Several general questions

[JeffHague]

Hello all! Im new to the board, Freestyler and even stage lighting in general... I have been doing live sound for nearly 30 years and am familiar with lighting but have never really done much of it. Recently I was asked to design build and now operate a sound and lighting rig for a very popular local rock and roll cover band and have been having a lot of fun with this project.
For lights I have 10 wide par64s and 18 narrow par56s - all LED RGB fixtures. In addition we have a dual color laser, 2 RGB dual drum scanners, a fog machine and some incandescants (4 par56s for face lighting and 12 pinspots) run from two 4 channel dimmer packs. All of this gear is DMX. There are way too many DMX channels for most (cheap) light boards to handle so for control (so far) I have chosen Freestyler and I picked up an Enttec Pro.
As I have been putting things together a few questions have come up and I have found some threads related to them here but I want to be sure that I understand things so here they are.
I want to be able to run simultaneous scenes (sequences? cues?). I.E. for each song I would like to have 2 or 3 washes that I can switch between easily and then be able to layer some chases, effects, laser stuff, etc. on top while the washes are still on. Is using Submasters the only way to do that? I would set the washes up in one cue and the specials in another separate cue or 2 and then drop the cues into different submasters so that they can be run simultaneously?
Do I have to specify a time for each sequence - cant I just create a sequence that starts when I start a submaster and stops when I stop it? I guess Im looking for something analogous to an analog lighting board - turn a fader up and the scene comes on, turn a fader down and it goes off, hit a button for a chase, etc.
Should I consider running things from an external MIDI controller - would that make it a bit more like an "old school" lighting console? Ive been looking at the Behringer BCF2000 possibly?
Any comments or help you can offer would be much appreciated - thanks!

Jeff

[Spirit]

First of all welcom.

you have The cue you can just run 20 sequence at the time if Muplite sequences is enabled.
Cuelist button is a Button and if you press it it will Run all 20 sequences at the same time.
You can also Enable Load Only, So it will only Load a Cue and you can start manualy a Sequence from that cue.

With the submaster, also used on Profsional Lighting desks you need to Fill the submaster with one Atribute from a Fixture. Like one submaster with the Pan chases a other with Tilt chases and the next one With a Intensitie. one with RGb chases, and so on......

But next to a Submaster you also have a Slider. This Slider will only work on Fixtures that have a Intensitie channel. or RGB if the fixture doesnt have a Intensitie channel.

And enttec pro is a Good choose.
and a BCF200 would be REALY! nice to have. it just work a lot quicker. instead of doing everything with the mouse.

/spirit

[JeffHague]

Thanks! So I can run multiple sequences at the same time from the Cue? I thought it would only run sequences 1 ata a time in list order.
Thanks!

Jeff

[dmxlighting]

better still would be using submasters and cuelist buttons. see the wiki for more info