Phil Mckerracher

Update: I think I've found a solution, at least in the simulator. Recording it here for my own benefit and in case it helps others. What I did: The link here doesn't work but I eventually found the "capture demo packs" here https://www.capture.se/Downloads/Download-Demo-Packs and Phantom Zeros 7.14.4 here https://www.vari-lite.com/global/products/zeros-software (you have to click the Legacy Zeros link and download and unzip the file to find it). This allowed me to run the three capture demos. I couldn't get the "Club" demo to work at all - it loaded but none of the lights would come on. But the other two (Open Air and Dockhouse) do work and that's all I needed. I also discovered how to see what the buttons on the simulated Leapfrog48 console are - if you hover over them it tells you in the title bar at the top left. Far from ideal but a lot better than trial and error. WIth a working simulation I could at last do some experimenting at home. It's taken me all day but I think I've found a solution, which is.... [FX: Drumroll] After saving a scene to a "Multi Function Fader" (aka Submaster), click the fader (in the MFF window on the monitor) to open its properties and change Fader Function to Manual Fade (1 way). I have no idea why this works - the user guide makes no sense to me in this area, but it does what I want. The colour remains as the intensity changes. This is better for me than editing the default colours of all the fixtures because it's faster and less disruptive. A side effect is that the Flash button no longer works, but in a way that's an advantage since I rarely use them except by accident! I will get a chance to try it on the real board later this week. Fingers crossed. I also confirmed the solution to my other question here so I'm happy. 🙂

Update: I finally got this to work in the simulation using Clear + Fader buttons. Still more than 10 button presses but a big improvement. So, many thanks for that tip. I'll have a chance to try it on the real board later this week. I think I've found a solution for my other question as well.

We've come back to the title of this thread, which was "How do I control the initial colour of playbacks?". It looks like the answer is essentially to use the HOME key to edit the fixtures, a key I wasn't aware of (because it's literally invisible in the documentation and the simulator). I haven't verified this yet but it looks hopeful. Thanks everyone, I've learnt a lot of incidental stuff as well.

It's just taken me half an hour to find the "Home" button (on a Leapfrog 48). It's mentioned in the user guide but not shown anywhere in the user guide. Or in Phantom ZeroOS. Why aren't these things labelled? What's the big secret???

Thanks, if I can get the simulation to work I'll try it. (Someone has just given me links to it in another thread.)

Those links work at least. I'll give it a try. Thanks very much!

Perhaps I wasn't clear. I do want colours to cross fade in general, along with intensity. Like old-fashioned incandescent lamps with gels in front. If you cross-faded a red incandescent lamp and a blue lamp you would see magenta during the transition. That's fine by me. I was trying to keep it simple by just talking about a single fader coming up from nothing to full. In that case I observe that the colour changes on LED fixtures (but not incandescent ones). I never requested that and I don't want it. The green LEDs in the device grow increasingly in intensity and then reduce again as the fader reaches full strength, as commanded by DMX. Nothing to do with non-linear LEDs or brain interpretation. Kind of bizarre, when you think about it. Certainly unexpected. When I say "I never requested it", the default white colour has been set by someone at some stage (perhaps the profile supplied by Chauvet, the factory default of the board, a Zeros update, or a previous user at the theatre), and of course the board doesn't know or care who it was. They may have done this for good reasons. I want to change that configuration (effectively make the starting colour black rather than white, in this particular situation) and understand the implications. So far I have failed. I don't know how to make it any clearer than that.

Well, this comes back to my earlier point about "what does it mean to add or multiply a colour?". In your example where I'm effectively cross-fading from red to blue I think an intermediate magenta is actually the best option. It seems preferable in this situation to other alternatives like white or a dip to black, or a snap. I don't want green appearing in the mix and I don't want sudden changes that don't correspond to my slow fader movements. Those are just artifacts. Of course, there are situations where this is undesirable or impossible and a snap is better (physical moves and so on). That's why it's all configurable. My problem is I can't find a way to configure it!

The default "snap" behaviour of colour is probably the designer's intended answer to this conundrum, especially in the situation where we're not starting from black and something else had control. But the snap looks awful and I really want to avoid that, and hence I would indeed normally configure fader-controls-colour. That's really what I want, it's just the default colour that's the issue. From a philosophical point of view, I should probably reconfigure all the LED fixtures so their default colour is black rather than white. Then if I bring up the intensity and nothing happens it's simply my fault for not telling the board what colour I want yet. Typically my very next step would be to adjust the colour anyway so it might not be too bad. I think I'll try that when I next get access (if I have time). My memory is that the board wouldn't accept that but I'd settle for a dim grey. From a practical point of view it's yet another thing that can stop a light coming on unexpectedly, and there are already enough of those. And other users of the board might object to such a change. I'll see how it goes.

Lots of interesting stuff, but no-one has really answered the original question. Is there really no way of programming a submaster so that it stays the same colour all the way up? It seems like such an obvious thing to want to do.

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't currently have access, but in the past I have tried all the fader action options one by one to see if they helped and none of them achieved what I'm asking for here. Of course, the permutations and combinations are almost infinite so it's quite possible I have missed the magic combination. That's why I'm asking here.

This looks useful but the links are broken. 😞

Good to know there's something that works, at least. My hunch is that setting the default to black would create more problems than it would solve, though. To be honest, this feels like a bug. I'm quite happy with the default being white, or even warm white to match old incandescents if there are lots of those still in the mix. But this is not a "default" situation. I've told it exactly what colour I want and unexpectedly it's bringing other colours into the mix. I realise that "adding" one colour to another or "multiplying" two colours isn't a simple thing. But in this case there's only one colour that matters. I asked someone who is familiar with the board about this and they said they open the program window and scroll a long way to the right to find the fixtures concerned and adjust the starting colour there. It solved a problem I had in the main stack but I couldn't get it to work on a submaster and in any case it takes far too long to be a general solution, though useful to know.

Has anyone actually tried this? I imagine it would result in the fixture not responding at all (by default) when intensity was raised above zero, which would be a bit of a problem. That's probably why it didn't seem to be accepted when I tried it.

That looks promising. Is "Fader Function" what I would call the "flash" button under each "submaster"? (Giving away my age here!). If it's a single button on the main console I don't think I have that.