newtech said:
I'm new to the theater tech department and have been thrown into using a
Strand series 300. As I have never before done theater lighting and the previous tech left before giving me any training on the
system I am a little lost. Can anyone tell me where to find usefull tutorials or books that i could read to get a handle on this
system. I find the
manual to be either very poorly written or geared twoard some one with far more lightbooard experience than I. The basics are all I'm looking for at this
point such as general usage, navigating through menus, setting subs and any good tips on work flow with this
system. Any help would be great.
WOW REALLY!?! SOMEBODY TO TALK TO ABOUT THE
STRAND SERIES 300! Anyway we've both been thrown on the same boat. I have the
manual but the director would be all stingy about it if I lent it to somebody. Many many months ago, I asked the same question and sadly I got no reply that really showed me how to work it. But now that I've become more expierenced at it, I'll show you. So I'll tell you as much as I know thus far.
First off, you want to get to understand what everything does. As you may know, there are 6 "panels" that make up the lighting board (three on the top and three on the bottem). The first 4 (the top three and the bottem far left one) are all of the channels of your lights. I havn't figured how to get these working but I dont' use them anyway. I find it way easier to use the numeric keypad on panel 6 (which is on the bottem right). Panel 5 is in the bottom middle. Those are your submasters (30 of them I beleive). Ok now that you know what everything is, lets move on. (NOTE: BEFORE YOU MOVE ON, PRESS "LIVE" ON PANEL 6 TO GET TO THE MAIN
SCREEN.)
Depending on how many lights you have (I have about 70), you can have up to 499 lights connected to the board. So lets start off by turning on some lights. Enter in the numeric keypad "1 ON". You have just turned on light number 1. Lets say you want to turn on lights 1 through 10. You will put down "1-10 ON". This will turn on lights 1-10. You will have to experiment and see where each light is and where it is located. Now lets say you only want to have lights 1, 7, 8, and 10. You will type in "1+7+8+10 ON" (note: you must type "+" otherwise you will be typing in light number 17,810). You can also turn lights off by pressing the light number, and then "OFF".
Lets program a
cue. Type in "10-15+71-87+20-25 ON". It can be any numbers. I'm just typing in anything. So your basically saying turn on lights 10-15, then numbers 71-87, then 20-25. So these numbers should be on and it should say "FL" (full) under these numbers on the moniter. All you have to do now is press "REC
CUE 1 *" (the "*" is the enter key ((it's a double key on the bottom right)) ). You have now made your first
cue. To edit a
cue, just type in the numbers that you want and press "REC
CUE 1 *". It will tell you that you are about to record over something and that you cannot get it back once deleted, so just press enter again and you have edited your
cue. I'm not sure how many
cue's you can have. I've had up to 150 so far. I guess it depends on your hard drive. Lets talk about subs.
Sub's aka "submasters" are little slides that are on panel 5 and you can program any amount of lights on them and in some cases, I have used them as a
cue to make really nice trasition effects. But when we're done with the season, I usually make them into recognizeable settings like one of them is all on. Another sub I set for all green, another for all blue, and another for all red. Then another for
house lights and well, you get the
point. First you will have to get into the subs menu by pressing "subs" on panel 6. Once your in the subs menu, find the
button that is next to the numeric keypad called "sub" (NOTE: THIS IS A DIFFERENT KEY FROM THE OTHER SUBS KEY AND YOU MUST USE THE SUBS KEY THAT IS NEXT TO THE KEYPAD!!!) so anyway press the "sub" next to the keypad and press "1". It should have highlighted sub number 1. Now just enter any numbers that you want programed for that sub and press enter (*). It will show the numbers that you have selected. And press "sub 1 REC" (NOTE: THE SUB KEY. NOT THE SUBS KEY). Now you have recorded your first sub. Now that you are done recording, press "LIVE" to get you back to the main
screen. make sure everything is off. Bring sub number 1 up by sliding it upwards and the lights that you selected should increase as you bring up the slide. You can also press the
button that is below that sub that has a circle on it and may be lit up and it turns them all on but only as long as you hold that
button.
Well I'm really tired of typing for now. But if you have absolutely any questions at all regarding anything I have mentioned here, please do not hesitate to e-mail me at "
[email protected]". You can also put the lights at different levels but I'll explain that in a later post. Hope this has helped you.