Strand 500 FXs wih LED parcans

[tij5987]

Hi all,

 

I am unfortunate enough to be working with some LED par cans for a few weeks. They seem quite cheap - think they might be Showtec ones. They dont appear to have an intensity attribute - just red, green, blue, macro colours, strobe and macro fxs. I am trying to program some simple fxs - colour changes, fades in and out of one colour etc... nothing heavy. So I record my first fx step with (for example) green at full then my second fx step with green at zero and red at full. Run the fx and nothing happens. Is this because there is no Intensity attribute? I dont see a 'atts only' rec mode in fxs so is this why? I have these assigned as fixtures. Im guessing unless I am doing something very obvious and stupid that the only other way around this would be to treat R,G&B as seperate lamps and patch accordingly?

 

Any suggestions kindly appreciated.

 

Many thanks as always.

 

TJ

[Brent Smith]

Have made sure that you have taken care of the Step timing in the Att column?

 

Do you fixtures work as expected without the FX?

 

Brent

[tij5987]

ahhhh that is a possibility, will double check when im next at the console, but think I have taken care of that.

 

In response- yes they work fine when not dealing with fxs.

 

Tom

[Ynot]

We have 14 LED pars (yes, cheap ones) and run them regularly from our Strand 300 with no real problem.

 

However, I discovered a while back that you can't easily run these as a fixture - you need to plot each channel manually as a discrete control channel. Yes, it takes up a LOT of DMX channels, but fortunately we got loads to spare as the norm! ;)

 

With a bit of time and judicious patching you can easily set all red channels to consecutive control channels, all the greens and blues as well. One thing I've done before is patch the 4th, 5th & 6th channels in groups - ie all FX channels on one, macro channels on another etc. As these are seldom used, and usually in groups when they are, it helps.

 

Once you have the control channels split, you can record subs and effects as you like.

[tij5987]

OK,

 

Having double checked Brent's method I can now say that my att times etc are all good and as one would expect.

I am starting to come round to using Ynot's method but then I think 'why should I?' Is it really the case that you can't create attribute only FXs on a 500/300 series console??? I'm sure this isn't the case (can you tell I come from a Hog background yet??? hehe) I am pretty sure I have created FXs with CMY fixtures in a similar way on a 500 series before - only they would have held an intensity value also I guess. Would really appreciate some more advice on this one - I will happily admit I am no Strand expert and know there are all sorts of fancy (dare I say it as a non-strand lover) 'after-thought' methods that may help with this. eeek opened myself up for some stick from Strand lovers there! ;)

I can see that in Ynot's case, setting and patching the fixtures as described above is an advantage on the 300series because you don't have the rotary encoders and at a guess it is tedius controlling these fixtures with a Microsoft trackball mouse buttons and scroller wheels????? - whereas (with the ATC page set up sensibly) the rotary wheels on the 500 make using these fixtures really quite easy.

 

So yea not quite ready to give up on this one yet - any ideas????

 

oooo and another query for the Strand boys - any idea why in 'console set-up' Universe 4 is 'yellowed' out and so cant be edited/used????

 

Many Thanks

 

Tom

[richard]

It is worth remembering that the effects are tracking, and so will 'pile on' the attributes unless you explicitly set their value to 0, assuming that the fixtures colours are patched as attributes you would need to type [x].[x][@][0][0] for each of the ones that you don't need to use.

 

Best thing to do will be then to watch the attribute values while you run the chase to check that they are being effected. I have run many effects on attributes before and they have always been fine!

[Tomo]

I would recommend Ynot's method on any console that doesn't support virtual intensity.

 

This is primarily because RGB lights do 'unexpected' things without virtual intensity:

- When you look at a channel view, it looks like they're off even when they're on.

- Pull down the GM and the LEDs stay lit.

- Subs behave oddly.

 

However, as mentioned there's no reason why this shouldn't work - it's likely you've been bitten by tracking.

[pete LD]

when you record the FX step press FX 1.1 @att then the soft key colour then record. this will filter all other stuff out of the chase!

HTH

pete

[tij5987]

Hi all,

 

thanks for all the sugestions so far - bit of an update here then.

 

Have checked all of the fx steps and havn't been bitten by tracking, I have taken out the attributes as necessary, tried Pete's technique of filtering out the attributes and still no joy. Probably worth confirming that the ATC page is set up to allow RGB in the colour field. If I go into the fx screen and look at the individual states - in the preview they all look as if they are are correct, so why in live when you run the effect does it not work????

 

Bored of this now ** laughs out loud **.

 

Tom

[gareth]

I'll PM you my e-mail address - e-mail me your show file and I'll have a look at it to see what's going on.