Avo Pearl question

[pscandrett]

Hi

 

I'm still getting to grips with the Pearl 2000 - I know what I'm doing in general, but I just have one question which I wondered if someone could help with please? It may well be a non-problem, but I thought I'd ask anyway; the gig's tomorrow.

 

Previously when using the desk I could stick some faders up on dimmers or movers and press clear and they would stay on; this was useful to put a bit of light on stage without having those fixtures recorded on any memories/focuses/presets/whatever as I continue to program. However, on Thursday I reset (wipeall) the desk and started from scratch; after patching it (and playing with a couple of fixtures, since I'd changed gobos in them) I noticed that when I press clear now the fixture goes to B/O, regardless of the level of the fader. I haven't tested it with dimmer channels but fear it might do the same again, which would be a nightmare when trying to program whilst people are on stage.

 

Am I misremembering what it did? Is there an option to change its behaviour (back) so that the main fader levels take precedence? Is it, in fact, a non-issue and I'm being stupid? Hope I've described the issue clearly enough.

 

(And yes, I'm hoping to go on the Pearl course, but as ever, lack of time has taken over...!)

 

Many thanks in advance

 

Peter

 

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[Guest lightnix]

That's perfectly normal on a Pearl (or any Avo AFAIK). Hitting Clear wipes all the values in the Programmer back to zero.

 

I'd love to explain it further, but fear that it's for both of us :)

[pscandrett]

That's perfectly normal on a Pearl (or any Avo AFAIK). Hitting Clear wipes all the values in the Programmer back to zero.

 

I'd love to explain it further, but fear that it's for both of us :)

Ok, thanks. I have the manual, I'll check it over again.

[niclights]

Actually I think there are a few things here that are not specifically detailed in the manual or in the 2004 release notes.

 

There were a few changes to the behaviour of [clear] over raised preset faders in Run Mode Takeover:

 

If you press [clear] whilst on the same Fixture Page as the fixtures raised, the fixtures will still output to stage as required and their values will simply be removed from the programmer.

If you press [clear] whilst on another Fixture Page then the fixtures will be removed from output. I suspect this is what you are doing. In the past (2000 soft) this function was used to 'swop' any raised preset faders to fixtures contained on the currently selected page. Though rather a strange idea, this did mean you could quickly return to the correct Fix Page and hit [clear] to restore the output. Unfortunately the current implementation does not 'swop' and therefore the only way to regain the stage output is to lower and raise the faders.

 

There is a further change to the effect of the Preset Master over Presets that enter values in the programmer. Currently the master takes control of all values, whether in the programmer or not. Therefore if the master is at zero, raising a Preset Fader in RMT will not give output. In previous builds the master did not have control over programmer values.

 

For the latter I have suggested a user option, since both methods are useful.

 

The former has been a long standing problem and I have highlighted it as the most important 'fix' for the next build. Essentially I propose that [clear] can never remove a preset output to stage regardless of Fix Page. Thus the only way to change an output to a fixture contained on another page would be to lower and raise the fader. This then avoids the disaster of plunging artistes into darkness after changing page and pressing [clear] - something that has become much easier to do by mistake with the introduction of Palette Paging.

 

HTH

[pscandrett]

<snip useful reply>

 

Thanks for that; in the end the desk behaved in a way I expected (I think!) and I coped fine; the question was more preempting. You know when you suddenly begin to doubt what you thought you knew? Anyway, the gig went well; it's one of these things you pick up with experience, practice and more experience I think :-)

 

Thanks everyone.