ETC Express 72/144

[Nick LX]

Hi,

I saw on the Strand 520i last week that you could give Colour scrollers (like Chroma Q) an address like 50,51,52 and 53 while you have 4 PAR cans with these scrollers on addressed on the dimmers to 1,2,3 and 4.

 

Anyway I saw that you could easily change the position of the scroller without knowing its address, but knowing the latern's address like this:

 

CHAN 1.1 @ FL

 

So the scroller of channel 50 was assigned to the lantern of channel 1. Having looked through the manual of the ETC Express I was wondering if it is possible?

 

Thanks

[HobitLight]

On a Strand 500, basically you map the colour address (e.g. 50) to the colour attribute of the light. Colour is .2 (not .1, this is intensity). So if you wanted a scroller at address 50 to be the colour attribute of channel 1 in the patch you would type

 

50@1.2

 

Sorry, I have no idea about the Express though.

[Nick LX]

Hmm. That is what I mean! Any body else can help?

[woody74]

In Express language, there is no such thing as Channel 1.1.

 

-w

[Nick LX]

Perhaps, but is there a similiar way to do this on the Express?

[tom_the_LD]

Depending on the scroller depends on the personality you use. Let me take the Chroma Q Cascade as an example in creative mode.

 

Here, channel 1 does the front string and channel 2 does the read string (it's possible it's the other way round, can't remember off the top of my head, but that's not important).

 

Lets say we have addressed this to 20. The PAR can it is on is plugged into a dimmer channel which is addressed to channel 1.

 

So, you go into the patch menu on the express. You choose where you would like DMX channel 1 to appear on the desk - for arguements sake let's say channel 1. You then go into the 'fixture' menu by pressing S8 and load in the fixture profile and patch it accordingly. (I think this is how it's done off the top of my head - might be slightly different; I shall download the OLE later and confirm). So lets say you have told the fixture menu that the scroller is DMX address 20. You then patch this to anywhere on the desk - lets say channel 2 (it will also automatically patch to channel 3 as it is a 2 channel personality).

 

You then go back into stage mode.

 

Then you select:

Channel 1 AT FL

This brings up intensity.

 

You then hit:

S8 1

This selects fixture 1 which is that scroller and is patched to channel 2 and 3 on the desk. You then use the trackpad to control the attributes - x will do one string whilst y does the other.

 

You get used to it eventually - sounds more complicated than it is!

 

I shall download the OLE and check to see if I have made any errors.

 

Hope that helps in some way though.

[Nick LX]

Great - thanks very much!

[neilalexrose]

Unfortunately the ETC will not treat srollers in the same way as the strand. You cannot say channel 1 at full in frame 5 (to put the intensity at full, and set the scroller to frame 5.) Unless you do some clever plotting using macros.

 

You can link two channels together, so that when you select channel 1 the intensity is controlled by one side of the trackpad (the left I think), and the other channel is on the other side of the trackpad (the right I think.) Have a search through the Express manual for linking channels. If I remember correctly the link option is in the channel attributes menu in the setup page, where you can specify which channels are linked with which. (remember the express treats scrollers as channels) You can also specify in this menu whether the scroller channels are independent of the grand master and LTP as opposed to HTP.

 

Personally I don't bother with linking channels. I use focus points and group the scrollers together, and then use macros as a syntax shortcut, to give me one button press. e.g. group 1 at full (intensities) then [macro 1] (selects the scrolles for that group, syntax reads [group} {50} [at] [focuspoint]) then input desired frame number; [5] [enter].

 

Focus points behave kind of like groups on the strand, in that if you use a focus point in programming your cues, and then you have to update a focuspoint, then it will update throughout the whole show. Useful if a scroller slips out of frame, you only have to update 1 focus point, rather than 50 cues. You can also put all of your scrollers into a focus point which relates to the frame number (focus points 1 - 11 = frames 1 - 11) , regardless of which lamps/groups they are in, because you only have to recall the focus point data for the selected channels.

 

I hope this makes sense. It been about 6 months since I last programmed a scroller heavy show. If anything is unclear, please say, and I will try to elaborate. Its been a long contemporary dance day.

 

Neil