The Avolites Discussion Forum

I've been playing with the virtual faders again

When you have a fixtures patched to the virtual faders I've discovered that if the clear mode is set to 'Leave preset fader levels' and you have the faders on (ie it is inputting intensity data to the programmer). If you move these to a fixture tile in the fixtures workspace you can't turn them off. The programmer will clear but the physical fixture intensity remains at whatever level it was at when it was moved.

I don't think this is a bug or new - this will happen after moving fixtures from other (physical) faders such as presets or playbacks and you can get similar results if you have a scale master (group) on fader and move to a non-fader handle. The problem is we just don't have a way to access (or view) the fader level on handles without faders at the moment.

This is something I would really like to see and I do feel that this is what was actually needed rather than what we currently have with the virtual faders window. The virtual faders window is fine and is better than nothing but I don't think it has fully addressed what many users were asking for or might be expecting.

Along with (or replacing) a more customisable virtual faders window (especially the ability to set an exact fader width such as 1 rather than just 5/10/15 strides to maximise display real estate) I would like to see the ability to toggle faders on/off on all handle types and maybe buttons too, perhaps global to the handles within a given window via window appearance settings.

This would provide a solution to the issue described here where you could toggle the faders on, bring down the fader and then toggle off etc. Similarly it would allow setting of levels without having to move them to a fader handle (whether physical or virtual). If we include button options it could pave the way to have, for example, a collection of handles in a window where each has two buttons rather than being restricted to just one. Perhaps one could be latch and the other GO for cue-lists or latch/flash etc. And, most importantly in my opinion, the ability to quickly access fader levels for all fixtures. In this modern world of touch screens and fewer physical faders if you want to make an intensity chase I personally find groups and @ buttons a significant step backwards in terms of speed and efficiency (macros can get you there to a certain extent but are fairly restrictive, require pre-planning and even more time initially). And sometimes you just need to quickly raise (and keep) intensities live on stage that you didn't plan for.

I think there is also scope to have a shift+ shortcut for levels where holding shift and clicking on a handle would reveal a (level matched) level slider which could be dragged.

Thanks for the reply.

I did also figure out that if you change the clear mode to 'zero preset levels' or whatever the exact terminology is. Pressing clear zeros them despite there being nothing in the programmer.

Also discovered if you move them back to the virtual faders it remembers the preset level on the virtual fader to whatever they were before they were moved

.perhaps a simple softkey or macro could be added to allow you to release the playback level on selected fixtures.

If you used the "clear selected fixtures" clear option with the "zero preset levels" clear option you would obtain this behaviour, no?

Er yes. I forgot the exact terminology that the options gives you. But if it's set to zero the preset levels when they are moved it works as normal.