NZ

Sam As much as we would like to make it a custom console for each person it is not possible. The PCB's and drivers for things like buttons with text are all different to standard ones. If anything it would make the whole range more expensive. Nice idea but not practical at the moment.

Ian Yes you will continue to see a range of updates for the current Frogs and the Illusions. We have a huge user base so won't abandon you. Obviously they will slow down slightly, the current range is now pretty fully featured. We will probably do a new release in the first quarter of next year once Frog 2 is shipping.

Hi To answer a lot of questions in one go.... You could hit one button for an accent. It is way more powerful for live than the existing Frogs as you have a lot more flexibility in what goes where. You may have to change the way you think slightly but perhaps you should look at it when it is all working. Touch screen size. It is in fact 6x6 but before you all jump up and down wait again to see what is on it. It is not the main interface but rather a place to put user definable buttons. Its layout is not finnished and will be large enough for plump fingers to do the walking. Finally we could use lots of things like LCD's and buttons with text on....how much do you want to pay? If you are happy to add £500 to retail cost then LCDs are an option. If you want buttons with text then you are talking about £80 per button at retail. That would make about £1000 at retail. Or it all appears on the monitors in a clear easy to read display....

Hi I am afraid the only way to run the bar as a single channel is to do it as an LTP value. Graham

First off I am sorry there was no one around to do a demo at PLASA, we certainly did enough of them It is difficult to put all the features down here as there are so many We are still getting feedback on the console and the final specification is not yet finished. We have another trade show in the US where we will be doing more previewing and it will also be doing the rounds of several lighting designers programmers in the States next week. I fancied a holiday! An Overview of the Frog 2 Lighting Desk There are 10 play back stacks on the bottom of the desk. There are 100 pages of playback. The first twenty pages are locked and these have the 200 memory stacks that you can program into on them. The other 80 pages of playbacks allow you to mix stacks as you need them for shows, songs etc. The 10 faders above these can be anything that you want them to be. The can have a channel on one, a group of fixtures on another, a colour wheel on the next....I think you get the idea. There are 100 pages for this. The 20 buttons at the top right of the console can also have anything on them that you want. So you could put your most common fixtures or palettes or strobes or smoke machines on them. The touch screen is colour and has the command line and the info as to what is on the wheels on it. It is also where you can tag or untag each paramater for any light. So yes it programmes right down to parameter levels :twisted: You can set a time for each parameter for each fitting used in a cue. This means you can do a split movement fade across a range of lights or have parcans dimming up across a bar with a delay on them all in the same memory. This applies to both fade and delay times. There are screens for colour, beam, position, group and effects palettes. There are 4 universes of DMX, 2 outlets per universe, it will also have ethernet. Backup can be to USB sticks, you get one with the console or to a CD writer. Two monitors can be run and you can save your own screen views so you can have what you want up for different actions. You can have more than one screen per monitor and can size them to fit multiple screens on the monitor. The whole desk can be run using the onboard keypad and hard keys or can be run using a mouse. Obviously this all comes at a price so it will be a more costly than the current desks. I think that is enough for now. Graham

Yes. Infortunately you will have to wait for PLASA as we don't want to spoil the surprise! :twisted:

Hi We have a booth in the hall this year F41. We do also have the pub which we will be using during the day for training but it will be open to the public from 4 to 8 pm each day for everyone. Graham

Hi Frog 2 will preview at PLASA and LDI and ship around this time as well. It will support 2 external monitors. As we have done with the existing Frogs we will commit to regular updates on this product. There will be two desks working at PLASA. Yes you will be able to touch and play. Graham

Hi We will keep working on updates and bug fixes on the Frogs for a long time yet. You have to understand though that we are also committed to new product. I am sure you are all aware that we have not charged for a single upgrade in Frog software. If you do want updates on product we need to keep making money. That basically means new products. In all cases though we need to decide what is important and what can make, I know in some cases we will probably disagree on this, sorry. graham

You could create a fixture that treats the bars as LTP. You could then have as many bars on wheels as you want. You would need to treat them as a beam shape probably. You would have to think a little when programming but it is relatively easy.

Have a look at Capture Sweden. This is what we like at the moment! Graham

Only one....that's good. To beat punters I find littlelites are the go.

I am sure we could do a special deal on a pre order. Graham

We certainly have more than Crap at the moment! Do we have all the features we want right at the moment? No Do we have a lot of the things being asked for? Yes. Will it suite everyone? No Are we launching a product that will be completely finished? No it will be like the existing Frog Range and will be constantly developed over the next 2 years. A large part of this will depend on user feedback. Are there constraints on the desk, yes but nothing like with Frogs. Who is it aimed at? It would be easy to say Pearl users, or Hog Users or Sirius users or..... It will appeal to some users from all these segments and also some users of Strand 500s, Expressions etc. It will really depend on what you want to do and the type of show that you are doing. Like any lighting desk people who use it regularly and learn all the features will find it more useful than people who use it occassionally. As an example how many of you in the past month have learn't things on this forum about existing Frog that you didn't know? Frog II will have even more features so will take even longer to learn. I beleive that you should be able to do most medium size shows on this desk. What is medium? 40 to 60 moving heads and a bunch of pars. You could probably do more but it would then really depend on how well you knew the desk. To finish who it is aimed at I would say if the following features appeal to you it will have something in it for you: Keypad entry Lots of palettes Effects User definable faders user definable buttons Touch screen Monitors Multiple playback Compatibility with a WYSIWYG type package (maybe not at launch :roll: ) All this for less than €10K Then it is probably the type of desk you want. As to when we are launching it, no secret Plasa. If we hit a snag and the software is not 100% finished we will still have a console at the show and will be looking for comments. We aim to ship before the end of the year. Again as with any software we can hit a snag that changes this. K9 manages this but if I decide to change features due to feedback then that may delay it. A quick final note on feedback. We try to assess what is realistic from the forum and what is a desire by a single operator. As a manufacturer of a product that we aim to sell in large volume we have to keep it appealing to the majority. We can't give everyone what they want, sorry. It doesn't mean we aren't listening and if we can we will try and add the features. Each desk we design has a business plan and a development costing which we try and stay inside. If we sell more than anticipated it makes it much easier to constantly add features, it is Catch 22 sometimes but with Frog I think we have got it 80% right. Keep the feedback coming and we look forward to showing you a product at Plasa. Graham

You have a fade up time for a memory and a fade down time. Assume you have programmed Q1 at 5 sec up 7 sec down and Q2 at 4 Sec up 4 sec down. When you hit the go button to do the transition to Q2 the lights affected by Q2 will fade up over 4 sec's and any levels outputting in Q1 that have had their values reduced will fade down over 4 secs. On our old desks the fade down would have been the 7secs in Q1. The best way to understand this is program a couple of cues with say Ch1 to 10 at Full in Q1 and Channel 11 to 20 at full in Q2 and Channel 1 to 10 at 0 in Q2. Program a fade up time of 7 secs in Q2 and a fade down time of 0. When you do the transition you will see CHannel 1 to 10 snap to black and Ch11 to 20 fade up over 7 secs. You can see that the times in Q1 have no impact on this transition. Hope that helps. Graham

No Violence, No Fun

Just goes to show we can't please all of the people all of the time! :evil: Some people like the times for a memory to be in the memory, some like the fade out time to be in the next memory. I don't really mind which one it is as long as it is consistent. Graham

I think we can offer you want you want with the new improved Frog! 8)

I am not sure that this will always solve your problem. Even if the desk snaps to full not all dimmers are going to cope with this. I know some dimmers won't run a strobe properly even if you program them to snap to full. As Paul says the only proper way to get non dim is to use the dimmer curves to do this. Even then I am sure I would run some things on them.

I hate to be boring but a long time ago when I learn't lighting, yes Noah was still a young boy, I was taught that if I needed to insert a point cue between two memories you made it X.5. That way if you needed to add further cues you had the ability to do so with out a major rework of point cues. It was also down to me to write a cue sheet that matched what the book said. If the stage manager called a cue it didn't always match what the number on the desk was. Ideally it did but not always. That was when we got our first memory desks. Before that it was a 3 preset 72 channel desk and not only did you have to write down the cue number but all the channel levels as well. That also mean't remembering to move the scrollers when they were dark on the current preset so when you brought the next cue up the colours where right. Now you all want it done for you! Careful just now the desks will think so much a sound monkey will be able to do your jobs :wink: Just joking! Our new desk will allow renumbering but will have only a single level of point cues.

No You can only lock programming. If you locked it the person would be able to use the mac's but wouldn't be able to program them into a look. They could use looks you had created. If you wanted to you could save your show to disk, clear the patch so the mac's weren't there then lock the desk. That way they would have no access to the Mac's. When you wanted to use them unlock the desk and reload your show. Graham

You should have no problem loading a show on an old version of software to a newer version. Have just loaded a show created on version 3 to a version 9.6.

Hi What you are asking for in terms of an A/B cross fade on memories is something that exists on the Illusion. We didn't see this as a feature that many people would want on the Frogs. Maybe I am wrong but this is the first time in nearly 3 years it has been asked for. We will look at it but no promises as I think it would be a major thing to do. On the next generation it is more likely. :wink:

I am afraid you can't renumber a cue list on the Frog range. You can do this on the Illusion. The only solution is a point cue, a jump or copy cues one by one to move them all up one. I would go with changing the book. 8)

Some ideas for you all to kick around: 10 playback stacks that can each have a cue stack assigned to it. 100 pages of stacks. 10 user definable faders. This means you could use them to bring up channels, assign a memory to them, assign a parameter to them like a colour wheel or...... 40 user definable buttons. Think SX buttons on speed, they could be palettes, groups, a memory..... A touch screen. Enough to go on for now :twisted: