Strand 530 - Moving Lights & 'Live' Moves

[alexadamson]

Hi,

 

I need help with the operation and programming of moving lights on a Strand 530.

 

One of the shows I'm looking after at the Edinburgh Festival this year is a female singer and her five piece band and I will be looking after her lighting. I'm going to be honest, I'm not really a lighting op, its not my first calling, I seem to have a good eye for design, but when it comes to programming, I need somebody much smarter than I to setup the desk, then I find I can operate a show quite well.

 

I'm hoping that if I give you a brief outline of how I like to operate, the "much smarter people" will tell me if this is possible on a Strand console.

 

Due to the nature of the show, I like to operate the desk live, giving me the freedom I need that programming the show as a stack doesn't. In the past I have been fortunate enough to operate the show on an ETC Eos, which for the way I like to operate is perfect !! What I like to do is record only the mover intensity onto a sub group, and then recall the attributes of the mover using beam, focus, and colour pallets.

 

For example on the Eos, with the intensity sub at zero, using the direct selects touch screen I could pick the mover or group of movers I wanted, set the three of four attributes for that specific moment in the show, press enter, and then when ready, manually bring up the intensity of the fixture.

 

The other thing I need to be able to do is 'live' movements and changes, so whilst the intensity sub is up. Again for example on the Eos I would type the following syntax:

Fixture 301, Focus Palette 4, Colour Palette 6, Sneak 0:10

----> then press enter when the change was to start thus making fixture 301 move to focus palette 4 and change colour to palette 6 all over 10 seconds.

 

What I am hoping "the much smarter people" on here will be able to tell me is, if initially the 530 can be programmed in this way, with the palettes, and any tips on how best to set this up on the desk? Then, if the live movements are possible, how to achieve them, and if needed what the required syntax is?

 

I understand a lot of people may say just plot the show into the desk, I promise I've tried it and it doesn't work, not with the live nature of the artist performance and the way she controls the band, no two performance are ever a like, and so, that live control is needed.

 

 

Apologies for the long post, was hoping to make myself as clear as possible.

 

Thanks in advance and I look forward to your responses.

 

Alex

[GridGirl]

In answer to your first question, yes it is possible, but it's a little bit fiddlier than it is on the Eos. You can record specific attributes to groups (rather than palettes) and then recall them. We used to do it just by selective recording - for instance if my movers were channels 200 to 205, I'd set them to the colour I wanted then type "200.2 THRU 205.2 GROUP 1 RECORD" - the .2 is the colour channel, pan and tilt are .3 and .4, and so on and so on. I *think* there is a quicker way of recording than that but I can't tell you what it is! Depending on the fixture you may also need to edit the FIXTURE.LIB file if there is no existing profile for the fixture.

 

To recall, you'd then just go "200 THRU 205 @ GROUP ##" and the colour, gobo, focus etc etc will go to that prerecorded group.

 

The live moves are a little trickier. I don't know of any way to do that easily (someone else may though!) - the only thing I can think of would be to assign groups to subs and manually crossfade them, although the HTP/LTP implications of that I'm not sure on.

[IRW]

The live moves are a little trickier. I don't know of any way to do that easily (someone else may though!) - the only thing I can think of would be to assign groups to subs and manually crossfade them, although the HTP/LTP implications of that I'm not sure on.

 

200 THRU 205 @ GROUP ## TIME XX

 

:** laughs out loud **:

 

If you can get hold of one, a graphics(macro) tablet is the bees knees for this sort of operation.

 

Before we got our Pearl, I used to program a set of mover intensities onto a sub, and make that sub flash button a macro to select the attributes of those movers (1.2 THRU 3.99 *). I then had colours, gobos, postions etc, programed onto the tablet (@ GROUP ##), and had times programmed onto the P buttons (@ TIME XX *) so that nothing was more than two buttons and a few taps away. Aside from the main selection macro, my P button macros where the only ones which were succeeded by *.

[rossmck]

If you're new to the 500 series it's worth reading Strand's own tutorial available as a PDF titled "Automated Lighting Tutorial for Version 2.8.6" (not sure if linking direct to it here is allowed as it doesn't seem to be on Strand's site any more, but PM me if you want me to send you a copy)

 

Then as Ian above says, you can just put a TIME ## and/or DELAY ## on the end of the command to make them move over a set period.

[The Seedage]

If you're new to the 500 series it's worth reading Strand's own tutorial available as a PDF titled "Automated Lighting Tutorial for Version 2.8.6" (not sure if linking direct to it here is allowed as it doesn't seem to be on Strand's site any more, but PM me if you want me to send you a copy)

 

Then as Ian above says, you can just put a TIME ## and/or DELAY ## on the end of the command to make them move over a set period.

 

If you want an easier way of recalling, you can assign these commandlines to macros, and fire them off keys, giving you instant acces to those looks.. To activate, you would just hit the macro button and off you go with the busk.

 

You can even add the channel numbers at the end of the macro to select the heads ready for fading up manually if you wish....

[nickjones]

All the answers you could need in simple to understand screen-shotted goodness.

Nick

[Big Jay]

The easier way to record selective is

 

201 thru 202 record group 1 @ATT colour *