Richard CSL Posted July 8, 2012 Share Posted July 8, 2012 OK so I have come from Daslight to MQ. Went on the training course in london, spent months reading the manual. 2 weeks ago built the lighting rig . 30 led par56, 2 circles 14 led par 36 each, 14 Scanic 150 moving heads, 12 Soundlab colourscans, 10 Mac 500s, 10 mac 600 wash lights. 8 Queenspots.spent the last week setting up and programming. Today with the show director, it all fell to pieces as it takes me forever to select heads. I also don't get the work flow when he says change that head to red and point it here. change those heads to blue (a mix of 500 and 600s) when I go back to change them again I struggled to select them each individually. So a hardly used PC wing is looking like it will be coming up for sale, as the show director has called in the professionals (Spanish) to do the show. Sad day. All because I can''t get my head around layout of heads,and work flow for scenes. do you create a cue with all the positions, then just change colours, but what happens than when 2 heads have to be moved, and where do you store this??or do you save it all as pallettes, tried that but could never reactivate them until the heads had been re selected, which took forever. I did post the questions here on the forum, still dont get it , unless you need to show all the individual heads all the time instead of groups, but with this many heads the screen is mega full?? Seriously frustrated, as I know it is a good desk, just don't understand it. and why oh why is there not the group button on the pc wing as this button gets pressed more than others. (such as blind?)rant over, frustrated of Tenerife. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themadhippy Posted July 8, 2012 Share Posted July 8, 2012 to select individual heads hit <head number> @@,then hit colour ,postion or beam and tweek its settingsand why oh why is there not the group button on the pc wing as this button gets pressed more than others. (such as blind?)no idea,however to make the most of the software,even with a wing, a touch screen is essential,infact id go as far as saying a touch screen is more usfull than a wing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard CSL Posted July 8, 2012 Author Share Posted July 8, 2012 my point is I am not sure which head it is , after all I have around 100 fixtures, ok 20 front of house. but where do you save the resulted tweek?? What is the correct structure for a show? do you save all as cues, on one playback, or individual playbacks (if so I am running out of playbacks with a pc wing rapidly), or position palets , then individual colour palets for mixed heads, and if you do, how do you know from looking at a grey unselected palette , which heads are associated with the palette.?? Another point is for each song I have many head types so I need more than 10 playbacks (one for each type of head) and then each change in the song. I tried having 2 pages per song, but the original page produces annoying flashing red playback tabs for each previous active page fader. is there a solution to this ??? answers appreciated Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themadhippy Posted July 9, 2012 Share Posted July 9, 2012 my point is I am not sure which head it is Then thats down to you not the desk,get a plan drawn up and mark up the head numbers.you can then transfer your plan to a grid on the output screen,once done you can select indivdiall heads off the grid. How you store the scence depends on your way of working,if its a structered show id record it as 1 or 2 playbacks,if im not sure of the order id record it as a song per stack and maybe a couple of specials on seprate stacks (strobes,blinders,etc). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shez Posted July 9, 2012 Share Posted July 9, 2012 I'm in the midst of reading Brad Schillers's rather good book on automated lighting programming which answers exactly these kind of questions (link below). His approach is generally one page per song with one or more cue stacks for the main states and bump buttons for specials like strobes, blinders or particular colours. Assuming it's a structured show rather than busked, there's no need to have different heads on different playbacks - each cue in your cuestack can contain any type of data. Palettes are your absolute best friend. Just in terms of colours say, you could have a red palette that contains the colour red for every fixture in the grid. If you want just the MAC500s to go red, you just hit the MAC500 group and then the red palette - it'll only affect the selected fixtures. With a bit of thought when programming, you shouldn't need to worry too much about which heads are associated with which palettes as you'll only apply them to the heads you want them to change. The "next head" button is also useful - you can very quickly zip through all the heads in a group in order to get to the one that you want. http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/024081553X.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted July 9, 2012 Share Posted July 9, 2012 The critical thing is to put into the pallets the things you need often. Here's what are in mine for theatre type one-nighter shows. The rig plan is the most handy because it lets you see what is on, and you can if you wish just tap something on the touchscreen and turn it on - two prods. You could use the groups. all the LEDs in mine are because for a couple of shows we had LED bars all over the place. My pallets for position as you can see are less developed.http://www.earsmedia.co.uk/magic1.pnghttp://www.earsmedia.co.uk/magic2.pnghttp://www.earsmedia.co.uk/magic3.pnghttp://www.earsmedia.co.uk/magic4.png Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indyld Posted July 9, 2012 Share Posted July 9, 2012 The "next head" button is also useful - you can very quickly zip through all the heads in a group in order to get to the one that you want. You can also use Next / Previous along with Highlight (Single, on or off) and All to pick out a particular fixture very quickly without knowing it's number. Select a group of heads, next, next next next, next, oh, prev. Make change. All. Start again. The thing in this instance that you have little control over is the number of fixture types you have. Every fixture type added to a rig adds an exponential amount of faffing about when programming dealing with different attribute sets all the time. For the reason below. A key part of ML programming is what I call "herding" where you make your changes based on the biggest herd first (everything to "blue", then all Odds to cyan), Gobos in, rotation on, all tilt up a bit. Then breaking your next move into the next biggest herd: All back truss blue again, tilt up, Fan/Align out a bit. Then pick the two outside heads, tweak pan. Save that as Pos (palette palettes, palettes, palettes) and keep programming the look. Finally, only pick out individual fixtures when you really have to. I find beginners tend to treat moving heads like individual robotic conventionals and work on one at a time before going back around and making changes one at a time. "Herding" with Groups is your friend: Lots of things, do that, some things, do this, tweak one thing and use Next / Prev to run around the rig tweaking. Obviously, a lot of different fixture types and attributes means not only many more types to put into a single palette but also limits your herding possibilities when creating looks. The trouble with club rigs is they have 4 of everything. :( LD's that work well with their programmers also don't keep asking for random stuff to happen, they also understand the nature of herding and how to build up a look without keep calling up individual fixtures. If you are frequently re-calling up individual fixtures when creating a look, there is a problem with everyone's workflow. Another key piece of organisation is obviously your Groups but before that, the way the fixtures are numbered so they make sense from the desk. If you inherit a stupid numbering system, spend time changing it in the patch (easy in the MQ) so that you don't have to look up the numbers on the marked up plan. Or investigate Hippy's excellent suggestion of using the Output grid to layout the fixtures as the rig and select them from there. I use all the systems mentioned, including that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard CSL Posted July 10, 2012 Author Share Posted July 10, 2012 OK tried several times to create a rig plan, as this seem like the way to go.Every time I try to insert heads it either only inserts the mac 500's or it inserts them as entire groups .(represented by the letter G) So I try to select the (mac 600) heads in the group page and insert in the output plan view. but each time I get mac 500s. I tried entering head numbers but again the wrong head type is inserted. this may be due to the fact that I have renumbered all my heads to start at 1. this is due to the fact that I have 30 led pars and starting from head 73 is difficult to work out the sequences. In out mode it is very easy (when using encoders) to overun existing heads and wipe them out. Help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shez Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 You are inserting the fixture number in to the grid rather than the channel number aren't you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themadhippy Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 its a bit of a job with loads of heads,were the "insert heads "button is so tempting ,but in design view type in the head number,then hit the square you want the head to be (dont bother with encoders,use the mouse if theres no touch screen),repeat for the next head. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grum Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 Hi Richard, I know your pain, there's nothing worse than trying to get your head around a new desk especially when you have as many fixtures as you do. It's all too easy to get bogged down with head numbers and DMX addresses but fear not, it's actually pretty easy once you get used to it. First thing is to break your rig down into easy, bite sized chunks. Personally I do this by changing the head numbers after I've patched in all the fixtures. I prefer to patch a single DMX output to each bar as this makes fault finding a bit quicker but this isn't really essential however it is quicker if you patch groups of fixtures together so, for example, first you patch all your MAC500's then all your MAC600's and so on. Keep this patching sequence the same for each output as this will also help keep track of your addresses. Once you've got all of your fixtures patched try changing their head numbers to give you a better chance of selecting them. Personally I use a four digit system with the first digit being the fixture type, the second digit being the bar/area and the final two digits being the location in that area. So head number 1101 would be the first MAC500 on LX1, head 2306 would be the 6th wash light on LX3. The great thing about this is that it eliminates or at least reduces your need to look at the plot which significantly speeds up programming especially when working with another person. Once you've got your numbering sorted the next thing to do is start creating some groups. The standard palettes layout on a MQ console gives you access to four windows each with a 5x4 grid giving you 20 squares that are readily accessible during programming. When you press the GROUP button the top right soft buttons read VIEW GROUPS & VIEW HEADS press VIEW HEADS and select all the spots on LX1 then press VIEW GROUPS, hit RECORD then select an empty square on the grid. Repeat this for each fixture type in each location and you end up with a grid that allows you to quickly select all the spots on LX1 without selecting any other fixtures. You can use the ODD EVEN key or the NEXT PREV keys to break that selection down further if required. Now that you can easily select manageable numbers of heads you can start to think about creating some position pallets. Personally I have eight standard ones that I use in almost every show which leaves me plenty of space for creating show specific ones as required. Mine are UP FAN OUT, DOWN FAN OUT, UP FAN IN, DOWN FAN IN, STRAIGT DOWN, BLIND, X'd 1 & X'd 2. These positions can be created so quickly that with a little practice you can do a rig with well over a hundred movers in less than 10 minutes. Repeat this for colour and beam pallets remembering to save time by selecting all of each head type. By default, MQ will produce a lot of beam palletes, personally delete these and create my own, sticking to just shutter ope/closed, a random strobe, a fast strobe and three or four gobos. Remember that MQ records everything that is in the programmer into each pallet, make things easier for yourself by locating your fixtures and positioning them on a wall you can see then recording this as a cue. This allows you to change just the shutter information and see the results without having to record gobo/zoom/iris information at the same time. Don't forget to record focus values when creating gobo pallets. Now that you've got the prep work out of the way without the LD breathing down your neck you're ready to start programming. If you're doing a traditional theatre style show then all you have to do is select a group of lights, hit locate and then use you're selection of pallets to quickly create the looks the LD asks for. If they ask for a spot on a set piece it's a good idea to create a new position pallet especially for this item as this can be edited when the director inevetibaly decided to move it and any cues that refer to that position will automatically update as they refer to the pallet information rather than direct pan/tilt values. Likewise, if the LD asks you to mix a specific colour then create a new pallet for it during the programming session, it'll only take a couple of seconds but it will allow you to recall it whenever you need it and edit it when they later decide that it's too cold/warm/green. Hopefully that all makes sense and reduces the stress of programming in the future. The most important thing is to be as prepared as possible before the LD arrives. A lot of what I've just described can be done well in advance of getting anywhere near the rig and just edited when you get to site making you look better and making your life easier when a delay means you on,y have 20 minutes to flash through before the LD shows up. Good luck with your next project and keep the questions coming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fireball40k Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 This is all priceless advice and it would be great to see it collated as a 'general guidance to a happy life' section in the MQ manual. There remains a chasm between the getting started videos (which are excellent), the manual and one's becoming half-way proficient at creating shows on MQ - which is an excellent piece of software, once you get your head around it. Lots of experimentation required. Isn't Blue Room marvellous? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 Oddly - I ended up today in a strange venue, by sheer fluke and they've got a magicQ and a touch screen running from a laptop. About 20 movers of all sorts plus a few par cans and other odd gadget and even lights on tables - It doesn't take long to produce what people ask for - I was building a few useful pallets - starting from scratch - mainly because some of the things pre-placed into them just weren't right for this venue. Then in came a pile 'ladies' with Irish accents, reminding me of that programme recently on TV. The owner was trying to talk to them while I was programming - and one said can you make the dance floor pink and all moving - I'd just finished that bit, and in about ten seconds, what I'd heard was on the floor - and they made the booking. The previous lighting desk had been so complicated nobody apparently had ever been able to use it. All I put in the pallets were some simple positions - like grum said, I'd put in the gobos that were similar in groups - as not every fixture has the same types = and it really can be that quick. Grum also mentioned using the palettes to make your individual looks that you record onto the faders. The bit about updating when things move or change is so important, if like me, you were brought up starting each one from scratch, you'll kick yourself. I reckon I'm faster now than I have ever been on other controls, and to be honest - the laptop touch pad and a touch screen are brilliant - never tried that one before today! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themadhippy Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 if someone knows a quick way of tweeking fx's that are in cue stacks please tell,pressing select-view cue-view fx seems a bit long winded in the heat of battle Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
indyld Posted July 10, 2012 Share Posted July 10, 2012 if someone knows a quick way of tweeking fx's that are in cue stacks please tell,pressing select-view cue-view fx seems a bit long winded in the heat of battle Am I missing something? Do you not just INCLUDE the cue with FX into the programmer in the usual way and then make the changes using the encoders before UPDATE-ing? Sorry if this isn't what was meant. I encourage beginners to load values into the programmer properly, rather than relying on things like REC-UPDATE as it's a more powerful way of working in the long run. Especially if your programmer behaviour is set to something like recording only the Selected by default (and Prog Clear after Update is also off). Means you can create additional things, cues or other palettes etc. with the information you have already created. The reverse way of working is a version of Paul's old start everything from scratch workflow. Regarding Output window grids, I sometimes use the group or Thru selection, insert a bunch of heads into the grid squares and then use Move to put them where I want. Edit to add: It's funny that it often comes up the the MQ is difficult to understand. While I don't think it's a perfect system (it has plenty of faults) or the user manual is amazing, people rarely complain that the Grand MA, the Hog or Titan. In my experience, they can be all complex as each other. I wonder if this is because the MagicQ is starting at a £10 price point and therefore it's assumed that it's going to be like using a £10 piece of word processing software and not a fully featured flexible lighting desk that Brad Schiller would feel at home on. I'm sure I could come up with 100s of thing that could be better communicated in the manual, but let's not forget that we are talking about a professional level moving light console with similar features to, say, the MA. No one here complains that the MA is ridiculously overly complex at times, which I assume is because those using it had to make a significant investment in the desk AND the training to make it worthwhile (MQ training days are pretty good). Not having a go at anyone, just interests me that the market Cham Sys finds itself in means that those very new to programming moving lights are perhaps more common than those beginners using other consoles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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