I'm stumped again. School stage show goes up Monday night. I thought I could use sequential list to just run it from 'Go' button, but I can't find anyway of selecting scenes into seq list macros with the ability to vary intensities.
I've therefore decided to revert to using buttons for each scene in the show (about 40 I think) but with a full stage to light and almost 50 fixtures with a rough 50:50 mix of generics on dimmers and LED RGB PAR's. So approaching 300 DMX channels. However I've now found a snag with that... mainly on the generics. A steps scene is no use as it steps through it, whereas I need CCT spot 1 and 2 at 255, and Fres 5 and 7 at 180, and floods 1 thro 6 at 75. They all need to come on together and go off together at that level. On a traditional desk I would have created a scene on a desk and dropped it onto any one of a number of sub-masters (often on multiple pages) so a student could control the overall level of that scene. My APC mini only has a limited number of faders and I believe ShowXpress only allows 8 masters. I expected to be able to set a slider on each scene I'd set and then bring them into a macro button, but I discovered that I can't do this on a single step scene as the slider controls the steps not the intensity. It also appears I cannot apply a slider to a macro button, or at least its not in the list. So in effect I think I have to create a single step scene for,
- every lantern,
- for every likely dimmer level,
For the LED's it appears I need a steps scene for every colour and intensity option, all multiplied by the fact that I need to control stage_right, stage_centre, stage_left and stage_wide, plus of course going up and downstage as well. I already have a long list of scenes that become too difficult to locate in the list, but this is going to explode into the 100's. As I need to maintain an overall master for blackouts (blackout button as per the recent thread kills my back stage blues plunging the cast into darkness) and another for lighting the band, I'm limited to 6 intensity controllable scenes ..... unless I've missed something. I've been back through Darren's video's but all it seems to do is to confirm my worst fears.
Any suggestions please? At present I think the task is too big to complete this weekend. I can't get back onto the rig until Monday 1pm with the show at 7pm. 3D view helps a bit but doesn't really cut the mustard when a director is asking to 'reduce the level of lighting upstage and add a bit of red' as the colours on screen don't mach reality, not do the number of available generic's really help because actual beam angles and power differ vastly from the available options.
Thanks in advance .... Robin
) four of the master faders leaving me with just four to play with. However, after spending all last evening on 3D view and then going in to the live rig this at 9:30 this morning with another tech, we conclude the software is not fit for purpose, or there is a problem with my Chauvet Xpress 512.