Using playbacks in cue lists

My "workflow" is to set up several scenes and store them as Playbacks, each assigned to a  slider. For a play, I might have a dozen lighting scenes. I generally set these up ahead of time based on the play script and lighting notes.

During the course of the play there may be 50-100 lighting changes/queues based on the above scenes. Currently I manually sequence through the queues with the Playback sliders.

At rehearsals, I have to modify the Playback scenes to see what works best and what the producer wants. This may happen right up to show night.

As far as I can figure I cannot use the CS Queue list - due to the amount of reuse of Playbacks (I could maybe use one of the Playbacks 40 times during the course of a play), and the inability of all of the Queues that use a particular Playback to be updated when that Playback memory is updated. As far as I understand I would have to go through the cue list and update every Queue that used that particular scene that changes. BTW I tested this with a version 3.3 console just to make sure.

I really would like to use the cue list esp for being able to set consistent fade in/out times, but due to the practicalities discussed above, it is not very feasible for me.

So questions:

 - Am I misunderstanding on how to use the console in my application i.e. is my Workflow incorrect

 - Is there other software out there that can control the CS console via OSC that would allow me to do what I want with Playbacks/Scenes?

         - Qlab was mentioned, but I don't own a  Mac - and does it do what I need?

Thanks

gny

Good morning,

I think most people have the same constraints and that you, They also have to use certain scenes 40 times and have to modify them at each show.

For me the only solution I found, but I'm not a light professional, it's like you said, it's Qlab. I understand that you don't have a Mac, but and I can't advise you on PC.

But you had to look at Qlab, it's extremely powerful, very flexible, not too complicated to handle, and super stable.

You make a scene, and you can recall it as many times as you want, while having only one memory to modify.

You can mix cues, playback, sequences,, all in a cue list with a GO button , which you can change on the fly.

Impossible to do it  in this console.

With that I make cues list of 250-300 lines (GO), but with maybe 50 or 100 different cue. And I have a 20ene of automatics to retouch each time.

Titanic without Qlab and this console !

In addition, Qlab allows me to get around many bugs in the console, which are unbearable.

Well, of course it's only a €3000 console, and the other brands have same problems and inconveniences, we can hardly ask for more. So a Qlab license, a €500 Mac mini, an LCD screen, and you have a good very flexible configuration not too expensive.

I hope I have helped you.

The console does support palettes which can be incorporated into cues and you only have to update a one palette to change all the cues, but these only work for moving light positions, beam settings and colour mixes. Unfortunately you can’t store intensities unless you set a colour palette to black to extinguish a head. I don’t have a solution for dimmers and setting palettes for each lantern in every look can be time consuming, but maybe less than updating 40 cues. 

I'll try looking into it, but doesn't sound very convenient :(

Thx!

Thanks. Very useful info.

On Windows QLC+ will output OSC it appears. But the software doesn't seem very intuitive to me, but then again I've just started to look at it...

Really tho - it is very hard to believe that this functionality doesn't exist in ETC. The ETC software is equivalent to software programming without subroutines. Like back in the1940s..