kgallen

Your naming question is easy, I generally do the record and name in one movement, for cue 10: record 10 name <type name> enter To stop the mover effect you will need to choose Effect->No effect. You could do this when you record your blackout or go back and use Update. You can use shift+record to put in a blocking cue if needed. That’s quite an achievement if you’ve already run a show with moving lights less than a week having a brand new console!

Ooooo, interesting... thanks Edward! Good article by the way, I'll give that a go... 😊

Hi Eric, Did you get these "issues" sorted out? (1) Looks like something that should be handled by tracking - FLX defaults to "Tracking (Basic)" which means it's a tracking console but SmartTag is enabled to handle most of the complexity of tagging so you can just program away without worrying about the correct information being recorded in the cue. Tracking means that if "something is happening", that "something" will continue to happen until you hit a cue that has an instruction to "do something else". So you shouldn't have to replicate cue 4 to cue 5 to cue 6 etc to get the effect to continue. I understand from another thread on an intensity chase that tracking doesn't necessarily operate across chase steps, but I don't believe this is your situation here - you have a cue sequence not a chase. (2) Looks like it should be handled by move on dark (this just "works" - as long as you have the fixture intensity=0% between the two cues - although one thing that caught me out is I recorded a blackout cue as a blocking cue (SHIFT+RECORD) and that stopped the MOD happening in preparation for the cue after the blackout - this makes sense as the cue would be carrying position/beamshape information for the fixture I wanted to MOD, so it was my mistake not the consoles). You also mention Capture visualisation software. I'm also toying with the idea of purchasing this software, however it is 350GBP so quite an investment for me personally. I'm thinking on this one, so any comments on using this with FLX would be interesting - Jon/Ed is Capture the visualisation software you used in the Christmas Advent videos? Which version/name? Regards, Kevin

I've just got two moving head LED units which I used on the show just completed - first time with moving lights (ok I had one MAC250 for years, but rarely used with my Fat Frog). FLX made this very easy with position palettes, move on dark just works and I even got a circle effect going very quickly (Jon will be relieved to hear that with all of our historical moaning about the effects engine!). You will need to take a few more fixtures home to practice with! Try very hard to move away from the fader mentality. If your experience is with a much simpler/older desk, learn how to set up groups and palettes and how to dimension effects. With these your movers will become quick and easy to use. Without you will fight the complexity of all of the control handles and get very stressed during show plot. Reading back through this thread to some of the earlier posts, Edward (maybe Jon) suggests using different playbacks to set up a cue stack for each of your dance sequences. Then you can play back these whole stacks in any order - actually with FLX you could overlay them if you wanted. Another way would be to create "partial looks" on a larger number of playbacks and then overlay these to create different looks for each dance. This is fairly advanced and will take some practice, but would give you a very large range of elements you can mix on the fly if you need to busk. It might be worth getting some experience in your own time (at your own pace), then getting some more detailed help from your local distributor (ok, I guess you bought your FLX from Thomann though, so you might have to ask nicely...) and getting some support on creating more complex looks once you've grasped the fundamentals. Good Luck! Kevin

Theatre (musical, pantomime, play) ~40 conventional ~20 LED +accessories -> gobo rotator, smoke, colour scroller, DMX controlled props, LED tape

Yes!!! 😁😁😎 Iiyama touchscreens are trouble! The Touchscreen should continue to work - it will only need a new calibration if you use Factory Reset or when you update Firmware (e.g. 7.9.4 -> 7.9.5). Here starts a steep learning process on the FLX capabilities - good luck! I have had mine since 2015 and I learn something new every week!

No, no, no! Press the physical UPDATE button on the FLX keypad when the External Monitor shows the screen with blue "+" 😊

If you did Factory Reset, then you will need to calibrate the external monitor again (other resets you do not). Go to External Monitor Calibration (get "+" on external screen), press UPDATE button. Check if you can do 3 "+" then draw. Can you get this to work?

Yes 😀 or any other playback - you have 241 playbacks, there is nothing special about the "master" playback other than dedicated buttons for Go and Pause. In it's simplest form an FLX playback is a submaster. But on FLX, playbacks are MUCH more powerful and flexible than a traditional submaster 😀

To review: Have you been able to follow Edward's instructions and get A and UV onto playback faders? Have you found Strobe on any encoder (under colour or beamshape or position -> pressing the encoder centre button to cycle the pages)? Above you say "But for my part I will like when I am at the level of the faders in "channels" mode to control with a fader the UV" -> you will need the faders in "playbacks" not "channels" -> channels will always give you intensity control of that fixture number. To map the UV to a fader you are using a "playback" to be a control of a single parameter (colour attribute -> UV parameter) of a fixture. (If you want to control every parameter of each fixture manually on a fader then the power of FLX abstraction of control is not needed, you might as well buy a cheap fader-per-DMX channel desk. Point of FLX [and other "high" desks], is you deal with many fixtures in an abstract way with palettes, groups and other high-level features, not fader per DMX channel).

Which mode are you using with the Stairville flat PAR? Can you try the 8-channel mode - need to set on the fixture via its menus, and by assigning the 8-channel profile on the FLX. I'm just looking in the latest Fixture Library, #35, and I don't see a fixture that looks like the Retro Flat PAR you list above. Which fixture definition are you using?

I'd expect (as Edward explains) the Amber and UV on the encoder (probably second page) - I have this too with LEDJ HEX6 fixtures. As you require you can get a handle on a playback fader as discussed, I hope this works ok for you. I would normally expect strobe to sit under beamshape if the fixture is constructed correctly (and the fixture itself is not quirky enough to have the strobe parameter burried within an otherwise colour DMX channel!) - hopefully Edward can check this out for you. If you can find the Strobe somewhere on the encoders then you should be able to get a handle on a fader as per Edward's comments, choosing "beamshape" or "colour" (or "position" if it's really weird!). Your fixture looks like a Thomann brand so I'll try to find the manual and see if the fixture definition looks sensible, if I get a chance...

Maybe the fixture profile is defined wrong - if you press the button inside the encoder you will cycle around the "pages" of parameters in a given attribute. Maybe you will find strobe under colour?

Hi Eric, (Now you have FLX [excellent!], should we not move over to the FLX part of the Forum?] Regards "parameter on fader" there is this knowledgebase article on configuring this style on FLX. By extension as as per your conversation above with Edward, this can be used for all colours and other attributes too like strobe on beamshape: http://support.zero88.com/Consoles/FLX/1014413041/RGB-Colour-Mixing-on-faders-FLX-Series.htm Regards, Kevin ps I notice in your screen picture you do have "USB TouchController" so that looks promising... I suspect you just need to press the UPDATE key when on the Calibration screen - I had to with my Iiyama T1731SR (and I also forget too, when I've updated the firmware!),

Thanks Jon! And ZOS-8669 could be expanded to apply to palettes and cues too - probably pretty much the same code in ZOS that handles this I suspect! I understand adding the name to the message probably wouldn't be feasible if a range was specified.

You need to elaborate on what you mean by this, that's quite a vague question...

Hi Edward, I need to check this as I was doing that originally and it wasn’t working until I typed the second GROUP.

(1) Use touch screen for group copy target. Current: (syntax) GROUP n <COPY to> GROUP m Enh: GROUP n <COPY to> <touch group> (2) Add group name to any messages talking about the group. This is because you get a blank screen with only this message, so have to think "Is group 16 really my blinders?" Current: DELETE GROUP n (or touch) -> "Would you like to delete Group n" Enh: "Would you like to delete Group n "<group name>" (3) Being able to "drag and drop" groups to rearrange them on the screen? (Not sure how viable this is, currently I use COPY then DELETE, but this is a bit slow. It would be ok to have to click a button at the top to enable "Rearrange" if a live drag-and-drop rearrange is considered too risky. (3a) Maybe this could be allowed for palettes too?

Usually I have my whole custom set as one collection written out from the PC Fixture Editor tool (I split out the new ones to a single entry if I upload it to the Forum for you to add to the released library). So this means I read in the whole lot again. But also usually I do Clear User first so I don't get double everything. The "issue" comes once I've started some detailed desk setup and don't want to use Clear User - which as you say wouldn't help with patched fixtures anyway as they get held in the showfile. I usually version-number everything I do, but hitherto haven't added a version ID to individual fixture modes, so maybe I will have to do start doing that. Thanks for considering the issue anyway. No idea how all this will change when the Correlian (???) library change happens! Regards, Kevin

FLX I've been developing the fixture profile for a new light (Showtec Shark Wash One, see other posts). This means I read in my personal fixture library a number of times as I develop/debug it and Update the patched fixtures. Because I've started to set up palettes, e.g. position palettes, I've not wanted to unpatch the fixtures or use the "Clear User" option in reset. So I read in my fixture files from USB again. The result of this is that the desk has multiple definitions for the same named fixture. It's hard to know during fixture update which is my "new/updated" fixture profile because the Manufacturer->Fixture->Mode/Channels list has multiple entries for the same fixture, nothing to differentiate them other than order - last=newest? It also means that n-1 of them is a definition I no longer want, because the latest is the "greatest"! How can I manage this on the desk? Clearly at the mid-point of my process there will be the "old" fixture definition - currently patched and "used" in the showfile - and the updated one that I want to move to. At that point I want to get rid of the "old" one(s). This presumes I can identify which is the "old" and the "new" other than assuming the list has the newest at the bottom. Is there a way to work out which is which, or can the UI be enhanced to help? Can I purge "old" fixture definitions manually? Of course the desk holds lots of "unused" fixture definitions, so it's only the older duplicates that I want to get rid of. Sorry, that was probably clear as mud... Thanks, Kevin

(Sorry to the OP for going off topic, hopefully you have your answers - maybe I should start a new thread). So I managed to get to this head page for FLX, where indeed there is a decent list of articles. http://support.zero88.com/Consoles/FLX/ Maybe the list is long enough now to have some sub-headings? Not more sub-pages though please! I'm not sure I find the "new" Knowledgebase that easy to find stuff in though. Hopefully you can keep adding these useful articles but then put some on-page structure there so the list is manageable. Although now being a little contradictory, these pages need to work on a small phone screen as we're likely to be in there when at the venue trying to drive the desk! Thanks, Kevin

Crikey , Tribo, you went through the mill with that a bit! I'm one of the lucky ones and so far I've never had an issue with my Fat Frog being fussy over floppy disks! (Although now I have an FLX the FF hasn't been out for a couple of years... I must check the battery hasn't leaked!) Enjoy, anyway!

Edward - these Knowledgebase Articles are great, but how do we find them? With the link above I got directly to the page of course, but otherwise how do I find a catalogue/list of them. I went back out to the "head" page and tried from fresh to find this page. Where is it/are they? I think you need to create some sort of top level index or list so we can find them otherwise they are of no use. Also they should be tagged with whatever software version they relate to or operate from/to. Thanks, Kevin

Weird. The FrogOS on the floppy is an uncompressed file isn't it? Might be time to check the battery unless you've changed it recently (below assuming your Fat Frog has a VGA output):

Aha, makes sense because of the Auto-With. Thanks Edward!