Loading a show on a Strand 550

[Jane]

Hello,

 

I'm relighting a tour at the moment, and in this week's venue the show was loaded from my floppy disk onto the venue's 550 as per usual, and it appeared as though all was fine. But when I tried to recall some groups, nothing happened. I went to look at the desk and despite the group no.'s, cue no.'s, subs and effects being in the desk, none of the channel information was there. So essentially there were 150 ish cues in the desk, with the right text and times, but they were all apparently blackouts! I reloaded the cues, groups, subs and effects and all was fine, but I'm just wondering if anyone else has ever had this happen, and why it might have happened?

 

Thanks,

 

Jane

[Dicky]

Did the patch load up, or was there already an old soft patch in the desk from a previous show?

[Jane]

Did the patch load up, or was there already an old soft patch in the desk from a previous show?

 

 

I asked the venue Chief to delete all his channels from the patch before he loaded the show, which he did, so I guess what happened is that he then loaded the show before doing the softpatch. I've since heard that this would have caused the problem, as the desk doesn't like having channels in there that haven't been patched.

 

:D

[eamon]

Hi

 

 

The problem here is with deleting the channels. As you may have guessed when you delete a channel(s) the desk goes through the whole show and takes it out of all relevent groups/cues etc.

 

You should only really use the delete channels option when at the start of a production/need to free up att channels etc/getting rid of non-exsistant show channels etc.

 

From a touring prespective with regular re-loading of a show, you should only delete the patch out and all will work like normal.

 

hope that helps

 

eamon

[gareth]

Eamon's bang-on - deleting a channel is different (more 'radical') to un-patching it. You only need to do the latter of these two before loading a show into a desk - unless you know you have channels in your show which are numbered higher than the current highest channel on the desk, in which case the best thing is to delete a couple of channels from the desk that you know are not in your show.

[Jane]

Hi

 

 

The problem here is with deleting the channels. As you may have guessed when you delete a channel(s) the desk goes through the whole show and takes it out of all relevent groups/cues etc.

 

Actually, what I meant was that we delete the channels from the venue desk BEFORE loading our show. I think this is the best way to go about it as then only my show channels will load. It also means that when we go to a venue with less channels than in the desk it was originally plotted on, nothing gets lost from the show.

 

The problem wasn't that the channels had been deleted from the show, it was just that there were no levels in any of the cues, groups, effects or subs. Confusing to explain I know!

[gareth]

Ah, I see what you're getting at now - I think I slightly misunderstood the problem initially!

[Bill Richards]

Jane,

 

This does sound like the channels were deleted after the show had been loaded.

 

All the same I am a little curious..... You say that you reloaded the Effects, Subs, Cues and Groups and got back where you needed to be. Did you do this by realoading the Whole Show or just selecting those items from the Archive Screen?

 

The reason I ask.... If you had only loaded the Cues, Subs etc, this would not have set the patch. If indeed the channel has been deleted, as I suspect, then you would also have had to load the patch.

 

If you (or any others for that matter) have any questions, please feel free to give me a call either at the Strand London Office or on my mobile +44 7867 536 523... The mobile is best....

 

 

Bill Richards

Strand Lighting

[Jane]

Bill,

 

I just reloaded the items from the Archive screen, as I didn't want to have to input the Stream 1 patch all over again.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "this would not have set the patch"?

 

If the channels had been deleted then I would of course have had to reload my entire show and input the Stream 1 patch all over again. But no channels had been deleted!! I knew this because all the channels from my show could be seen in the Live screen, and could be brought up. The issue was that there were no LEVELS for those channels recorded in the cues, groups, subs. It was as though an entire show had been created with no levels whatsoever. I'm obviously not explaining it well as nobody seems to understand!

 

To try to clarify:

The showdisk I tour has Stream 2 patched (moving lights, scrollers, hazer etc). Stream 1 (venue dimmers) is unpatched, so all the channels are greyed out in the Live screen when you load the whole show.

A friend has pointed out that if you load the showdisk and THEN patch the dimmers to the channels (ie Stream 1) the desk will not "see" channels in the cues etc until it knows there are dimmers patched to the channels. If you do it the other way then it should be fine apparently.

Not knowing which order the venue's Chief loaded the disk/patch in, I don't know if that is the problem, but it seems likely.

 

(Although I can remember doing it this way before and not having any issues so to be honest I'm a little confused)

 

Thanks

 

Jane

[gareth]

My personal theory is that the channels were deleted, rather than simply unpatched, before you loaded the show. When you loaded the show disk, the stream 2 patch information would've been loaded in, therefore 'assigning' intensity and attribute channels in the patch for those outputs. But because none of the channels from the show data on the disk that would normally addess stream 1 outputs actually existed, the information for those channels didn't get loaded.

 

As I explained earlier, deleting channels and unpatching them are two diffrerent things - unpatching a channel means that it still 'exists' in the desk but isn't patched to any output (therefore it's greyed out on the Live screen). Deleting a channel not only unpatches it, but completely removes it from the console - that's to say, it no longer exists unless you 're-create' it by patching something to it.

 

At least, I think that's what I mean! I'm too far into a bottle of Tempranillo Sauvignon to be able to write with any degree of certainty! If I think on, I'll try out this theory when I'm in front of a console on Monday.

[Jane]

Thanks Gareth.

 

As I said earlier, I know the channels were deleted before the show was loaded. Likewise I do understand the difference between unpatching a channel and deleting a channel.

 

I think this comment...

 

But because none of the channels from the show data on the disk that would normally addess stream 1 outputs actually existed, the information for those channels didn't get loaded.

 

...holds the key to it all. I think you're saying what I was trying to say earlier about patching the channels before loading the show. Actually I think we're both saying exactly the same thing, just in a different way.

 

"I'm playing all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order".

 

Ta!

[Rob Halliday]

Hi Jane,

 

I can think of two 'chain of events' that led to what you've seen:

 

- show was loaded, all channels were then *deleted*, new patch was then typed in manually. Deleting the channels would leave cues/groups/subs etc with no information; typing the patch in would then create the channels again which is why you'd see them on screen.

 

or

 

- the console's internal data files were scrambled in some way, so the show just didn't load properly. I'd be surprised if this was the case but it is possible.

 

 

If I'm loading a show into a new console, I:

- make sure they've saved anything they need to keep a copy of

- exit the console

- run Strand's 220clean utitlity and select the option to delete the current showfile

- depending on time, also defragment the hard drive for good measure

- turn it into a console again (by typing 'os')

- select my show and just load 'setup'

- select my show then load 'whole show'.

- if necessary, select one of the theatre's old shows and load the console settings (to recover house-specific network and DMX settings)

 

 

- The 220clean step ensures that the console is starting from scratch and any old wierdnesses or oddities that have built up in the console are cleared out (-this can happen because, internally, the console works on the showfile in a 'spread open' format consisting of lots and lots of separate files - these are the .dat files you can see if you go exploring in DOS. These are effectively keeping track of all the changes through the process of making show and so can get very big over time. Clearing these out and starting again occasionally is good practice).

 

- The 'setup first' step is because, some versions ago, there was a bug whereby loading a tracking show in a desk set to tracking off would cause oddities with some cues (because the set-up would get loaded last and so the cues would load 'non tracking' then be switched to tracking). I believe this bug has now been fixed but I now just do this out of habit.

 

- Ticking 'whole show' is subtly but crucially different from ticking 'cues/groups/subs' etc seperately. Ticking 'whole show' clears out any show data already in the console, including deleting all channels - there is no need to manually delete channels before doing a 'whole show' load. Ticking each category individually effectively 'merges' the show already in the desk with the show you are loading - you will end up with all of the channels and all of the cues/groups etc from both shows, newer ones overwriting older ones if the same cue/group numbers exist in both shows.

 

 

Incidentally, if you take a completely empty desk and just load cues, the channels in the show will 'appear' in the desk complete with all of their information even though you haven't loaded the patch..... though the values will appear wrong in the output screens (eg. scroller attributes will appear as 0-255 because without the patch they don't know how many frames they're meant to have). If you then load the patch the values will then appear 'correct' on screen and the show will playback correctly.

 

 

I'd almost put money on the show having been loaded, chans deleted, chans re-patched scenario.

 

What show are you doing?

 

Rob.

[Jane]

Hello Rob,

 

Thanks for your info. I didn't know that if you load the whole show there's no need to delete all channels in advance, that's good to know.

 

I see what you're saying about deleting all the channels once the show was loaded, but I'm not convinced this happened. The reason for this is because over time we've cut quite a few channels from the show, so on tour they never get patched and just stay greyed out in the Live screen (I've never bothered deleting them from the show, slapped wrists for Dutton for shoddy housekeeping......anyway). Those channels which are now never used were still there in the Live screen when I went to see why I couldn't recall any groups. Surely if the show had been loaded and all channels deleted, then those channels wouldn't have been there anymore? Only the channels which we were using for the show in that particular venue would have been in existence?

 

I take on board what you say about 220 cleaning and defragging. But when you're using other venue's desks, I always reckon that side of it's up to them.

 

The show's called Nights At The Circus. We're using a hired 520 this week so I may do a few experiments when loading the show!!

 

Am off up north now. Thanks,

 

Jane

[strand600X]

Hi Peeps

 

Sorry I wasn't around when this was first posted but I was in belfast at the GOH

 

I have had this problem before when I have loaded a disk into a venue's board and not into my own (where it was plotted)

 

I don't know why it does this but the workaround I do is to load all the different things seperatly and it goes in...

 

We do three different opera's a week so everyday a different show is put into the desk and usually from the hard drive not the floppy and we have never had a problem when its put back onto the original desk.

 

At one point it became such an issue that out chief made an executive deciosion that we had to always install our own desk and back up and nodes intop every venue we go into.

This is a pain sometimes but we never have a problem.

 

Cheers

baz

Opera North

[Jane]

Hello,

 

Well it was all fine this week, I think it must have just been a weirdy blip in the system. Clearly that particular venue's desk wasn't up for doing a show with a nearly naked lady in it!

 

Thanks for your reply Baz.

 

Jane

 

:blink: