Memory Stacks

[Brian]

I'm currently lighting a show which, apart from a few cues at the top and a few at the bottom, consists of two lighting states which alternate through the action for about 40 cues.

 

During the dress rehearsal we needed to move some scenery which meant I had a hole in the lighting cover. Sticking another unit out FOH solved this but then I had to add it into the desk. I then realised that adding something after a show is programmed can be a bit of a pain.

 

On the desk I am using each entry in the cue stack is a memory in it's own right. This meant that I had to go through the stack and edit all 40 memories, adding in the new unit to the previoulsy programmed state. When programming I had simply set the states on two submasters and alternated those as I plotted.

 

It got me wondering if any desks separate the stack and the memories so that the stack is a list of which memory to output at each step. With this method I would only have to update two memories, the changes reflecting all the way through the stack.

 

I realise that I could have softpatched the new unit to an existing one but there are limitations to this - some desks don't do proportional softpatch and you might have wanted a different proportion of the new unit in each state.

[ThaiLD]

Maxxyz can do it; if you write a 4 or 5 small cuelists, chases or just preset looks and assign them to playback faders you can write a cuelist with macro cues that loads, triggers and releases the cuelists and chases on the other playback faders; now the next challenge: how to use this to make the playback faders dance...:P

What desk are you using btw?

[nickb12345]

I have never used a Hog II in depth but im sure I remeber something along those lines being mentioned about it. (come to think of it it may have been a Hog III)

 

Or am I going mad?

 

Nick

[Shaun Foster]

With ETC Express/Expression you can use 'Focus Points'. These work like groups but you can update the focus point and this will update every cue with a reference to the focus point. I think they are intended for moving lights but if you don't have any, grouping onto the focus points instead of the groups means you can adjust things much more easily.

[Tom Baldwin]

On Strand (Genius) desks the separation isn't quite as complete as you describe, although your application could have been achieved with two cues (plus the stuff at the top and bottom):

It's possible to link any cue to any other - so cue 3 naturally leads into cue 4 - which can be set to link back to cue 3, creating an infinite loop. Fortunately, you can also specify how many times this loop iterates. Once these iterations are complete, you pop out the end of the stack, and progress to cue 5. You can also nest these loops (!) so 20 cues could go on for hours...

[andystone]

I think you will find that most currently available desks will allow you to achieve this in a number of different ways.

 

You could trigger cues as mentioned for the MAXXYZ (and same for Vector, Hog 3) earlier, but I would prefer to use either some kind of Auto Mod function that certainly the Vector has, and others probably do, where you can make changes to a range of cues based on the original state. Alternatively you could use Copy and Paste to very quickly copy new channels/levels to a range of cues.

[Tomo]

The Celco range of desks do that - you have a 'large' number of cues, and you then assemble these cues into stacks in the order you want them.

 

The stacks themselves consist of a list of pointers to the cues, along with a wait time for automatic operation. (Manual or x.xx seconds)

 

They can automatically stick them together in numerical order, or you can arrange them any way you want in any order, or reuse them as many times as you want.

 

The desk I've used in their range was the Explorer (generics), and it had a few limitations - fade times were attached to the cues, rather than the stack (irritating when reusing cues), and the 'automatic GO' sequencer was very buggy.

 

Other than that, it's a fairly powerful desk, albeit rather old. (And no command line)

[Brian]

What desk are you using btw?

Frog

 

On Strand (Genius) desks the separation isn't quite as complete as you describe, although your application could have been achieved with two cues (plus the stuff at the top and bottom): It's possible to link any cue to any other - so cue 3 naturally leads into cue 4 - which can be set to link back to cue 3, creating an infinite loop. Fortunately, you can also specify how many times this loop iterates.

Ah, that's useful to know.

 

The Celco range of desks do that - you have a 'large' number of cues, and you then assemble these cues into stacks in the order you want them.

 

The stacks themselves consist of a list of pointers to the cues, along with a wait time for automatic operation. (Manual or x.xx seconds)

That's sounds like the sort of thing.

 

It seems to me that being able to recall a submaster in a cuestack is quite a useful feature but that very few low-mid range desks do it.

 

It may just be the way I plot - I work out my basic states and stick them on subs and then use those as I go along to plot. Many desks allow you to transfer stack memories onto submasters but not the other way around.

[Tomo]

It's possible to link any cue to any other - so cue 3 naturally leads into cue 4 - which can be set to link back to cue 3, creating an infinite loop. Fortunately, you can also specify how many times this loop iterates. Once these iterations are complete, you pop out the end of the stack, and progress to cue 5. You can also nest these loops (!) so 20 cues could go on for hours...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Oh yes!

The Obsession and WholeHog2 do that - although for the life of me I can't remember how...

(But that's what the manual is for)

[DSA]

It may just be the way I plot - I work out my basic states and stick them on subs and then use those as I go along to plot. Many desks allow you to transfer stack memories onto submasters but not the other way around.

Interestingly, you could do that on a Sirius, but not on a frog....

 

It sounds like brightness palettes would be handy, which I dont think exist on Frogs.

 

David

[richard]

On a strand desk you could do this using Automod, where you could tell the desk to add in channel 2 where-ever channel 1 currently is. You could also do a selective update to achieve a similar result.

[s-p]

It sounds like brightness palettes would be handy, which I dont think exist on Frogs.

 

From my knowledge of the Frogs this is exactly the issue. The nearest the frogs come to doing this is that if you transfer a memory to a submaster, if you change the memory, the submaster will update.

 

sp

[ocfe]

From my memories, the Avolites desks (certainly the Pearl) has a button labelled PHOTOCOPY. If you created your 1st and 2nd main states as Cue 1 and Cue 2, you could then photocopy them to copy them. Any changes made to the original cue would pass down to all the cues that are photocopies of it.

[s-p]

From my memories, the Avolites desks (certainly the Pearl) has a button labelled PHOTOCOPY. If you created your 1st and 2nd main states as Cue 1 and Cue 2, you could then photocopy them to copy them. Any changes made to the original cue would pass down to all the cues that are photocopies of it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yes, as opposed to the frog which just has a 'copy.'

 

sp

[PhilR]

From my memories, the Avolites desks (certainly the Pearl) has a button labelled PHOTOCOPY. If you created your 1st and 2nd main states as Cue 1 and Cue 2, you could then photocopy them to copy them. Any changes made to the original cue would pass down to all the cues that are photocopies of it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The Pearl, Azure and Sapphire can all do that. On the Diamond 4, you can get exactly the same effect by using autoloads - loading Cue 1 on the first, third, fifth.. step of the chase or cueList, and loading Cue 2 on the second, fourth, sixth and so on. As the cue itself is being loaded, any changes to that cue will have knock on effects throughout the chase/cueList.