Setting up a frog for programming.....

[Litegod]

Being a new owner of a Fat Frog, and being that there is several ways to "set up" the desk before programming (which is part of the beauty of the desk). I and maybe others would like some of the "old timers" to tell us their prefered set up before they program. Full.... Partial.... Relative.... Absolute......etc., and the reason they do it this way!

[X-Terminator]

Full Programming for the initial programs

Partial programming for "the finishing touch"

[NickTaylor]

A seriously old post but I am trawling the forums to establish where a show programme went wrong. I got called in late to help programme a show because the original op was having a problem. Its a while since I ran the desk and I never did it a lot. The answer here interests me. Can you change programme mode back and forwards? The desk is a mark one Leapfrog

No way are we going to change anything as we made the mistake of going into Full mode and of course tweeks on the run have gone wrong because of lights up on blackouts etc!

[iank99]

The desk is always in 'programme' mode to a degree - there isn't a mode change switch like on the Sirius.

 

Your problems probably arose because the switch between tracking and non tracking (I think Full is tracking) on the early consoles always created strange memories and values - as you've found. Indeed switching between tracking and non tracking causes similar problems on other manufacturers desks too.

 

The "issue" was "solved" in ZerOS by always having the software running in tracking mode but appearing to be in non-tracking mode if the operator wanted it that way, as a result the cue table doesn't get corrupted if you swap modes.

[kgallen]

What is stored in the desk between Full (record everything always) and Partial (tracked or non-tracked modes, user decides what is stored) is likely to be appreciably different, certainly in respect of what "tagged" data needs to be stored. Switching from Partial to Full will almost certainly mean a loss or corruption of the tagging data so you can't then switch from Full back to Partial and expect to be back where you were at the start. Also from a use-case point of view, you decide at the outset how you want to programme the show and exploit the facilities available in that mode - especially if we are talking about using the tracking feature, since that then gives you much more control over what data the desk actually stores and how that data is interpretted into the "look" on stage as each cue is executed.

 

I'm not one of the software developers for the desk, so I don't actually know how the internal data structures in memory are stored and manipulated, just trying to make some "educated" assumptions how it might operate!

 

As implied by X-Terminator in an earlier post, a one-way switch from Full to Partial may be possible (because you are elaborating the programming with tagging information), but as that post was from 2004 and the desk software has moved on a heck of a lot since that time - including the addition of Tracking functionality in Partial mode, I think you'd need to do some careful off-line testing of such a switch before relying on it as repeatable functionality.

 

As Ian says you can always programme a new cue at any point, just by hitting the Program button, but I think your question relates to the Program Mode as set up in Super User.

 

I don't think Zero88 support the concept of changing Programe Mode mid-program. In fact if you try it, a Warning dialog box comes saying "This may modify show data - continue ?"

Edited June 3, 2015 by kgallen

[NickTaylor]

kgallen

 

That was my assumption. Thanks for the in depth answer