Fat Frog Programming

[boac]

Hello Frog users,

 

I need a little help with getting my head around the Fat Frog. I'm used to using Avo and Hog desks but am currently working on a Frog for the first time and am not sure how to achieve what I want.

 

The rig is four MAC 250 Washes, six Pulsar ChromaPar36 run from one ChromaZone12 and a handful of generics. Four cans have scrollers but I'm happy to run them off the preset faders rather than patch them as a fixture.

 

The idea is that I have two banners, each of which has two MACs and three ChromaPars hitting it. Each banner needs to be lit with different colours according to which football teams are playing at the time, so basically its static looks that can be set up before the match and left. It needs to be fairly easy to operate so I can leave it in the hands of a less experienced person. The way I'd do it on a Hog would be to build a stack for each banner (or on the Pearl a chase with the link off). Can I put two chases on submasters and step through them individually on the Frog? If not, how do you suggest I do it?!

 

The other question I have is whether it is possible to patch the ChromaPars individually and use the ChromaZone in 36 channel mode? Pressing the colour button repeatedly to change the colour of each one seperately is a bit of a pain. Is there a generic RGB personality that I could use? I have enough faders spare on preset B to patch them there but then I won't be able to use pallettes.

 

Oh and one other thing, in the manual there is much mention of 'tagging' but I haven't found a full explanation of it. Am I correct in thinking that a fixture is tagged when the yellow LED is flashing? What does it mean when the red LED is flashing as opposed to just on (selected).

 

Many thanks for your help. I have been reading the manual but would appreciate some pointers to stop me flicking back and forth not finding what I want... there's no index in it.

 

 

Cheers,

 

boac

[SceneMaster]

If I understand you correctly you would have a stack for each banner with every team programmed into a cue in the stack and the operator just on each stack needs to go to the correct cue for the team. Obviously you can’t do this with the FatFrog due to it only having one stack.

 

You can create a chase and put it into manual drive using the step button to advance it to the next step however I can’t remember if you can run two chases at once as I think I have never actually tried to do that (be interesting to know actually).

 

Personally the only real way I see of doing this is to program a sub for each team for each banner. There are 20 pages each with 12 playbacks. So that 240 subs which gives you a maximum of 120 teams. So for instance the first few pages are all the teams on the left banner and the subsequent pages are all the teams on the right banner. Seems a little long winded to me but that it the only way I can think of.

 

Tagging “in partial mode” means that only the tagged fixtures parameters will be recorded, all other fixture parameters of other fixtures even if selected will not be recorded when you press record (however brightness will be). If you not in partial mode there is no need to tag as the output of the desk to all fixtures ect is recorded (as far as I know, I always run partial mode).

 

Edit: Peter our administrator is your friend by the way when it comes to zero88 desks considering he works for them...

 

Edit: Incorrect statement about flashing light on fixture selection removed, so not to confuse people. See Potassium Neuf post below about primary fixtures.

[soundo26]

Hi Mate, if you contact Peter Kirkup at Zero88, you'll find that he is offering free training days on the Frog Series of desks, I attended one the other day and it was a good day with lots of hands-on, a good chance to meet the guys, see the factory and we got taken to the local pub for lunch too!

It's at their factory in Cwmbran,near Cardiff and worth the trip.

[Potassium Neuf]

The “Primary Fixture”

 

The wheel LCD can only show up to three parameters for one fixture type at a time. Therefore one of the selected fixtures will be designated as the “Primary Fixture”.

 

The last fixture selected will be designated as the “Primary Fixture” and the red LED in its fixture selection button will be displayed flashing (slowly).

 

The fixture parameters displayed on the wheel LCD for the currently selected attribute and wheel group will relate to the “Primary Fixture”.

[SceneMaster]

My bad… sorry… I hadn’t really ever though about primary fixtures, my desk is always programmed as separate fixture types as in I program all the macs of one type together then all the macs or usually colour changers\scanners of another type ect together.

 

I presume\hope I was right about the tagging and partial mode as I use that most of the time?

 

I shall remove my incorrect statement from my last post so as not to confuse people.

[boac]

Thanks Potassium, primary fixture makes perfect sense.

 

I now think I will program all the team colours on submasters across several pages. I'll do this on the first 8 submasters, leaving me four for other things. Another thing I'd like to do is have a goal sting where the macs ballyhoo, flash, change colour etc when someone scores. If I put this on another sub, I presume it will override the position and colour on the team colour subs. Is it possible to make the team colour subs 'persist on override' (forgive Hog terminology) so that when the sting sub is lowered again the macs return to the banners in the correct colours. If not, it means having to scroll throught the pages to find the correct memories again after every goal, which might be a bit slow.

 

Also, any news on patching the ChromaPars individually?

 

Thanks for your replies.

 

boac

[SceneMaster]

I presume you are going to program a sub for each team colour on each banner? So each team will have two subs one for each banner. If you only program a team on one banner there are the chances that say a team on banner A may play another team on banner A which means you would have a problem.

[Potassium Neuf]

When you program data onto a submaster, either as channel data directly or as a transferred memory, the LTP data (colour, beamshape and position parameters) is only triggered on the fader up movement when it passes the LTP trigger level.

 

There is no 'untriggering' or releasing of the LTP data on the downward fader movement, so yes you would have to retrigger the previous state from another submaster.

 

 

:) Would it be possible to program the colour states onto palettes ?

 

eg say you had fixtures 1-3 on banner 1 and 4-6 on banner 2; Program all 6 fixtures say to red and store as colour palette 1.

 

To get red on banner 1 - select fixtures 1-3 and output colour palette 1

To get red on banner 2 - select fixtures 4-6 and output colour palette 1

 

As for patching and controlling the Chroma Pars - Peter is the best person to ask as he has done a lot of work on the fixture library and has a better knowledge of these type of fixtures :)

[boac]

Thanks again for the replies. Unfortunately they're more or less what I was afraid of!

 

I will certainly use palettes when programming but wanted to have all the states nicely set up on the subs to make it as straight forward for the operator as possible. Given that different fixtures are likely to be different colours I think it would take longer (and be harder for the inexperienced user) to go through changing the fixtures individually live on the palettes.

 

I'm off to the Frog site to see if I can figure out how to write my own personality for a generic RGB.

[SceneMaster]

I could see that working colour wise… however it depends how complex each teams state is. If it is just purely a colour/standard gobo break-up then it would work but if each team has a complex unique state of different mixed colours gobos ect this wouldn’t be so easy as you can only have 24 teams palettes per palette type and there are 30 something teams and this wouldn’t store all of the gobo states from each team as this would be on the gobo palette.

[boac]

No gobos involved, but yes there are too many teams for this to work. 32 to be precise... (hint - the World Cup starts tomorrow).

[Potassium Neuf]

Yes there are 32 teams in the World Cup but do they all have to have unique colour states ?

 

If the colours are based on the national flags then there are several countries which use the same colours, eg France, USA, Czech Republic are all red, white and blue; England, Japan, Poland and Switzerland are all red and white.

 

I suppose you may have a problem if any of these two teams meet in the knockout stages :)

[boac]

I've just been wondering about that myself! The other question then is, do I go for the colours of the national flag or the colours they play in? Look at Holland for example. The flag is another red, white and blue but their kit is usually orange! How else would I distinguish between all the red, white and blue teams?!

 

I have created a couple of personalities (one with virtual master) for the ChromaPars which should hopefully work if I put the Zone in 36 channel mode and patch carefully. I'm going in now to see if they work. Fingers crossed!

[Potassium Neuf]

Good point there.

 

I guess that generally most national sides play in some combination of the colours that are on their national flags but there are always some exceptions ... Holland being a good example, Italy another :)