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pscandrett

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Everything posted by pscandrett

  1. I got an email notification about it - have just 'report' ed it. TBH I forgot I had an account on here - hello all 🙂
  2. Hmm, I use the pallettes - I must admit I've not quite got round to using the SX buttons as, er, SX buttons! What's the benefit of doing so? And how the heck does one keep track of what's on what button when busking a show?! (What does SX stand for...?!) TIA
  3. Hi On a Mambo frog with various positions in the SX buttons, is it possible to get the movers to 'fade' to the next position rather than snap? On the Avo Pearl you can say, effectively, move from this position to that position in 5s and it will generate the DMX to move them smoothly rather than snap. Is this possible in any way on the frog(s), either using SX buttons or on submasters? Should I be looking at the LTP times on the submasters to achieve this? If so, presumably there's no way of doing this when busking a show? Thanks in advance - sorry if I've not explained myself very well, I'm a bit tired at the moment! Peter
  4. I've noticed the latter two (fig8 and shape generator being dropped) before but assumed it was just me being stupid... In the latter case, if you have a recorded shape generated wibble on a submaster, it'll run quite happily but looking at the LCD screen whilst it's going says 0 for everything - with the net result that if you try to save that state somewhere else it doesn't remember the shape movement at all. Peter <><
  5. Ok, thanks for that. Sorry for not reading the forums closely enough and going over well-trodden ground. Peter <><
  6. Ok, thanks all. One other thing... is is possible to record a chase onto a memory? I know you can /create/ a memory as a chase and that's what I've been doing, but if I've got a state where, for example, a chase is running on one submaster and a few other submasters are up too, and I want to record that into a memory, it only appears to record the instantaneous state of the chase at the time I hit 'record'. I think I read something about this somewhere - that this is the 'right' behaviour - but I can't see a way of effectively combining memories together. Failing that (and the answer's probably no), can one run two memories in the stack simultaneously (from the go button?) without resorting to submasters? If so, I could have a chase memory and a scene memory playing back at the same time... Thanks!
  7. If the cursor is on the 'Next' memory field, then you can type the next memory number in from the external keyboard (press Enter to complete). Ah, OK - I thought I'd tried that but ended up renumbering a memory at one point (but this was whilst I was still playing around). Incidentally - is there an easier way of naming a memory than pressing F2, memory, then the number etc on the main frog desk? Could the 'name' of the memory be navigable-to on the VGA screen along with all the other parameters? Ok, thanks, will play tomorrow. Righty ho, thanks (particularly for your prompt reply!)
  8. Haytech Thanks for your reply. It broadly makes sense - I'll have a play later. Ta Peter <><
  9. Hi Me again :-) I'll be going on a frog training day some time soon, honest - but in the meantime I'm struggling by :-) I've been using my mambo frog for quite a while now for rock/pop style gigs where I've been mostly busking the show - which I know isn't terribly exciting but I've learned a lot. However, the show I'm programming at the moment has a fair few theatrical moments (if you see what I mean) and so I'm using the memory stack for the first time beyond a few chases. I've got a VGA monitor and keyboard out for this because I was particularly getting confused about the fade up/down times and which cue they related to! Similarly, the 'current' and 'next' memories are confusing me a bit (specifically if I want to overwrite or edit a memory which one am I overwriting?!) but I can work through it. I'm not quite there but I'll get there. So... here's my 'how do I' questions. I can't find much in the manual for these, but I may well be being thick! Firstly, I thought the external keyboard would make life easier but it itself is taking a lot of getting used to - notably, the up/down keys and left/right keys seeminly being backwards on the memories screen. Is there any reason why it behaves like this? Could the external keyboard/VGA monitor's navigation be more like, say, traversing a spreadsheet? Anyway, here's the how do I... how do I page up/page down/jump to a particular memory in my memory stack? I'm finding it very irritating (not to say fairly slow) scrolling through all my memory cues using the up/down (or is that left/right?!). Is there any reason why pageup/down doesn't jump, say, 10 cues up/down? What about a direct link to something (eg type alt-25 to jump to cue 25?). Anyway, the other thing is... deleting a memory. How do I delete a memory? Not the whole lot (which you can do from superuser) and not a step of a chase, but an individual memory that one is perhaps not using any more? I can clear it I think but I'm not sure that that deletes it (if you see what I mean). Finally... is there a more efficient way of doing states with movers than encoding a cue-before-the-actual-cue to move the fixture to where it's about to be used with the right gobos etc before actually bringing up the light with the brightness control/shutter in the actual cue? (Does that even make sense?) I've had a couple of cases already where I've had to work around because the movers (mac 250s in this case) have got a bit enthusiastic when moving to another position - the shutter doesn't come in fast enough before the gobos/colour wheel changes/the light moves ready for its next cue... the only way round this I've had so far is to have another cue where there is an explicit shutter-in, then doing the move etc in another cue. Am I missing something very obvious here? Many thanks Peter <><
  10. Hi This is something I've been having trouble with - I thought that it should do this, but last time I tried it I'm sure it didn't. Having reread the manual just now I'm sure that what I'm doing should work (s7-6 in the Mambo Frog manual issue 3) but it doesn't seem to. I'm probably being stupid. Sorry, that didn't make much sense. I currently use pallettes for colour, beamshape and position (often using the F1 lock feature) so I can access, er, pallettes quickly during a show and programming. It's perhaps worth saying at this point I don't use the SX stuff for anything else - I should probably look into them further, really! Anyway, that's not the point. What I want to do is base a whole load of programs/chases etc all referencing back to one point in the desk's memory - that of a position pallette - so that when I do the show next time I just need to reposition those positions (ie rerecord the position pallette button) and all the corresponding chases/positions/memories/submasters will automatically be pointing in the right places. I hope that makes sense - sorry I'm not terribly coherent this evening! :-) Am I going about this the right way? A hypothetical real life example... say I want the macs to sweep from umpteen positions on stage to one central point and back, or something. I might create a memory/chase based on two position pallettes - one for 'centre of stage' and one for 'umpteen positions'. Then at each venue, all* I need to do is re-record the pallettes for 'centre stage' and 'umpteen positions' and the chase/sequence/other presets will automatically look lovely without having to rerecord them. Is this correct? If so, what could I be doing wrong in my programming? (Mambo Frog, partial mode) Many thanks
  11. OK, thanks - I thought (expected?) there to be a better way of doing it...! Peter <><
  12. Hi Is it possible to program (a mambo frog, but I guess it's a general question) with a channel up and yet not have that channel or submaster recorded in the programming? To give some context - when doing a gig, it's not uncommon for me to be programming/fiddling with the desk and lights whilst soundchecks and preparations are continuing. However, often the guys on stage want some work light - but I can't at the moment leave a channel on as a worker because it gets recorded into all of my scenes/submasters/states etc! So, can I leave a dimmer channel/preset up for a bit of light on stage and continue to record other stuff without recording that channel's state? Hmm, that's a bit long-winded. Hope that's clear :-) Many thanks in advance PS Thanks also for the polo shirt for the caption competition of Dec 04!
  13. That's a shame, but not a surprise. Thanks. Peter <><
  14. Hi Here's the other topic as promised. We're working on some big letters each of which are made of light bulbs, and each letter has its own dimmer (ie there's 5 or 6 channels making up each light). If I have a chase sequence defined that affects, say, channels 1-6 only, is there any way of copying that chase and shifting the channels it references to 7-12 and then again to 13-18 etc? Or do I have to reprogram it for each group of channels? Or am I missing something really obvious here? TIA Peter <><
  15. It's not just the movements that I want to store (which is why I bung the whole 'look' on a submaster). I do have a few pallettes with movements/positions stored for busking a song; however, if I want somethign to happen as part of a scene storing only the movement on the pallette isn't very helpful (as I understand anyway), is it? Or have I misunderstood? ta Peter <><
  16. Hi This is the sort of thing that I am sure has been covered before but I can't find anything about it so, er, please forgive me if this is a repost! It may be a 'training' issue as much as anything else... I'm using a Mambo Frog (latest OS I think) and utilise the effects generator quite a lot (ellipse, tri, quad etc). (With mini macs, but that's irrelevant I guess.) I set up effects and stick them on submasters so I can trigger them at various points during the show. I will sometimes want to tweak what I programmed earlier during the gig - to slow it down, perhaps, or change the X or Y values (or sometimes even the shape). The thing is, if I set up an effect (for want of a better way of putting it) and transfer it to a submaster, it records the /values/ of the ellipse, etc, rather than the fact that it's an ellipse (if you see what I mean). Consequently you can't just tweak the effect once you've triggered it from the submaster - changing any individual parameter 'resets' it - so if, for example, you've got it going really fast and you want to slow it down you change the 'speed' parameter, which flips to 0, making it all look a bit odd. It'd be much better to be able to change the parameters from what they're set to, rather than starting from scratch. Is there any way of transferring the information as 'Ellipse' rather than the calculated positions/rates etc? I hope that makes sense! Many thanks Peter <><
  17. Hi I've got a mambo frog and use it with a selection of moving lights, normally mini mac profiles and martin MX4s - but this is a general question. Is there a way of assigning a tilt function (with limits ideally) to a submaster so that 100% = tilt all selected fixtures up and 0% = tilt them all down? In other words, rather than using the control wheel for tilting (or any other parameter I guess, but tilting in particular) I could use a fader? It just might make life easier for the sort of things I do in a show. (I'm happy with the other parameters on the wheels!). Also - and this is more a 'how to organise yourself' question - how on earth are you supposed to keep track of all 9 pages of submasters?! I'm developing my own way of using them but even so I tend not to use more than 2 or 3 of the 9 submaster pages because i run out of places on the desk to put white tape (and hence reminders as to what's on what fader)! I've seen (but not used) the avolites solution to this with the big roller; I'm not suggesting anything like that but how do others keep track of what's on the faders? :-) I've just noticed 9.2 is out so I'll have to go and get that - pan/tilt swap and live chase speed adjust would be very useful for me. (I'm also intrigued as to how to access the submaster pages 10-20 when there's only a single digit LED ID for the current page :-)
  18. Hurrah! I also have a mambo frog and am in much the same situation. Do you know when the next version is due please? Ta Peter <><
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