Ideal Features on a Lighting Desk

[Barney]

The ADB Phoenix and Mentor desks have a "Live Macro Recorder", which records the button presses and fader movements in real-time. You can thus 'teach' the desk what you want it to do for chases or artistic crossfades or even more realistic lightning flashes!

 

If you've pressed the buttons too fast, you can even edit the time between each action that was recorded :-)

[gareth]

The ADB Phoenix and Mentor desks have a "Live Macro Recorder", which records the button presses and fader movements in real-time. You can thus 'teach' the desk what you want it to do for chases or artistic crossfades or even more realistic lightning flashes!

 

If you've pressed the buttons too fast, you can even edit the time between each action that was recorded :-)

Yup, Hog2 can do all these things!

[Bryson]

What would be useful would be using a login screen so that each user can have different preferences, eg double digit entry versus single digit or various different ways of displaying channel levels instead of just locking out features like the current strand login does.

 

On my 500/400 (cross) I have a show called "Matt's Macros and Setup" which I load as soon as the desk turns on. It does basically what you're talking about.

[David Buffham]

What I'd find useful on a console is to combine programmed cue timing with the ability for myself as an operator to quickly step in and accelerate or decelerate the remainder of a cue with the same feeling as manually fading submasters or the A/B crossfader thing.

 

I'm thinking of a powered fader on a scale of 0 - 100% that controls the percentage completion of each cue. The cue would still be triggered from a 'Go' button and the fader would move by itself over the total cue time but if necessary the operator can grab the fader at any time and complete the movement themselves to slow the cue down or complete it quicker. Or if everything is OK the console can be left to do all the work itself.

 

Such a facility may exist on some desks, but unfortunately not the ones I work with! I use a Virtuoso DX for a lot of my theatre work, and love the ability to very quickly assign different times & delays to each attribute of each lantern in each cue - it allows some for some fantastic cue transitions, and is essential for moving light work. However I miss the ability to properly 'feel the moment' of the cross-fades, especially in situations where there's been very little technical time for plotting fade times with the cast to any degree of accuracy. A second or two either way can make quite a difference to whether the transition works.

 

I know that on the DX the cue rate is dynamically adjustable, but this is via a rotary encoder which is quite hard to judge in real-time - a linear fader which actually shows how much of a cue is left to run and allows the operator to judge the rate at which to manually complete the cue would be loads better. And the fader itself should be as physically smooth as possible!

 

At school my first lighting desk was an Eltec Studio 80 with 2 presets and 2 groups - and we were not allowed to use the timed 'dipless' cross-fade fader! That stuck with me and for a long time when using Sirius and GSX consoles still used manual cross-fading between subs or via the A/B fader, and its only quite recently that I've always used 'Go' button timing - but it can be detrimental in certain situations; yet essential in others such as when the show is operated on DSM cues by a different casual technician each night... However this facility would allow the best of both worlds!

[gareth]

What I'd find useful on a console is to combine programmed cue timing with the ability for myself as an operator to quickly step in and accelerate or decelerate the remainder of a cue with the same feeling as manually fading submasters or the A/B crossfader thing.

Both of my favourite desks (Strand 530 and Wholehog2) can do these things - either accelerate or decelerate a running cue, or take manual control of the remainder of a fade and 'play' it by hand on a fader. (Although this latter operation is a tiny bit more cumbersome on the530 as you can't pick up the fade until you move the manual faders to match the current position of the fade progress ...)

[Tomo]

I've seen a project to build automatic faders into sound desks, and I expect the same technology could be incorporated into a lighting desk. It was a University project, so it's either very uncommon or doesn't yet exist in production.

 

I'm pretty sure that there aren't any desks that do it exactly the way you've described - just ones that either have a "Faster/Slower" wheel/button/whatever and/or a "Give me manual" button.

[Peter Russell]

I've seen a project to build automatic faders into sound desks, and I expect the same technology could be incorporated into a lighting desk. It was a University project, so it's either very uncommon or doesn't yet exist in production.

Many sound desks have automated faders, and have had them for a long time.

Every large studio desk that I have worked with allows you to record the mix on the faders as you master a track so you can then play it back and tweak it again and again until it sounds right.

These desks aren't that cheap though, although some of the small digital desks that are hitting the market are getting cheaper but you are still looking at over £150,000 for a cadac J-type...

But that's quite enough sound talk in the lighting forum for now B-)

Peter

[Light Console]

Ah yes, but why not free up your hands to adjust other levels? Use your foot to control the speed of the cue, just look at my avitar, a foot pedal speed control 60 years old! B-)

Seriously, I would like to see desks with some foot controls as more effects can be achieved when mundane controls are at your feet. A DBO button foot control leaves your hands free to change faders for the snap back at the end of a song for instance.

[colinmonk]

On the automated faders front - The GrandMA and the new Compulite Vector series lighting desks run automated faders...

[Just Some Bloke]

The general thrust of the conversation up to now seems to be that everything we want to happen can happen, but not every board has every feature (and if it did we coudn't afford it!). I was interested in how many dimmers can talk to a control board, which I didn't know about only ever having used DMX, but I haven't heard anyone say that moving heads can send a message back to the board saying "can you check I'm in the right gobo because I feel like something has slipped" which would be really useful.

 

My crew had mixed feelings about the Fat Frog (which, incidentally has a "slow down or speed up the current fade" knob too) until they discovered the new software allows them to play games when the show they're lighting is boring. Now it's suddenly become a great board. Maybe if it had a couple of buttons which dispensed coffee and donuts they'd never want to use anything else again!

[Brian]

Maybe if it had a couple of buttons which dispensed coffee and donuts they'd never want to use anything else again!

Ah, you'll be wanting one of my 'DMX to Domestic Appliance' interfaces then.

 

Oh course, if you get really bored, you could always program up 3 movers to allow you to play 'Pong' on the cyc B-)

[richard]

Regarding lamps talking back to the desk. I think that some Vari*lites can talk back to their desks, and high end fixtures can talk back to the Hog III

[Ben]

I think (not 100%) that the new revolution cna talk back to etc desks

[David Buffham]

Regarding lamps talking back to the desk. I think that some Vari*lites can talk back to their desks

Series 300 VLs (5s, 6s & 7s) can talk back to an Artisan or Virtuoso console if they're being run by VL protocol rather than DMX; but not the 1000, 2000 or 3000 series (i.e. those which are DMX-controlled only).

 

VL2000 range was going to have talk-back to the Virtuoso, but this was never finished - don't know the reasons why! Though for software download purposes all the new ranges can talk to each other via their XLR5 connectors, five-core cable and a loopback plug, but not at the same time as receiving DMX.

 

For Series 300 lights running on VL protocol, the console provides positive indication to operator that whether each unit has calibrated successfully and is responding to commands OK, and maintains an error log in English for each unit with a problem (like "fixed gobo wheel failed calibration"). Also the 3D graphic and other status windows are driven by data coming back from the lights rather than what is being sent to the lights - so they reflect how things actually are rather than how they should be.

 

Which is all nice but we tend to run Series 300 on DMX anyway, as it involves less hardware (cheaper) and with smaller rigs its quite easy to tell whether any light is playing up just by watching what they are doing - and they still need fixing in the same way.