Control/Dimming - ETC ION: Merging Show Files

[jglodeklights]

Hey Gang. I'm trying to, in ION OFFLINE, merge two show file patches. One with the current show soft patch, one with the old patch but correct calibration of my scrollers (with about 120 channels I will just retype the patch in the board rather than recalibrate my 31 scrollers). I can not, for the life of me, get it to work in any way, shape or form.

Suggestions on how to get this to work? The manual is useless in regards to this.

[azylka]

Ok. So what I understand is that you want to take the patching from one show and put in another.

1. Start in the new show file (the one getting a new patch/calibration)
2. Go to open the old show file (one with correct patch/calibration)
3. Before clicking 'OK' in the "Do you really want to open file?" dialog, click "Deselect All"
4. Click/select "Patch"
5. Now click "OK"
6. Check to make sure that the patch/calibration has been properly transferred
7. Save the new file, and thank me

Hopefully that got you where you need to be.

[jglodeklights]

No, Azylka. Not so simple. I need to merge the files. File A has the correct dimmer patch, File B has the correct patch (and thus show data that includes calibration) of my scrollers. I know I will probably need to manually alter the dimmers on units with scrollers, but I would like to at least be able to not have to retype the other 90+ units if possible.

[rochem]

I'm really not sure what you're trying to do. So, as I understand it, you have one show file with everything, including a complete patch, and you just want to add the scroller units into that show file from a separate show file? If so, that's pretty easy to do. From the Browser, go to File -> Merge and select your show file. Click "Advanced", and you will be able to select exactly which channels you want to take from Show File B into your current show file.

If you're talking about just transferring the scroller calibration into a new file, I'm not sure if I can help you with that. I've never been a huge fan of the scroller calibration feature - no real reason, I just don't feel like it gives enough information about what has been calibrated and where. I tend to just record color palettes for all my frames, and calibrate to full frame manually when making palettes.

Ok. So what I understand is that you want to take the patching from one show and put in another.

1. Start in the new show file (the one getting a new patch/calibration)
2. Go to open the old show file (one with correct patch/calibration)
3. Before clicking 'OK' in the "Do you really want to open file?" dialog, click "Deselect All"
4. Click/select "Patch"
5. Now click "OK"
6. Check to make sure that the patch/calibration has been properly transferred
7. Save the new file, and thank me

Actually, that's not even close. Your method will close the file he has open and open ONLY the patch data from the new file. So he won't have ANYTHING from Show File A, and the only thing in the console will be the patch data from Show File B. You need to use Merge to take data from one show file and put it into another.

[jglodeklights]

That, Michael, is actually what I tried for over an hour to do! For whatever reason, even if I've deleted the channels, I can not get ANYTHING to merge into the file. I've actually had this problem since software version 1.4 (or was it 1.3 or 1.5?). Every time I've tried to merge a patch or items from a patch into a show I've been unable to (I thought I was just doing it wrong back in 2008, now I really just can't figure out why I can't do it even if it may not be the correct way).

PS: I learned to put frame position into color palettes as well. Unfortunately, this lead to some problems when I wasn't on the console and ended up having two color palettes containing the wrong frames for 2/3 of the scroller units, and then I had someone else, who is great on the ION but just didn't do things the way we do, change some palette number in a way causing them to change to frame number and not frame position. As such, it has been much less time consuming to recalibrate the few scrollers that lose scroll tension.

[rochem]

Ah yes, having multiple programmers working on the same fixtures in a rig is tough. I'm not sure why that wouldn't be working for you. I use Merge all the time (pretty much on every show I do, so I can get my basic functionality up), and I've never had a problem with it. I just tried it again on offline 1.9.8 beta (sorry, don't have 1.9.6 on this computer) and it seems to work fine. Are you using Advanced merge, or just taking everything in a selected category? If advanced, make sure you're formatting everything correctly, and that you have actually selected the thing you want to merge - I've been guilty on more than one occasion of failing to select anything to merge, then being confused when it didn't work. Also, make sure you're sending the merged content to the channels you want it to go to, and not accidentally sending it somewhere else.

Other than that, I can't really say what would cause that. If it's not urgent, I'd wait a day and give ETC a call on Monday morning to see what's up. By the way, are you running 1.9.6, or something older?

[SteveB]

Use the Advanced function to only merge in the range of channels not associated with the scrollers, then manually change the patch for the scrollers that are calibrated, if I understand what you are trying to do (keep the calibration settings).

[jglodeklights]

Strange of all strange things. Whether merging my scroller channels only, or non scroller channels only, I wasn't able to get my ION OFFLINE to display the merged data. Once I actually got it on the ION at 7:30 this morning it was....somewhat correct. I still had to manually pull out color palettes and macros from another file, but not groups. Weird. 1.9.6, too. I dunno. Maybe my computer was just hating me last night.

[YuriyLD]

Just FYI, I needed to pull a partial patch from another show and wasn't able to do it. Even though Advanced merge looks like it should work, it does not. ETC Tech Support confirmed, you can only merge the entire patch. Maybe that will change with 2.0. I don't believe 1.9.8 beta does it either.

[SteveB]

I had to think about this a minute, but what I do all the time is Import an ASCII patch file from Lightwright that has a Ch to Dim patch for say, channels 1 - 250. Then I merge the basic file which has my ML configuration and patch at channels 301 - 306. The merge piles on the ML's to the imported patch. I know this works as I have no ML's in the LW file.

So maybe save one of the files in ASCII, do an import and then a merge ?.