Fader assignments on moving light boards

[Spresley]

I'm tooling around with the Martin m- pc software. What items do you leave in presets and what items do you use faders for... I am thinking that intensity is an obvious fader value, but are you splitting those faders up by fixture type, or ganging all fixture intensity on one fader.... I'm also using movement speed on a fader, but again, should I record it using all moving fixtures, or just fixture groups. If I use groups, I'm burning 3 faders for each group of movers. Can anyone comment as to how they set up their faders. Thx

[porkchop]

If you feel like you're running out of space on your fader bank you can just use multiple banks. Commonly I've seen banks dedicated to just a single scene. You can even put macros in to the cuelist to switch banks when necessary. I'm not sure if Martin puts some kind of bank limit on the free M-PC software but I know on the M-1 you have at least 100 banks of faders, I would hope that is enough for you.

As far as presets it's a matter of what you are going to use multiple times. I know one lighting designer that makes a grid out of the stage and does a focus preset for every mover at every grid point he then when cueing brings up a light at a grid point close to where he wants it but then massages it into place for the scene so whats stored into the show file is mostly all hard values not presets. On the other hand many touring shows use presets for everything almost exclusively.

[Spresley]

Thanks for replying... I'm basically busking every show I do, and I've been using light jockey manager. So setting up colour, intensity, movement, gobo etc... So are you saying do the same on on bank, stacking cues? Cause I don't want to be flipping back from bank to bank...or is that how it's done? I know touring guys put songs on banks, or cue stacks, but since I have 3 types of fixtures, I would need a colour fader for each fixture type, gobo wheel etc....am I going about this the wrong way?

[porkchop]

Most commonly I've seen color, some basic focuses, and some common pan/tilt combinations as presets. If your fixture can't do a certain thing you just leave it out of the preset. I've also seen gobo's in presets a lot, but that's usually more for the convenience of being able to give the gobo a name. You should be able to grab whatever lights you want in the programmer and change their intensity with an encoder so I don't see much use for it as either a fader or a preset.

Really on with M-PC you should only make presets for things you will reuse a lot and faders for more complicated things. Any light(s) you select in the programmer will pop up on the encoders and you will have access to all of the attributes available. Things get a little weird if you select different types of fixtures (say a wash and a spot), but any common attributes work as expected. It kinda sounds to me like you're trying to make M-PC work like a more conventional board where you do everything with faders and submasters. If that's so I would suggest you try to let go of the faders and embrace the programmable encoders that are available to you. I will add my personal experience with Martin lighting control is with their physical Maxyzz consoles and with the new M-1 line things have changed a lot so if something sounds really strange that's probably why.