Channel Palatte

Greetings,

I was talking to a (hushed tone) non Congo operator the other day and he took great joy in telling me that the Congo did not have channel palettes.

 I was not able to say yes or no to this and wondered if someone could put the record straight.

The scenario was a group of lights, (audience keys & B/ls) that were in several presets and we wanted to update the balance we had into them all with the least amount of button pushes, sadly, I have to report that I took too long.

The answer from my colleague (no longer friend) was that if we had a channel palettes.........

Thanks for any help,

 

John

  • He probably means "Intensity Palettes", and he is correct that Congo doesn't have them - only Focus, Color, Beam and All Palettes.

    In Congo, there's at least three fast ways to do this kind of edit:

    1. Hit [Update]&[@Level] instead of just [Update].
      This gives you the option to 'track' your intensity changes forwards and/or backwards in the current Sequence. The changes will run in the chosen direction until they hit a "Block" step or a Preset with the channel at a different level.
    2. Hit [Track] and select the right lights. (Or vice-versa)
      This gives you a 'blind' spreadsheet editor for the selected channels in the current Sequence.
      When editing in spreadsheets like this one, the number never 'dies' so you can re-enter the same number as many times as you like without having to re-type it.
    3. Hit [Wizard] in the Live or Main Playback tab.
      This gives you a 'Channel Wizard' that lets you do extensive edits to channels across many steps.

    The appropriate one depends on the kind of change you want - the same change through the scene, many changes all over the place, or programmatic changes like 'add 5% if on'.

    - An alternative approach that can be very useful in some shows is to use a Master containing a single Preset for the audience lights.
    Your colleague might be jealous of the [Modify]&[Master_Key] shortcut though.

  • Richard said:

    Hit [Track] and select the right lights. (Or vice-versa)

    This gives you a 'blind' spreadsheet editor for the selected channels in the current Sequence. When editing in spreadsheets like this one, the number never 'dies' so you can re-enter the same number as many times as you like without having to re-type it.

    Furthermore, you could sort that spreadsheet by channel levels [COLUMN & ARROW UP/DOWN] and do multiple changes by hitting [SELECT & UP/DOWN]

    By the way: Working with presets wisely saves you time for putting your cues right. So, if you can build your sequence out of a few presets, you don't even have to go through your show. When I was touring I sometimes ended up in adjusting the presets live, – being happy that my one change was automatically updated in 20 other sequence steps that used the same preset.

  • Thanks for that,

    I'll play with those suggestions.

    The trouble with having things in masters is when you come to a cue/pre-set when you need the audience lights off, then, that's two things you have to do where as, if you get the balance right in all the cues, where they are required, then the left hand is still free to hold the glass.

     

    John

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