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    gjelliso
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SmartFade as Backup Board for Eos Family

My theater company is looking into renting an Ion console for programming of a musical that will run for a number of months. An Ion is out of our price point, but I have read that the SmartFade saves to an ASCII Standard and and Ion can also save to an ASCII Standard. I know that it doesn't quite work right, as I have tried to save an Ion show and open it on a SmartFade. I'm looking for a way to program and tech the show with the Ion, but then run the show using a SmartFade. We already have a SmartFade 2496 (we only have 96 dimmers, so the SmartFade's channel limit is not a problem) and ideally we could use this console to run our show. Any ideas?

  • I don't really think this will work - you'll spend more time doing clean-up than it is worth. If you don't already use it, you might look into SmartSoft to give you an on-screen display. -luke-
  • in reply to luke.delwiche

    I agree with Luke, making the ascii file readable by a SmartFade will be a terribly large amount of work, and probably quite annoying.

    If the number of cues is not very large you could do this:

    Connect the ION DMX output to the SmartFade DMX input.  Set up DMX mode to 'To memory' (Menu > Settings > DMX > Mode).  This places the input on fader #1.  Put the SmartFade in MEMS mode and set fader 1 to full.  Now run the cue on the ION and then record a cue on the Smartfade.  If your show is short this will probably work.  You will need to manually edit the step times to match the original cue times.

    Otherwise it might make more sense to just record the show directly into the SmartFade, using SmartSoft will help a lot.

  • gjelliso said:

     SmartFade saves to an ASCII Standard and and Ion can also save to an ASCII Standard.

    ASCII Cue Standard is really only useful for very basic data - Channel, Level, Cue # , Time, etc...

    You don't really describe WHY you want to use an Ion for programming  ?,  thus I'm assuming that you want an Ion for some of the more advanced features that allow better control of ML's scrollers, etc....  whose functionality and methods of being dealt with by the console, is not translatable to ASCII.  Remember that Eos/Ion does not define separate channel values for ea. attribute of an ML or scroller and LED devices, thus these values will not get recorded into ASCII.

    Adam's idea of snapshotting the DMX values off the Ion (while clever) is only useful as backup and I can visualize all kinds of issues in playback, all related to to the inability for the Smartfade to AutoMark any of the ML or scroller moves.  Thus I can see all kinds of undesirable effects taking place with anything other then a conventional fixture on a dimmer.

    SB

     

     

     

     

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