Static or Transparent...Help?!?

[Nathanrs93]

Hey,
I was looking through FS and came across these two options within the sequence creator. I've read the FS wiki to get an understanding of this but just want to get another understanding from you guys. I did read the wiki but I couldn't get my end around the example that they had used 100%, so if anyone can put it in basic simple terms about what these two options do and if they are useful to me.

Thanks
/Nathan

[Kings]

I think it refers to 'tracking'. Think of a series of cues where you have a rig consisting of 5 different fixtures. With early lighting consoles, when you created a new cue (or added a new cue to an existing series or cues), you had to enter a DMX value for EVERY channel of every fixture. Tracking lighting consoles 'remember' the values of the previous cue and you only need to update the values of the DMX channels that you want to change (so no need to enter the values for all the other channels even though they haven't changed). I don't think I have ever altered this setting in FS.

[Kings]

After a bit more research...

Say you have a rig of 5 of the same fixtures (say a type of scanner). You can easily create a sequence with a number of steps that vary EVERY attribute (ie add a DMX value for all the fixture attributes/channels such as pan, tilt, colour etc for every step).

Now say you want to create a sequence that only adjusts the pan and tilt of the mirror as you want to run an entirely different sequence at the same time that will adjust colour and the gobo.

In transparent mode, you will only adjust the DMX values of the pan and tilt channels. You don't enter values for the other channels leaving them 'free' so that they can be influenced by your other colour/gobo sequence. In this way you can 'layer' sequences to control your fixtures.

This will become more important when you start looking at submasters. You create a whole bunch of sequences that vary only one or two attributes eg pan and tilt and insert them into your 'movements' submaster. You do the same for a colour submaster (ie colour chases), intensity submaster (on/off, strobes, fades etc)and so on. The final result is that you can layer all the submaster sequences together to get the look/chase that you want. It's called programming by attribute and it's really suited to a live situation (sometimes called Busking).

Once you have the look your after, FS will also allow you to assign it to a cue list button for instant recall later during your show.

[Nathanrs93]

It sounds interesting and something that I could benefit from I suppose, but I think it's something that I'll have to get around to playing with when I have 5 mins. Thanks for your help, Kings.

/Nathan