Support Forum

I am running lights for a small college theater that uses old school analog lighting with DMX-capable ETC Sensor dimmer racks. In the past they have always used a 48-channel board, but the current show has a lot of fancy cues, so I'd like to start using FS. My question is, can I use FS without DMX400? Can I just create a fixture for each dimmer and just control the intensity and ignore shutters and the like?

yes of course you can create either 48 single channel fixtures or a 48 channel (not sure if its possible) fixture (or split it) then use the sliders on the right of FS (when u click the fixture) In fixture creator create a dimmer pack and select the number of channels you want to use, If you want to break it down split in into 3 say for like stage right stage left and center etc etc

I must have missed something: I thought creating dimmerpacks wasn't possible anymore because of the "No intensitychannel"-warning? I was advised (and I was not the only one) to create a single dimmerchannel as a fixture. (The pinspot-fixture in the standard fixtures as a base) If things have changed, I sure would like to know.

Regards,
Martin.

Hi,

you only can create a 33 dimmer channels, it´s the limit of the Fixture creator, i´ve asked if is possible more and... voilá! you can create a 12 or 24 dimmer pack. or simple using as fixture a PAR64 and set the adress that you want. Put 8 fixture of 6 channels and you have the problm solved. In FS you have the Par64 on groups of 6, 4, 2 and single.

compliments

Well since I will need individual control over every light, I'll probably just create single channel dimmer fixtures anyway. I can add as many of them as I need to my desktop and sequence them as needed. If for some reason I need to change several lights at the same time manually during the show, I can always multi-select. Thanks for your help.

or you can create groups... do shortcuts and select with them. you can else do blackout shortcuts to the groups that you creat. Is interesting and i use a lot.

MarSafe wrote:I must have missed something: I thought creating dimmerpacks wasn't possible anymore because of the "No intensitychannel"-warning? I was advised (and I was not the only one) to create a single dimmerchannel as a fixture. (The pinspot-fixture in the standard fixtures as a base) If things have changed, I sure would like to know.

Regards,
Martin.

isnt the no intensity for the dmx 400 which he doesnt want to use?? plus a 1 channel fixture of anaything will still have a slider attached to it to control the output
so if u had a single 512 dimmer pack with 512 lights attached to it if u add 512 single channel fixtures u have individual control of every one of those 512 lights!

DJ Support wrote:isnt the no intensity for the dmx 400 which he doesnt want to use??

Not shure. I only know that with 2.96 this problem occurs and I don't know when it did. I should reinstall the older version to find out, but I won't!!

DJ Support wrote:plus a 1 channel fixture of anaything will still have a slider attached to it to control the output
so if u had a single 512 dimmer pack with 512 lights attached to it if u add 512 single channel fixtures u have individual control of every one of those 512 lights!

That's how I work now. ( 3 4-channel DP's) The only problem (or advantage, depending on how you work) is that by multi-selecting the spots only one slider appears that control all the sected lights. Well, it only means I have to program FS, but I'm a bit lazy....

Anyway, to stay on-topic @ Burp: Yes, you can. Like stated in my question, you can create single-channel fixtures. In the library there is a pin-spot, that has no other function than dimming. You can use that for your purpose. If running FS you can, by right-clicking and selecting, add the fixture to DMX400. I suggest you do. Assigning the fixture to DMX400 still gives you the freedom to use it freely with sliders or submasters, but if you need the DMX400 it's already pre-programmed. Have the crowd dancing after a show!!
BTW: In DMX400 you can slider-control up to 12 channels if the DMX400-controller is set to static.