Hi there
Apologies in advance for the long post....
I am working on a show that has a large festoon sign. The sign is 8 letters with 3 circuits in each letter (total of 24 ckts) so it can chase and flicker and do all that kind of fancy stuff. The show was originally programmed on a Strand 520, and we are now transferring it over to the Eos.
The problem I am encountering is there are times where the festoon sign needs to have more than one effect running at a time. For example, a 24 step chase running in random - each step controlling one circuit of the sign to give a flicker effect. Over the top of this we have a 2 step chase (sign on, sign off) so the over-all effect is a flickering sign that bumps on and off at the same time.
To my knowledge and from what I have read in the manual, a channel can only have one effect assigned to it at a time. Does anyone know of a way to get around this?
We also have a cue where the sign is doing a slow gentle fade from one letter to the next, and then in the next cue the sign fades into it's 24step random chase. Currently, instead of fading between the two effects on an HTP basis, the sign stops the first chase instantly and then starts to fade in the newer effect. Any suggestions on how to get around this?
Finally - a bug I noticed with step effects is that when the effects are run in cues, the downfade of the step effect is ignored unless the entry time is greater than 0sec. Setting the effect to 0.01sec does fix the problem, but it just seems a bit odd to me.
It would also be handy (in my opinion anyway) if there was an option so the effect entry and exit times could be inherited from the cue they are being used in. The show I am currently programming has appoximatly 20 > 30 step effects which are used repetedly in the 369 cues we have in the show. As a result, every time the effect is used, I have to copy the effect and give it a new fade time to match the cue it is being used in. This works fine, it's just a bit slow and labourious.
Cheers
Brent
