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    xhpohanka
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Crossfaders and blackout

Hello,

I need to crossfade two cues with a very short blackout between. I have found this note in the SF2496 manual.


DIPLESS: SmartFade provides dipless crossfades as long as both faders are moved in
parallel. This means that active channels which remain unchanged in both scenes will not
'dip' to 50% of their level as you move the crossfaders from one scene to the next, making
for much better-looking scene transitions. To create a blackout between two steps, move
only the Live fader to it’s end position.

So I expected that moving only the live fader up will create a blackout. Unfortunately the channels consisted in the next step remain on the minimal value from both crossfading scenes.
Is this behaviour correct? According to the manual this should happen only when the crossfaders are moved synchronously.

 

greetings, Jan

  • Hello,

    any clue? This time I solved the task by inserting "black step" into the sequence, but this solution is not optimal for me.

    greetings Jan

  • in reply to xhpohanka

    Jan,

    I've duplicated your issue on my software version, not having a SF2496 handy. The one thing that I can't repeat is if this happens in 2 Scene mode. I suspect it does, and that's not what you are doing.

    From what I know of the console I think this is more of a manual issue than a hardware issue. If you think about it purely logically, how does the console know you are going to black, rather than cross-fading. It can't suddenly decide that it should have been fading the otherwise steady channels.

    I think your solution is the best option. You might also consider putting timing on the cues and using "follow" to make it run from the Go button. What about your show makes the manual dip-fade ideal?

    If this is causing problems for your show I suggest calling Tech Support (800) 688-4116. If this needs to be changed they will start the process.

  • in reply to RickR

    You can also move the 'live scene' x-fader first to 0, without moving the other x-fade to 100 and leaving it at zero, this shoudl result in a manual blackout in two scene mode.

    I never use two scene mode, and mainly work in 'normal mode' with mems on my SF2496, and I record an empty memory to the stack to have a blackout using x-fade / go button. As suggested you can also insert wait times, resulting in 'follow' behaviour of the smartfade.

     



    [edited by: Jeroen at 2:25 AM (GMT -6) on Fri, Jan 8 2010]
  • in reply to Jeroen

    Let me clarify:

    In 2 scene mode a blackout may be obtained by moving the Live side crossfader to zero and leaving the Next side crossfader in position, i.e. also at zero.  The next side fader may then be moved to full to bring in the next preset, whichever it is, the top or bottom fader row.  In this mode the two crossfaders simply master (with a dipless calculation) the two rows of physical faders.

    In Normal mode on the Stack a blackout step must be recorded as a step.  A blackout step simply contains an un-recorded memory or an un-patched channel and is recorded in the usual way.  It is not possible to obtain a blackout on the crossfaders unless the blackout step is present.  This is because when the Live-side fader is taken to zero the dipless calculation leaves channels on stage that are present in both the Live step and the Next step.  This is how a dipless scene fader works on a cue lst.

  • in reply to AdamBennette

    Thank you for clarifying the function of crossfaders. I'll use black step in similar situations.

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