Problem with Dimming Moving-Heads in Scene/Submaster

[mcdroemmel]

Hello Community,

i have a strange problem which annoys me with dimming my Moving-Heads in one single Scene. This Scene is than inserted in a Cue and that Cue in a Submaster for quick Access.
I worked out the great tutorial for Submasters in this Forum so that i want to organize the manipulation of Attributes (like color, gobo, moving, strobing, and also dimming) on Submasters.
At least almost everyting works fine for changing colors, gobos etc with Submasters.
But i also made a cue (organized in a single Submaster-Group) which controlls dimming of my moving-heads. One Scene in that Cue closes the Shutter and sets the Dimming-Channel to 0. Works fine. The second Scene in that Cue opens the Shutter and sets the Dimmer to half Power. A third Scene also opens the Shutter and sets the Dimmer to full Power.
The Problem: Setting Scene 1 works every time (closing Shutter, setting Dimmer to 0), but Scene 2 and Scene 3 are not working (even when the sliders right of a SM is on 100%)
When i click on a fixture of a moving head i see, that the dmx-values are correct, but the moving-heads are dark!! When i now manually change the dimming-value of the mh-fixture, than the mh is doing the manual change. Very strange.

Does anybody have an idea whats going wrong? What i can do?
Freestyler-Version is 3.3.2, DMX-Interface is EntTec Open DMX (but with an Interface of dw-lightning.de)

Any help would be great!!

regards
Matthias

[LJ_krede.dk]

could you upload the pff file(s) for your moving head(s), location file, the sequences and cue files? then i will have a look.

pff files a made by opening the fixture file in fixture creator and choose File --> export.

this is a long shot but maybe it is the moving heads which is acting weird.. could you also upload the manual for them.

[mcdroemmel]

Hello,

thanx for your answer. I have that files on my installation at home.
But i downloaded the fixture from the user-area of the forum for user-defined fixtures. It is the Futurelight PHS 260. But i have two different type of moving-heads showing the same behaviour. The second one i modified myself also from a user-defined fixture Stairville MH-25 a little (my MH is Stairville MHX-25).
In my meaning its unlikely that the same beahaviour exists with different fixtures.
Dimming only using the fixture itself (using the the special views) works fine for the MHs. Only not working when using single-step scene in Cues and Submasters.

regards
McD

[LJ_krede.dk]

yes, sound like the problem is not in the moving heads itself. it could be an issue in FS but at first lets take a look in your sequences. it could be a programming error (no offence)

[Bigtoddy]

wow, I just encountered the same problem this weekend. I set up a dimming cue for my LED Pars. Fade up fade down, fade side to side, just some silly chases. Any, I program up all the sequences and load them into a cue. If I play them from the cue, they work fine. But When I load the cue into sub-master, running it causes all the lights to go out and I have to reset FS to reestablish DMX control. Its really weird, I've never had a problem like this with these lights and other sequences/cues/submasters.

[mcdroemmel]

Hello,

this problem struggles me. unfortunatly i had no time so far to post the config because i had to build the stage for my next gig. But it seems, that it is also not a MH specific problem, perhaps a general problem using the dimming-channel in a cue/Submaster, because i have the same behaviour with my eurolite k401 led pars. The sequences are easy, only modifying the dimming-chanel. Dimm to 0 in first Step of Sequence 1, Dimm to 255 in first Step of Sequence 2. Loading in SM Sequence with Dimm to 0 works, Dimm to 255 doesnt work.
But FS shows the value 255 in fixture channel view!!! But the Moving-Heads (and LED Pars) are not reflecting that change. Only manually overriding in fixture channel view with a slight change, works afterwards.
Unfortunatly tomorrow is a greater gig and this important feature doesnt work...

regards
McD

[LJ_krede.dk]

But FS shows the value 255 in fixture channel view!!

have you tried to check the DMX output window as well? that should show the accurate DMX values FS is sending out

[mcdroemmel]

Hi LJ_krede,

i will check this this evening.

regards
mcd

[Spirit]

hello

i did also a couple of test: (With FS 3.3.2 and 3.4.0) both have same results.

Sequence 1= Shuter closed & Dimmer off
Sequence 2= Shuter open & dimmer 50%
Sequence 3= Shutter open & dimmer 100%

And it works perfect if i try it.

/Spirit

[Kappert]

Hey guys, I'm having the same problem.
I'm running Freestyler 3.4.8
I've tried everything I can think of, it doesn't matter what i do, submaster turns the shutter/intensity off with my fixtures. when i play the sequences within the cue player they work fine, but as soon as i open submaster the shutter drops to 0. I've tried making a cue with only an open 100% sequence with no luck.
the funny part is. as soon as i close the submaster player the intensity resumes to its previous state (normally open).

[Robin_N-Zone]

Hi everyone!

This sounds alot like the problem I am having with my submasters to, I just posted a thread about it yesterday.
I cant get my LED par cans and LED bars to turn on from the submasters, I´ve programmed Intensity channel for pars, and one Cue for each RGB colorchannel on the LED bars. These are multistep sequences, chases and such, but I dont get any dmx output when I launch them from the submasters, or from the Cue list if the submaster window is open..
I´ll try to program a cue for my scanners intensity channel and see if that works. But as it stands for me now, everything but Intensity and rgb colorchannels works fine.

Almost starts to seem like a bug in the system, or are we all doing same kind of strange mistake somewhere? It seems to work for Spirit?

[Jan_K]

Just a stupid question.

Have you guys adjusted the Sub master fader to 100%.

I made a test yesterday with some Led Par cans and it worked perfect.
Also SM is one of the most tested functions in FreeStyler.

/Jan

[Robin_N-Zone]

Jan_K, yes, atleast I´ve made sure to set the Submaster fader to 100%.. Gonna try more with it in the next few days if I can find the time.

/Robin

[Jan_K]

What Fixture are you using.

Also you can open the "Output" Panel and see if the DMX values look correct.

You have to look on all the values for the fixture dimmer/Shutter, RGB and so on.

You can try making a manual control with the light and note the values in the output panel.
Then try the same thing with SM and see that it is the same.
If the RGB values are ok then it the other values for fixture that are interesting.

/Jan

[Robin_N-Zone]

I´ve noticed this problem with my Stairville LEDbar 252 RGB DMX, and my Stairville LED Par 64s, but those are also the only fixtures I´ve tried to make submasters for that use Intensity or RGB channels.

I started another thread about this problem where I described it a bit more. Yes, I did check the output section, when I run the sequences directly from the Cue, no submaster window open, everything works perfectly, when I open the submaster window, and tries to start one of those sequences from there, with the fader @ 100% and the sequence running, and the fixtures on the screen indicating that its working, but I dont get any output (checking both the lights irl and the Output window).

But I think Spirit found that Intensity type channels doesnt work correctly with submasters if you program them as Snap in the sequence. Strange, but perhaps logical in some way
But it makes no sense then that the FX engine puts those channels as Snap, atleast when you use something like Flipflop or Can-Can, I tried that yesterday.

But since the program wont output anything without an interface, and my interface was at my storage yesterday evening, I gave it up for the day;) I´ll bring my interface home today and see if I can get it to work.

Oh, and the other channels, on the Ledbars there is one other relevant channel, what I like to call Mode channel, and yes, its in the correct value, it is set to 3 segment DMX mode as default from my fixtureprofile, and for my Led pars it the same, a mode channel, that is set to DMX mode by the profile. For the pars I made the sequences for the Dimmer/Intensite channel, and controlled the RGB channels manually and with override buttons, and that works perfectly when running with only the Cue window.

Spirit kindly made a backupfile for me to test, but for some reason I cant load a backup, so cant try it:( I just get an error message that an error occured while restoring the backup.

/Robin

[joshua2007]

Hi,
it's been quit a few month since the last conversation here.
We are still having this problem with all our fixtures.

Does anybody have an anwser, workaround or solution?

would be great.
Thanks.

[joshua2007]

well, it seems to work now, we've downloaded the latest update. Looks great now.