New User Questions - Memory Overides, Sequence vs Stacks

Greetings again. You guys have been so helpful I figured I'd ask my other questions as well.

Just restate I’m a volunteer for my church, not a professional lighting person (though I thoroughly enjoy learning and running the lighting board).

Two main questions,

We do not do much pre programming of our services with lights. I setup a handful of lighting memories (i.e. Pre Service, Worship, Solo, Message, etc) and do additional mixing live on the fly (change colors, lower or increase intensities, etc).

My first question is, can you override the settings of a memory that is currently active? For example if I have a memory with house lights in it at full, and I wanted to temporarily lower them but keep everything else in that memory the same, I switch to Int A select the lights but cannot lower the intensity of them. Is there a way to force the lights to do this regardless of what the memory has programmed? (Note: I know I can keep the house lights out of it, and I do have them on a separate memory, but there are other examples where I just want to lower one light or something). I’ve noticed adding intensity is not an issue, only lowering it.

Sort of related side question, I’ve noticed that if you set a light manually (meaning you select INTA and push channel 1 to 100%) it stays that way till you pull it down (as expected). Is there a setting that says once you switch to MEM and start activating memories you kill everything on the board but what that memory has programmed? (Is this SOLO mode?)

Second question. Understanding Sequence vs Stacks best practices.

I’ve read the manual and played with them. I know what they are, but I’m not fully understanding when you would use one vs the other? For example, we wanted to do a more concert style service with lots of pre programmed light changes during the song. I wasn’t sure if I should save each light change to a memory then assign those memories to a sequence or stack? So if you’re going to have a performance that has say 10 songs and each song has 4-8 light changes (40-80 total) how would you program that?

Thanks again for you help.

sclausen over 15 years ago

Hi again -

Regarding the intensity questions, the answer is the same in all cases. On SmartFade and SmartFade ML consoles, Intensity is handled using Highest-Takes-Precedence (HTP) logic. What that means is that when you have more than one source for a level (like between channel faders and memories, or between two or more memories) the source that contains the higher level will always win. That's why you can't use the channel faders to take the levels down from an active memory fader, or why you won't see the memory's level if the channel fader has been brought up to full. The channels you need/want to handle separately must be stored into their own memory (things like houselights and such - if you want manual control of them during a show, you should probably have them in their own fader.)

Using the CLEAR button creatively might help you in some cases to remove some sources from what's known as the "HTP Pool" (basically, the collection of sources so that comparisons can be made and the highest level determined). However it's probably easier for you to think about the kinds of adjustments you need to make during a service or event and then program your memories to support this.

Regarding stack vs. sequences, the stack is a single cue list with up to 199 steps that gets played back on the main crossfader pair. Sequences are shorter (maximum of 24 steps each) that occupy memory faders. The stack steps can contain a single channel at full, a reference to a memory, or a "direct cue" containing levels that exist only in that step. Sequences can contain either a single channel at full or a reference to a memory.

How you choose to program is really up to you - if the 8-10 songs in your example are going to be played in the same order every time, you could use the stack. However, if the band/group may change up their set list from one show to the next, I might use a combimation of sequences, or sequences + memories. It really depends on how involved you want to be during the actual show. :-) If the songs will be used again and again in your services, though, you may want to program up a sequence for each song. Then when the content of the service is determined, you'll have that sequence there and ready.

I hope that helps -

Thanks!

Sarah
Cancel
Vote Up 0 Vote Down

Sign in to reply

Cancel