Flickering while fading

[jensemann]

Hallo,

I have a little problem with Freestyler and DMX4All MIni USB.
I programmed a chaser with fade time for my LED Pars. So far it works perfect.
When I now start a movement for my heads or scanners, the fade between the LED chaser steps begins to flicker.
There isn´t a smooth blending anymore. When I stop the movement, the blendings are smooth again.
Is it a problem of the Interface or maybe of too less CPU power?
My notebook has an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz CPU and 1GB RAM.

Thanks,
Jens

[remco_k]

Hallo,

I have a little problem with Freestyler and DMX4All MIni USB.
I programmed a chaser with fade time for my LED Pars. So far it works perfect.
When I now start a movement for my heads or scanners, the fade between the LED chaser steps begins to flicker.
There isn´t a smooth blending anymore. When I stop the movement, the blendings are smooth again.
Is it a problem of the Interface or maybe of too less CPU power?
My notebook has an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz CPU and 1GB RAM.

Thanks,
Jens

Small chance its about CPU power. You can verify that by having a look at the task manager and look at the CPU percentage graph.
Usage should be near zero. If not (say >40%), find out what application uses that lot of CPU power.

Also you could try changing FreeStylers output refresh rate. (Setup->FreeStyler setup->Interface setup, push the button "advanced" and change the refresh rate to as low as possible (20)).
Also disconnect all other fixtures except the LED pars and run the same test (so start the movement again, ofcourse nothing will move now).

Let us know the results.

[jensemann]

I allready tried to change the refresh rate without any result. Even whith only LED Pars in the physically DMX line the problem exists. The CPU graph shows a usage of about 10 percent. So, I think that is not the reason. I use about 200 DMX channels in this setup. Is that allready too much for the DMX4All interface?
Have anybody had a problem like this befor?

[dmxlighting]

could it be the dmx4all interface. I dont know anything about them but I do know this is a problem seen on some interfaces.

[jensemann]

Yes, the interface has an onboard processor. But I do not know how good it is. It is a proper USB 2.0 port.
Does the Enttec Pro work well with this amount of channels and slow LED fades?

[LJ_krede.dk]

just a thougt:
what kind of LED par's is it? manufacture, type etc? maybe it is them which is the problem because they don't receive the DMX signal correctly?

Does the Enttec Pro work well with this amount of channels and slow LED fades?

Well, me and a lot other FS Users use the ENTTEC USB DMX PRO interface and i have never seen or heard of a similar issue. (ENTTEC USB DMX PRO FTW )

[remco_k]

Yes, the interface has an onboard processor. But I do not know how good it is. It is a proper USB 2.0 port.
Does the Enttec Pro work well with this amount of channels and slow LED fades?

I use the Enttec pro here, no problems at all here.

Don't forget that the LED Pars themselves could be bad like LJ_Krede says. Not sure how you could test that, without having to use another DMX interface.

USB speed is kind of ruled out. DMX runs at about 250 kbit/s. Lets take some overhead, 500 kbit/sec. USB 1.0 runs 1.5 Mbit/s so thats enough.

[jensemann]

I am sure that it is not a problem of the PARs because it works perfect as long as no movement is activated. The Pars are Inition Studio PAR Platinum TriLED for about 480€ per unit. In this price range they should work proper. The more value changes are in the whole signal at the same time the stronger gets the problem. Due to this fact I think that the processor in the interface is just too slow. Yesterday night I found out that it is not an issue for the led pars only. Even the mirror movement of the scanners gets less smooth. At the movingheads you can not see this because the head movement is physically too inertial.

[LJ_krede.dk]

can you try the interface with another software so we can rule out that the issue lies in Freestyler.

[jensemann]

No, I haven´t got another Software. And I don`t want to programm the whole show on another platform again.
It would be the best to try another Interface. But therefor I have to buy one. Unfortunality here in my region isn`t anyone to rent from.
Has anyone tried a similar scenario with his own material?

[remco_k]

Could be the DMX4ALL interface if the onboard proc is too slow.
I've might had the same problem width the Velleman VM116 / K8062 interface.

Easy test for you:
Make all 512 channels (except the few needed for one LED PAR) some value, other than zero. Make them static. They do not have to change all the time.
Do your fade test with the channels other than zero and zero.

Also try a flash test:
- Measure the time it takes to turn on the LED PAR in FreeStyler and the actual time it goes on. Should be below say 50 to 100 msec at maximum.
- Make all 512 channels zero and to the same.

[rkhanso]

Sorry for posting on this old thread, but I'm also having similar issues. But, I see the flicker when fading simple PARs on dimmers.

I have tried dimming with Chamsys MagicQ and there is NOT a flicker problem when using that software....and I've tested it quite a bit with MagicQ. It only happens with Freestyler.

I'm using an Enttec Pro compatible interface.

Has anyone found a fix to this problem?

[rkhanso]

Forgot to mention that I'm using the standard PAR fixtures in Freestyler (as well as standard dimmers in MagicQ) and have not done any custom fixtures.