Please help with colour palettes in MagicQ

[Hypersound]

Hi All,

 

Just come across an odd thing with MagicQ PC. If I select a group with a number of different types of fixture in it, I would expect the colour palette window to have those colours that are available to ALL of the fixtures in the group highlighted and the colours that are available to only SOME of the fixtures greyed out In fact it seems to work the other way around and any colour that can be produced by at least one fixture is highlighted. This makes no sense to me. You select a group, go to the colour palette window, select an available colour and only some of the fixtures change colour....

 

I am a noise boy (can I call myself a boy at 49???) at heart. Am I missing something?

 

Cheers.

Andy

[gareth]

No, what you're seeing is the correct (and logical) behaviour for an operation like that. If you select a group of fixtures, any palettes containing colour information for those fixtures is highlighted. Select multiple groups, and palettes which contain info for at least one of the fixture types selected are highlighted.

 

Think about it ... if you select, say, a group of MAC700s you see the colour palettes with info for those fixtures highlighted. If you then selected a group of xSpots in addition to the Macs, would you expect to see the highlights for the Mac colour groups disappear and no longer be able to select those palettes even though you still have the Macs selected? I certainly wouldn't!

 

The answer, to be honest, is to apply a bit of thought to how you arrange your colour palettes. Don't just let the desk auto-generate palettes for you, because it'll only lead to confusion as soon as you have more than one type of fixture. Create palettes which make sense in relation to the fixtures you have in the show, and which are suitably noon-specifically-named to contain values which will give a broadly similar colour on all fixtures. (But don't be too general!!)

[Hypersound]

You have lost me in your second paragraph, Gareth. No I wouldn't want to want to lose the colour information for the Macs when I added the xSpots but then that isn't what I was suggesting should happen. What I was suggesting is that colours that both fixtures had in common would remain highlighted and colours that were perculiar to the individual fixtures would be greyed out. Since I believe both Mac700s and xSpots (not that I am likely to get near either!) are both CMY it seems to me that it would be easy enough to create an extensive palette of colours shared by both fixtures so I don't see how it would be a problem in the scenario you put forward.

 

Anyway, I have been in touch with Chamsys and apparently they plan an update that will result in the buttons that have colours available for all selected fixtures having a background of one colour, the buttons that have colours available for only some of the selected fixtures having a different coloured background and the buttons relating to colours that aren't available to any selected fixtures being greyed out. A far more elegant solution than my idea but then I am new to this (and a bit thick, it seems!!).

 

For what it might be worth to someone else who finds themselves in a similar position, my problem was that I have a load of RGB led units and one group of movers with a colour wheel that has 9 flags and white. Obviously, I have created a palette where the RGBs produce the same colours as the colour flags on my movers but that isn't ideal as I don't want to limit myself to 10 colours and some of the colour flags aren't ideal (the pink, well isn't pink!). So my temporary solution is to follow Chamsys' lead and simply use icons on the buttons that apply to ALL the fixtures and leave them off the buttons that just apply to the RGB units. If it gets more complicated in the future, well I can generate my own icons.

 

Duh.....

 

Andy

[gareth]

You have lost me in your second paragraph, Gareth. No I wouldn't want to want to lose the colour information for the Macs when I added the xSpots but then that isn't what I was suggesting should happen. What I was suggesting is that colours that both fixtures had in common would remain highlighted and colours that were perculiar to the individual fixtures would be greyed out. Since I believe both Mac700s and xSpots (not that I am likely to get near either!) are both CMY it seems to me that it would be easy enough to create an extensive palette of colours shared by both fixtures so I don't see how it would be a problem in the scenario you put forward.

You're taking me too literally with the fixture types, Andy! I just picked two at random as hypothetical examples.

 

OK, let's break it down a bit more and with examples that are more relevant to your situation. Let's say you have your LED fixtures, for which you've mixed yourself a nice collection of perhaps a couple of dozen colour palettes. You've also got your old movers with 10-slot colour wheels, the colour parameters for which you've added into the 10 most appropriate of the 20-odd LED palettes. With me so far? Good! :blink:

 

Now, your point seems to be that if you've programmed a group containing ALL your fixtures (LEDs and movers) and you select that group, you seem to be expecting/wanting to only have the 10 palettes with information for both the LEDs and the movers highlighted in the colour window, with the palettes containing only LED colours greyed out. But that doesn't make sense - by selecting that all-encompassing group, you've included the LED fixtures in your selection so why would you want to restrict the availability of your colour palettes to only 10 of the 20-odd that you've programmed for the LED fixtures in your selection? Well, you wouldn't, would you?!

 

So the answer is to apply a bit of forethought when you're creating your palettes for these two types of fixtures. You need some way of signifying which 10 of the 20-odd palettes contain information for both types of fixtures, and which contain information for the LEDs alone. You could do this with icons, as Chamsys suggest. You could do it by adding a '*' or something to the palette name. You could do it by laying out the palettes in the window in a meaningful way - grouping all the common palettes together as the first ten, perhaps. Basically, there are a few ways to solve your particular issue - but what you should understand is that the particular element of the console's behaviour which is perplexing you is actually quite normal - that's the way it's worked since the Wholehog 2, which was the first console (15 years ago) to use the same sort of 'palette buttons on a touchscreen' method of palette selection that the MagicQ now employs.

 

The additional feature that Chamsys mentioned, having a different background for palettes which contain information for either 'all' or 'some' of the selected fixtures, is a nice idea - I'm on the beta-testing list, so hopefully I'll see it pop up in a beta sometime soon.

 

(Edit to correct abysmal spelling!)