The Avolites Discussion Forum

Hi all. I operate in a club venue in Holland and since a couple of weeks we have purchased us a Pearl Expert Titan. Before that we used a Martin Case Pro, which is in my opinion one of the best consoles for a club venue. With the new Expert we have to adapt us a complete new way of operating.

Now I run into something which is called the playback rollerbank. My biggest wish is to see these rollers all stand alone instead of 2 times a bank with 10 playbacks. The thing is that we are always pressing some buttons during the show and if we roll the rollerbank to another page we overrule the previous page which we don't want.

Hoi Jochem,

Welke club werk je bij? Ik snap niet zo heel goed wat jouw vraag is? Volgens mij wil je weten hoe je de tafel moet operaten?

Translation:
Hi Jochem

Wich club you are working at? I don`t understand your question? Do you want to know how to operate the board?

Hey Jochem,
Aangezien jullie de Expert Titan hebben zie ik het probleem niet echt...
Wat jij wil is denk ik niet mogelijk maar waarom doen jullie het niet als volgt:
Zorg voor een touchscreen zodat alle paletten van het intelligent licht op je touchscreen komen.
Dan kan je beginnen aan je playback faders... En je hebt er veelste veel op 1 pagina!
De rollers zijn al 2 * 10 playback faders die je als dusdanig kan programmeren maar als je de pagina van presetfaders verandert naar een lege pagina dan heb je met de nieuwe software nog eens 60 submasters...
Je moet maar eens kijken wanneer je de memory/cue knop induwt om op te slaan gaan ook die lichtjes branden/knipperen (tenzij er een fixture/lamp gepatcht staat)
Dus als je wil heb je al 80 playbacks op 1 pagina... Als dat niet genoeg is denk ik dat je in mijn ogen een verkeerde manier van programmeren hebt (zeker voor een avolite)...
@SL, hij wou weten of je de rollers apart kunt gebruiken dus als je naar een andere pagina scrolt ge niets gaat overrulen als je dit activeert...

And now in english!
Hey Jochem,
Because you have got the Expert Titan I don't see the problem!
What you want to do isn't possible as far as I know but why don't you try the following:
First go and find yourself a nice touch screen, this way you can put all the pallets for your intelligent lighting on the touch screen.
Now you can have a look at the playback faders... In my personal opinion there are way to many on 1 page (for gigs which aren't to big of course)!
The rollers are already 2* 10 playback faders which you can program accordingly but if you change the page of the presetfaders to an empty page you'll get or see 60 new extra submasters (thanks to the titan software)
Just try pushing the memory/cue button for saving a submaster, all the blinking faders are free submasters (except when you patched a fixture on this submaster/presetfader)
So now you have 80 playbacks on 1 single page... If that still isn't enough for you I suggest to program your desk in another way (especially since you are using an avolite)...

Thanks all for the replies. I work at Brothers Bunnik (near Utrecht). I know how to program/operate the console (programming is way much easier than the Martin Case) but I'm struggling with a good setup of the playback faders. I will give you an example overview of our playback faders as we have programmed at this moment.

1A intel odd dimmer all 1B intel odd dimmer chase 1
2A intel eve dimmer all 2B intel eve dimmer chase 1
3A all spots dimmer all 3B all spots all
4A all wash dimmer all Etc.
5A all scans dimmer all
6A all colorchangers dimmer all
7A LED strips red 7B LED strips green
8A move 1 spots
9A move 1 washes
10A move 1 scans

faders 11 till 20 are all full with static lights dimmer channels/chases such as par's, ACL's, Strobes etc.

We are using the grey flash buttons a lot, let say 90% of the time. The problem is that if I press FB 1A & 2A during the show and I want the LED strips on green the intel will go to dimmer chase 1 if I roll to page B. So before I roll back to page A I have to lift fader 7B to ensure the strips will stay green and you see that green glow. So thats why I wanted the rollers all be separated from each other, to give you more space to roll separate playback faders with dimmer info.

Another thing is that I want to make use of lets say for example Par chase 1 (11A) and another static fixture chase which is programmed at 14C both at once. Without lifting one of the faders this is impossible.

Maybe we have a bad way of programming, if so do not hesitate to shout. We have the console just a couple of months and we are still looking for a good setup. And maybe we have to re-program the LED strips. The only thing is that they have no separate dimmer channel but only CMY dimmers. If they had a separate dimmer channel I think the problem was easier to solve.

Oja... A real miss is that you can not program a chase speed under a fader. That's way faster as tapping the damn button each time for each fader you want to set to the bpm.

Edit: we do not have the touch screen. But this is high on the wish list. We're on it but it is all a budget thing

My interpretation is that you want to be able to page each of the 20 master playbacks separately. Even if this were done by hardware or software I think it would cause many more problems that it would solve. It would be very confusing.

Instead I see the solution as a combination of elements:

Firstly, as you mention, you need a dimmer for your LED's. Since Titan supports 'virtual' dimmers, the console can do this even if the fixtures don't. Which fixtures are they? If a v-dim personality doesn't exist it will be easy to make.

Secondly, you can make use of the roller pages (1-3) as well as the roller facets (A-J). Use these for only slight changes - for example perhaps only one or two playback difference on each of the three with all other playbacks as copies. Structure your playback layout deliberately to avoid the issues you are currently encountering.

Finally, make use of the preset handles. As already mentioned all of these can be playbacks. I like to reserve these for non-intensity type cues. ie. positional shapes, rainbow shapes etc.


As for chase speed on fader I'm sure your request has been noted. But don't forget that it's often just about what you are most familiar with. Many people will find adjusting speed by wheel equally as fast. Tap tempo is particularly useful for presetting speeds. Speed on fader would present issues with intensity chases (as it already does with intensity shapes). However, the concept of being able to link the speed of a number of separate chases to one control (be that fader, wheel or tap) I see as valuable.

Thanks niclights for your reply. The solution with the virtual dimmer I will try for sure. Is there a sort of walk trough in the manual for this? because this is new for me.

I completely forgot that you have indeed 3 roller pages. This will give us more space to have more copies of playback faders. If we are able to set the LED dimmer function under a single fader it will be a big step forward. On the intel rollerbank I want to roll as less as possible.

Thanks for all support! I will give it a try! We are used to a Martin Case but with all these possibilities I will gonna love this console more every day.

Hopefully they send us to a coarse soon, because I think the console has so much possibilities which we are not aware of yet.

What are the LED's?

Well we have 2 types, I thought it was as follow:

Showtec LED powerbar 36 (41332), we have 12 of them and we have also 4 Showtec LED wallpainters (41200).

If you like you could have a look: http://www.brothers.nl/knop/8/Areas

Club looks pretty but website keeps being overlayed with some graphics. How do I stop that?

From what I can gather the Powerbars are simple 3 channel RGB. So you can use the 'Generic RGB' fixture and choose 'RGB + Virtual Dimmer' mode.
I can't find information on the Wall Painters. Obviously if they're also just 3ch then it will work with the same generic personality, otherwise what is the channel mapping?

I have looked up the wallpainters and they are LED wash ultra bright rgb. 5 channels:
Ch1: dimming
Ch2: red
Ch3: green
Ch4: blue
Ch5: strobe

I checked the LED power bar today and it is patched with a virtual dimmer. Well I assumed because I have a dimmer channel (intensity) and the RGB channel. Now, when I program the dimmer to a playback fader it works. The only problem is that I tried to program some pallets with color info but (I do it exactly the same as for spots) the pallets don't work (it will not change for example from blue to red). So what I've done now is program the colors as a cue under a preset fader. As our fixture page 3 is completely empty, I used this page as a show page now so all my pallets are also in.

Palettes should work fine. When recording palette check mask and recording mode. Simplest method is probably to set mask to 'include all' and set record mode to 'mixed'. Mixed mode ensures that if, for example, you adjust just the red channel then the green and blue will also record without having to place them in the programmer.

Palettes are usually much more flexible in that they can be recalled with a timed fade and can be used to create other cues. It also keeps playbacks free for things that aren't suitable for palettes.

I'll look into the personality.