Help me understand more about Tracking

Hi Dale

So, with tracking, a fixture will stay at it's current value until a move instruction is given (or it is stolen by another cue list....but lets keep it simple and just talk about single cuelist operation for now).

So if you put chan 1 at 50 in cue 1, it will stay at 50% until it is given another move instruction.  The biggest advantage I find with tracking is if you want to make a change to a level, or focus, or colour, etc, you don't have to go through every cue of the show, or section of the show, that you want to apply the changes to.  This becomes even more apparent when dealing with moving lights, scrollers, and other fixtures with more than one paramater.

For example, ch 1 is up at 50 in cue 1.  It's next move is in cue 10 where it fades to 0.  When playing back your cuelist, you decide in cue 5, you you want ch 1 to go up to 60.  Instead of having to change this in cues 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, you can make the update in cue 5 and it will track through to cue 10, where it fades out.  If you only wanted this change to apply to cue 5, then you would add "cue only" to your update command.

With the eos/ion in regards to effects, step effects react differently to liner effects (can't make a comment about absolute effects as I haven't used them very much).

What I have found with the ion is that step effects will stop running when the channel recieves a new instruction (eg, you apply a step effect to chs 1 > 5 in Q10.  you then change the level of chs 1 > 5 in Q12, this will cause the effect to stop running on those chans as they have recieved a new instruction)

Linear effects will continue running over the selected chans until they receive a stop effect instruction.  This means you can increase and decrease the levels of those chans and they will continue to let the effect run.

In answer to your question about how to check if an effect is still running in a cue or if the stop effect command is there, firstly, go into blind display and select the cue you wish to examine.  Any chan with an effect running on it will display E#.  This will be displayed on the parameter which the effect is controlling (eg, the E# will be displayed on the pan and tilt params if you are running a circle effect.  E# will be displayed on the intensity if it is an intensity effect, etc) 

If there is no E# then there is no effect running on those chans/parameters.  Also, if there is a "stop" displayed, then that is the point that these chans stop running the effect.

Another handy thing I find to see what effect are running, is when in live or blind, press [displays] then the [effect status] softkey.  This will display any effect that is active in the current cue and will also list the chans it is applied to.  It is particularly helpful in the blind display, as the "cue" column will list the cue number that effect started to run.

Hope that provides some helpful info - Have fun

Cheers