Feature request

Hi all,

I am a newbie and have been working on the Congo for one week in a live festival situation where nothing is programmed in sequences, I'm just firing some subs (i.e. presets, groups; including dynamics and attribs)

I am very pleased with console as it works very much like a conventional lighting board and results are quickly to achieev, however there are some items for a wishlist:

 
_ One should be able to quickly pick Palettes from the Direct Selects and put them onto Master Faders. (One song you need to fade between blues and greens, the next you'd like to fade between reds and lavenders...) At the moment I'm mostly stuck in "What number was that blue?" and making five keystrokes.

I know that [CONNECT] is meant for a different purpose, but an easy way would be [CONNECT][Direct Select] & [MasterKey]

_ Also it would be very helpful to move (i.e. copy/paste) Master Key contents ("No, this preset not here but there, we've forgotten to put the drum's special in between those two...")

Thanks,

Mario 

Parents
  • Hi there -

    These are easier than you think -

    If you know the number of the palette you want on a master (and if they are already on the direct selects, then the number is displayed right there), just type # COLOR & MASTER KEY to assign it to a fader. If you want to assign a whole bunch of palettes to masters, type # (where # is the lowest numbered palette you want to assign) then press and hold COLOR then press as many master keys one by one as you have palettes. This works for Focus, Color, Beam, Palettes, Groups, Presets, Sequences, Dynamic Effects... Just press and hold the key for the data type you want to assign.

    Moving things around on masters is equally easy. Nothing "lives" on a master, those bits of data are only referenced by that master. This means that clearing contents from a master doesn't actually delete the data from the show. Press and hold the C/ALT key and then press a master key to clear the contents of a master. Then you can place whatever you want onto that master and reassign the next one with the old content. Also, you have 999 master pages in a play, so you can have a lot of different setups  on pages and use the paging keys to change the contents of the masters on the fly.

    I hope this helps...

    Thanks -

    Sarah
     

  • Sarah,

    of course I've read about all these features in the manual, but thanks for the advice...

    What annoys me, is that you have to look up the number (upper left half of the desk), type it in (bottom right) and move your fingers to the master key (bottom left). This is not fast enough for me, sorry.

    I also do understand the basic concept of having presets independend from the master keys! But clearing one master and reassigning the content to another master takes way too long for me. (On a GrandMA, for example, moving anything around takes only 3 keystrokes! On the Congo it's: C/ALT & Masterkey, 8, 0, 1, PRESET & Masterkey – 7 keystrokes AND you have to keep the number in mind.)

    Moving around in lots of master pages confuses me even more during a live situation. Please keep in mind, that I was not doing a theatre play but a live rock'n roll-style show ;-)

    Best regards,

    Mario 

  • If you want to see the same content in multiple pages you can use 'Transparent' pages, which allows multiple pages of Masters to show exactly the same thing in parts, while having different content where required.

    I'll post a detailed example of these on Monday.

    Another important thing to remember is this:
    You don't have to clear the Master to have the data shown elsewhere - you can have exactly the same content on as many Masters as you want at a given moment. They all run independently and start/stop as required, (although chase BPM is shared as it's part of the Sequence data).

    One of my favourite tests for Congos is to run exactly the same chase 41 times - once on every Master and once on the Main Playback.



    [edited by: Richard at 6:46 AM (GMT -6) on Sat, Jul 21 2007]
  • Richard,

     

    I was already wondering if there was a feature to fix any Masters. Thanks for the hint.

     

    Mario 

  • To set pages to Transparent, open the Master Page list from the Browser and tick the "Transparent" column.

    Any "empty" Masters on a transparent Master Page will retain whatever their last content was through page changes.

    For example:

    1. Set Master Page 3 to Transparent.
    2. Fill some Masters on Page 1 with content
    3. Now change to Page 3 - the content from Page 1 is still visible.
    4. Now fill some Masters on Page 3 with content - either in top of previous content or in empty spaces.
    5. You can now see content from Page 1 and Page 3

    Things to watch out for:

    • Master Pages are only 20 Masters - a full 'view' is actually two Master Pages, one on the upper bank and another on the lower bank.
    • The visible content on a Transparent page is Latest-Takes-Precedence:
      • You have content on Page 1,3 and 5.
      • Page 3 is transparent
      • Change to Page 1 - you see Page 1
      • Change to Page 3 - you see Page 3 on top of Page 1
      • Change to Page 5 - you see Page 5
      • Change to Page 3 - you see Page 3 on top of Page 5
    • When you set or change the Master content (# [content-type] & Master Key), you are always affecting the current page.
    Hope this makes sense!


    [edited by: Richard at 10:16 AM (GMT -6) on Mon, Jul 23 2007]
  • Hi,

    This might sound like a daft question but is there an easy way to 'lock' a Master (or particular Masters) so that it will have the same content, whatever page you happen to be on ?

    We've used this feature a lot on the Hog (Tmplates) for keeping cue-lists consistently in the same place, wherever you happen to be.

    Just wondered as it sounds kind of similar to where your coming from tith the transparent pages !

     Cheers

    Richard

Reply
  • Hi,

    This might sound like a daft question but is there an easy way to 'lock' a Master (or particular Masters) so that it will have the same content, whatever page you happen to be on ?

    We've used this feature a lot on the Hog (Tmplates) for keeping cue-lists consistently in the same place, wherever you happen to be.

    Just wondered as it sounds kind of similar to where your coming from tith the transparent pages !

     Cheers

    Richard

Children
  • Hi Richard -

    The way transparent master pages work is that they do not force a master to "empty" when the page is loaded. So, for example, let's say you want to keep the contents of masters 18-20 the same all the time. You populate those masters with their content on page 1 (could be any page...) and then on all other pages you keep those three masters empty and set them to "transparent" in the Master Pages List tab (Browser>Master Pages, MODIFY).

    Then, no other master page will change the content on those three masters, because a transparent page doesn't force unpopulated masters to become empty when loaded.

    Make sense?

    The only trick here is that the console will not "remember" which faders were "bleeding through" when you reopen the play file, so if you want to ensure that certain content appears on a master on every page, you may need to assign that data in each page. I have just checked what happens to a sequence that's actively playing back and it appears that it will continue to play back in order even when the content is reloaded on a new page.

    I hope this helps -

    Thanks!

    Sarah
     

  • Hi Sarah,

    Sounds fine.

    Just have to be organized ! 

    Cheers

    Richard 

Related