First Freestyler Show Last Night, impressions and problems..

[Uriahdemon]

Hi All,

Well after weeks of intensive learning (or trying to) of Freestyler I had my first show last night.

I just thought it worthwhile posting this with a couple of observations and problems which I may get some help on.

Firstly how I set the controls-

Submasters with all components of the two types of moving heads I used
Cue Window with some pre made cues and washes etc
Override buttons again with some colour washes

Is this normally how you would set up for live busking control...??

The problems I encountered were -

When engaging some of the cues I had set up. Those with strobing effects on the moving heads and PARS caused me to lose control. The only way out of this was to quit FS and then restart it and all was well again. I really am not sure what happened there.

Another problem was that my idea was to have cues replacing cues with just PARS and when the time was right to introduce the moving heads. Unfortunately this caused the cues to stop working (just staying at the point where I started the moving heads). When I clicked again on the cues the moving heads stopped. I thought with the option ticked within FS setup 'Cue multiselect always enabled' would overcome this. Again any thoughts very welcome.

There is much learning and experience yet to be gained however I do feel that I have come a long way thanks very much to this forum and the helpful folks on it. So thanks very much to everyone who has helped so far.

Any comments on any of the above I would really appreciate -

Did I set up the control correctly...??

What happened when introducing other fixtures...??

Rgds Mac

[Mattotone]

When engaging some of the cues I had set up. Those with strobing effects on the moving heads and PARS caused me to lose control. The only way out of this was to quit FS and then restart it and all was well again. I really am not sure what happened there.

Please supply your DMX output device, sounds like your strobe may be causing a glitch on the dmx line and causing usb/freestyer to hang.

Another problem was that my idea was to have cues replacing cues with just PARS and when the time was right to introduce the moving heads. Unfortunately this caused the cues to stop working (just staying at the point where I started the moving heads). When I clicked again on the cues the moving heads stopped. I thought with the option ticked within FS setup 'Cue multiselect always enabled' would overcome this. Again any thoughts very welcome.

are you using the first cue slots for the pars? they are also used for the submasters too.

[Uriahdemon]

Hi Mattotone,

Thanks for getting back to me.

I was using an Enttec Pro dongle.

I dont understand what you mean about using the first cue slots, could you please expand on that...??

I have attached a screenshot of what I was using on the night however this was split on two screens so I have just put it on the one.

Rgds Mac

[Spirit]

hi can you upload a backup file so i can take a closer look at it.

/spirit

[Uriahdemon]

Hi Spirit,

I seem to have problems uploading the backup. It may be due to size as it is 10.6Mb.

Here is a link to it on my dropbox site -

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/592nodsrykp46q7/A4UjSoA7zw

Please let me know if you do not link to this.

Rgds Mac

[Spirit]

Uhmmm

i get a Error if i try to Restore the backup..
Can you upload the backup again? as Zip or rar...

/spirit

[Uriahdemon]

Hi Spirit, thanks for all your help.

Uploaded rar file.

Rgds

Mac

[Spirit]

Hi again.

sorry i wasent realy clear but can you RE-backup and upload as zip/rar

as again i get a Error...

/spirit

[Uriahdemon]

Hi Spirit,

I really do appreciate you taking the time to have a look at this.

OK, I have just backed up again and converted to RAR.

[Spirit]

Pfff oke i can open it now and i will look at it..

/spirit

[Uriahdemon]

Pfff....?????

[Spirit]

Yes pfff lie finaly


But i see the problem or i see many of them
But creating the sequences can be Tricky.

First of all i see that the Cuelist buttons and Submaster Cant be used at the same time.
But as i see on your show i would recommend to Use the Submasters to Controll everything..
TIP: i know you can only have 4tabs with 5submasters each BUT if you use touchscreen interface 2 you can have all 20Submaster on One screen (You only need a Big screen for this)

Tips and Tricks For Submasters:
a Thumbe Rule, Each Submaster should Contain ONE fixture atribute/Channel.

For MH
Pan /tilt Sequences should contain Pan or/and Tilt 8bit AND 16bit. (only your fixtures have 8bit so Thats fine)
Color Seq. Only Color channels
Gobo Seq. only Gobo Channels
Prism Seq. only Prism channel
Dimmer seq. only Dim channel
Shutter seq. only shutter channel (Dim and shutter can be Mixed But be SURE!!! on all the sequences you add to the Dim/Shutter submaster needs to Channel set to FADE or SNAP on the Seq.)

For LED
COLOR seq need to have the R, G, B channels ( also be sure all sequence on that sub.M need to have the RGb channel set to FADE or SNAP to avoid strange behevair.)
Shutter Seq. only shutter channel..

----

i see you made all the sequences for the ledpars on the Cuelist buttons and i also noticed you úse the Ledpars mixed with eachother.
i would make this more clearer and Use one Sub.M for ROH 1~7 One for L1~3 and R1~3 one for Floor and one for Drum..

and the submaster looks Oke only the STROBE WHITE looks strange for the Movers but i'm not sure if this is the idea.

But i will make a Version of a Submaster show how i create it so you can Compare it with yours..

/spirit

[Uriahdemon]

Thanks Spirit,

I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Will your suggestions get over the reason why FS hanged when i introduced certain cues...??

I really do appreciate your time and effort as always.

Rgds

Mac

[Robin_N-Zone]

Spirit, are you 100% sure that you can have RGB and Intensity/Dimmer channels programmed as Snap, and still work with submasters? I believe that the problems I had in the beginning with submasters was because I had programmed the Sequences as Snap, not Fade. I think it was even you who found it?

Nowadays my sequences work fine, the only thing I changed was to program in Fade instead of Snap.

My problem was that the RGB sequences for my Ledbars worked fine if loaded and launched directly from the Cue, but not working at all if loaded and launched from a Submaster.

Perhaps it was something else, I´m going to have to try, or it only affected RGB channels and not DImmers. Or maybe it has been changed/fixed in the 3.5 version?

I would love to be able to make some sequences for my ledbars and led par cans in snap, sometimes that looks nicer for my shows, and still be able to launch them from submasters and be able to use the submaster intensity slider to control the overall intensity of the leds. Which works fine now, IF i program in Fade. If I program in Fade, and then use Disable Fade between steps in the Cue, the SM intensity slider doent work (it only turns on and of the SM)

Ideally I´d like to have much shorter fade times btw, 500ms is far to long for my use, If i use the beat of the music to change steps in a sequence, say a chase between 3 segments of a ledbar, they never really turn of, the just flimmer down to maybe 60% or something, granted, this is with music at 150-250bpm or more.
If I could have had a shorter fade, like 100ms or so, It would probably look nice I can do that on my 100euro Stairville DMX Master-1 controller so;)

Oh, and also, How do you guys use SM´s to controll RGB fixtures(with or without a Dimmerchannel), one SM for each color (then you can do on the fly colormixin) or do you program one SM to controll all three RGB channels at once and make a bunch of different chases and stuff in specific colors?

Thats what I like about my LED par cans, they have a dimmer channel, so I can make chases and such on the dimmer channel, and use the RGB channels to make any color setting I like idepently of which lights are turned on, muuuch more flexible then my LED bars that only has RGB channels for each of the 3segments and a strobechannel for the whole LEDbar, no main dimmerchannel.

Sorry for the long post and slight of topic wandering...

[Spirit]

Hi robin
i wasnt 100% sure more like 99.9%

but i tested it and if i make a Sequence RGB loop set all the channels on SNAP.
it works OKE! on the submasters and the SM.int slider also works oke..

also i know the devolper Disabled the "Remove Fades" feature from the CUE window if you use the SM.on the new beta version (let say 3.5.0.1)
But he will seach for a Solution.

Oh, and also, How do you guys use SM´s to controll RGB fixtures(with or without a Dimmerchannel), one SM for each color (then you can do on the fly colormixin) or do you program one SM to controll all three RGB channels at once and make a bunch of different chases and stuff in specific colors?

yes i allways make Seqeunces with all three Channels on one Seq..
i dont like the On the fly mixing Result..

and for Ledpars with a Sepearte Dimmer channel i also make some Dimmer Chases so it looks like a Oldschool Parcan..

but i also prefere ledpars with a Separate dimmer channel.

they never really turn of, the just flimmer down to maybe 60% or something

this can be caused becasue you use Cheap ledpar (No offents)
but if you look close to it and you set the Dimmer or RGB channel to dmx Value 0 they are OFF.
if you set the Channel to DMX value "1" you see they are allready 50% on or something..
i have the same issue with my cheap Showtec ledpars..

/spirit

[Spirit]

hi Uriahdemon

can you give me a Idea how you setup your rig?

/spirit

[Robin_N-Zone]

i wasnt 100% sure more like 99.9%

but i tested it and if i make a Sequence RGB loop set all the channels on SNAP.
it works OKE! on the submasters and the SM.int slider also works oke..

Spirit, that is great news! Hope I can get it to work on my setup also I´ll try it tomorrow when I´m programming the show for my Hardstyle/Hardcore club:)
I guess you tested this in the latest release, 3.5? Not the latest beta?

yes i allways make Seqeunces with all three Channels on one Seq..
i dont like the On the fly mixing Result..

Well, in the beginning I wanted to program for separate colors, for more flexibility and less programming ( Ithougt:P) But I´ve come to realise that´s not a nice way to do it, atleast not for LEDbars without dimmerchannels for each segment.
For my LED pars that have a dimmerchannel, I usually program chases and cascades and such things that turn on and of different pars on the dimmer,and make both a cue with different colorsetups and a bunch of overrides with different colorsetups, much the same way I do with my Moving heads and scanners.
Partly because I dont really like the lights to shift colors all the time:P

I would have loved to be able to do the same for LED lights that doesnt have a dimmerchannel, that virtual dimmerchannel we talked about a while back would be fantastic:) Do you know if there is any plans on implementing that?

this can be caused becasue you use Cheap ledpar (No offents)
but if you look close to it and you set the Dimmer or RGB channel to dmx Value 0 they are OFF.
if you set the Channel to DMX value "1" you see they are allready 50% on or something..
i have the same issue with my cheap Showtec ledpars..

I think you missunderstood me a little bit here Spirit, I not saying I cant get my (yes cheap, but not cheapest ) LEDbars and LED par cans to turn of when running sequences, or otherwise. That is no problem at all, if the Scenetime is longer than the Fadetime, it works just fine,or if running sequences without Fades.

But, when the Fadetime is say 0,5s (shortest you can set) and the Scenetime is less then 0,5s (you can set it to 0,1s I believe) the lights just wont have time to fade out.

In my case its usually is so because I like some things triggered on every beat, and if the music is going at 180bpm, this gives you an effective Scenetime of just 0,333seconds.
And let me tell you, 180bpm is far from the fastest music we play at some of our events

And as I said, if I´m running a sequence without Fade, it works perfectly even att less then 0.3s Scenetime:)

Perhaps I should run the S2L at 1/4 beat division or something, but sometimes its nice to have really quick sequences

//Robin

[Uriahdemon]

Hi Spirit,

If you mean the physical locations then basically its a truss bar at the rear.

Drum riser with drum pars on and sunstrip beneath. Then I have left and right columns with a moving head on the top of each and three floor PARS.

I have uploaded my stage plan and also a camera shot from EV3D to the dropbox link.

https://www.dropbox.com/home/Mac%20Open%20Access

Thanks for all your help on this and I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Rgds Mac

[Spirit]

hi you gave me the wrong link
but a EV3d view save file would also be very nice to ahev..

/spirit

[Uriahdemon]

Really, sorry about that. I just clicked on it and it took me straight there.....??

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/592nodsrykp46q7/A4UjSoA7zw

Apologies.... try this one please...???

[Uriahdemon]

Hi Spirit, did you manage to get it this time....?/

I have just had a read of everyones feedback on this however alot does not really make sense. I am waiting for your example to have a look at and then I may ask some sensible questions or make some sensible suggestions. Thanks again for your help. Rgds Mac

[Spirit]

hi yes It works OK!

and i'm bussy
and the weekends i allways have at least one show or two so not realy allot of time

/spirit