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    rriegner
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Multicell Parameter count far too high?

I'm patching a new show file with a lot of multicell fixtures. I've come up on my patch limit far too soon. The reason is that multicell fixtures take up far too many parameters. As far as actual addresses patched, I should only be at 2,180 out of 4,096, but my "patched parameter" count is 4,274.

I did some poking around and multicell fixtures are to blame. The biggest offender I've come across is the Clay Paky Sharbar in RGBW Shape mode. It is 54 DMX addresses, but the parameter count is 183. It's murdering my parameter count. (Not to mention the other mystifying issue that cell 6 controls the master intensity). This is not true for the non-MC profile, which is 54 addresses and 54 parameters. The Mac Quantum Wash Extended is 33 addresses. in MC mode, it takes up 36 parameters.

What's going on here?

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  • 0 in reply to starksk

    Here's a link to my show file using the MC profiles from library 2.7.0.75, not the new MC2 profiles:

    www.dropbox.com/.../WMW-Opera-MC-Fix2.7.0.75 2018-06-06 18-16-01.esf

    It appears the Clay Paky SharBar is the worst offender. Should be 54 parameters/addresses, but each takes up 183 somehow.

  • +1 in reply to rriegner
    Thanks for the show file. Unfortunately, this is a bug with Multi-Cell fixture count implementation. It has been captured as RND 0047114: Multi-Cell fixtures are reported as using more addresses than they really use.

    Until the fix is released, the only workaround is to use the non-Cell version of the fixture personality.

    Sorry for the troubles.
  • 0 in reply to starksk

    I think I have figured out the underlying cause of the issue here. I don't know how to contribute to that bug report directly, but let me know where I can go to help out. Here's a summary of it.

    Using the SharBar fixture as an example here: Each cell has a tilt parameter that falls in the middle of the master patch, while the RGBW parameters come at the end of the patch. (i.e. [Beginning of Master...][Tilt1][Tilt2][...][Tilt6][...End of Master][Red1][Green1][Blue1][White1][Red2][Green2][Blue2][White2][...][Red6][Green6][Blue6][White6]) Because cell 6's first and last DMX addresses are 33 apart, the console is saying it's using 33 addresses (from the parameter count column), instead of just the 5 addresses that are actually patched. It's counting all the "unused" addresses in the middle, which are really part of other cells or the master. 30+18+21+24+27+30+33=183, which is the number of Patched Addresses I see per SharBar in my About screen.

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