Out of focus points/ different way of recording ML effects?

Johnthan,

I was in your seat for many years with 4 moving lights on an Express 48/96 and running out of options! A great tool I started to use was a combination of subroutines and macros. Subroutines are like effects; but their steps are actually cues and by firing them on the C/D fader (assuming you are using A/B for primary playback) you can layer your effects on top of your beam looks and conventional intensities. So say you build many cues with different beam looks, leaving gaps between. Now jump up in your cue list say up to the 500s, and build cues with different combinations of focuses; for instance, different steps in a ballyhoo, circles, boxes, can-cans, etc. Now comes the little bit of cleanup: you need to go back to your cues with beam looks and create a sequential cue that clears out any position info in the same time as your subroutine's first step (since all channels are HTP on the Expression, your effect would only move your lights "beyond" where they are in your beam look cues, if that makes sense; also mimicking the timing of your subroutine allows effect to "fade" in.

Now create the subroutines in Blind by pressing "type" and I believe subroutine is option 4 or 5. Subroutines can only be recorded as cues, so you can pick another bank of cues (maybe the 700s) to record the actual subroutines. You can get some great effects by combining cues from different subroutine sequences to create new effects.

Now.....if you're in a cue with a good look onstage and want to add movement (say, on a build in the music) you can write a macro to fire your movement subroutine on the C/D fader while also taking a cue on the A/B fader that is the current beam look sans position info. To get out of this, make another macro that releases the C/D fader and jumps you back into sequence where you want to be.

This sounds a litle daunting, but with some planning and a numerical organization plan; you can create many different types of effects an lay them out in a way for easy running on-the-fly.

Let me know if you need some clarification.

As far as your sub issues; try looking at macros to switch between pages; keeping in mind that macros can also fire one other macro as well as execute a full string of commands.

-Nick

Johnthan,

I was in your seat for many years with 4 moving lights on an Express 48/96 and running out of options! A great tool I started to use was a combination of subroutines and macros. Subroutines are like effects; but their steps are actually cues and by firing them on the C/D fader (assuming you are using A/B for primary playback) you can layer your effects on top of your beam looks and conventional intensities. So say you build many cues with different beam looks, leaving gaps between. Now jump up in your cue list say up to the 500s, and build cues with different combinations of focuses; for instance, different steps in a ballyhoo, circles, boxes, can-cans, etc. Now comes the little bit of cleanup: you need to go back to your cues with beam looks and create a sequential cue that clears out any position info in the same time as your subroutine's first step (since all channels are HTP on the Expression, your effect would only move your lights "beyond" where they are in your beam look cues, if that makes sense; also mimicking the timing of your subroutine allows effect to "fade" in.

Now create the subroutines in Blind by pressing "type" and I believe subroutine is option 4 or 5. Subroutines can only be recorded as cues, so you can pick another bank of cues (maybe the 700s) to record the actual subroutines. You can get some great effects by combining cues from different subroutine sequences to create new effects.

Now.....if you're in a cue with a good look onstage and want to add movement (say, on a build in the music) you can write a macro to fire your movement subroutine on the C/D fader while also taking a cue on the A/B fader that is the current beam look sans position info. To get out of this, make another macro that releases the C/D fader and jumps you back into sequence where you want to be.

This sounds a litle daunting, but with some planning and a numerical organization plan; you can create many different types of effects an lay them out in a way for easy running on-the-fly.

Let me know if you need some clarification.

As far as your sub issues; try looking at macros to switch between pages; keeping in mind that macros can also fire one other macro as well as execute a full string of commands.

-Nick

Never done it myself, but you can actually make channels on Expression be LTP.  Go to Setup -> Channel Attributes, Select the Channel, and mark the LTP field (or use S6).