no smooth pan/tilt - 16bit correction possible?

[der_mick]

Hi,

I just found out that my moving heads don't work correctly with the pan and tilt 16 bit channels. Is there any way to let freestyler just use a range of 0 to 200, not 0 to 255?

I didn't find anything in this forum or in the fixture setup. I tried the corrections in Setup > Preferences > Correction but there I can only add or substract offsets. If I could use a multiplication like " * 0.78" my problem would be solved

Thanks for any hints or advice!!

Michael

[Rod_Horning]

I suppose one possibility is to use Custom Sliders. A drawback to that approach is that 2 sliders are required for Pan and 2 for Tilt.

You also might use the Fixture Creator to edit the fixture definition to set the pan and tilt ranges. (I do not know what effect this will have, it is just a suggestion to try).

[der_mick]

Thanks for your answer!
But this using the sliders does only work for positioning the beam, not for the fades between two positions or for bezier shapes.
The pan and tilt ranges only describe in which angle the moving head can be moved but does not have an effect on the smoothiness of the movement itself.

[Rod_Horning]

Yes, the sliders are used to set the final position you want. The slider "fade" is however fast or slow you move the slider (also the setting of the pan/tilt speed if the instrument supports such a function).

In a sequence you can set the "fade" time. For any channel that is set for fade (green icon), Freestyler will vary the DMX value (thus the position) from the value (position) when the step in the sequence begins to run to the final value (position) across the fade time.

Using the Fx (effects) generator you can limit the Amplitude which addresses your 0-255 issue on the 255 side. For the 0 side see if the Offset parameter helps. I've never used this so I do not know.

Thank you for the update on the ranges.

Just a thought. Some instruments have a configuration option for pan/tilt of either 8 bits or 16 bits. I've read posts from other users that have observed that 8 bit moves are not as smooth as 16 bit moves.

[der_mick]

Unfortunately that doesn't solve my problem.

Yes, the FX generator can be used to produce values in a certain range. And I could use them for the Pan16bit or Tilt16bit channel. But still they are in no relation at all to the values in the pan and tilt channels and the moves freestyler calculates between two positions in a fade.

> Just a thought. Some instruments have a configuration option for pan/tilt of either 8 bits or 16 bits.
> I've read posts from other users that have observed that 8 bit moves are not as smooth as 16 bit moves.

That's my problem. I'm using the 16 bits to get smoother moves. With 8 bits it would just be a hopping from point to point. But my fixtures have an error positioning the 16 bits channel correctly. This I why I asked for a possibility to adjust these values in freestyler (in my case: only use a range of 0 to 200).

[Jan_K]

It is the 16 bit / fine tune channel which has an error. ?
And it is only the 16 bit channel you want to limit?
/Jan

[der_mick]

Yes, only the fine tune channel (on both pan and tilt).

[Jan_K]

It is not possible.

The reason is that the two channel (8bit and 16bit) in combination gives the total of 16 bit.
It correspond to masking out the last 4 bit if it has to make sense.
FreeStyler will send the full 16 bit and then the manufacture of the fixture decide how many of the bits to use.
I don't think you will find any sw. which will give the possibility to limit the pan and tilt channels that way.

And yes 8 bit channel only will give you a rough movement.
If you have a 560 deg movement with 8 bit, then 1 bit step will give 2.2 deg. and on 10m distance it will give you 38cm movement.


/Jan

[der_mick]

Jan, thank you, although that was the answer I was afraid of

It would have been so great to have a possibilty to change these values in the correction table. But I guess I'm the only one with this problem

[Jan_K]

I will say that it is more that a problem.

If you limit the 16Bit to 250 it will then in each shift in the 8Bit channel give a discontinuity in the movement

pt_movement.jpg

If you look in this figure then the right shows a step in movement and this step will come for each value in the 8Bit channel and 16Bit channel is tailing out.

[der_mick]

That's true. Right at the moment, my moves look like in the attached file.

Therefore I would need a limitation to a value rather than stripping bits. Or just a multiplication or a factor in the correction table. In this case all values on this channel * 0.8

[remco_k]

Check the fixture file in the fixture creator, maybe it has some sort of wrong setting in it. (also check the custom sliders tab if nothing is there for the pan/tilt channels)
And while you are there, if all seems good, you can try and leave the 16 bit pan/tilt values blank. Forcing 8 bit movents instead of 16 bit. Maybe this solves the problem at the cost of some precision.

You can also try to see the freestyler monitor output, and look at the pan/tilt 8 and 16 bit DMX values yourself and determine that they seem to be okay, -or- they seem to also be bugged and therefore your fixture responds badly to it.