Edward Z88 Posted September 21, 2023 Report Posted September 21, 2023 Hi @Amy Worrall On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: Well, I survived! First night was yesterday. With very little time in the venue and no tech run (gotta love amateur theatre), I'm glad I prepared myself by getting help from you guys Expand Glad you survived! Thank you very much for taking the time to leave this feedback. My responses below: On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I was using a FLX without a monitor. A few things were annoying because of that: Expand FLX is easier to use with an external monitor. If you don't have a physical external monitor, you could turn a Windows PC or an iPad into one by connecting them to the console's network, and run the ZerOS Monitor apps. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: having to use shift+view to get the output window, as opposed to having it as one of the things that View will cycle through. (I constantly wanted to swap between the cue list and the output window, and I pretty much never cared about the fader display -- LX tape was sufficient to label my faders!). Expand It is possible to record yourself a macro to get back to the Output window, which could then be put on a UDK. If you'd like information on this let me know. We also want to make various improvements to the FLX touchscreen, to bring it more inline with FLX S. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I didn't like how you had to press and hold record or update to get the record options, and when you did, you couldn't see the command line. I frequently wanted to issue the command "record cue N", where N was the number of an existing cue I was replacing, and to also specify tracking mode or some other record options. Expand In Setup -> Settings -> Record & Update, you can configure the Record & Update Options to always appear on the internal touchscreen when RECORD or UPDATE are pressed. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I wish that the current and next cue numbers were persistently displayed somehow, even when e.g. looking at the outputs window or a set of palettes. Maybe they could go on one end of the command line? Expand This is a great suggestion. I have logged this on our system as reference number ZOS-3600. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I wasn't so keen on how the command line just fills up with multiple unrelated things. For those that don't know Eos, it clears the command line after each command is finished -- Eos maintains selection separately to the command line, so clearing the command line doesn't lose your selection. This wasn't too big a deal, I did get used to it. Expand ZerOS uses the command line as its Undo history, allowing you to undo selection/control changes. With fixtures selected, a single press of the CLEAR key will clear selection, and clear the command line, leaving programmer values as they are. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I really really really missed having a Time key. On Eos, to edit the time of the cue you're in, you can just type "Time 3 <enter>", or for a different cue, "Cue 6 time 3 <enter>". Time entry by navigating with the arrow keys on the cue list was probably my biggest slowdown. Expand None of our current ZerOS consoles feature a TIME key - this is something you will only find on our Neo X consoles. To quickly increment/decrement a fade time value on FLX, tap on the fade time, and then hold SHIFT and use the Up/Down arrow keys. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I loved the auto colour and gobo palettes feature. They saved loads of time. Expand Brilliant - glad to hear it. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I did record a few "everything" palettes (e.g. having intensity, colour, position etc in just one palette, aka Eos Presets). They worked fine -- I put them under Colour, fairly arbitrarily. I think it'd be more understandable having a separate home for them, but this was fine. Expand Feature suggestion logged as ZOS-5952 on the system. I have made a note of your request. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: Am I correct that the desk only holds one show file at once, and auto-saves? I was very confused about whether the Save option through Setup, and the save option through the Z key, did the same thing as each other and whether they always saved to USB. Expand That is correct - FLX will only ever have the current show file stored on it, and it auto-saves after every change you make when outside of Setup. Setup -> Save is a bit like "Save As" - that's where you go and initially save your show file to a USB drive. Z -> Save Show, is a way of quickly saving a new revision of the show file to a USB drive - with the console simply adding an incremental number to the end of the show name. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: Is there an Undo? I couldn't find one. Would have helped a lot when i replaced colour palette 8 instead of position palette 8! Expand There is no "programming undo". To undo what you've described above, the only option would be to load in an earlier revision of the show file from a USB drive. This is why regularly tapping Z -> Save Show is best practice. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: Is there a way to swap the encoders from fine to coarse mode? They were scrolling very slowly for me. Expand Yes - to do this hold SETUP and tap the key of the attribute you are working in, for example SETUP+COLOUR. You can then change the encoders to Coarse/Fine, or simply adjust the encoder sensitivity. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: Probably a small thing, but I missed Eos's "expanded" output tile view, where every parameter of every light was visible. (I'd want it as an option, since it would drastically increase scrolling!) Expand On ZerOS, you can open an equivalent of this window in table form in the Output window on the external monitor, by selecting the fixtures you'd like to view. There is too much information to display this nicely on the internal touchscreen. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I liked how Zeros displayed the fixture types above the output window items (And that I could name my dimmers and those names would appear there.) Expand Great 🙂 On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: It was great to show all the possible things that could be updated, but the tap targets were very small! Expand Update Options window UI enhancements logged as ZOS-5728. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: It wasn't immediately clear to me what "also update references" did -- was it so that if I changed a palette it would update the cues that referred to the palette? If so, when would you ever _not_ want that? Expand This is described here... https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/updating-cues/update-options#references The console uses the logic that if you have manually adjusted parameters, breaking the palette reference, and are about to update the cue, you have deliberately chosen to break that reference. However, if you wish to reinstate the reference, you can enable "Update References". On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I think I mostly grokked how to remove things from cues (via update->remove), but I still wasn't perfectly clear. There was a toggle for Smart Tag in the update dialog, but I wish there was also the toggles for selected vs tagged, and all params vs tagged params. I wasn't sure how to specify "remove this entire fixture" vs "remove this parameter of this fixture", and I didn't grok what smart tag remove would even do. I know you guys explained it to me, it just hasn't quite sunk in! Expand This is described here... https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/updating-cues/update-options#remove To remove an entire fixture from the current cue, select the fixture(s), tap HOME > UPDATE > Remove > ENTER. This can only be done with SmartTag disabled. To remove a fixture's attribute from the current cue, select the fixture(s), hold CLEAR and tap the attribute you wish to remove (CLEAR+COLOUR) > UPDATE > Remove > ENTER. This can only be done with SmartTag disabled. To remove an individual parameter, select the fixture(s), tap the attribute key to access the parameter (COLOUR), tap the parameter on the touchscreen to tag it, so that it goes blue on the encoders, UPDATE > Remove > ENTER. This can only be done with SmartTag disabled. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I still miss the Eos Blind Spreadsheet though. The ability to see precisely which move instructions are in any [cue, palette, preset, submaster, etc], with blank spaces where no instructions are found… and an easy press of "at enter" once you targetted the thing you don't want, and you get instant feedback by seeing the number go away… Expand Our old "Orb" series consoles have the "Fixture Levels" window. Bringing this to FLX could be interesting. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: Minor nitpick, but I kept wanting the Groups key to be near the Color/Pos/Beam/etc keys. I'm not actually sure why, since on Eos they're nowhere near each other either. Expand The main reason the GROUP key is not alongside the attribute keys, is so that you can very easily use the GROUP key in syntax - GROUP 1 @ 75 ENTER On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: Playbacks were pretty intuitive. I managed to set one up that did LTP mixing of intensity params, and it worked fine. Expand Nice 👍 On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: Clear-clear to remove manual values was fine. I wish there was an option to remove them with a fade, aka Eos "Sneak"… if there had been, I'd have used syntax to modify lights during the live show, knowing that I could put them back when I wanted without the audience noticing. Expand There is - tap Z and then enable Programmer Time on the fourth encoder wheel - this fade time will then be used by CLEAR CLEAR. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: Patching was fine. I liked the <channel> <at> <address> syntax for updating DMX addresses. I wish that if you typed that into the patch window for a non-existent channel, it'd get created automatically. Expand This is a great suggestion. Logged as reference number ZOS-8097. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I missed the Eos "%+" and "%-" buttons. I liked having easy access to make a bunch of lights brighter/dimmer all at once. (I didn't try using an intensity encoder on ZerOS though -- I know you can lock that on if you want, but I didn't get time to see if it would have been an intuitive workflow for me.) Expand To reduce the currently selected fixtures by 50%, type @, and then hold SHIFT and tap the Down arrow key, and then type 50 ENTER. @ -50 will be typed into the command line. You can also use SHIFT and Up arrow to access @ + syntax. More information here... https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/selection-and-intensity/commands#scaling On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: We ran into an odd bug where the grand master was down but the desk ignored the fact. Once we moved it to the top, it started working normally again. Expand Upon booting FLX, it will always set the internal Grand Master level to full, irrespective of the fader position. The Grand Master fader can regain control of the Grand Master by taking the Grand Master fader to full. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I didn't quite get the logic of when the "pause" button would immediately do a "back" action, vs which situations pressing it once would cause it to flash and you had to press it a second time to go back. I would have expected the latter to only happen during a fade… but actually it happened _most_ of the time, but not all -- sometimes a single press of pause _did_ go back. Expand If the Master Playback is currently paused, only a single press of PAUSE is required to Go Back. The Pause button will be flashing if the Master Playback is currently paused. If it isn't flashing, two presses will be required to Go Back. Bear in mind, if you record a cue without SmartTag, the Master Playback will be in a paused state - the theory being you have just snapped into the cue you just recorded, ignoring fade times. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: I was bitten a couple of times by the fact that bringing the master fader down released the cue list and reset it to cue 1. I was trying to edit some moving light positions, and I went to the relevant cue, then brought the master fader down so as to see what I was doing (with manual values in the movers in question)… but it released the cue and I had to start over. I solved my issue by only bringing it down to 10%… Expand Hold SETUP and tap the Master Playback's GO button, to open the Master Playback's Settings. Choose Raise and Lower, and set Release On Lower to disabled. On 9/20/2023 at 10:57 PM, Amy Worrall said: How do you "clear" (aka release/sneak) just _some_ manual values? I know you could do it by manipulating the command line, but suppose my command line was ages long. This was definitely a workflow I missed -- often, I'd bring intensities down on some other lights while I was editing the ones I cared about, then I wanted to clear that intensity reduction but keep my other changes ready to update into the current cue. I miss my "@ enter"! Expand To clear a whole fixture, you can use the "Clear Fixture" command. To access this, hold SETUP and tap an empty UDK. From the dropdown, choose Clear Fixture, and click OK. Now, select a fixture, and tap your Clear Fixture UDK, and the values of this fixture will be cleared. Thanks once again for taking the time to write up this feedback. Please let us know if you have any questions. 1 Quote Edward Smith Formerly: Zero 88 Product Specialist - Email Support Currently: Obsidian Control Systems Product Specialist
Amy Worrall Posted September 21, 2023 Author Report Posted September 21, 2023 Thanks for the responses Edward. Point taken about the console being better/easier with an external monitor -- I was a bit limited by what the venue had available (unless I wanted to press into our hire budget for one, and the sound department had already eaten most of that). I'll certainly be looking back at this thread next time I use a FLX to remind myself. I tend to use whatever's in the venue, so currently I'm not sure when I'll next encounter one, but when I do I'll be prepared On 9/21/2023 at 12:09 PM, Edward Z88 said: The console uses the logic that if you have manually adjusted parameters, breaking the palette reference, and are about to update the cue, you have deliberately chosen to break that reference. However, if you wish to reinstate the reference, you can enable "Update References". Expand That makes sense, but in that case what happens if I select both the palette and the cue in the top of the update dialog? I figured that doing that was the way to achieve this functionality -- does that do something different? On 9/21/2023 at 12:09 PM, Edward Z88 said: If the Master Playback is currently paused, only a single press of PAUSE is required to Go Back. The Pause button will be flashing if the Master Playback is currently paused. If it isn't flashing, two presses will be required to Go Back. Bear in mind, if you record a cue without SmartTag, the Master Playback will be in a paused state - the theory being you have just snapped into the cue you just recorded, ignoring fade times. Expand Ah, it was the record without smarttag -> paused feature that I was not understanding. On 9/21/2023 at 12:09 PM, Edward Z88 said: The main reason the GROUP key is not alongside the attribute keys, is so that you can very easily use the GROUP key in syntax - GROUP 1 @ 75 ENTER Expand Yeah that makes total sense -- I am not sure why it was confusing me. Maybe because pressing it caused a screen transition (i.e. showing the groups on screen), so in my mind it wanted to be by the screen! On 9/21/2023 at 12:09 PM, Edward Z88 said: This is described here... https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/updating-cues/update-options#remove To remove an entire fixture from the current cue, select the fixture(s), tap HOME > UPDATE > Remove > ENTER. This can only be done with SmartTag disabled. To remove a fixture's attribute from the current cue, select the fixture(s), hold CLEAR and tap the attribute you wish to remove (CLEAR+COLOUR) > UPDATE > Remove > ENTER. This can only be done with SmartTag disabled. To remove an individual parameter, select the fixture(s), tap the attribute key to access the parameter (COLOUR), tap the parameter on the touchscreen to tag it, so that it goes blue on the encoders, UPDATE > Remove > ENTER. This can only be done with SmartTag disabled. Expand From this (and the manual page), I think I understand that: "Remove" in the Update dialog always only applies to tagged parameters; there's no way to apply it to selected fixtures other than by using something like Home to tag all the parameters. Is that correct? Also, all your examples were done with smart tag disabled. Does Remove ever do anything when smart tag is enabled? If not, could you maybe grey out the Remove button when smart tag is enabled in the update dialog? On 9/21/2023 at 12:09 PM, Edward Z88 said: On ZerOS, you can open an equivalent of this window in table form in the Output window on the external monitor, by selecting the fixtures you'd like to view. There is too much information to display this nicely on the internal touchscreen. Expand It was displaying parameter info for selected fixtures on the internal touchscreen I think (unless I'm misremembering and that only happened in Phantom ZerOS where I was using a virtual external monitor). That was useful, but I'd still like a mode to see the info inline for all fixtures. On 9/21/2023 at 12:09 PM, Edward Z88 said: None of our current ZerOS consoles feature a TIME key - this is something you will only find on our Neo X consoles. To quickly increment/decrement a fade time value on FLX, tap on the fade time, and then hold SHIFT and use the Up/Down arrow keys. Expand That would have been marginally quicker; I was selecting the fade time, hitting enter, typing a new time, hitting enter again. Orb had a Time key, right? I think Orb would have been closer to my ideal console than FLX is. Any plans to release a more syntax focussed ZerOS console in the future? (I know, no comments on future products!) But given that ZerOS must support the concept of a Time key, you could maybe add it to the things you can make the UDKs do on FLX? On 9/21/2023 at 12:09 PM, Edward Z88 said: It is possible to record yourself a macro to get back to the Output window, which could then be put on a UDK. Expand I'll consider this for next time. I guess I just figured it's such a useful window, I expected most people to want instant access to it! Quote
Edward Z88 Posted September 22, 2023 Report Posted September 22, 2023 On 9/21/2023 at 5:50 PM, Amy Worrall said: That makes sense, but in that case what happens if I select both the palette and the cue in the top of the update dialog? I figured that doing that was the way to achieve this functionality -- does that do something different? Expand Manually tapping the palettes used in the cue at the top of the Update Options, is the same as clicking "Update References", but "Update References" is essentially the shortcut to allow the console to automatically update the palettes that are used in the current cue. On 9/21/2023 at 5:50 PM, Amy Worrall said: "Remove" in the Update dialog always only applies to tagged parameters; there's no way to apply it to selected fixtures other than by using something like Home to tag all the parameters. Expand That is correct - "Remove" cares about tagged parameters, not selected fixtures. On 9/21/2023 at 5:50 PM, Amy Worrall said: Does Remove ever do anything when smart tag is enabled? If not, could you maybe grey out the Remove button when smart tag is enabled in the update dialog? Expand You can't use SmartTag in conjunction with "Remove". UI improvements are covered in ZOS-5728... On 9/21/2023 at 12:09 PM, Edward Z88 said: Update Options window UI enhancements logged as ZOS-5728. Expand On 9/21/2023 at 5:50 PM, Amy Worrall said: It was displaying parameter info for selected fixtures on the internal touchscreen I think (unless I'm misremembering and that only happened in Phantom ZerOS where I was using a virtual external monitor). That was useful, but I'd still like a mode to see the info inline for all fixtures. Expand You won't see what we call the "Parameter Table" on the internal touchscreen. See the link below for more information... https://www.zero88.com/manuals/zeros/desktops-windows/output-window On 9/21/2023 at 5:50 PM, Amy Worrall said: But given that ZerOS must support the concept of a Time key, you could maybe add it to the things you can make the UDKs do on FLX? Expand It certainly isn't impossible! Thanks once again for your time - it really is appreciated. Quote Edward Smith Formerly: Zero 88 Product Specialist - Email Support Currently: Obsidian Control Systems Product Specialist
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.