Moving lights

[Munro]

Hey.

 

We've recently hired in 6 movers for our dance show, and I need a bit of help.

 

Wheel 1:

open

Light blue

red

light green

yellow

magenta

cyan

green

orange

 

wheel 2:

open

deep red

deep blue

pink

cyan

magenta

yellow

3200k

ultra violet

 

So say I was on light green on colour wheel one, and I wanted magenta. I could go to magenta on the first wheel and watch it flick past yellow. But if I set it to magenta on the second wheel, it's nots as seamless as I would want it. It has a few other colour in there before it gets to it.

 

Is this just me being thick and there's a setting to turn on? Ive tried blackout when colour changing and that's just tacky cos there is a delay before it closes the shutter.

 

If your wondering we have 4 Robe 575 Colourspot AT, and 2 Robe 575 colourspotE AT (cos nstage only had 4 available so they had to hire some more in)

 

The desk is a Zero88 FatFrog (I know, a fatfrog for Movers. Put it this way, you've got it easy, your not ruddy programming them)

 

thanks

[themadhippy]

Tis a fact of life with colour wheels,with cym its not such an issue.Neatest option if you can, use the move when dark on the desk.

[Smiffy]

Wot the hippy said really

 

The only other way around it is carefully planned colour usage :** laughs out loud **:

 

Cheers

 

Smiffy

[KevinE]

I dont want to insult your intelligence but make sure the colours arent programmed to fade as that will exaggerate the colour 'scrolling' effect!

[Just Some Bloke]

If your board will allow everything else to fade but the colour to snap, that is a bit sudden but at least you don't notice the colours in between. What board are you using? On the Fat Frog, for instance, you can do this (where it says CBP set C to Snap and everything else to fade).

[gareth]

Of course it's not seamless if you go from a colour on wheel 1 to a colour on wheel 2. Wheel 1 has to turn from wherever you are at the moment (which, if you're in light green, is through red and light blue) to get to open, and at the same time wheel 2 turns from open to magenta (going through UV, tungsten and yellow on the way - unless it's not clever enough to have a 'take the shortest route' algorithm, in which case you go through the other four colours).

 

Did you think you'd be able to snap from a colour on wheel 1 to a colour on wheel two without going through anything in between?

[LXbydesign]

Or the other thing you can do is simply have the movers in every other Q rather than each one - or split the difference , then that way you are able to do colour changes 'on dark'!

 

And also, whatever anyblody else thinks, yes, its not an Avo - but programming movers on a Fat Frog, certainly for shows on a Q-stack isnt that bad and with experience, you can achieve quite a lot. Its usually the people who dont really know the desk inside out that say its ###### for movers!

 

Busking on live shows however - non non non!!!! hehe

[KevinE]

The robes are pretty fast though, I'd have thought it difficult to really discern unwanted colour-mixing if they're being snapped rather than faded.

 

The colour wheels on these robes have 2 internal modes depending on DMX value, they will either continuously move from one colour to another and everything inbetween (eg for split colours) where the channel values are approx 50% or less, or they will snap from 1 colour to another if they're selected with DMX values of over approx 50%. I wonder if the fixture profile has been written to only use the 'continuously variable' colour wheel mode?

[Munro]

Tis a fact of life with colour wheels,with cym its not such an issue.Neatest option if you can, use the move when dark on the desk.

 

Thanks for the advice

 

I dont want to insult your intelligence but make sure the colours arent programmed to fade as that will exaggerate the colour 'scrolling' effect!

 

Not at all. I've already got that set to snap. (it's the quick flicks of colour that irritate me)

 

If your board will allow everything else to fade but the colour to snap, that is a bit sudden but at least you don't notice the colours in between. What board are you using? On the Fat Frog, for instance, you can do this (where it says CBP set C to Snap and everything else to fade).

 

it's not very sudden to be honest. It takes a good second or two to change from one colour to another.

 

Of course it's not seamless if you go from a colour on wheel 1 to a colour on wheel 2. Wheel 1 has to turn from wherever you are at the moment (which, if you're in light green, is through red and light blue) to get to open, and at the same time wheel 2 turns from open to magenta (going through UV, tungsten and yellow on the way - unless it's not clever enough to have a 'take the shortest route' algorithm, in which case you go through the other four colours).

 

Did you think you'd be able to snap from a colour on wheel 1 to a colour on wheel two without going through anything in between?

 

If I were a moving light designer, I would have two colour wheels, and allow you to take them out of the beam to change colour, if you get what I mean. You have colour wheel 1 on light blue, and wheel 2 o

UV. Light blue is on. Then on the q the wheel slides out of the path of the light, and the UV on colour wheel 2 slides in. Then wheel one has changed to orange. And the same happens again.

Or the other thing you can do is simply have the movers in every other Q rather than each one - or split the difference , then that way you are able to do colour changes 'on dark'!

 

And also, whatever anyblody else thinks, yes, its not an Avo - but programming movers on a Fat Frog, certainly for shows on a Q-stack isnt that bad and with experience, you can achieve quite a lot. Its usually the people who dont really know the desk inside out that say its ###### for movers!

 

Busking on live shows however - non non non!!!! hehe

 

I know the frog very well. I don't know movers very well. And I don't know the programming styles that go with them. I've read all the guides on OnStageLighting. Anyone recommend anymore?

[tomrbland]

Hi,

 

The way I get round this is to program 2 scenes for every one, for example: I program one scene to set the gobo, colour and position of the fixture then another which actually opens the shutter. That way the lights have time to 'get them selves set' before they turn on.

 

Obviously this doesn't work very well if you want to do quick changes. That then requires subtle use of different fixtures an example being using 3 movers (on light blue) for one scene then swapping to the other 3 (on say - cyan) for the next one.

 

Does that help?

 

I cant remember the best way to do this on a Frog as I haven't used one in ages because well... we don't get on!

 

Cheers

Tom

[GridGirl]

If I were a moving light designer, I would have two colour wheels, and allow you to take them out of the beam to change colour, if you get what I mean. You have colour wheel 1 on light blue, and wheel 2 on UV. Light blue is on. Then on the q the wheel slides out of the path of the light, and the UV on colour wheel 2 slides in. Then wheel one has changed to orange. And the same happens again.

 

I don't think there's ever been a mover built that does that (and if there is I've never seen it!)....it would mean a whole lot more complex mechanics and probably a much bigger head as you'd need space for the wheel to slide sideways (and if you were going to do it with the colour wheels, you'd probably want to do it with the gobo wheels as well....which means more space and more mechanics to go wrong). In my lighting programming days, every designer I ever worked with would either put in a "movers to black so they can change colour" cue when they wanted a colour switch, or else they'd ask "what colour is either side of that one?", go with one of the two options, and get around it that way. There's no other solution really, apart from the colour flick.

[KevinE]

It takes a good second or two to change from one colour to another

There's something definitely wrong with the programming then here, the wheels are fast enough to easily complete 1 whole rev or more in less than a second!

 

Do check the channel assignments on the profile are set to select the upper DMX values not the lower ones.

[Just Some Bloke]

It takes a good second or two to change from one colour to another.

Indeed, this really shouldn't happen.

 

I haven't used a FF for a while as ours is out on tour at the moment, but check whether, when programming your fixtures into a memory, the colour paramaters offered include a 'speed' option. It sounds like the desk is telling the movers to change colour gently. If you can alter that setting to the fastest possible speed then do so. Colour speed is not a setting that the Robes recognise but the desk can do that itself and you may find it is.

 

Apologies if the Frog doesn't have that function but it's worth a check.

[TomHoward]

From memory on our Bullfrog (although I only use it for scrollers) you may want to fiddle with the LTP fade time on the memories as well, as I believe this will set a fade time between fixture parameters. Common sense would say that setting Colour to Snap instead of Fade should override this but may be worth a try.

[Pattern123]

Having to program movers with a frog regularly now, and having previously detested having to do so, I am starting to get the hang of it. That said, the colour wheel flicking phenomena is a problem.

 

Just a few asides - whoever said 'use the move dark function' - ha ha ha, there is no such function on the Frog. Also whoever said 'anyone who said frogs are crap for movers hasn't used one enough' I'd say you are half right. It does take a year or so of use to get the hang of how to get around the problems. But speaking as someone familiar with desks from QCommander through to Pearl, I'd still say it's a pain in the bum for moving lights.

 

This particular issue is most easily got around by convincing the director to go for a colour one side or other of the previous one used.

 

Failing that, I tend to build two 'in between' states by copying the state I want to go to and the state I'm coming from and taking the movers to dark in between - I find that it depends on how I use the shutter in the smartmac as to whether you still see a brief colour flick before it goes dark - if the shutter is on 'fade' (Slow movement) rather than snap - you tend to still see the first flicks of the colour transition. Still means that you end up with a rather unsubtle looking transition from one state to the next, however as the 'crossfade' becomes 'Movers off, crossfade generics, movers on'. You can mitigate this by making setting colour to fade on the frog and using the shutter fade setting on the fixture, but it still ain't pretty. Calls for some thought at the design stage, working with the director to set some ideas in train for scene changes etc to make it work. Hopefully the new LED moving head profiles with full dimming willl make such problems a thing of the past and bring back some subtlety to our stages.