Checking your Palettes.

If you need to repeatedly do this for a show that is touring or sitting for a while, you might be well served by building a cue list just for doing this checkout. I've had many touring broadway shows that have a dedicated cue list that's just for checking moving light focus. The time it takes to set it up the first time can be considerable, but saves a lot of time later on.

Yeah, what Jon said seems to be the most common way to do it. Once you have your show programmed, go through and determine exactly what palettes/presets are used by each fixture in the show (for larger shows, software like Focus Track is very useful). Then make a cue list where each cue brings up all of the fixtures in a given preset/focus palette. For example, in cue one, you might have 12 of your moving lights that, at some point in the show, use the focus palette "Down Left". In the next cue, maybe you only have two fixtures that use the focus palette "Wall Scrape". And so on.

I like to record the cues with all of the fixtures at Full in a very saturated color. This allows you to use Select Active to grab the whole group of fixtures, and you can Next through them (with Highlight on) to bring up one at a time and refocus them. When you're done, just Update the references and hit Go to move onto the next focus. Takes a bit of time to set up, but it makes ML focus extremely quick. I have even used this on one-offs that don't tour when I knew programming time would be limited - take an hour or two to build the palettes in advance and make focus cue lists, and once you're in the space, updating those palettes is a snap.

Does Group Preset set the world alight for you?

Dont forget that pre-seeding a record target with GROUP will allow you to access only channels in those targets. Then put them at the target.

GROUP PRESET 12 PRESET 12 ENTER...........Then maybe highlight or rem dim. (Not really got my head around highlight) 

I am with you that it is a shame to write a macro as the EOS is too well thought though to have to do things in a ***-about-strand way.

When sorting my Presets i tend to use the utilisation reports (from Print) and a highlighter to see whats hot and whats not. How old school.

In the long term a cue stack seems like a grand idea.

Hope that helps 

olly b

Chichester Festival Theatre

 

Group Preset does set the world a glow for me. It's getting closer to what I was looking for.

I think I've found a nice way. It doesn't have the pleasantness of just updating a cue which will update the required palettes/presets.

But here is another way if you fancie trying it out:

Enable Direct Select  Double Click.

This will make it so when you double press a Palette or Preset it will grab the channels in that Palette/Preset and put them at target of the palette or preset.

Pretty much exactly like 'GROUP PRESET 12 PRESET 12 ENTER'

 

This works fine but doesnt turn of all the lights that aren't being used so what you can do is for every state/look/check you have. Create a preset that aswell as having the lights you want to check, have the lights you don't want to check at 0.

 

From these new presets you've made you can double click on the direct selects. and if you need to make a change [Update] [Preset] [X] [Enter]

 

You could follow up with [Group] Direct Select [Rem Dim] to take out the lights that aren't in that preset.