Support Forum

I am having trouble finding a tutorial on how to program your lighting for a live show.

I am a beginner in the DMX lighting department

I have 4 scanners
1 moving head
6 LED par cans
6 LED panels

What is the best method for programing freestyler to use all these fixtures at the same time?


I have programed some sequences and loaded them into the Cue.
I put all the scanners / moving heads on the same shape and then change the wash lighting with each sequence. basically giving the same movement on the scanners and then a color fade wash

Should i program sequences just for the wash lighting and then another set for the scanners and run them at the same time ?

I would be happy with running the scanners live and just have the wash lighiting on a slow color fade, but i cant figure out how to set the wash lighting to a color fade, I assume it would be with the DMX 400 but i cant figure it out.

What is the best practice for programing actual shows. Where i would hit one button and it trigers a short 20 second show or something of that nature

theres no "wrong way" to do lights. Some perople thinks its simple to use the cue list buttons whch can activate several sequences at the same time. some like the submasters and use one submaster to different fixtures and / or attributtes (movements, colour, gobo, strobe, etc.)

check the help file in Freestyler and the wiki page to find out what FS can do,, with some practice you will find out what FS can do for you, and last (but not least) you foind out to make cool light stuff with FS on your own way...

As LJ_krede.dk said, there is no right or wrong way.

I figured out that I can work best with a combination of the submasters, some macros for fixtures and the FS build-in windows for color/gobo control. But everyone has to finde out what works best for him/her.

A realy important question is, if you controll the lights live as a lightjokey with full attention to the lights, as a DJ controlling them next to the music you play or as a band member, controlling the lights during you play an instrument. The answere to this question is a indicator how you can controll the lights. If you do not have time to set every color you should programm sequences where you can hit one single button to set all colors.

For live bands the "GO Monkey (Multi) - Theater Cue Stack", programmed by Mattotone, is an interesting tool. If you are interested in something like that you should take a look.

Ok, thank you for the advice. I will have to look into Submasters , i have no clue, I have always used hardware controllers and just moved to software.

do either of you know a good tutorial for the dmx 400 or a led wash color fade technique .

the wiki does not really explain anything about the dmx 400 feature

don't have that much time this week, but if you have a few questions i may answer them tomorrow (and i can copy the question to the wiki as a beginning for a DMX400 description)

btw, have you look at the help file in freestyler? can't remember if there any description of the dmx400, but i think there is (at work so cant check it myself today)