Help with Cues and Scenes

[lightingmanevan]

Hi everyone, please help me as I need to try to use FS for our upcoming school show-it starts in a little over a week.

I bought an Enttec DMX Prop to use with the software and when I tested it at the high school, it worked great.

I need help with all this cue, sequence, and submaster stuff. For the school shows, especially this one, we only have BASIC lighting changes. For example, we will go from a full wash on stage to a Blackout, and then to a Stage Right Special.

So...I have tried making sequences and reading a ton of posts on here, but I still have lots of trouble. I need to have, I hope, a cue for each lighting change and then I would be able to have say Cue #1 for full stage wash, Cue #2 for fade to blackout, Cue #3 for Stage Right Special, but when I have made the sequences, there are many things I need help with. First, I need helping with the scene time, as this is something I will not know at all, and it may change a bit every night. Also, when running the sequences in the fast cue switcher, if I make all these steps into 1 sequence, when I run it they all just run right after the other, and this doesnt work for me as I wont be able to program the times in for each step. I have read many posts on here about people saving the cues in the Fast Cue Switcher and then running them as submasters, but I just want to have the easiest way of doing like I said, having a cue for every change, so when the person is calling the cues, I can just run each cue ON ITS OWN. I have seen the manual trigger and that may work, but also the show will probably have around 80-90 lighting changes. This is not a complicated show, it is basically always lights up full, blackout, SR or SL Specials, and then some other basic scenes. There is no moving lights, just conventional fixtures. So can you all PLEASE tell me the best way to set this up so I will be able to run each cue seperately and how to solve the problem of putting in a scene time, as I really will not be able to know that. The full stage wash may stay on for 4 minutes for the duration of a scene, then a blackout could be 10 seconds, but this will always change a bit from show to show, so I would prefer to just run it cue by cue. It would just be best for me to have one cue for each lighting change and then to run each cue seperately, and I really hope the program can do this-I just havent been able to figure it out. Thank you so much, any help is appreciated, as our show is coming up soon!

[dmxlighting]

So you have made some sequencies
And then you have added them to the cue page
you have saved each sequence as a separate cue and you are recalling them using fast cue switcher

Instead of this add them to the cue buttons then manuallly select the cue you need and it will play back only that cue when you need it.

I use loads of submasters for my shows.
for example Im using 6 moving mirror fixtures. Each sub is set up for a different atribute of the fixture ....

Movement , Colour , Gobo , Shutter , Rotation and so on. This means I can use the same movement chase with a range of colours chases and shutter chases etc.
Then if there is one combination a loike alot I save this to a cue button and it will recall that on one button press.

have a look at this http://www.freestylersupport.com/fsforu ... =58&t=1394 it might help you. I did not use any cue buttons on this setup. I will do a new version soon that does but have a look anyway. See how you get on.

[lightingmanevan]

OK, if I use the cue buttons on the fast cue switcher panel, that will work, BUT since I will not know the duration of any time, how could I keep the, say the cue with the lights up full on for as long as I need it to be?

I see how using the buttons may work and have each cue per 1 button, but I have around 80 cues for this show-so I dont think this will work too well. If I use the submasters, I dont really know how to set them up too much. I have loaded cues from the fast cue switcher into the submaster panel but they all had more than one step in each, and as of now, I would like to have one step per cue, or just for say Cue #1-lights up full-then BLACKOUT.

Thanks

[lightingmanevan]

Any help with this issue?

Thank you

[LJ_krede.dk]

i think you have misunderstand something about how Freestyler is working.

what you should doiffeten "looks" is to make one step sequences, one for each dyou want to use. set the fade time to a desired fade time. dont focus on the step time as you wont use it for your purpose.

make sure that "Cue "Go to previous value" always enabled" is activated in setup-->Freestyler Setup-->Preferences-->Extra Options

add the sequence in the cue window, now, when you want a look for your stage you activate the desired sequence and your lights will fade up (at the speed (fade time) you have setted) and the will stay on until you deactivate the sequence)
when you want to turn off your lights you deactivate the sequence, they will fade down.

you only use the step time if you make more than one step in your sequences.

as a beginner to freestyler is it a really good idea to to read the help content in the Freestyler program.

[lightingmanevan]

Thank you...

I understand that..and I will have one step sequences..but I have two final questions.

1-Is it possible to have different FADE UP (IN) and FADE OUT times for each one step sequence?

2-What is the easiest way to RUN the cue during the actual show, since I will have around 80+ cues?

Thank you very much.

[LJ_krede.dk]

1-Is it possible to have different FADE UP (IN) and FADE OUT times for each one step sequence?

if you want one fade time for fade up and one for fade down, you can create a one step sequence to fade down the lights.

2-What is the easiest way to RUN the cue during the actual show, since I will have around 80+ cues?

that was a lot, cant you use the same sequences for some of the "looks"?

well. you can use different cues (4+), you just have to change the cue in the fast cue switcher. another way is use the cue list buttons, with a cue on each button, and then change pages. if you do that you can assign short cut keys and use the keyboard for it. you can have 96 cue list buttons.

another way is the submaster and you the master to fade up and down yourself.

[lightingmanevan]

I am still having a bit of trouble with this...

I am trying to learn the software before rehearsal starts on Saturday and then I hope to have a better grip on the program before we start.

I have made the one step sequences, so for one sequence: the step is all the lights fade up
The second sequence, has 1 step again, and all the lights blackout.

I understanding creating the 1-step sequences, but I still have trouble running them. During the school show, the person calling the cues will say "Lights Cue 4 GO" and then my cue 4 will go through Freestyler. I do not see the easiest way to run the cues...Like I said all my cues need to be numbered (Cue 1, Cue 2, Cue 3 IF THIS IS POSSIBLE) and I will not know the SCENE TIMES for any part of the production, I just need to be able to run cue after cue, the cues are basic (lights up, lights down) so if you have any more advice-PLEASE help me.

THank you

[remco_k]

I'm not sure if I really understand what you need, but I have a very pretty basic idea.

You say you have 80 different cue's, maybe it is an idea to make just 1 sequence, with 80 steps in it and play that sequence with the sequence editor itself. (not the cue player as going back one step in case of an user error would cost to much time)

Here the basics:
1. Default the sequence editor in FS can only do 15 steps, you need to increment that by editing the FreeStyler.ini (in c:\program files\freestyler), locate the NumberOfSequences section, and change Number=15 to Number=99. (or whatever you like).
2. Open the sequence editor and create all the "cue's". For each cue, you make a new step in the same sequence. Think about testing first, by making just a small number of steps. At the end you will have 1 sequence with 80 steps.
3. When creating the first step in the sequence, make sure you set all used channels (that are going to be used in the complete sequence) to "fade" or "snap". As if you don't do that, you can have some unpredictable results when going one step back in the sequence.
4. Now you can run the steps manually by pressing the ">" button, and you can go back to the previous step with the "<" button.

In the sequence editor there are options for Global fade time. If you set that, then the fade time will be global for all steps. If you don't set that, you can set the fade time for each step you make.