Uriahdemon

Evening all,

Just thought I would ask if there is anyone nearby to help out an Elton John Tribute .  Using in house rig and I will pass on contact details if interested.

PS....  gap will be variable but happy to work within a set distance if necessary.

14 minutes ago, Anothertom said:

Some information lacking, for a useful answer to your questions: how big are the two screens you would like to use, what's the total width, and what gap would you have in the middle (might help if you draw this out)? Are the screens flown or ground supported?

And what throw distance would you have for the projection? An ultra-short throw lens is typically around 0.39:1 (so .39m throw for 1m width, and will be a fixed ratio.

I'd suggest contacting any friendly rental AV companies you use for specifc models, you definitely don't want to be purchasing for a one off.

Your suggestion for control and playback is fine, I'd suggest mapping the master opacity to a DMX channel so you can enforce blackout if something goes wrong. There are other ways you can avert disaster, but that's a good start.

Hi Anothertom thanks very much for the information.  I will try and provide the info requested.  

The size of the screens I am not sure about yet however if using one it needs to be at least 3m high and 4m wide.  This is something I am unsure about and flexible to get to the right place. If using two it would be 3m high and 2m wide.

The throw distance will change as some stage set ups are bigger than others and it is that flexibility I am after.  Also with the 1 or 2 screen and size options.  If I knew a minimum distance to achieve a decent projection then I will factor all that in for the set up and trussing.

Friendly AV companies mmmm, I am not sure of any AV companies near me or indeed if they are friendly or not.  Why would they take me through options if I were looking to do it on my own and they get no sale/hire at the end of it.....??

Mapping of master opacity noted and thanks. Always a good idea to be able to shut stuff off easily if not going as needed.

Thanks for all this, much appreciated  !!

Hi,

I have a few posts on this subject previously but unfortunately never landed on a solution.  I mention that as there will be lighting states happening as opposed to a dark scenario. I wondered that given I have a bit more direction on the requirements now if I stated them then that may help out on the advice received.

I am a lampy and have a decent rig and wish to add some visuals to the production.  I have been having a play with Resolume which allows me to control the lighting output via DMX on ethernet and would prefer to go down this route.  I have settled on the idea of a short throw projector (due to there not usually being much room on the stage) to a screen.

Can anyone please give me some advice on a package to get namely projector, screen and cabling.  The budget is reasonable but certainly not in the upper sphere.  I would like to be able to perhaps have 2 screens sat apart and not sure if I would need 2 projectors to do this.  Content however to stick with the one but will need to deal with drum kits sat in front of it.

Any advice really welcome please......??

34 minutes ago, david.elsbury said:

Well you wouldn’t normally do it via Ethernet… you could do NDI but you’ll need to get a couple of NDI decoders such as Magewell or Birddog ones to accept the NDI feed and output HDMI

why do you want to do Ethernet? How far away from the TV’s will your computer be? You’d normally run HDMI or DisplayPort from your graphics card into the TVs. Do you want to show the same content on both displays or have them independent?

Thanks David,  I am just looking for the best, most cost effective and easiest set up.  I was thinking ethernet given I am going to trigger the video via my lighting desk so configuring a universe to do that and the output would be on ethernet. Happy to output to HDMI if there is a way of doing that from Ethernet but not sure at this stage if that is possible.  My computer and lighting desk may be at a distance of 20 to 30m away from the screens.  I was thinking of the same content on both displays.

Just learning about the art of the possible right now as I would like to understand if this will work before buying equipment and licenses etc.  Thanks for your input

Hi,

I have a decent lighting package and was looking at adding some video (I have posted related threads on here) just to add to the overall production value.

I am looking at and getting acquainted with Resolume Arena.

Does anyone see any issues with outputting this via ethernet to compatible LED TV screens....??

It is for small to medium size venues.

Thanks very much in advance.

4 minutes ago, Dave m said:

iPhones vary the shutter speed instead of varying the iris- basically they don’t have one.

so using a phone to check is a waste of time

Thanks Dave, that is much appreciated.  I will give my digital camera a go.

Thanks very much to everyone for their helpful input to my issue. I apologise for coming back months later on this however as we all know the urgency to get my lights up to speed kind of blew away on the breeze.....  Like many of us.

I now want to get something done about the problem and bought a brand new LED PAR to test.  This has a refresh rate of 17.7 Khz as opposed to the problem child which was 400hz.  I video'd the old PARS which had the flicker and then the new one on an iphone but on reviewing the video could not see any flicker.

Has anyone got any good ideas for testing lights for flicker please....??

On 1/27/2020 at 6:17 PM, dmxlights said:

I have the (6) LEDj Q colour as well. I have also had the same problem as the OP and I also have other LEDj lights and I have no problem with them. I also have cheep LEDj lights and mean cheap they where 30.00 pound each and I have no problem with them at all. Even my showtec led bars do not cause any problems.

I have taken all the led lights I have as RGB or RGBW and have done tests with them and out of all the only one that I had problems with is the LEDj Q colour.

 

here is a list of lights that I have or tried.

 

Showtc lightbar 12 LEDj led zoomLEDj BurstStairville LED Flood panel 150LEDj Q Colour

Showtec LED par can (par 64)Cameo CLP64Q8W

Out of the above list the only one that causes any problem is LEDj Q Colour

 

 

I have tried other Q Colours that I do not own and they also do the same. So it not been down to been cheap they are just a bad design. I have listed cheap led lights in my list and do not have any problems with them

Thanks for this.  I totally forgot I posted this one night hence the extremely late reply

More than half the battle with image projection is the sourcing of that imagery. We used to spend days editing dozens of hours of recordings down to half hour loops of imagery and we weren't making them a focal point of a whole show.

 

But once you have that sorted then my first thought would be to talk to AV companies about hiring until you know exactly what you need. I don't know but I am guessing that there will be deals out there and once you have found your ideal set-up they may well be happy to sell it you second hand.

 

Be aware that to do it properly you probably need a dedicated vid mixer and things can get labour intensive very quickly indeed. To do a 500-1000 head two room club night with live bands and performers could easily take up half a dozen guys creating an environment. We regularly had four plus a vidiot.

Thanks Kerry, I get the sourcing of the imagery problem loud and clear but that will be another hurdle further down the track.

For now I need to steer clear of high labour numbers hence looking for advice on options that will be reasonably effective. Once the package is together, easy to set up and I gain knowledge from it I will look at bigger and better.

I will have a look at AV companies hire packages as you suggested.

Thanks again for your help.

What sort of scale of events do you work on? If for gigs you want to supplement a floor package (or even flown) rig you already have you could get some panels of video wall and dangle/rig them around the space, as squares, strips or any other shape... or you could get some lighting units which have multi cells which you can map from your desk/media server. Do you have anything in mind particularly? Do you just want patterns and shapes, or what you might call 'proper' video content?

 

Let us know the sort of rig you have already (along with your control surface/setup) and perhaps we can use that as a springboard for ideas. Can you link to any pics/videos online that have inspired you to ask the question?

Hi, thanks for the info and the ideas. The events can be small theatres (200 capacity) to larger festivals (2000). They are mostly bands . I like the idea of something to supplement the floor package. Just some eye candy to provide something a little different. If at all possible also projecting video of moving images. The idea came from some work I did with a Genesis tribute band who toured with a screen and projector. I have included a couple of links below which will give you an idea of what I was up to with them but it does not have to be exactly the same.

Control surface is a Zero88 FLX with a couple of wings, various truss setups (flexible), Led movers, Pars, lasers, blinders etc. Patterns and shapes would be good and image projection a bonus.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tc5pcwnrhmu1339/DSC_1237.JPG?dl=0https://www.dropbox.com/s/3biuj5farllznsm/DSC_2412.JPG?dl=0https://www.dropbox.com/s/h9znqk3oii1932r/IMG_0229.JPG?dl=0

Hi,

I am a lampy with my own rig but am looking to also introduce imagery/video.

I was wondering what options are available for touring and events. Mainly I would be looking for portability, easy set up and use, size adaptable, quality of images/video projected and of course keeping the cost down as much as possible.

As always thanks very much in advance for your help on this.

Thanks, I already do that but good advice !

A simple thing that might be obvious but hasn't been mentioned - keep the house rig and your toured rig on separate universes. Means you're guaranteed to not have any addresses clashing between house rig and toured rig.

Thanks, that is my intention and brushing up on Artnet config.

Yes. And be ready for house rigs split across 2 (or more) universes.

 

I carried 4 DMX universes of output (1 for me, 3 for house), and was setup to do SACN or Artnet if needed.

Thanks very much James for taking the time and effort to put all this together, it is really appreciated.

There is some obvious good info here and some I dont quite understand as yet and will need to digest and mull over in time.

If you dont mind I may post a few questions on this when I do.

Thanks again, Mac

This time last year (before all the madness) I was on a little tour through concert halls/theatres so knew from the outset house rigs would be quite varied. We also had no pre-production rehearsal for lighting so a rough showfile was thrown together during the fixture prep and very much refined as I went on. This meant that there was no "master" show to start fresh from each day so I made sure to lay the groundwork as best I could so I didn't have to bodge things in later.

 

For me the first thing to nail down is a good consistent fixture patch that covers all your touring fixtures as well as a sensible range of house fixtures. Try and group your head numbers so everything makes sense and is easy to remember/amend (e.g. spots 101 onwards, washes 201... etc). For this show the majority of the lighting came from our touring package with the house rig covering orchestra overhead wash, front wash & specials (vocals, conductor etc). For each of these "functions" supplied by the house rig I ended up patching two dimmers, two moving head profiles and two LED par fixtures so I had maximum flexibility when walking into the venue. If the previous night was fixed profiles for the conductor but today is Source 4 Revolutions I can just unpatch the dimmer heads (but leave them there in the console) and address the moving profile heads that would have been unpatched the previous night.

 

I was always coming back and changing things every show, cloning fixtures etc. if some venues had more for each specific task, however I liked the approach of keeping every "type" of fixture in the show separately as then no information is lost when morphing/exchanging. If I morph my moving head profiles on the conductor into generic dimmers I lose all the additional attributes like position and colour meaning I have to start again with those the next day!

 

Second thing is making sure any FX in my cues run against groups and not fixtures. This means that I can reorder, grow and shrink effects to suit in each venue. For each fixture type I had two groups (e.g. Spots 1, Spots 2) which the effects then ran against. If I had to grow/shrink the show to suit different setups I could just add/remove/reorder fixtures in these groups and not touch any of my FX. Same goes for sure attribute values in your cues come from your palettes, and that your palettes don't contain more information than they're supposed to (e.g. "Wide Zoom" also storing open gobo) to avoid any confusion.

 

Then, each day after the touring rig was flown my workflow usually consisted of:

1. Get DMX patch from house rig & make sure data is getting to the right places
2. Unpatching all house rig fixtures in the showfile
3. Morph existing fixtures in the show file into their house rig equivalents for this day with the correct mode etc. If there's more fixtures than the previous day clone some existing ones
4. Address fixtures & test
5. Touch up Fixture Groups & FX Groups to make sure all fixtures are present and in the correct order
6. Test some FX to see if things look right, tweak if necessary
7. Update position palettes for the current day, focus generics with house crews, more checks
8. Do the show

...oh yeah and find time to eat at some point!

 

This might not be an excellent example but it worked for me - although I'd also say that every time I start a new showfile I end up doing things a bit differently - eventually you'll find a style that suits the way you work & think.

Can anyone please share their work flow process for setting up. Where do you start, go to and end up, is there a sure fire sequence for doing this ....?

I used to do this on tour with a metal band. We carried control (Chamsys), 4 LED PARs, 4 birdies (footlight), 4ch of set/blinders, a strobe, and a dimmer rack. Was enough to do something in venues that had nothing or had only fixed on/off lighting, and was programmed so it could integrate with venue rigs.

 

Choose your 'master' fixtures wisely when you do your initial program, I used something that had all the features I might encouter so that my showfile had data for all of those scenarios. Know how much control you need - if they have 32 LED PARs, do you need all invididually or is 3 groups plenty - if 3 groups just have 3 fixtures and stack the addresses onto those fixtures or by 'cloning' fixtures. Know how to morph/swap/change and clone fixtures in your showfile. Get good at updating focus palettes quickly - they're the ones that you can't do without being connected to the rig.

 

Be ready to compromise if you need to, time is always short and sometimes doing less programming and actually having time to eat will lead to a better show than a beautifully programmed show operated by someone who is hungry/thirsty struggling to concentrate due to a lack of blood sugar.

Thanks Jon, this is the gem info I seek. I will go through this with a fine tooth comb later.

Thanks very much Ed, much appreciated. I will have a look and play at all the info you have provided here and across on the FLX forum.

Yeah I think Richard was thinking of conventional fixtures. Building your show using palettes and mastering fixture exchange are definitely things to look at.

Thanks

Some consoles eg Avo allow you to patch multiple dimmer channels onto one fader. You could just record a submaster to do the same thing.

Thanks but unfortunately the majority of the fixtures will be LED Pars and Movers, so lots of attributes to them.

depends on the show really - for some shows I will often simplify the house rig by having a single channel for my warm/cold front of house, and for the colours overhead - that way irrespective of how many units the venue have they always are patched as one channel and so appear in the right cues etc.

 

Moving lights get more complicated but if you have a show file with sensible presets/palettes in place then you can help yourself, although I'm not sure how advanced the FLX is in its ability to clone fixture or change the type while retaining data

Thanks for the tips Richard. A lot of the setups will include LED Pars and movers.I am not sure I understand how you get them all on a single channel. Do you mean a group...?

I am working with the desk to understand its ability to replace fixtures. I dont have the knowledge as yet but it does have a fixture replacement capability so I need to learn and test that.

The show is a tribute band with many lighting highlights.

Hi,I have a Zero88 FLX control desk with two wings.

I have been using it for a few years now with my own rig. In preparation for some potential work next year I need to set it up for maximum flexibility and capability. There is a chance the venues will be bigger and I will be using a small ground package and hooking into the house rig. I have done this in smaller venues and coped by getting fixture specs , positioning and DMX addressing info. Some venues were really good with a tech spec some not.

So the info I need some help on would be to help in a situation when you get to a venue with no tech spec info at all. How do you set your desk up, what are the work flows used for fixture selection groups, positioning etc.

Grateful for any pointers please and TIA.

I also used Freestyler with an Entec dongle for output. I moved on with it to be able to control quite a large rig including moving heads, lasers LED Pars etc.As opposed to just using a mouse I used a Beringher BCF 2000 for fader control plus a touch screen.

When I first started with lighting I used Freestyler to control a basic moving head and LED par set up. Wasn't the easiest to use but was sufficient for a small rig.

Hi,

I got this to run Artnet from my laptop and output to DMX for a back up to my desk.

I have the big brother i.e. the Showtec Net 8/5 which is all set up and working fine. Unfortunately I cannot get the pocket 2/5 to output despite using nigh on same settings.

I have gone through the manual, firmware is up to date, talked to its interface via web browser but still cannot get the Artnet signal into it therefore no DMX out. It is not the laptop software as I immediately plug in the Net 8/5 and all good.

I am using a router therefore DHCP as opposed to static IP addresses.

Any help would be most welcome please....??

TIA

Hi, I have recently bought the following PARS and have been using them without issue for a little while now. http://www.prolight.co.uk/ftp-in/LEDJ210_Manual.pdf

I have a show coming up and a couple of the chaps who intend to video it say they have experienced LED flicker off these fixtures. Is there any quick fix for this or do I need to get some different PARS.....??

Thanks very much. I must admit to now becoming to realise that. I will just have to take my time and get to know it in a live scenario

If you're coming to lasers from a background of moving head control, you'll have to forget a lot of what you know and start pretty much from scratch. Lasers are very different beasts and whilst there's some crossover in terms of terminology, things don't always mean what you might expect them to.

 

As others have said, you'll struggle to get accurate visualisation as there are fewer standard ways that laser manufacturers implement and name features than there are in the lighting world.

 

You'll have to just try out each channel to determine exactly what it does. Channels 6 & 7 for example may be broadly equivalent to pan and tilt, but could instead be a movement effect (think pan/tilt sine). They also may or may not have much (or any) effect if whatever pattern being projected is "full screen" instead of being zoomed down.

 

Don't expect to be able to control it in exactly the same way as a moving head as (basic) laser control systems just don't function like that.

Thanks for the info on Capture, I just wanted to check that my expectations were realistic, I will have a look at the software

I would suggest asking Capture to be sure but my understanding is that DMX lasers are not fully supported at the moment. Much like many 'effect' type fixtures (and indeed effects within more conventional fixtures) the vast majority of fixture manufacturers don't provide anywhere near enough detail to be able to simulate them. In my experience they barely manage to provide even the most basic information. So, regardless of whether or not it is actually possible without comprehensive details this is largely irrelevant. However if you control lasers using software such as Pangolin BEYOND then it is possible to simulate this in Capture.

Thanks very much and I must admit to being a little stunned

The link you have below to the manual on the Laserworld site is the one I used a couple of weeks ago. I got a manual dated 05/2019 with 12 pages and one of them just naming the 11 DMX channels. I

I used the link you provided again and find a different manual dated 08/2015 with 33 pages but also describes the values within all 11 DMX channels which is just what I wanted.

I am guessing that my email to Laserworld may have prompted a quick check and they changed the manual. Anyway, thanks for your help, much appreciated.

Rgds

Mac

As nic says, I don't think capture simulates lasers directly, but you can use laser control programs to feed data to capture, but isn't something I've ever looked into.

 

The manual I found (https://www.laserwor...-mkii-2015.html) provided this page of detail (https://I.imgur.com/zeVW44j_d.jpg) which only needs de-chinglish-ing.

 

If you have issues in a live scenario, to test that it responds properly, start by using 11 dimmer channels rather than any fixture profile, and verify/test that each channel is what it suggests it should be.