EOS - Blackout button

Todd, to engage blackout on a physical fader, you have to press both buttons (the go/bump and back/assert) buttons at the same time.  On the virtual faders, the blackout button is a one touch.  

This is so you can't engage blackout without meaning to on the physical faders.  The red LED looks just like an inhibitive sub.  So if you  have them side by side, we wanted it to be a bit more work to engage a blackout.... but the double button thing can't work on the virtual faders, so blackout is a one touch operation.

Does that make sense?

a

Anne,

Thanks for the explanation- it makes sense to require the double button press.  However, I couldn't find anything describing this behavior in the 1.7 manual or the 1.8 supplement (a quick search of the PDF for "blackout").  Is this a new feature?

I also found a forum post from a while back that said that the option to disable the blackout button (while still having a grandmaster fader) would be introduced in v 1.5.  In trying to figure out the blackout button operation, I never found that option on the console.  Is it implemented and if so, where is the setting?

Thanks,

Todd

Hmm...I was pretty sure this was in the manual, but will forward the post to our tech writer to make sure.

Yes, we might have intended at some point to disable the BO, and said that would be 1.5, but we never did that.  Given the amount of work you already need to do to make a BO happen, is the setup option needed?   It is possible on Ion to disable the GM separately from the Black out button.  Do you think that is what was meant?

:-)

a

Anne,

The forum post I was referencing (http://community.etcconnect.com/forums/p/3148/11847.aspx#11847) does have to do with an Ion, not Eos.  I may have misinterpreted Derek's reply to mean that the option to disable the blackout button would be in the common code and not an Ion-only option.

I don't think the option to disable is really necessary in Eos because of the two-button press.  I do think that the two-button press isn't something that people would just stumble upon without reading the manual- or if they did press both buttons accidentally, they wouldn't realize how to go back to normal output.  Perhaps a prompt somewhere on the screen would be helpful when the GM bump buton is pressed, i.e. "Press both slider buttons to toggle BLACKOUT"?

-Todd

Just to clear up a little bit of confusion...

We separated, in Ion (and in Element), the ability to turn off the blackout button and the grandmaster slider into two separate settings...originally you could deactivate both with just one setting...we were asked to break the setting apart as some people wanted to have access to one an not the other.

There is no setting of the sort for Eos because if you didn't want anything to accidentally activate the grandmaster or blackout, you simply don't map any sliders to be grandmasters.  Since Ion has a dedicated grandmaster and blackout button, we put those settings in for that console. 

Hope that helps remove any confusion.

-D