Pixel Chase

[TrafficLights3]

I have some pixel batten fixtures. When I run a chase effect across a fixture it chases across those pixels. When I run the effect across multiple fixtures, it will chase across them all in order. 

I’d like for all the battens to pixel chase at the same time as a group. 
I thought it could be something to do with the offset of the effect, however when I select ‘offset as group’ it ignores the pixels and treats each batten as a single light source. 
 

I’ve attached a video of how it works currently and an edited video of how I want it to be able to work. 
How it works now: https://youtu.be/gVSUg7lTL2w

How I want it to work:
https://youtu.be/qIHcmw-siQs

 

Is there something I’m missing? 
Thanks! 

 

[kgallen]

This video on multicell for FLX S might help, or as revision:

 

[Neil Macmillan]

Simplest solution is to have all of the fixtures as one dmx address.

Assuming that isn't an option or not ideal, it does seem to be a tricky one that I don't believe the video kgallen has pointed to actually addresses. It covers doing what you're already able to do - I watched it not that long ago as I was interested to do what you want to do and ended up just putting them on one dmx address for speed, but have been meaning to experiment since.

I suspect you may be able to save the parameters of the effect to a palette, then apply it to individual fixtures in turn, until all of them are doing the same. I'm not convinced it won't just start rolling into doing what you already have though as soon as you add each fixture.

Last option is manually creating your own playbacks with as many cues as required to make the effect.

As far as I can see though, when you select pixels across multiple lights, the desk just treats them as a big line of lights and doesn't seem to have any understanding of grouping them into fixtures.

[Davidmk]

@kgallen

I don't have much experience with multi pixel fixtures but would this work?

1. Select each pixel that should.come on together and record a group.
2. Repeat until all the required pixels are in a group.
3. Select the groups  not the pixels.
4. Run the effect by groups rather individually.

Failing that...

• If the effect can work on a single fixture then giving them the same address will make them behave the same but rule out treating them individually. Heaven knows what it would do to RDM though.
• You can patch multiple fixtures, on different addresses to the same channel. Again that stops you treating them separately in this show but they can still be patched separately in another show

Or build an actual chase recording each step separately. 

[Techie_v2]

Was also trying to do this recently.

I selected all the pixels in 1 fixture, so 1.1 thru 1.8 and created the effect I wanted and saved it as a pallete. I could not how ever apply this pallete to any of the othe fixtures, I had to create the effect on each fixture individually. 

Helped by recording a load of groups during pre programming, so each fixtures pixels as a group, all pixels in the first 4 fixtures as a group and so on......

Then I could just select the group, tap effects, tap chase, adjust a few things and record.

More time consuming as i had 24 fixtures each with 8 pixels but the only way I could get it to work.

[Mrdjjag]

1.1 thru 1.8 and 2.1 thru 2.8 and 3.1 thru 3.8.. and so on. Should be able to save that as a pre pallet as well, group or fx

[Techie_v2]

35 minutes ago, Mrdjjag said:

1.1 thru 1.8 and 2.1 thru 2.8 and 3.1 thru 3.8.. and so on. Should be able to save that as a pre pallet as well, group or fx

Selecting each set and using and between them would be the same as 1.1 thru 3.8. Which would span the effect across all the pixels, not apply the effect to 1.1 thru 1.8 and the have 2.1 thru 2.8 do the same thing.

What I didn't try was recording a group of say 1.1 thru 4.8, setting an effect on that and recording it as a pallete then trying to apply that to 1.1 thru 1.8 individually then applying it to 2.1 thru 2.8 and so on.

[TrafficLights3]

Thanks everyone for your help on this, after digging through a good few training webinars on YouTube, I came across the simplest answer - offset, specifically how the offset fans across fixtures. You can change this behaviour by holding setup and tapping effects. I set my shift click to be 'fan first' (Also experimented with the other fan options for different effects) then selected my fixtures, hit chase, held shift and span the encoder wheel to fan the offset of the effect until the chase matched up on all battens. Worked super nicely and certainly opens up some more interesting possibilities for programming

[Neil Macmillan]

On 7/14/2025 at 10:50 PM, TrafficLights3 said:

Thanks everyone for your help on this, after digging through a good few training webinars on YouTube, I came across the simplest answer - offset, specifically how the offset fans across fixtures. You can change this behaviour by holding setup and tapping effects. I set my shift click to be 'fan first' (Also experimented with the other fan options for different effects) then selected my fixtures, hit chase, held shift and span the encoder wheel to fan the offset of the effect until the chase matched up on all battens. Worked super nicely and certainly opens up some more interesting possibilities for programming

 

You've just blown my mind that I've never thought to see if there was a setup menu for each of the CBE pallette windows. I dread to think hour many hours of training videos you had to go through to find that! I will have to have an experiment now as well.

[TrafficLights3]

Yep! I was blown away too

[Mark Alington]

I have some battens forming the ground row for lighting a conference set. Normally I'll have a number of static states which I can cross-fade between (leaving the presenters' lighting on seperate control on the first 12 channels). What I want to do is to create a wipe across the set to change colour state; the Colorado144 battens conveniently provide a total of 36 cells across the stage. I've done this by creating a palette for each look and recording each step advancing each cell as individual steps either as a chase or as a series of follow-on cues with step times of 0.2secs, and the look (on the workshop bench) is exactly what I'm after. However this will get a bit tedious plotting every wipe.

I am wondering whether Multicell might help?

I have tried 2 different methods to get the same result - (A) Assign each cell as a different RGBWA fixture (e.g. 13 - 48), or (B) Assign each fitting with attributes (e.g. 13.1 - 24.3). Recording a wipe on our FLXS, after setting everything up including the colour palette, (A) requires 4 button presses per step, (B) requires 10.

The question is whether there is an easier way of creating this "wipe". This has also made me wonder if there is a way of adding default Trigger and Wait Times for recording sequences like these.

Using either method, when I run this wipe sequence, the desk instantly sets all the pixels to a fixed colour. If the wipes are run in a pre-programmed order, this is not an issue as the last colour from the previous sequence is used. However, if I want to run the sequences in a random order to match the mood, this jump to another base colour becomes apparent. 

Once recorded using either method, it can be played back either as a chase (using just 1 cycle) or as a sequence of auto-follow-on cues.

I remembering the days of running shows on a Strand Century Palette 30-ish years ago, any chase could be assigned an attribute of (i) forward/back, (ii) bounce on/off, (iii) random on/off, (iv) build on/off, and (v) invert on/off. I've almost certainly got some detail wrong! These could be added to any effect, even on-the-fly. Any chance of something like this on the FLX?

Sorry, this is a lot of questions for a very small desk!

[DALX]

Try this Colour Fan approach. FANNING

Select the 38 batten channels by pressing and holding the first batten flash button, then selecting the last batten flash channel button. This will light up all 36 channels. Then press the Z key, use the first encoder wheel to bring up the Intensity on all 38 batten channels to what level you want. Then select Colour Picker, use two fingers to select the range of colours you want fanned across the battens, record this as a cue. Then select the end colour you want the battens to be in, record this as a cue. Use an auto follow-on to go from the first cue to the second.

You can fan across the whole spectrum or just a short range horizontally, or you can fan across saturation vertically.

[Mark Alington]

Thanks DALX. I'm fine with getting different colors in each cell/pixel/whatever, but I want them to change one at a time in sequence like this demo

[scottydog75]

I've never had time to try it in the end, however I was once trying to do an intensity effect over 300 pixels, and at the time Edward suggested to write a Macro to do the hard work for me.

On 10/25/2022 at 6:29 PM, Edward Z88 said:

In all seriousness, it might be worth playing with creating yourself a macro, that turns off the current pixel, selects the next pixel, and records it as a cue in a chase. You could then run this macro multiple times, so the console builds your chase for you.

So, record the following to a macro: "@ ., Next, @@, RECORD ENTER". Then to use it, type "1.1 @@ RECORD ENTER" to record your first step. From there run the macro to record the remaining 299 cues. As this example uses RECORD ENTER, you'll need to be viewing your chase playback you would like the cues to be recorded into.

To keep the macro looping, record two empty cues to an empty playback, turn this playback into a chase, and add the macro to one of the cues. Run the chase at a speed the console can keep up with, and then make a cup of tea and let the console do the work!

Edward

You can't natively do Macro's on FLXS, however you could load your showfile into PhantomZerOS in FLX mode, create your macro and chase, and then load your showfile back into your FLXS (possibly?! - lots of maybes in this 😃)

[Archie D]

1 hour ago, scottydog75 said:

however you could load your showfile into PhantomZerOS in FLX mode, create your macro and chase, and then load your showfile back into your FLXS (possibly?! - lots of maybes in this 😃)

Just for clarification, when loading a show file containing User Macros into a FLX S console, they will be disregarded and not transferred over.

Hope this helps.

Archie