Please help

[JonHirsh]

Today i just had a traning session on a fat frog with some mac 250 Entours. And i am renting this rig for a theatrical show at the begining of may. (6 Mac 250 Entours and a fat frog) now i feel like the board is not up to snuff this is the only board in its class and i love that the affordablilty and size of the board is nice. But the flaws out way the Pros. Now this is purely my opinion but it can be changed if others can tell me if a few things are possible if they are then i would be happy with the board.

 

 

1. When doing fly outs whats the fastest way to do this unlike a hog or MA console you cannot use a pre made effects genorator so what do you do that doesnt take up space in your cue stack. and a chase does not work if you were thinking that i tried that.

 

2. Why is it that when in full or partial mode you cannot take down the lights when all t he faders are down except the grand master and it is a cue stack cue but the play back master is down i would think if the play back master is down play back should be off?

 

3. The Fkeys well not that imparitive why do they only work on the desk and not an attached keyboard.

 

4. why does the board not have an on off switch. How expensive could this part be?

 

5.How would anyone busk with this board i just dont see this being possible.

 

Again i am going to use this board because i have to. but i have paid for the gear and i am locked in to it. so the reason i want to know all this is to convince me that i can use thhis product again. it seems to be perfect for a small corporate show or maybe a small night club its more like a conventional console with some moving light ability but help me to like the board please i need it to be my freind.

 

 

Jon Hirsh

www.blackhorseproductions.ca

[Haytech]

Hi JonHirsh,

There is a answer to all of your questions let me begin at your 1st one:

Q: When doing fly outs whats the fastest way to do this

A: First your desk has to be minimum software release 9.6 (CLICK HERE) then it is possible to have so called n-shot chasers. I assume that a fly out is a 2 or 3 step movement sequenz. program a chase and modifiy the <N-Shot> value to 1. Works very fine for me.

Q:Why is it that when in full or partial mode you cannot take down the lights

A:I recommend that you work in partial mode so it is possible to save fixtures brightness parameters.

Remember to pull down fixtures brightness at the wheel when beginning a show or when program a darkout.

Q:The Fkeys well not that imparitive why do they only work on the desk and not an attached keyboard

A:Indeed the function keys are not routed to the keybord I think this is because some desk of frog series have different functions on this FKeys.

More discussions to this :HERE

Q:How would anyone busk with this board i just dont see this being possible.

A:Think positive everything is possible :mrgreen:

[Laubfrosch]

Hi Jon,

 

Haytech is right with his answers regarding your questions.

 

I am not sure I understand "fly outs". Okay you do not have predefined effects BUT try to play around with the effects engine which is included in the Position attribute. The newest software release 9.6 allows to save written effects to be saved as palette (Preset on a MA). You may save it also direct to a Submaster as so called "Live Data".

 

Have you tried the different value functions? By holding an attribute button the display shows the actual function. Scrolling the FirstFingerWheel you´ll see the various options 1.Absolute, 2. Relative,3. FanFirst, 4.Fan Middle and 5. FanLast.

 

These options work for every attribute down to channel level.

 

 

One big difference between Hogs and MA GrandMAs to the Frog series is that you do not have a real "Programmer". Please keep in mind to Home your fixtures and turn down the brightness Attribute before starting to playback your show.

 

As Keith writes I hope this is of help. Please don´t hesitate to contact me for further information.*:-))

 

 

best regards

[JonHirsh]

Hey well ok what a fly out is lets say you have 10 lights and every other light 1,3,5,7,9 is off and is pointing down and lights number 2,4,6,8,10 Are on and are pointing down with a movement to the up position where the shutter out. Then Lamps 1,3,5,7,9 are on and make the same movement while lamps 2,4,6,8,10 are off and move to the down position. this is repeted until stopped the effect lights flying out indefinately

 

 

as for the other problems addressed saying to be creative and to just deal with it isnt a good enough answer imagine if a car would start but you couldnt turn it off, Wouldnt you be looking for a new car? and not trying to come up with ways to get around this. It seems silly for a version that has had updates to be this flawed the traning session felt like a beta test.

[Paul]

Hi Jon,

 

saying to be creative and to just deal with it isnt a good enough answer

 

Please try to be a little fairer in your criticism of other forum members. Haytech and Laubfrosch are not Zero88 employees and were offering advice in good faith to try and help you get along with the desk. They are both experienced programmers and regular contributors to the forum.

 

I would be interested to hear where you had the training session (probably best not to post it here though if you don't want to upset them!), since it seems to have left you with some gaps in your knowledge of how the Frog series desks operate.

 

Answers to your questions:

 

1. The fastest way to do a fly-out effect is to program an n-shot chase. It is achievable, I promise you.

 

2. The fixtures have a set of 'virtual presets', controlled by the brightness wheel, which are mixed HTP with other brightness sources (Playback X, Submasters, SX).

 

3. Will be fixed in the next software update, very very soon (watch this space!).

 

4. Yes, we get a lot of comments about the lack of a switch! It's something we may introduce in the future.

 

it seems to be perfect for a small corporate show or maybe a small night club its more like a conventional console with some moving light ability

 

You've hit the nail on the head. That could be almost a direct quote from the original business proposal for the Frog series! If you're looking for a higher performance desk which can take on the likes of Pearl's and Hog2's, then you should be looking at the Frog2.

 

Hope this answers your questions. Welcome to the forums by the way!

 

Regards,

 

Paul.

 

edit: fixed link

[JonHirsh]

As per a conversation with Joe from Act Lighitng, we discussed these problems. The thing i want to stress from this conversation is that i would never tell anyone not to buy this board but i would discuss the negitives with the postives. Personaly i will not use it agin unless for budget issues or it being on a rider. I think if a client choses this board over a slightly more expensive board it is your duty as a good TD to warn them of its limitations vs cost saving.

 

Now Joe informed me that it is possible to do the fly outs i would appriciate it if you could please step by step instruct us on how to do this. and here would be the show parameters. 6 mac 250 entours auto patched starting at chanal 101. there sholud be a gobo and colour included in the description. You said it was possible please explain how you did it.

thank you

 

Jon Hirsh

 

PS. as to being unfair to the other members who posted in the response what i have to say to that is. I was unfair to discredit there sugestions but on the flip side of the coin they as users or owners of this console should not be compermising this is an investment. to buy a bord takes hard cash and when you find problems with the product like any other good product it should be fixed. even if it takes a while, The most worrying thing i see on this Fourm is that when someone makes a sugestion about a update or a bug they say oh i think this is an simple fix well it doesnt matte eassy or hard it should all be fixed at some point not done in order of simplicity. I would just hope that the users of this console would be able to require fixes not request them.

[Kirkup_xp]

To program a flyout:

 

Intensities, Beams and Colours can be delt with as required (some prefer fly outs to be done with shutters, others with dimmers). For the purposes of this example, i'll use just dimmer channels.

 

First, select fixtures 1, 3 and 5. Move them to the "In" position, and set the intensity to 100%. Now select fixtures 2, 4 and 6. Move these to the "Out" position and set the intensity to 0%. Program this (either as a step in a chase, or as a cue). I've detailed my recommendations for the content of the cues below.

 

Step 1:

1,3,5 pointing 'in' at 100%

2,4,6 pointing 'out' at 0%

 

Step 2:

1,3,5 pointing 'out' at 100%

2,4,6 pointing 'in' at 0%

 

Step 3:

1,3,5 pointing 'out' at 0%

2,4,6 ponting 'in' at 100%

 

Step 4:

1,3,5 pointing 'in' at 0%

2,4,6 pointing 'out' at 100%

 

You can then make this a repeating chase, where the fixtures will move in a continuous loop - 2,4,6 presetting themselves whilst 1,3,5 are moving, and vica versa. Setting the direction to <> would give you an interesting bouncing effect. You may need to play with the chase drive to get something you're satisfied with. If you only wanted the cues to run once, you could adapt the chase, making it an 'n-shot' (1) and plotting in a final step with the all 6 fixtures at 0%.

 

If you have the opportunity, it might be worth playing with this as a group of cues rather than a chase. This would give you individual control over the fade times for intensity and position (LTP Fade). Needless to say you'd set Step 4 to have a Jump to Step 1, and set all steps as 'Auto'. You might need to make a copy of step 1 prior to the actual step 1, set to 'Go' trigger, if you wish to use the flyout as part of a cue stack.

 

Cue 1 - PRESET FLYOUT - GO Trigger

Cue 2 - FLYOUT STEP 1 - Auto Trigger

Cue 3 - FLYOUT STEP 2 - Auto Trigger

Cue 4 - FLYOUT STEP 3 - Auto Trigger

Cue 5 - FLYOUT STEP 4 - Auto Trigger Jump to Cue 2

 

 

I hope i've made this clear. If not, I can post some diagrams to try and help.

 

If you wanted this to become much simpler, I would recommend looking at the Frog 2 console. One of the major features of the console is the ability to set individual fade and delay times on each parameter of a fixture. This would enable you to have very fine control over the timing of your flyout.

 

 

Peter

[JonHirsh]

Thank you that is a comprehensive response to the question now the problem in this is when you play back how do you exit it from a que stack

Ie how do you bypass the JUMP to cue?

 

 

Thank you

 

Jon Hirsh

 

ps. the frog 2 is out of the question as the gear is paid for and the dealer does not have those consoles

[Kirkup_xp]

To exit the looping cues, you would have to break into the stack manually and select cue 6 (in my above example) as the next cue (yellow highlight on the monitor). Pressing Go would then trigger this cue to activate and the jump would be ignored.

 

You could also set the cue to have another form of trigger (timecode, realtime, external) and this would activate the playback of the cue when the trigger is reached. If you put together a remote trigger using an 8-pin DIN system, you could trigger the next cue by setting the trigger as "Go Mem" "6".

 

Sorry its a bit of a work around rather than a neat solution, but it would get you there in the end.

[Laubfrosch]

Hi John,

 

well where to start?

 

Okay first answering your question.

You should ever have a ps2 keyboard with you. To stop the running loop of fly out cues. type the next cue No. and press enter the next "Go" will start this cue.

 

I don´t understand why you are not programming a chase as advised by Paul.

 

Chase

 

1. All Fix tagged, Position down, Dim 100%, Shutters closed

2. All tagged, Group Odd active, Shutter open, Position up

3. All tagged, Group Even, Shutter open, Position up, Group Odd Shutter closed

4. Group Odd Position down, Group Even Shutter closed

 

Keep in mind a Memory can be a single scene or a chase!

 

Now set your fades and times that´s all!

 

To answere your statements!!!

 

First of all RTFM!!!

 

Then please erase other desk philosophies. Now you may be ready to get the advantages of a Frog. And once more you are comparing desks which have different prices and in consequence completely other features.

 

After you have done YOUR homework, you can validate or deny your former statements.

 

 

that´s all for now!

 

regards

[Kirkup_xp]

I think the problem with using a chase is that you don't have control over the speed on a step by step basis. In a flyout, you normally want the fixtures to snap on just before they perform their movement. By using a chase, you will either have a delay before the shutter opens or the movement will start before the shutter changes (depending on which modifiers you have set to which settings).

 

By programming a memory you can set individual fade times for the fixtures which are fading in and those fading out, together with seperate LTP fade times and the ability to set attributes as Fade or Snap, giving you significantly more control over the sequence than using a Chase. I know i'd use a memory, thats for sure.