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    travisres
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Handling patch on a touring console

Hi All,

Question for anyone else out there touring with an Eos/Ion that are having to re-patch daily with every venue.

Here's my delema. Every day, I'm in a new venue with new patch info. To clear the patch, I used to just type channel 1 thru 500 at enter.

While this would clear the patch, it would leave intact any parts on on the channel. When I go to patch new info into a channel, rather than using an empty part, it just adds yet another part. So after a couple days of this, my front light channels and house light channels have 30 or 40 parts. So, I discovered the reset patch under the clear menu. Ok, so this solves my multiple channel part issue.

Now, what if I want to label channels with what they are. So Wrm Fnt SL, Wrm Fnt CS, etc.... if I assign the label before I patch anything, as soon as I add address info, it creates a part 2. Part one will have no type, but will have the label , and part 2 will have the address and be a dimmer, but no label. Not really an issue as I reallly don't need to know that every part in the channel is warm front light. But,  back to my above problem. If I'm having to reset patch every couple days to get rid of all the parts, I end up losing my channel labels.

 

I am really looking for the channel labels for all the extra city specific channels I end up having to add. Sponsor logos, multiple house light channels, partially dimmable isle lights, the lobby chime, etc etc... Whlie I've added channels to my paperwork for the basics, I would love to have labels in the board for the less common ones so when I'm 20 cities down the road, and I see that channel 427 comes up in 3 cues during intermission, I know what it was, why it was there and if I should keep it.

 

Make sense? Am I missing something basic?

Thanks

Parents
  • 0

    HI there,

    what i used to do

    - i programmed the show in our own theatre
    - labeled the house lights and unpatched them. (kept my own fixtures patched.)
    - Every new day i opened the empty patch show and went on from there. (so i patched the house lights and, as i recall, the first adres patched to a channel allways took part 1. 
                    every once in a while i updated the empty patch show.

    and, i programmed the fixtures in groups

    for instance

         :  ch1-14  : front
            ch 21-44: something else
            ch 51-88: more lights

            ch 601 tru .... :   all the other things
                     so 601-606  : house lights
                                   607 :  Sponsor logos
                                   608 pause signs

     

    does that help?

     

    greetings,

     

    Mart

  • 0 in reply to RHye

    RHye said:

    HI there,

    what i used to do

    - i programmed the show in our own theatre
    - labeled the house lights and unpatched them. (kept my own fixtures patched.)
    - Every new day i opened the empty patch show and went on from there. 

    This would not be a solution for me. I am updating my touring show every day, during every performance (small timing and intensity edits). I don't have the time to do show merges on the next touring day. Deleting multiple patch parts for one or more channels would mean a world of time saving to me and a lot of Dutch touring productions. To me it seems like a basic function which should have been implemented from the start. I understand it might not be the easiest function to implement, otherwise it would have already be there. I do think however, it's an important feature request for the Dutch theatre production market which leans heavily on touring productions with lighting crews always being short in time.

    Thanks for your suggestion and thanks for helping.



    [edited by: mikevers at 5:39 AM (GMT -6) on Fri, Aug 12 2011]
  • 0 in reply to mikevers

    Hoi Mike,

    Are u sure it takes too much time to merge an 'empty patch' (but with labels, without extra parts etc) 
    Because for now, this is what i'd do when we go out on tour again. so u can keep working with your show file and still have a 'clean' patch.
    I tried merging a patch into a show-file, and it was considerably faster than deleting several parts in channels...

    Or am i missing something?

    Succes met touren,

    Regards,

     

    Mart

  • 0 in reply to mikevers

    Try using Patch Address instead of Patch Channel.

    In Patch, hit [Format] to take you to Patch Address.

    <Address> x [@] [Enter] , will remove the channel (or channel part) associated with that channel, but will keep all other data (Labels, text fields, and show data). So if channel x had 3 parts, it will remove the part that was associated with address x and leave you with only 2 parts in that channel.

    And now if you type <Address> x [@] <Channel> y [Enter] it will simply patch address x to channel y (as a single part channel, or if there are already other addresses patched to that channel it will add another part) and it will have kept all of its label and show data.

    When I do a touring show, I usually have one universe of the rig that will use house dimmers, so I just go into patch and type <Address> 1 [Thru] 512 [@] [Enter] , then repatch, and I'm done.

    Hope that helps,

    -M

  • 0 in reply to Chaosbob
    Chaosbob said:

    <Address> x [@] [Enter] , will remove the channel (or channel part) associated with that channel, but will keep all other data (Labels, text fields, and show data). So if channel x had 3 parts, it will remove the part that was associated with address x and leave you with only 2 parts in that channel.

    And now if you type <Address> x [@] <Channel> y [Enter] it will simply patch address x to channel y (as a single part channel, or if there are already other addresses patched to that channel it will add another part) and it will have kept all of its label and show data.

    Except that this doesn't actually work as advertised. When one uses [Address] x [@] [Enter] it clears labels in patch for those addresses. I seem to remember there being a discussion in regards to ETC fixing that in a future build that dealt with a lot of changes in patch.

    This is I think one of the issues the original poster had an issue with.

Reply
  • 0 in reply to Chaosbob
    Chaosbob said:

    <Address> x [@] [Enter] , will remove the channel (or channel part) associated with that channel, but will keep all other data (Labels, text fields, and show data). So if channel x had 3 parts, it will remove the part that was associated with address x and leave you with only 2 parts in that channel.

    And now if you type <Address> x [@] <Channel> y [Enter] it will simply patch address x to channel y (as a single part channel, or if there are already other addresses patched to that channel it will add another part) and it will have kept all of its label and show data.

    Except that this doesn't actually work as advertised. When one uses [Address] x [@] [Enter] it clears labels in patch for those addresses. I seem to remember there being a discussion in regards to ETC fixing that in a future build that dealt with a lot of changes in patch.

    This is I think one of the issues the original poster had an issue with.

Children
  • 0 in reply to jrgoss

    If you are in "Patch By Address" format (where Address is on the left and Channel is on the right; and it says "Patch Address:" on your command line), and hit: x [@] [Enter] it will remove the label from the Channel, but will keep the label for the Address.

    If you are in "Patch By Channel" format (where Channel is on the left and Address is on the right; and it says "Patch Channel:" on your command line), and hit: x [@] [Enter] , it will remove the label for the Address, but keep the label for the Channel.

    Hitting [Address] x [@] [Enter] will remove the label from the Channel, but will keep the label for the Address.

    However, I believe I misspoke before. I think the touring electrician had a group of the "touring" channels that needed to be repactched for every venue, and would go into patch and hit:

    [Group] x [@] [Enter] , which would keep the labels with the channels, and then repatch. 

    There has been talk about redoing some features in patch, but I hope this helps until then.

    -M

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