The Avolites Discussion Forum

Hi guys.

Sorry but i am very new to this game and have been working on a Zero 88 desk for ablut a year. Real newbie.

I now have a pearl 2008 and have a live dub step festival to do next weekend. All good but need a little help.

Pallet buttons on the desk. Can they be programmed to be used live in the show. So overlay colours on chases strobe on top of that etc???

What i need to be able to do is set movement chases with the master faders and change the scene (colours. Strobes. Gobo etc) on pre programmed pallet buttons or faders!

Also can the dimmer channels be programmed to dimmer control a group of moving head fixtures for easy swaping bwteen groups of lights. Say 16 entours on one and 6 scanners on another. Two dimmers be the master control for the dimmer channel to swap bewteen the two groups quickly??

Help please. New to this so hope this is all ok.

Cheers.
Alan

Yes, you should be able to do all this quite easily.

For recording dimmer intensity masters for fixture types (and probably any other playbacks) the key is to ensure record mode is set to 'By Channel' and then ensure only the dimmer information is in the programmer. For example, clear (just in case something is already in the programmer), select entours, wheel dimmer to full, record (by channel) select playback, clear. Repeat for scanners.

For palettes it's been a while but it should be a case of making sure only the required controls are in the programmer and store palette. Two important things to remember - firstly, for colour mixing, make sure all the components are in the programmer before storing otherwise you might get unexpected resultes when applying - for example if you have an RGB fixture and want to record red you must have red at 100% and also green and blue at zero in the programmer (same thing applies to pan/tilt). Secondly, make sure the attribute bank is set to the correct mask before recording or applying as this will filter. Personally I always used to set it to dimmer which includes all attributes.

If you make sure the palettes only contain the information you want to recall - for example separate colour palettes for each fixture type - then you can make use of 'Quick Palettes' which will apply everything in a palette if no fixtures are selected. This makes for very fast busking - one button for instant recall or numeric then palette for timed recall (note that you might have to enable quick palettes in user settings).

Lastly if you are setting up pan/tilt shapes as is often the norm then if you set the playbacks to mode 2 in [Edit Times] you can control size and/or speed on the fader by toggling the required parameter in the shape options. Personally I used to use size+speed so that I could gracefully fade them in/out but having both together is a compromise.

This lols great. Thanks so much for your comments. I won’t sadly be back on the desk until tomorrow night or Saturday but will of ccourse let you know how I get on. Looks great thought thanks.

Alan