Programming conventional consoles

I am not enough of a console expert to comment on much of your post, but I can tell you this:  Parking the intensity masters at full does NOT reduce the dimming resolution to 8 bits. 

The 15-bit dimming process happens within the Selador fixtures themselves.  They receive whatever combination of channel inputs they're given (the 7 color channels plus the master intensity channel) and always output at the maximum resolution between changing intensity steps, in order to keep the dimming very smooth.  Dimming will be no steppier when master intensity remains at full while you dim individual color channels, than when you use master intensity to do the dimming.

What does change when parking the master intensity at full is that you lose 15-bit resolution for maintaining the color mix (the relative intensity settings for each of the 7 colors) when doing a fade.  When you use the color channels to define the overall color mix and then use the master intensity to change the brightness, the fixture is able to keep the relative values of the 7 colors in their original ratio with full 15-bit precision.  When the master intensity channel does not change, the fixture is unable to know what the values of the 7 colors should be, relative to one another, in anything other than the 8-bit resolution that defines each of those channels.  It means that the overall color mix has a greater potential of changing its appearance when you fade in or out.

I think I've given a rather convoluted explanation, but I hope you can make sense of it.

robgerlach said:

I think I've given a rather convoluted explanation, but I hope you can make sense of it.

Nope.  Made perfect sense to me and a thanks, it clarified the use and need for the master intensity channel

Steve B.

robgerlach said:

I think I've given a rather convoluted explanation, but I hope you can make sense of it.

Nope.  Made perfect sense to me and a thanks, it clarified the use and need for the master intensity channel

Steve B.