3 questions - one gobo, 2 effects

  Hello generous and knowledgeable people out there!  Yesterday I had to write many cues, which is rare in my venue.  I have some VL1000s in my rig, and we wrote cues where the gobos were first still, then in the next cue they were to rotate slowly, then in the next back to still, all as a live move.  We recorded the still position cue, then I put the gobo in rotate mode, rotated the encoder until the spin was at the right speed, then recorded the next cue.  In the final cue, I stopped the rotation by putting the gobo back into index mode so it would go back to being still while holding onto the gobo.  In playing back the cuelist milliseconds before doors, going from one cue to the next the gobo would start at its still point, revve to full before slowing down to the wanted speed, then revve again into still.  I had no idea how to fix this in a nano second, so I owe that designer a pint of shame.  Anyone have any ideas how to go from still to slow to still without the vroom to get there?

 I actually have 2 other items on my want to know list.  Effects on subs - it seems according to the manual/dvd that one has to record the effect running as a cue, and copy it into a sub that has been designated as an effect or intensity master sub.  Am I understanding that correctly?  Also, I recently had the courage to update the software, and noticed that there is a fan softkey that when pressed, opens others that say things like mirror, centre, and other things.  Are these moving light features?  Thinking about it, updating the software lost my gobo information so I had to re-record my beam palettes - maybe I didn't do it properly which is leading to my super spin problems?

Any advice/experience stories would be greatly appreciated! 

  • Heather Richards said:
    next the gobo would start at its still point, revve to full before slowing down to the wanted speed, then revve again into still

    This sounds like a feature of the VL1000 colliding with the beam time of the console. If you set your beam time to 0 it should snap from still to speed to still rather than ramping through all the DMX settings between still and the speed you want.

    Heather Richards said:
    fan softkey that when pressed, opens others that say things like mirror, centre, and other things.  Are these moving light features?

    I'm no expert on Fan but I think that while it is mostly useful for MLs, it can also be used to vary intensity (or other attributes) for conventional fixtures. It's really just a programming shortcut to cut down on the keystrokes required to program an evenly distributed setting across a group of fixtures (1@10%, 2@20%,3@30%, etc.)

  • Hi,

     

    The problem you were having with the rotating gobos is that you switched back to indexed mode.  If you want the gobo to ramp up and down in speed you should leave it in rotate mode and set the speed so the gobo is stopped.  I have palettes for rotating and index mode and also for various speeds and stop.  This allows the fixture to stay in rotate mode and speed up/slow down the rotation live.

    If you have updated your console to 1.8 you can record effects directly on subs.  You can also make a sub an effect sub where it will only contain the effect data and no background data.  The effect subs are great for being able to apply an effect on top of what ever is happening on stage already.  

    Hope this helps

  • If you want the gobo to come up to speed with the timing of the cue you can start with the gobo in rotate mode with the speed at at 0 on the encoder.  In the cue that it comes to a stop you return to 0, what you lose with this method is the ability to control the indexed position if that matters.

  • Heather Richards said:

    In the final cue, I stopped the rotation by putting the gobo back into index mode so it would go back to being still while holding onto the gobo.

    There's your problem. Put the rotation to 0 without putting it into index mode. By putting it into index mode you specified a specific place in the rotation for the gobo to be, and it's zipping there when you take the cue.

    Heather Richards said:

    noticed that there is a fan softkey that when pressed, opens others that say things like mirror, centre, and other things.  Are these moving light features? 

    They will fan any attribute. Try grabbing some intensity channels and running the level wheel while holding the fan key. Since you have the VL1k's try using fan on the pan and color wheels, you can achieve some interesting looks with minimal programming.

     

     

  •   Doh!  It makes perfect sense, of course, as soon as someone points it out!  I've followed your advice and now have a bunch of filtered beam palettes so I can rotate smoothly to my hearts desire, which has made for far fewer key strokes and spins while busking.  Hopefully for the next show I'll have a couple of effects on subs ready to go - I've just been doing direct selects until now.  Cheers!

  •   Thankyou!  Of course this worked beautifully, and makes perfect sense.  Cheers!

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