How easy is busking?

Hi, I work for a production company and have been looking at acquiring a SmartFade ML for some of our smaller venues.  Typical lighting packages include around 30 conventionals, 10 Studio Spots, and 12 ColorBlast 12TR's.  

After looking at all the videos I'm not worried about stack, this board seems to have that down well.  But for concerts and festivals i'm wondering how easy i can make this on my operators.  I have a couple questions that maybe some of you can answer:

1)  First off the Color Blast fixtures.  If i patch them as a generic RGB (dont like the hue profile) can i assign 3 of the subs as red green and blue for all of them and mix on the fly?  If so will they mix smoothly or snap to which ever fader is higher?

2)  Can i make a few moving programs for the moving lights and just put them on subs so that pushing up the sub turns on that look and effect.  What i'm asking is does recording a moving effect to a sub work?  or do you have to grab the fixtures and assign that moving effect every time?

3) Can i group the conventionals into some subs and have access to them as well?

  • Hello,

    firstly, why not download the free SmartSoft application.  It includes a console simulator exactly the same as a real console so you can try things out (no real DMX output though, for that you need a console).  In the meantime, some brief answers to your questions:

    1  Yes, you can.  If you patch the colorblasts as simple dimmers they will mix highest-takes-precedence.  You will be able to mix but the resulting values for each of red, green and blue will be the highest reuslt from the combination of memory faders.  Or you can patch them as proper 'devices' (recommended) and make selective recordings of red only, green only and blue only to each of 3 subs (memories)  These will mix in last-action mode: whichever fader is moved will take control of the channels it posseses.  So the answer is yes and there are two ways to get there depending on your preferred way of working.

    2  Yes,  recording an effect into a memory means that fader will run the effect each time it is taken up.  The effects are recorded inside memories, each independently.

    3  Yes, subs (memories) can contain ordinary intensities (dimmers), devices (moving lights / leds) or both together.

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