Mac Training

[jagardner1984]

Hi there,

 

Does anyone know where there are training workshops in using Mac fixtures, any Mac fixtures, starting at "How to I turn it on?" as I have done some VL stuff, but the world of Macs is a mystery to me

 

James

 

Moderation Note: Topic title corrected 15/10/04

[sam.henderson]

I presume you mean Mac (as in Martin Mac) or do you mean the audio stuff??

 

If you mean lighting go to www.martin.dk then go to Support (left hand side menu bar), new screen loads then select Training, at the top select UK From drop down menu and then press search and you will find all the courses. There are ones like hands on service, advanced etc. etc.

 

Sam

[jagardner1984]

Sorry, random typo there, thanks for that advice, I have had a look and all the courses seem to be in Maidstone, with a couple in Sheffield, does anyone know any courses that are a bit nearer ... Glasgow, because Maidstone is a bit of a trek - and also basic introduction courses.

[colinmonk]

erm... Official training will all be in Maidstone as thats where the UK HQ is, unless you fancy going to denmark to do the training...

[mikienorth]

If you get a few people together, or maybe if you are buying some Martin will travel to you. I went on a course at my last employer run by Martin, and it was held on site, they brought their own Macs for us to open and train on, and ran a two day course for five people, preceded by a 1/2 day course for around eight.

Chris West is thier training person, and is a rather nice guy.

[peter]

Chris West (head of training for Martin UK) is a member of the Blue Room and Martin's official Company Rep - id cwest. I'm sure if you PM him he'd be more than happy to advise you about training.

[Benj]

I'm off to do the "general maintance of intelligant lighting " run by Martin in Maidstone on the Monday 18th October there is also a one running on the 20th (£77). Other courses available for more info go to.

 

www.martin.com/academedia

[Gareth A]

Can highly recommend that course. Went on it a few weeks ago and did the Mac 500 - 2000 course and the general maintenance part as well. Was well worth it, definately agree Chris is a top bloke, was late most mornings and he didnt mind! Well I dint think he was. Mac 2000 are well worth the time training on. Also its not expensive and they do provide lunch and things as well.

[slim_mcslim]

what do you mean by mac training?

 

I can understand the whole idea of the maintainance training, but as for training in fixtures what exactly do you learn? information such as turning it on and setting addess etc can be got easily from the user manual, as for user operation/programming most modern moving light desks lay out the attributes for you, which makes picking channels easy and if you are programming on a generic desk then the full channel listing for fixtures can be found in the manuals. as long as you grasp the basics of programming and lighting then most moving yoke fixtures are similar, as are most scan fixtures. they might have differences in gobo's/focus zoom etc but a lot of that comes down to just playing with the fixtures so you can get a feeling of what you want them to do.

 

what else can you learn on the training course - I am sure they may be things that I havent appreciated, and I am interested to know.

 

I was taught how to program a hog on the job, and I taught myself the pearl in 98 from the manual and just sitting down with it and a load of lights, and frankly I didn't think it was as good as the hog, then I went to avolites and did "the pearl" training course and didn't learn anything and we where just really left to play with the VL's hung in the demo room, it was the same when I went back the following year for the azure training - but the lunch was nice...

[mikienorth]

I've only had a basic mac 2k course, but the very nice mr west showed us how easy it was to fault find in a mac, and the course was based around how to set up a mac for different situations, to relamp and reset the timers, and, as I have said to be able to point a service engineer in very definetly the right direction as to the problem.

example:

a week or so after doing my half day course I had a mac 2k profile go pop.

the LX, who had done the full (academedia) course and me sat down in front of a mac in a mood and;

"it keeps blowing fuses on the PSU board" (the lX)

"are the lights coming on on the board?" (me)

"no"

we have a mac we can swop the baord in, it sounds like the board isn't too well, shall we"

Lets (the LX)

a few minutes later, we had one good mac out of two bad ones.

 

In short.

The training Martin gives you is not how to use the lights on any given console but how to set them up and FIX THEM.

Although Martin Macs have, as far as I have used them, been very, very good in terms of reliability and usability; to know how to fix them is a very useful attribute, and beats guesswork.

 

PM Chris West. He is the guy to contact in relation to all this, and, to re-enforce what I said before. I spent half a day with the bloke andf he is a very, very nice man.