I'm going to give this a try, hopefully I can be clear and concise. In a tracking situation, once you bring up a light (or any other device for that matter) it remains at that level until you tell it to do something else. Think of the light switches in your home, once you turn it on, it remains in that state until you consciously turn it off. Now, let's say you're programming a dance recital (just for sake of discussion). You program all the cues in the first piece and then record a black out. Then you start up again and program the cues for the second piece. That blackout cue will only contain zero values for lights that were used in the first piece, lights who were brought up, then brought back down. Any light that wasn't touched doesn't have any information attached to it yet, because it's simply not necessary. Now let's say that you go back and add a new special into one of the cues in the first piece, you move on and forget about it. Rehearsal comes along, the new special comes up in the first dance and looks great. Then the blackout cue happens and...the special is still on in the blackout...and the second dance...and the whole rest of the show. This because it has never received any specific instruction to be turned off, because it wasn't part of the original blackout cue you recorded. Blocking is a way to prevent accidents like this. You record "hard data" (usually zeroes, but it doesn't have to be) so that any changes made to cues before the block cue are prevented (blocked) from moving forward and effecting cues later on. In this example we would record the blackout cue and then enter [CUE] # [BLOCK] [ENTER]. Now every value in that cue, even if it's tracked forward, or if there is no value, will be converted to hard data, and all the following dances are now safe from changes to the first dance. I usually record most of my blackout as blocking cues, because I figure I'm going to black for a reason, and I'm not likely to want something to track forward in the future. Hope this helps.
Nice example, just remember though if you have any Nps you also have to update them in the blocked cue. Adding to what Jim wrote, say you add a special (mover) that you didn't have in the 1st piece, you must add all Nps to the blocked cue for that Ch. or it will move, color, etc. when it hits the blocked cue and hits hard data. Hope this helps you some.
Nice example, just remember though if you have any Nps you also have to update them in the blocked cue. Adding to what Jim wrote, say you add a special (mover) that you didn't have in the 1st piece, you must add all Nps to the blocked cue for that Ch. or it will move, color, etc. when it hits the blocked cue and hits hard data. Hope this helps you some.
In a future release it will hopefully be possible to block just intensity, at a cue level. This means that you'd be able to apply an intensity-only block to a blackout cue, and leave the NPs to track into the blackout (where they can then mark or whatever).
For now the quickest way that I know of updating NPs so they don't move in the blocked blackout cue, is to go into Blind, select the cue, select the fixture(s) you've added or modified, and {Focus}{Color}{Beam}[@][Enter]
The nice thing about {Focus}{Color}{Beam} is that you can hit the three buttons at the same time with three fingers, without moving your hand too far away from the keypad. {All NP's} is fine, but it means moving further away from the keypad. So personally I find {Focus}{Color}{Beam} quicker to punch in, but at the end of the day it's just personal preference.
