks' from which to construct your memories etc. You can name your palettes and lock the monitor screen on one of the palette screens. In the next update package this will also lock the flash buttons to operate as the corresponding palettes, as well 8) Hope that makes things clearer, if you have any further questions, just ask

Just a few points before we wrap this topic up and put it to bed ... As NZ said, the SX buttons were designed specifically as a feature on the Mambo Frog. Yes, the software could be made to provide SX buttons on the other desks in the range, but this is not what they were designed for. You start getting major overload of the channel flash buttons ie they now function as channel selection, channel flash, colour palette, beamshape palette, position palette, group or SX button depending on the screen you are in and which other button is pressed. As I said previously to provide the same functionality as the Mambo with a similar user interface you also need an SX button (with LED) to provide the programming/editing functionality. On the Fat Frog you could not use the F4 button as this is already used as the Group button. All other Functions keys are also used. What NZ meant was that you will be getting 20 pages of subs in the next update package .. and with that I declare this topic closed

Unfortunately, the location field of the user profile is optional and it is up to the individuals as to whether they complete it or not. I suppose I could always ask people to enter their location :wink: I agree that it would make for an interesting analysis if we knew where all the forum members came from I don't think I have permission to alter the style or layout of the forums; that is possibly something Tim might be able to do though.

To do the equivalent of holding down a button on the front panel, right click on the button image with the mouse .. a red light should come on indicating that the button is held down. Right click on the button image again to release the hold.

I'm testing some of the new frog updates at the moment and I will try and reproduce the problem here in the demo room. The action that led to this problem may be affected by one of the new functions which allows live adjustment of chase speed for chases running on the playback X, submasters and SX buttons (Mambo). Live adjustment of chase speed is a temporary 'run mode' operation. When the chase is run again, it will run at it's programmed speed. If you wish to change the programmed speed in the chase, you will need to edit the chase, but this would not normally be done while running the chase live during a show !

There's already several single brightness channel or generic fixtures in the fixture library What I meant about the Mambo was that it doesn't have dedicated preset faders to control generic channels like the other desks in the Frog series.

I said that the user interface and software for each feature across the range has to be consistent. The feature set provided on each desk in the range does not have to be the same. That is why the mambo was specifically developed. The Mambo was designed for a different market which required more fixtures, but did not want preset faders for controlling individual generic dimmer channels. Therefore the desks in the Frog range have feature sets to cater for different user requirements: Frog - Generic Channels Only - No moving fixtures Fat Frog, Leap Frog, Bull Frog - Generics + Fixtures to suit different size venues. Mambo Frog - No Generic Channels - loads of fixtures. The specifications of the desks in the range are quite clear, and although frog show files can be ported between different desks, the software will only load that information applicable to the feature set it provides. Consider you hire a car with a CD player and cassette player. Later you hire a cheaper model which only has a cassette player, you can't play your CD's in it ... that's life