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    nickh - Former HES Forum Member
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A few issues after first week of tech

I just finished the first of two weeks of tech on a new musical. This is my first Hog III experience and for the most part I am pretty pleased with the console. The show is large, very ambitious, and my lighting designer works at an insanely fast pace. We are cueing much of the show out of sequence, and we are making drastic changes throughout the cue structure daily. The designer also likes to copy cues and insert them throughout the list. A spread sheet function is something that could be heplful. I use the source button in the view cue window, which is great for looking backwards. My Cuelist is very long. We move too fast for me to take notes or label cues at times. The ALD tracks what he can, but again we are simply moving too fast. With a spreadsheet I could have a view of multiple cues and see what is happening in a specific fixture from cue to cue very quickly.

I performed a console clean install last week with v2.1.0 (1618). I reboot my DP every day before powering up, and I perform Garbage collect & Check Integrity before shut down every night

I understand that using 2 xternal monitors with lots of constantly changing info slows down the desk. However, I absolutely need the externals in order to keep up with my LD. I keep output on one and programmer on the other. My default view is to have my cue list on the first touch screen, and View cue on the second touch screen.

1. Cue Next and Back is too slow in View Cue. There is a lag from when I hit the button to getting the proper reaction. If I need to move quickly ( Back, Back, Back, Back) the lag really slows me down.

2. When I return to my one and only Q list from pallets, Follow Cue has to be reselected, View Cue needs to be reselected, and Follow Current needs to be reselected. Time consuming. Sometimes when View Cue is selected the window appears empty with no data. Occasionally fixtures appear out of order, in the wrong aggregated section, and repeatedly in multiple aggregated sections. In these situations, I close all the views and reopen them. Lately, I have gotten into the habit of closing all the views before I reopen my Cue List and View Cue. This solves the problem some of the time. I have played with the additive setting on views, but I can't solve the issue.

3. When I delete a cue in my live stack (not the cue on stage), more often than not, my programmer window on the external, and my view cue window close. So, I have to go through the open view process again. I delete cues fairly often.

4. There is a lag when I use the hard Update button to update cues. I realise that using the syntax Merge [cue#] causes no lag. However, Update Enter is easier. As I said, my LD moves really fast. We will jump through cues (go to next, go to next, go to next) make an edit, update and continue on. It takes an extra moment for me to check to see what cue we are in, and type it into the command line.

5. When I update cues additional values are placed into the time cell of the Cuelist separated by commas. Often 0 times, though there have been other values that seem arbitrary. I often don't have a chance to clean this up before we goto a cue in the newly incorrect time. This annoys the LD a bit.


All said, I hate to harp on the bad. There are many features I do really like about the console. For instance, I love how the indexed/rotating gobos are set up. And I love how I can reverse and match rpm's. The touch, suck, and copy w/ masking features also work really well. Aspects of the editor I too find very useful.

While I'm here, I've got a question. I would like to add one of my old backed up Cuelists to my current show file. I do not want to merge into my current Cuelist. I looked through the manual, but I could not figure out if this is possible. There are some old cues that I have deleted in my current show that I would like to recover.

Thanks for reading,
nick
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    Hi Chris,

    So heres the deal,

    I record many blank cues with the Lighting Designer and the conventional programmer. We eventually Goto these blank dummy cues and work within them. When we build dummy cues the designer assigns times which are put on the convention console. Would be nice if I could enter these times into the hog as well. I have approximately 450 cues as of now and there are more to come.

    After editing a dummy cue, I press Update, Enter. This inserts a 0 count instead of my default 9.9 time. We often move on before I can look at the Obsession monitor and edit the time in the Hog. When I Goto a cue further down in the stack and Merge programmer into that previous cue which now has a 0 count, a 9.9 count is added to the 0 separated by a comma.

    In mark cues which I designate as .7 cues, I see more of these issues. In a cue after a mark cue, I have fade time issues when working in the editor of the mark cue. For example, I am in cue 58 and editing cue 51.7 which has a Fade time of 5s and a Wait time of 1s. I select fix 10 and assign Intensity 1 (labeled MARK) to it. I then press Update and close the editor. In my cue list the Fade of cue 51.7 now reads 5s,9.9s,10s. The cue previous to 51.7 has a 10 count, I guess that's where the 10 came from.

    There have been other instances of counts being added to the Fade column. By the time I see these discrepancies, I have forgotten the exact keystrokes that I performed. I will continue to watch for this behavior and take notes on what led up to the outcome when I can.


    -Sometimes when View Cue is selected the window appears empty with no data. Can you tell us which cues are doing this to you? Also, be careful to look around in the cue as sometimes the data is offscreen and you don't see it until you scroll around in the cue editor.

    The data is definitely not off the screen. I will try to document exactly what leads up to this situation next time it happens.


    Another occurrence I have experienced has to do with Pan / Tilt. Sometimes after selecting a fixture and giving the Pan or Tilt encoder the lightest possible touch, the chosen fixture will fly away. Sometimes it will even quickly move in the wrong direction. This is my first time programming for the designer I am working with. I think he is incredibly talented. He knows exactly what he wants more often than not. So, he will talk me through in detail exactly where to position a light. Not how I'm used to working, but the end product is really quite stunning. Anyway, if a light flys away as he is trying to position it, his design process becomes hindered.

    I will send you my latest show file today.

    Thanks for your help,
    nick
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  • 0
    Hi Chris,

    So heres the deal,

    I record many blank cues with the Lighting Designer and the conventional programmer. We eventually Goto these blank dummy cues and work within them. When we build dummy cues the designer assigns times which are put on the convention console. Would be nice if I could enter these times into the hog as well. I have approximately 450 cues as of now and there are more to come.

    After editing a dummy cue, I press Update, Enter. This inserts a 0 count instead of my default 9.9 time. We often move on before I can look at the Obsession monitor and edit the time in the Hog. When I Goto a cue further down in the stack and Merge programmer into that previous cue which now has a 0 count, a 9.9 count is added to the 0 separated by a comma.

    In mark cues which I designate as .7 cues, I see more of these issues. In a cue after a mark cue, I have fade time issues when working in the editor of the mark cue. For example, I am in cue 58 and editing cue 51.7 which has a Fade time of 5s and a Wait time of 1s. I select fix 10 and assign Intensity 1 (labeled MARK) to it. I then press Update and close the editor. In my cue list the Fade of cue 51.7 now reads 5s,9.9s,10s. The cue previous to 51.7 has a 10 count, I guess that's where the 10 came from.

    There have been other instances of counts being added to the Fade column. By the time I see these discrepancies, I have forgotten the exact keystrokes that I performed. I will continue to watch for this behavior and take notes on what led up to the outcome when I can.


    -Sometimes when View Cue is selected the window appears empty with no data. Can you tell us which cues are doing this to you? Also, be careful to look around in the cue as sometimes the data is offscreen and you don't see it until you scroll around in the cue editor.

    The data is definitely not off the screen. I will try to document exactly what leads up to this situation next time it happens.


    Another occurrence I have experienced has to do with Pan / Tilt. Sometimes after selecting a fixture and giving the Pan or Tilt encoder the lightest possible touch, the chosen fixture will fly away. Sometimes it will even quickly move in the wrong direction. This is my first time programming for the designer I am working with. I think he is incredibly talented. He knows exactly what he wants more often than not. So, he will talk me through in detail exactly where to position a light. Not how I'm used to working, but the end product is really quite stunning. Anyway, if a light flys away as he is trying to position it, his design process becomes hindered.

    I will send you my latest show file today.

    Thanks for your help,
    nick
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