Control/Dimming - Martin light jockey meets Standard Boards?

[Goph704]

Okay
So I've just taken a Job with a small design company in Charlotte N.C. It Looks like it's going to be a little Rocky to start out with but After a huge personal debate I've decided to stick with it. We sell Chavet, Elation, American DJ and Martin products as well as do night club and church design and installation work. We're best known as the installation company for barbizion in this neck of the woods.
They've hired me to help the company branch out into the theater market. I'm in the process of putting together a basic theater packet using martins and the Colorado line. Even now my boss is looking with an eye towards conventionals, so putting together a rider pack should be the easy part
Here's what I'm worried about. Currently the only thing that they program on is the Martin Light Jockey. Which I'm not incredibly familiar with ..yet. It's a PC based program That's got some really cool stock effects, some awesome Pre-sets and a lot of control, but it only can record 12 cues. Not a typo. Here's the other fun problem. The standard board is the ETC express, the most high end is The Ion and the lowest thing I've seen is a leprechaun two-scene.
So is there a way to tie in the light Jockey to some of these smaller boards? How would I go about doing that and what are the odds i can create a "normal" show situation with higher end gear? Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated. Do we have to bite the bullet and just buy a desk?
-Adam

[JChenault]

The more or less standard way to interface stand alone computer control with a lighting console is using MIDI. Looking at the Light Jockey manual, I can't tell how well they support MIDI. There is a control labeled MIDI but I could not find any documentation.

Have you considered other software only solutions to control your movers? I use ( and helped develop) an application called MLight that I connect to my express console using MIDI. I'm quite biased, but you might want to give it a look. It is primarily designed for theatrical applications ( fixed cue list) but has some support for club work.

Feel free to PM me with quesitons.

[derekleffew]

Goph704, see this and subsequent posts regarding interfacing LJ and an Express: Automated Fixtures Why is intelligent lighting "dumb" on an ETC ..., post #24+. While I don't think the OP did a very good job of explaining it, apparently it is possible and works well, at least in that user's application.

Alternative answer, buy an ETC Element, which you'll probably want to have around anyway as a demo to your target market.

[Esoteric]

I don't like the way LJ functions and I don't recommend it for people with more than 1 or 2 types of units. It takes a lot more front end work on that console and a lot of setup to get things working right. It takes a very different mindset. I am not a fan.

Mike

[len]

Originally Posted by Esoteric

It takes a lot more front end work on that console and a lot of setup to get things working right. It takes a very different mindset. I am not a fan.

Mike

I have to agree that it take a lot of front end to get it working. It wouldn't be my first choice for a straight theater board. There's no hardware to speak of.

MIDI input is a possibility. But it requires some other products and you may spend a lot of time getting everything to talk to each other if you don't know midi. If you go that route, let me know, as it's something I need to investigate as well.

If you have the Universal USB (it has two, 5-pin outputs. Most other LJ dongles only have 3-pin data outs), you can re-configure it to run 512 in and 512 out. But there is a latency with the in. If you can find a Fingers board or a Behringer BCF-2000 you can use those through USB or serial connections.

But your idea about 12 cues is wrong. The problem is that LJ uses a different language. The way LJ works is to build a scene into a sequence. Then you assemble one or more sequences into a cue. There are only 12 cue slots, but I've programmed shows with 10 - 12 different types of fixtures on it and it's been fine. You'll also need to know about transparent cues, and background cues. And statics are good to know about, too. You can make a cuelist which would allow an operator to just sit and hit a "go" button that will track through a show.

The manual is good. Try here as well. Monthly Features - Ukslc.org

I've been using LJ since 1999 or so (I can't remember the date, but my first LJ hardware was a parallel interface that only ran with Win98) and 2032 and 3032 before that so I've got a few years with Martin products. Feel free to PM if you need help. Or visit the Martin forum.

[Goph704]

Thank you
I'm still a little cloudy though. Okay, After reading a lot of the information here, I'm Seeing a little bit of where I'm getting confused. Let me see if If I can figure this out really quickly. Please bear with me as I still think in conventional fixtures a lot and in conventional programing.

1. A Scene< sub master. - This is where you create a "Look" but you cannot adjust time. This can also be used as a channel where one scene controls on attribute or many attributes of a type of fixture. I don't imagine it would be a far step to turn one of these into a pallet, but I'm not sure yet.

2. A sequence= a cue- You can control fade time (Up/Down) position (Pan+ tilt) and color but apparently sequences have to build on each other, due to the priority rule. which is confusing. You can also place multiple fixtures into the sequence, but only one attribute (?)

3. A Cue= a cue stack- a Group of seque3nces tied together. You can place multiple sequences together and have them run separately, but they must run in sequence. These are limited to 12 Cue slots ( where the confusion ws coming in.)

4.Background cue>a sub master- A separate look that you can fade to, or flash to with bump buttons. the Original look remains, but this adds in more lamps, or effects. Can be programed to change the existing Look ?

Snap/Fade/Off- How you want your light to come up.

Alright please correct me where I'm wrong here. I read the previous post on transferring "Scenes" into "channels" through DMX. If you record each attribute as a separate "Scene" Imagine this is possible, even though I can't help but wonder if she doesn't mean "Sub masters" instead If that was possible it would be easy to record a look into your subs and then record from there. But that might be wishful thinking. Also Just so you know this wouldn't be my first choice for a theater board either, but that's what I'm working with so the mentality of "let's see what we can pull off with what we've got" is kicking in. Perhaps in a few years this company will be able to upgrade but it really depends on how successful I can be with what I've got.
So am I in the ball park here?
-adam

[len]

You're partially right.

I don't have time this morning, but I'll try to find the time to compose a more detailed response when I get back to the office tonight.

[len]

Had some extra time this AM. Since terminology can be different, I'll do the best I can. First thing I would do is update to 2.9.1 if you haven't already.

Originally Posted by Goph704

1. A Scene< sub master. - This is where you create a "Look" but you cannot adjust time. This can also be used as a channel where one scene controls on attribute or many attributes of a type of fixture. I don't imagine it would be a far step to turn one of these into a pallet, but I'm not sure yet.

Yes, but you CAN adjust the time a scene takes to go to full on or off. In order to change the sequence time, look to the first toolbar, labeled "SEQ". There's a window which would show the name of the sequence being edited, if you've already saved one. Yellow means it's active, and an orange background means that the sequence you are editing will not be active until you save it (blind mode). You'll see the sequence dialog box (remember, this is a windows based software so everything is a window or an icon) with the label Sequence (sequence name). The double left and right arrows allow you to play a multi-scene sequence. The single left and right advance the sequence one scene only. Then you see what scene of the total # of scenes in the sequence (2:5, for example), the plus button adds another scene to the end of the sequence, an insert another sequence button, and a trash button.Below that are where you adjust the amount of time for the scene, and the time it takes to fade in within that scene. You can have a 10 second scene where a dimmer comes to full in 2 seconds, for example.

I go into all this in more detail in the UKSLC articles I wrote.

The best way for you to learn this is to either set up a couple fixtures and play around, or get a multiple monitor computer and set up some stuff and use the offline visualizer. If you do that, use all generic dimmers and older Martin products as they will be well supported and documented.

Originally Posted by Goph704

2. A sequence= a cue- You can control fade time (Up/Down) position (Pan+ tilt) and color but apparently sequences have to build on each other, due to the priority rule. which is confusing. You can also place multiple fixtures into the sequence, but only one attribute (?)

True, mostly. Separating different attributes into different sequences makes sense, but it's not a requirement. The only thing that has to be universal to all fixtures active in a sequence is the time it takes for the sequence to run.

Originally Posted by Goph704

3. A Cue= a cue stack- a Group of seque3nces tied together. You can place multiple sequences together and have them run separately, but they must run in sequence. These are limited to 12 Cue slots ( where the confusion ws coming in.)

Basically. But if you have multiple sequences in the same cue, they will all start and run at the same time. Yes, there are 12 slots in the cue. You also have to bear in mind that if you have multiple sequences in a cue, the one in the higher numbered slot will take precedence over the lower number. So if you have dimmer channel #1 set to 50% in the sequence in slot 1, and at 80% in the sequence in slot 4, the dimmer will go to 80%.

Originally Posted by Goph704

4.Background cue>a sub master- A separate look that you can fade to, or flash to with bump buttons. the Original look remains, but this adds in more lamps, or effects. Can be programed to change the existing Look ?

Not really. A background cue is like an active cue. But anything that you do in a background cue will take precedence over the active cue. If you want a bump button, I would use a hotkey and make it so you can flash a sequence.

Originally Posted by Goph704

Snap/Fade/Off- How you want your light to come up.

Yep. Anything you don't want in a scene should be "off." Snap means the fixture will get to whatever it's supposed to as quick as is possible. A fade is a fade. Remember, tho, that if you set a fixture to fade, but keep the sequence time or the fade time down to .05 seconds, which is the default, it's effectively a snap.

Originally Posted by Goph704

Alright please correct me where I'm wrong here. I read the previous post on transferring "Scenes" into "channels" through DMX. If you record each attribute as a separate "Scene" Imagine this is possible, even though I can't help but wonder if she doesn't mean "Sub masters" instead If that was possible it would be easy to record a look into your subs and then record from there. But that might be wishful thinking. Also Just so you know this wouldn't be my first choice for a theater board either, but that's what I'm working with so the mentality of "let's see what we can pull off with what we've got" is kicking in. Perhaps in a few years this company will be able to upgrade but it really depends on how successful I can be with what I've got.
So am I in the ball park here?
-adam

If you want to use LJ for a theatrical board, I would make a bunch of cues. Then use the cuelist. That is a list that will run cues one by one and will activate each successive cue based on how you tell it to advance, either by a keystroke, or by time, or by a midi or audio input, etc.

[smigit2002]

Hello,

Just chiming on on hardware interfacing with LightJockey:
in the midi realm, there's LJFaders, which is incrediably useful. It will basically take any USB MIDI device and then tie in with LJ to control various aspects of your show.
Specifically, I use the Korg nanoKONTROL, and basically use each fader as a submaster, and all the keys as individual submaster blackout keys/bump buttons.
Additionally, I'm not sure which dongle you're using, but the newer ones can do 2 universes out, or 1 in and 1 out. With this, you could take a traditional board, input its DMX, and do a similar thing, just with more faders (I presume). I'm not sure if LJ will actually pass DMX, or if it just interprets it, but... it's an option.
Wish I could tell more, but I'm in class