HELP! Issues with migrating subs from Express to ION

Hi all,

Although I haven't frequented this forum much, in the past I have found some nuggets that I can use, and I'm thankful for them! Now that we are in the process of migrating to a new system, I've actually joined as a member, and anticipate I'll be up here more often to leverage the wealth of experience here! Please forgive me for the length of this post; I felt it necessary to explain both our previous and current setup in order to clarify the issues we're having.

I lead the Lighting ministry for our church (so yes, I'm a volunteer). Up until now, we have used an ETC Express 48/96 console, with a couple dozen conventional fixtures and 10 K-9 Bulldogs (BDs) for color changing on our backdrops and stage props. Each BD has been set up in 5-chan mode and programmed in the console as a 5-chan fixture. Our cues have no BD channels in them (tracking is off). Instead, we have created pile-on submasters that each have only BD in them so we can effect different color changes by hand in concert with the feel and rhythm of each worship song. Color blends are achievable with this setup, and there is no need to worry about which sub "has control".

Planning for the future, we recently purchased an ION console and my team underwent ETC-provided training for it. We have migrated our weekly show over to it, mostly. Fixture management, as anyone familiar with both consoles knows, is very different from that of the Express. Whereas the Express co-opted the channel paradigm for management of fixture attributes, and required consumption of a channel for each DMX address, the ION assigns a fixture type to a single channel, and manages the addresses associated with the attributes in the background.

On the ION, we're using our standard Bulldog-free cues to control our conventionals. We then have 10 channels each defined as an 8-chan BD type (the BDs are now in 8-chan mode). We have constructed the building blocks of groups, color palettes (by Type), and presets using these channels, whereby each preset is a group of BDs in a given color scene. Submasters have then been created using combinations of presets, and assigned to virtual faders, which we then control using our fader wing. The subs are all Additive, Proportional, HTP, Exclusive, and Independent. Again, tracking is off.

The problem we have is that we can no longer blend or cross-fade our color scenes with the same freedom we had with the Express. There are a few anomalies we need to resolve:
  1. With one color sub active, introducing another into the mix blends to an extent, but not to the same level as we saw on the Express.
  2. A complete cross-fade to another sub leaves residual color from the now-out sub in the live display.
  3. After introducing a second sub into the mix, if the first sub is lowered even 1% (and still above the intensity of the second), the second takes control. If the second is then removed from the mix, all color goes out completely, even though the first sub is still "active."
On the Express, with multiple subs active, none of them had "control". It was always an HTP scenario; the color combo/intensities always reflected the highest channel in effect. Blending was very smooth.

I have a feeling these differences are due to the all-channel fixture model of the Express vs the Intensity/Non-intensity attribute model of the ION. Is there anything I can do, in terms of configuration and/or procedure, that can effect Express-similar behavior on the ION to resolve these issues?
 
You don't have to patch the Bulldogs as attribute devices in Ion (I.E. as single channel with attributes).

You can always use up the console channels and just patch as you did on the Express. You have a 10,0000 channel and at minimum, 1024 addresses on the Ion, so I'd doubt you'd run short.

Then just re-build the subs with the channels, as you had it on the Express.

Steve, thanks for responding.

One of the things we really liked about establishing the BDs as attribute devices is that color programming is much simpler. It sounds like you're saying that we can either have either easier programming with less flexible playback or more complex programming with our playback issues resolved. Is that right? If so, that's unfortunate. :(
 
When you ran on the Express, using 5 channel mode, you essentially were mixing Intensity, and RGB&W, so 5 subs per fixture ?, or at least 5 Subs of grouped units, but essentially only mixing color with 4 faders ?.

And now all you've added is the extra 3 effects channels available, which shouldn't interact with the color mixing.

What it sounds like is while recording subs, you grabbed other color attributes as zero values - I.E. When doing red, possibly the B, G and W attributes are in the red sub ?. Thus might be getting some odd behavoir when blending.

You can see if this is so by looking at the subs in blind - Sub, XX, Enter.

In truth, the best way to get an answer toy what you are seeing, is to re-post this on both the ETC forum as well as the FaceBook Eos Programmers Page. More learned people then me gay better advise you.
 
Steve,

On the Express, in 5-channel mode, we ran 5 channels per fixture, and mixed all 10 fixtures (50 channels) into a single sub representing a color scene (e.g., "Sunset" or "Daylight"). When we blended subs, since each attribute was on its own channel, it was HTP, so blending the same attribute (e.g., "red") on a given fixture (A) with two subs (1, 2) resulted in the sub with the highest level for A/red (say sub 1) coming through. But the intensity for A may have been higher on sub 2, so that would take effect. Order of introducing the subs into the Live scene did not matter, because everything was HTP.

Our ION subs are setup similarly, whereby all 10 fixtures (each consuming one channel) have their intensities and color attributes programmed into one sub. There is no "red" sub; like the Express, there is a "Sunset" sub that has color mixes for all of the fixtures in one sub. But since only the Intensities are HTP and the colors are LTP, order of introduction is now very important, and we have lost the flexibility in playback we had with the Express.

If previous Express behavior is not possible while taking advantage of the enhanced programming features for fixtures, what we would really like to see is a user-selectable switch that makes non-intensity attributes (at least color) either default to LTP as they do now, or use HTP.

I'll post to the other resources as you suggest, though. Thanks for your support.
 
Greg-

One thing to check is if your color values are storing as Hue and Saturation values in your subs. Try switching these to RGB values, so that the RGB values are white and the H/S values are greyed out. This might solve your HTP issues. ION uses H/S by default in the color picker but theres a color format function that switches it for you.

Hope it works and good luck.
 

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