chaser without intensity?

[Otter]

Hi all,

first of all, I have to admit, I'm completely new to zero 88. I have had a FLX S48 for a few days, which is supposed to replace the old QLC+. So I don't want to rule out the possibility that I'm getting this wrong right now.

My setup consists of LED PARs, LED bars, moving heads and LED effects. 

In QLC + I created chasers in three different categories:
- chaser for the colors
- chaser for intensity (dimmer)
- chaser for movement (positions)
All these chasers were always overlapping for all devices. So when I selected the color chaser "red green", all fixtures alternated between red and green.

The fixtures were activated in groups with one fader each (for example for the group "washer") for the luminosity. So I was able to activate fixture groups for a color chaser via the intensity, adjust their luminosity individually and, if necessary, add further chasers (movement or dimmer). With 24 color chasers, 8 dimmer curves, 8 movements and 8 groups of lamps, that makes 12,000 different scenes.

That's exactly what I'm trying to recreate in ZerOS. However, the chasers always seem to have to map the luminosity. I have also not yet succeeded in creating a fader (intensity / dimmer) for a group of fixtures without including a color or a movement.

What am I doing wrong here? How would you approach the problem?

[kgallen]

Hi. The root of your issues is probably SmartTag. As you are trying to set up a range of playbacks with only very specific information recorded you will need to turn off SmartTag in the Record options. Simplistically with SmartTag on, you will only record information for fixtures with non-zero intensity. This is probably the root of your comment  ‘chasers always seem to map the intensity’.

When you turn off SmartTag, only the information that is ‘tagged’ will get recorded (tagging usually occurs when you ‘adjust’ something). Further this means you can record colour/position etc without needing a non-zero intensity and also you don't record the intensity. You might need to click some other buttons in the Record options to say what you do want to record - because you will probably need intensity "up" to see what you're doing with colour/position etc, but you won't want that intensity recorded to the playback.

Hope this gives you enough hints to get you started as it seems otherwise you know what you’re doing. In short you should be able to achieve what you need relatively easily once you get your settings and mind around it!

Edward will probably give a more comprehensive reply tomorrow.

Kevin

[kgallen]

This thread might also help with your two questions. There are quite a few questions around this topic, so worth taking a look at other forum posts. This topic tends to be the headline subject, so should be quite easy to spot. Also the online manual is a useful resource: https://zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/record-options/snapshot-smarttag?filter=2

 

[Otter]

Thanks for Your help, Kevin. I‘ll try it out after work today.

[Edward Z88]

Hi @Otter 

Welcome to the Zero 88 Forum.

Really glad to hear you have a FLX S48.

As usual, @kgallen is exactly right - when trying to record "building blocks" onto playbacks, rather than "whole looks", it is best to disable SmartTag, so you know only the parameters you adjust will get recorded. This will also then allow you to mix them together effectively.

2 hours ago, Otter said:

I‘ll try it out after work today.

Let us know how you get on.

Edward

[kgallen]

16 minutes ago, Edward Z88 said:

to record "building blocks" onto playbacks, rather than "whole looks", it is best to disable SmartTag

I like that way of thinking about it - building blocks vs looks.

[Otter]

Hi,

turning of SmarTag helped. I‘ve now on fader for red, one for green and one for blue. But if none of them is active, all three colors will be on 100% (white). Fading in one color reduces the two other colors. Fading out the color returns to white.

Of course that‘s not helpful. The Faders should just add a color. Fading out should turn into black at the end. And i need to get ride off the white as soon as intensity is higher than 0%.

Splitting the control for color and itensity means:

fader1: itensity
fader2: color red
fader3: color blue 

To get a blue light i‘d need to fader 1 and 3 together.

To get purple light i‘d fade all three in.

Itensity without a color should stay black, same for using a color fader only.

Is that possible?

[kgallen]

I think the situation you have is when all of your playbacks release, the desk is looking for what to do with the lights, and there is nothing left controlling them, so in this situation it reverts to the default which is Home and that is usually (with a "correctly" constructed fixture), on at max in white.

Wait for Edward to correct me if this is wrong, but I think you need to edit the Home for the fixtures of interest. This is done by programming your fixtures - in your case intensity=0, and RECORD HOME (with SmartTag off, since you want to record that zero intensity).

I believe this is in accordance with Edward's comment here:

 

[Otter]

Thanks, RECORD HOME sounds like a good idea. I‘ll try it asap.

But there‘s another thing. It‘s the way ZerOS is mixing the two different cues.

cue fader 2 for red:
r 100% / g 0% / b 0%

and fader 3 for blue:
r 0% / g 0% / b 100 %

if I pull both in, i should get purple:
r 100% / g 0% / b 100%

But ist always turns to the color (red or blue) of the last fader I moved up. I tried different settings for the fader, but it didn‘t help.

I guess the cue i made for the color didn‘t records the red channel on 100% only, it also recorded the 0% for the other color channels, right? It seems to me the general logic of ZerOS to adress the whole fixture instead of every channel of a lamp (which is great for a quick beginning) is now what restricting me here. Is there a way to get access directly to the channels of a fixture?

[Davidmk]

You might find this useful...

https://zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/playing-back-cues/rgb-colour-mixing-on-playbacks

 

[kgallen]

You need to ‘separate parameters’ on colour since you are programming a hard ‘blue=0’ in the red playback. By default, Colour will tag all colour parameters when you adjust one, so when you adjust red then blue green white etc will also get tagged. If you do SETUP COLOUR there should be an option ‘Keep Parameters Separate’ (or something like that). For Colour it defaults to No, change it to Yes. Then when you adjust red only red will get tagged so only red recorded. 
 

If David has linked the article I think he has then this should be explained in more detail there.

HTH

[Edward Z88]

Hi @Otter

12 hours ago, Otter said:

‘ve now on fader for red, one for green and one for blue. But if none of them is active, all three colors will be on 100% (white). Fading in one color reduces the two other colors. Fading out the color returns to white.

As @kgallen mentions, this will be due to the fact that by default, RGB parameters will default to full. This means when you simply raise the intensity, you achieve full white light output.

3 hours ago, Otter said:

But ist always turns to the color (red or blue) of the last fader I moved up. I tried different settings for the fader, but it didn‘t help.

By default, colour mixes LTP, which stands for Latest Takes Precedence. This is basically a complicated way of saying whichever playback you raised most recently, will be the one that controls the colour of your lights. It will not add to what is there already. So if you have red on stage, and then raise blue, blue is the latest instruction for the light, so it goes blue.

3 hours ago, Otter said:

Is there a way to get access directly to the channels of a fixture?

Yes there is. This is what @Davidmk has helpfully linked to...

2 hours ago, Davidmk said:

You might find this useful...

https://zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/playing-back-cues/rgb-colour-mixing-on-playbacks

 

This article shows you how you can create yourself a Red, Green, and Blue playback fader, that you can mix together independently, without one colour replacing another. The article above includes a tutorial, which I have linked to here...

 

2 hours ago, kgallen said:

You need to ‘separate parameters’ on colour since you are programming a hard ‘blue=0’ in the red playback. By default, Colour will tag all colour parameters when you adjust one, so when you adjust red then blue green white etc will also get tagged. If you do SETUP COLOUR there should be an option ‘Keep Parameters Separate’ (or something like that). For Colour it defaults to No, change it to Yes. Then when you adjust red only red will get tagged so only red recorded. 

This is certainly one approach. The technique used in the video above, doesn't involve adjusting parameters, and simply involves manually tagging/untagging. With this technique, you therefore don't need to worry about separating parameters.

11 hours ago, kgallen said:

Wait for Edward to correct me if this is wrong, but I think you need to edit the Home for the fixtures of interest. This is done by programming your fixtures - in your case intensity=0, and RECORD HOME (with SmartTag off, since you want to record that zero intensity).

This is another approach, you could default the Red, Green and Blue parameters of your fixtures to 0, meaning you are building from black. The drawback of this, is it means when you raise the intensity of a fixture, it remains black, prior to you then having to manually bring up colour parameters.

I hope this helps, if you have any questions let me know.

Edward

[Otter]

13 hours ago, Davidmk said:

You might find this useful...

https://zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/playing-back-cues/rgb-colour-mixing-on-playbacks

 

This helped a lot, David! Thank You!

About the video there: at the end a very important step ist missing there. You need to disable "release on lower" for the intensity fader! Otherwise it will overwrite the colors when turning of the fixtures light, so next time u need to set all color fades again from below. With disabled "release on lower" the color mix will stay, even when intensity is 0%. Maybe You guys wann add this hint to the video.

[Edward Z88]

Hi Otter,

12 hours ago, Otter said:

You need to disable "release on lower" for the intensity fader! Otherwise it will overwrite the colors when turning of the fixtures light, so next time u need to set all color fades again from below. With disabled "release on lower" the color mix will stay, even when intensity is 0%.

That is exactly right. However, the drawback of doing this is if you lower your intensity playback with release on lower disabled, and then go to bring up the fixtures manually, they won't illuminate, as the intensity playback will still be telling them to be black. Therefore if the intensity playback is lowered with release on lower enabled, it releases control, allowing you to then control your fixtures manually again.

12 hours ago, Otter said:

Maybe You guys wann add this hint to the video.

I have added this as a tip to the bottom of this page...

https://zero88.com/manuals/zeros/cues-playbacks/playing-back-cues/rgb-colour-mixing-on-playbacks

I hope this helps, if you have any questions let me know.

Edward