ion & ML question for a Noob....

Hi there, 

I have recently started getting more involved in lighting (as i come from a sound background) and have bought an Ion. My question may be a simple answer but my level of understanding of tracking desks and intelligent fixtures is limited so i must apologise.

I have a show where I am using 2 x Mac 700's and some ChromaQ scrollers (as well as other kit) and providing there is a blackout SOME of the cues seem to move on dark ok. However, there are a few cues where you see the undesireable scroll through the scroller colours or the 700's move whilst fading or changing colour etc...

Is there basicaaly a way (or another mehtod) of ensuring that the shutter or intensity fades first before the position or colour?  I have read up a bit but seeing as i'm not sure what its called that i need to do its a bit tricky.. 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.... On a side not the Ion is a great desk, ETC have been second to none support wise!

Matt

Parents
  • Yes, this is a great feature of the Eos family called Marking. You can read up on it in Chapter 12 of the Ion v1.7 manual, but Mark is essentially a feature that tells your Non-Intensity Parameters to go to their next setting before the light actually turns on. The easiest way to do this would be to turn on AutoMark, which can be found in Show Settings. If you need to manually add Marks, just select each channel that has a new Non-Intensity value (such as a new scroll color) in a specific cue and press [Mark] [Earliest] [Enter] (there are other settings you can use as well, which you can read up on in the manual). Also, you probably already know this, but Marking doesn't really work unless the units do actually fade out between different Non-Intensity settings.

    Hope that helps!

Reply
  • Yes, this is a great feature of the Eos family called Marking. You can read up on it in Chapter 12 of the Ion v1.7 manual, but Mark is essentially a feature that tells your Non-Intensity Parameters to go to their next setting before the light actually turns on. The easiest way to do this would be to turn on AutoMark, which can be found in Show Settings. If you need to manually add Marks, just select each channel that has a new Non-Intensity value (such as a new scroll color) in a specific cue and press [Mark] [Earliest] [Enter] (there are other settings you can use as well, which you can read up on in the manual). Also, you probably already know this, but Marking doesn't really work unless the units do actually fade out between different Non-Intensity settings.

    Hope that helps!

Children
  • Cheers Roch, 

    I'll certainlyu go back to the manual so to speak. I do understand Mark and i'm sure i have automark on but perhaps some of the cues have not been marked.. Is that possible ? 

    So the "mark earliest" would just move / change them in the preceeding cue ? One of the problems i have is:

    LX1 = tab warmer

    LX2 = blackout

    LX3 = scene one........

    Basically when trigggering LX2 you see the gobo go home and the 700 move....

  • thanks for the swift reply though.... Matt

  • Ah I see. In that case, I can't say for sure what exactly is causing it to do that, because there's many things that could cause that. Are you programming in Tracking or Cue-Only mode? One possibility is that there's extra data stored in LX2 that you don't need. Try this - go into Blind and pull up Cue 2. Select the channel(s) you're having trouble with and type [(Channel List)] [At] [Enter]. This will automatically copy whatever the lights were doing in LX1 into LX2 - including the intensity values, so make sure you go back and take those channels out in LX2. Now if you go back to Live and play the cues through, the lights should fade out in LX2 without moving at all. Now go to LX3 and select each channel that needs to change from LX1. It should be marking in LX2, but the software is smart enough to wait until the light has faded out in LX2 before changing the position/settings. If it's not marking already, you can do that manually.This might help, but it really depends on what the root cause is.

    If you're not sure where the channels are getting their data from, try using About by selecting each channel and hitting [About]. This will tell you where the channel is getting the data from.

    Mark Earliest is just one way of using Mark. When manually marking, you can tell the console exactly when you want it to mark by using the command [Mark] [)Cue # to mark in)]. Alternatively, if you don't care when it happens as long as it does happen, Earliest will just tell it to mark in the first cue it can after the light fades out.

    Good luck!

  • EDIT: Looks like Rochem beat me to it. So , what he said. 

    ==

    Hi Matt,

    The fact that you say that you see the gobo going to "Home" in LX 2 makes me think that you have somehow recorded gobo values into Q 2. I'm assuming that you are using the Mac 700's in a gobo in LX 1?

    If you see something moving as a light fades up from 0, it is not marked properly(something might be preventing Auto Mark from working). If something moves as the light fades to 0, then the light has a hard command on a Non Intensity Parameter in the cue that also fades the light to 0. 

    My suggestion would be to go into Q 2 in Blind, select your moving light channels, select all NIP's and then [@] [Cue Only] [Enter]. By removing the values Q only, it will ensure that Q 3 has the proper hard values for the move instructions. 

    Also keep in mind that if the light is going out in Q 2, and the Q time is a 5, that it will take the lights 5 seconds to fade out, and then the console will take another 5 seconds to mark the light, so if you take Q three within 10 seconds of Q2, you will probably catch the tail end of the mark.

     

    HTH,



    [edited by: travisres at 4:28 PM (GMT -6) on Sat, May 21 2011] Double post
  • Once you've cleaned up all your cues, if you still have unwanted visible moves then discrete channel timing can be helpful.  You can delay the move of any parameter (intensity, color, focus, beam), speed up or slow down things to make everything behave the way you want.

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