patching

[david simpson]

Getting on fine with my leap frog ,but it would be nice to check the dmx patch "live"while in super user mode. Is this poss?

 

Dave :cry:

[GLX]

Is the any chance that the external keyboard could be used to find channels in theatre suitation, ie.... ch 34 through 45 then move one of the control wheels to bring it up.

Countless times i've been in the suitation trying to find channels in a theatre and going in and out of the super user which is a serious pain. :?:

[K-Nine]

Unless there is a particular reason for not doing so, I would recommend patching the generic channels 1:1 with the DMX channels, so to check any particular dimmer channel, move the corresponding preset fader on the desk.

 

The control wheels are only used for fixture parameter control on the Frog Series of desks.

[GLX]

What happens when you get into a theatre with over 200 dmx channels and your trying to find those loose par cans you rigged earlier, the theatre crew saying "try 56 or 78" it can get very confusing, jumping in & out of s.user.

[GLX]

1 to 48 is patched on the desk, now if the theatre number for the ie.. cans on lx4 is 67 through 75 they think!, you have to go into s.user to patch it,come out of s.user then see if 67 through 75 has cought the cans. If not its back in again and patch something else.

But if any number on the 512 dmx could be brought up by using the external keyboard and press enter it would make life so much easier.

[Morten]

How about, a "live" function in the manual patch. For example, if fader 32 is to be patched, then the channel you wish to patch to it, is output at 100%... pressing"+" turns the next dmx channel on at 100%...

 

Morten

[GLX]

Yep! spot on would work fine.

[K-Nine]

How about, a "live" function in the manual patch. For example, if fader 32 is to be patched, then the channel you wish to patch to it, is output at 100%... pressing"+" turns the next dmx channel on at 100%...

 

Morten

 

Apart from the fact that when you are in the Manual Patch screen, the + and - buttons are already used for selecting the DMX address :!:

 

However, if we could find another unused key that would flash the selected dmx address :idea:

[Morten]

I know that. But couldn't the selected dmx-adress be output?

 

Or a flash as you mention...

[GLX]

How about , entrer channel number on external keyboard and then press "*" on numeric end of the keyboard to bring the channel to full?

[K-Nine]

I think that we need to maintain the current user interface for entering the DMX address (using the +/- keys or directly via external keyboard).

 

We could then use the PREVIEW key to bring the output on the corresponding DMX channel to the level of the Grand Master.

 

Frog Reference 5450 - "Live" function in Manual Patch to output on DMX channel.

[Angelos]

One more vote for this functionality.

 

i.e. We have recorded a show for a certain play and either we move to different theaters with pre-allocated lines or the crew is not that 'experienced' and makes wrong patches to the cables.

It would be really helpful not to have to enter and exit superuser mode in order to find where is 'that' line going to.

And time is not on our side as we usually have only less than one night to move-in setup and stabilize before the dawn.

 

Angelos Giannatos

RODA Theater

[gargo1]

Not being able to check to see if you patched things right till you get out of Super User is a headache. When I manual patch the generic channels to a fader I wish I could bring that fader up and see if it is working right. Going to different venues every week and having people right down the numbers for you and then finding that there are a lot of them wrong is frustrating enough. But then having to guess and go in and out of the super user just to check adds to the frustration. Does anyone else agree? Thanks!

[Chris999998]

I'd have to agree, this would also make life much easier when patching while someone else is focussing, I checked on phantom frog and the faders currently appear to do nothing. Perhaps it would be possible to keep the flash buttons with their current function and the faders on setup as patched in Super User?

 

Chris

[lampie85]

I work with the Meatloaf story and vampires rock touring with a Fat frog. We tour a few moving lights, acl's etc and rely on in-house generic lx.

 

One thing that really bugs me is when the venue dosent give me a plan or list of channel numbers to patch ( as its quite a small desk I have to patch duplicates on each channel to fit all the washes etc in)

 

They tend to say "oh just flash through channels 200 thru 220 to find this bank of cans", or suchlike after I've patched everything elce... I have to find 4 or so unpached channels and patch 200 to 203, exit patch, wait for the desk to update all the cues etc and watch it get stuck on 93% for ages then have a look, if no sucess then try again, back into superuser, patch etc, What a pain!

 

It would be great if when you were in the manual patch menu, to be able to use the keyboard and type say 223 then space or something to preview that dmx channel at full rather than having to patch it and exit desk setup as above!

 

Any way this can be done to save me this nightmare of incompetant venues?

 

P.S It would be usefull to be able to patch more than one dmx channel number to each desk channel. (E.G, if you were given the tab dressing channels and you wanted them on a single desk channel and that circuit was also part of the "red" wash from FOH) I know in normal practise this wouldnt be a problem as you could record the "red" wash as a sub etc but as Ive got so much stuff going on, I have ran out of space and have to patch whole washes onto single channels as duplicates!

 

I can patch duplicates fine but lets say on desk channel 1, I want to patch dmx channel numbers 250 thru 255, And also on desk channel 2, I want to patch dmx channel 250, You can't. You can only use one dmx channel (1-512) once, (if you try, it jumps the number to the next available number)

 

I was just suggesting this may be a usefull feature (it certainly would for me)

 

Ahhhh, Mabye time to get a bull frog with double channels!

 

If any one has any thoughts on any of the above please let me know ( and I apoligise for the dredfull spelling! )

 

Thanks, Daz

[nighteyes]

As far as i know there is no lighting desk today that can actually patch a dmx-channel to several faders at the same time and also do vice-versa. If anyone knows of one, let me know.

 

As i understand it, its very difficult, (if not impossible) to program this into the software. Out of pure curiousity, i'd like to know a bit more about what the exact problem there really is. Is there anyone who can tell me a bit more on this problem?

[Paul]

If you allow multiple desk channels to control a single DMX channel, you have to perform some sort of mix. For brightness channels, HTP would be the obvious choice. For LTP channels, it's more difficult since you have to look further inside the desk's data structures to see what changed last, and why (i.e. because of an ongoing fade or because of a user action or because of a chase step advance or because of an auto memory trigger etc.), and then apply some sort of priority rules.

 

For every patch duplicate of every HTP channel, you'd have to have an additional HTP mix. The theoretical limit would more than double the number of HTP mixes that the desk has to do. Tests have shown that this is one of the most computationally intensive things that the desk has to do, and we really don't want to introduce a potential performance problem for the sake of a feature which we don't see in other products and don't think can be cleanly defined and don't think would be wanted by the vast majority of users.

[pollywog]

Situation:

In all custom houses I work i could not get any DMX-Plan about the used DMX-Channels.

At the last production it took me 1,5 hour doing the DMX-Patch for the house. (Bullfrog 10.8)

 

How i did it:

- knew used Channels are between 001 and 150

- put Bullfrog in Wide Mode

- Auto patch 1 to 96

- connect to House-DMX

- pull each fader to see whats happen in the house

- write down on a paper what dmx-channel is what

(there was no structure in the house 6er bars were not continous numberd ...)

- after DMX-Channel 96

- Auto patch 96 to 150

- pull each fader to see whats happen in the house again

- write down on a paper what dmx-channel is what

 

- Put a stiky tape ahead the generics, write down the needed DMX-Channels ahead the channels

- enterd 110 times DMX-Channels in the manual Patch :-( (40 I did not use)

 

Suggestion:

I would like to do it thatway:

- Desk Setup; DMX-Patch; Live Generic Wheel Patch (new Menu-Line)

- Using Thumb Wheel is increasing/decreasing DMX-Unisvers A

- Using 1stFinger Wheel is increasing/decreasing DMX-Universe B

(If Thumb is on e.g. 45 and 1st Finger moved Thumb is set to "0" and otherwise)

Live: all DMX-Values are "0", only the selected one is on 100% (255)

Patching:

-Pressing Generic Button (Goal for DMX-Channel), afterwards store (not keeped the generic Button hold :-( ))

 

Time Compare:

With the described Method it is done within 15-20 minutes instead of 90 minutes.

Why I know this ?

If there are no Movings in the set I Use a MA24 / MA48 where patching is working like that, however the desk was developed 15 Years before the Frogs :-(

 

 

Other Frog Useres:

please post here also yes, I need this too (if so) to show the Zerro 88 Team

that this is a needed feature for all the operaters touring or working in different houses ...

[Paul]

Using the wheels would not be the preferred method, since it wouldn't work on a Frog desk. The PREVIEW button is available on all desks.

 

Edit: This function is now available in release 10.9 software.

[pollywog]

Hi Zero88 team,

 

with 10.9.1 90% are done.

Pressing the preview Button in Patch menu --> great.

 

I was wondering when i keept the preview button pressed and increased / decreased the dmx Channel that it is working added.

Meaning not only one channel is going with 100% to DMX out, all the previos channels are als at 100% DMX Output.

 

Could you change it that only the active DMX number Chanel is on 100%

 

Thanks pollywog