leofric Posted March 3, 2008 Share Posted March 3, 2008 I am shortly due to go out with a theatre tour and the design team have decided to add a colour web 250 as a cyc. Has anyone got experience of using this product in a touring environment, any hints or tips? I've looked at the AC website but I am after advice from people with operational experience. We will be touring mainly in the UK around medium to large theatre venues much of it back to back rock and roll style. thanks in advance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gyro_gearloose Posted March 3, 2008 Share Posted March 3, 2008 So the design team have decided to hire some kit and then they want you to work out what to do with it? Hiring any equipment before you know what you want to acheive is a bit like putting the cart before the horse, and in some cases can be a waste of money. A better solution would have been to work out what 'look' they wanted and then hire equipment to suit. However since the equipment has presumably already been hired, it would be useful to know how you intend to control it. While you can just use 3 DMX channels per panel for simple RGB control, a media server would allow you to display low-res images and animations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee House Posted March 3, 2008 Share Posted March 3, 2008 Hi there Leo Please feel free to contact me here at AC for any tips and help you need with the web. Kind regards Lee Lee.house@aclighting.com or +44(0)1494 838325 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gareth Posted March 3, 2008 Share Posted March 3, 2008 What are they hiring to control the Colorweb? Bearing in mind that each individual pixel needs 3 control channels (red/green/blue), and depending on the size of the Colorweb drop that you're touring you may well end up with something that needs several hundred control channels to operate, it would seem advisable to make sure they're giving you some sort of media server to drive it, rather than having to rely on programming each pixel individually from a lighting desk ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
son of lx dad Posted March 3, 2008 Share Posted March 3, 2008 To answer the OP..... I work with colourweb on a regular basis and my only big niggle with the product is the cheapo fiddley connectors between the web sections and the spider. They are worth checking regularly and break quite easily. In terms of transport you can fold it rather like a standard flat black only with all of the tags to the top of the fold and then tape them all together so you can lift the top straight out of the box and unfold it the right way round the first time. We tend to fit one 20x4 piece into a standard Euro trunk. In terms of fixing the product its great because you just unclip a dead square and put a new one in its place (not that this happens very often). Though fixing the actual strings themselves is a fiddley job - id just send them back. Some of the older power supplies are starting to have an internal scorching problem in a connector block causing the PSU unit not to power-up, its fine it generally just needs a bit if a clean inside. Under working light it looks awful - bits of tags hanging about wires not clipped in - dont worry. It all goes in the dark. The best thing is to have a Flat black behind it, and, if you can, a bit of light black sharks-tooth in front. Smartens the whole thing up a treat. As others have said, the control system is very important and probably over looked by your creative team. 10m square per universe is not very much for a lot of channels. This could be done by the lighting desk, for example, a GrandMA has a very strong but simple pixel mapping system but NSPs are expensive and you are likely to need 3 or more in total. A media server with ArtNet outputs and an ArtNet to DMX node of some type is probably the way to go - PixelMAD is a good choice for this sort of thing though there are others. And obviously your creative team need someone to create content and it to be the right size and so on and so on. Colourweb is a lot more costly and complicated than it first looks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnhuson Posted March 4, 2008 Share Posted March 4, 2008 Not personally toured it but one of the bands the we worked with on a series of shows last summer were touring Colour Web as one of their additions to our standard rig. Struck me a very durable, it literally got thrown into a trunk at the end of the gig and every time it come out it worked pretty well, as stated above the only problem is the fiddly little connectors which usually at least one or two needed tightening each day but other than that and a dead PSU one day it worked fine. For reference they were running driving it with Pixeldrive triggered by a Avo D4 Pilot system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leofric Posted March 4, 2008 Author Share Posted March 4, 2008 Thanks for the replies so far. I'm not operating the show and am mainly interested in the practical aspects of rigging the thing each day. However for the sake of completeness I will try an fill in some of the blanks We have toured the show a couple of times using front projection and managing the content with a PRG Mbox triggered by a Hog ll. Suppliers have not been finalised, I am assuming at this stage that this will be the same again but suffice to say there will be some type of media server involved. The colour web is coming in as an evolution of the show so we have some content. there will be two led surfaces the colour web for big low resolution work and there is to be a smaller higher resolution screen in the set for more detailed images. How these two elements work together is all part of the voyage of discovery. Thankfully I sit on the other end of the multi-core although I do appreciate any information as it is all useful. Knowing the programmer he will be trusted to developed the content with the media server as the tour goes on. ta Leo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
son of lx dad Posted March 4, 2008 Share Posted March 4, 2008 An Mbox is fine to do content but the problem is the web also needs to be mapped (I don't think an Mbox does this). It does not come with a clever box like most LED screen products and it doesn't come with its own software as it is a DMX based product which is why PixelMAD is a good thing to use. Its a weird middle ground between screen and fixture. The only thing to make sure of rigging wise is to have a rigging strap for every 250mm. If you only have one every 500mm, the rows that dont have a clip look a bit saggy near the top and you would need to cable tie the flapping clips back onto themselves to stop them falling in front of the top pixel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Buffham Posted May 16, 2008 Share Posted May 16, 2008 Can anyone recommend a rental company that stocks Color Web 250, preferably in the London area? I know that RML has it and I will be trying them, but are there any other suppliers I can get a quote from? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peter Posted May 16, 2008 Share Posted May 16, 2008 I'm pretty sure Stage Electrics have got some... might be worth a go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peternewman Posted May 17, 2008 Share Posted May 17, 2008 Stage have it in their hire catalogue, but not online for some reason. Pretty certain its the 250, but could be the 125. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
son of lx dad Posted May 17, 2008 Share Posted May 17, 2008 the stage electrics stock is the 250 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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