Stupid Ion Questions 6: File handling

Jay Ashworth

Well-Known Member
We've just rehung the FOH bridge, in consequence of which our Rep plot showfile (and all its children) are now inaccurate (pending a repatch, which we're probably not going to do*; there are only about 3 persistent children we care about, and it was time to clean those up too).

This leads me to the questions:

1) Can I batch move shows into a subfolder named (Don't Copy Out without Cleaning Up)?

2) When we create our new grandparent show file, can we mark it read only, so people *have* to save child showfiles with a new name?

3) Is there a really good treatment of how Save handles where it's going to put the file -- in the Show Archive, or in a subfolder thereof? This is one of the least intuitive parts of the UI, for me; I can almost never figure out where it's going, something not helped by it asking for the filename *before* it shows you where it's going.

And

4) When I build a look with submasters, are the subs recorded in the cue, or the channels they contain? On a Smartfade, if I build a submaster with 3 channels and stack it, the *sub* is in the stack, and if I put it 5 places, and then change the sub, all 5 change. Does EOS work that way too?

--

* Part of the motivation for the rehang was to give me a better collection of specials at FOH (thanks, boss), so more thought went into this one than previously.
 
1) Can I batch move shows into a subfolder named (Don't Copy Out without Cleaning Up)?

Yes, you have to exit into the shell. If my memory is correct it's under settings and maintenance(?) and then there's an option to let you access the show files and move them around. I'm fairly certain it's under the settings button.

2) When we create our new grandparent show file, can we mark it read only, so people *have* to save child showfiles with a new name?

Nope. Best thing to do is to make many copies and keep them safe. Follow the 3, 2, 1 rule of backups if you feel so inclined! Maybe get a flash drive that has your master file on it and then just merge from it every time you are creating a new show. Merging will keep you from "opening" the file as it's just pulling data out of it.

3) Is there a really good treatment of how Save handles where it's going to put the file -- in the Show Archive, or in a subfolder thereof? This is one of the least intuitive parts of the UI, for me; I can almost never figure out where it's going, something not helped by it asking for the filename *before* it shows you where it's going.

When doing a Save As, I find it reasonably intuitive. You drill down into the folder you want to save the file in. Once in the directory of your choosing you can double click "<new folder>" to make a new folder. To save in that folder, you simple double click on the title of the folder. I'm very particular about my folder structure. I'll have a parent folder for the season (2017-2018) and inside there each show will have it's own folder. And inside that will be all the show files named appropriately, such as SHOW NAME - Patch, SHOW NAME - Level Set, SHOW NAME - Dry Tech, etc, etc... That way I can easily go back and find something if I need to. When the show opens I rename the file to SHOW NAME - Open. Having a specific folder structure helps me to know where things are when saving and where to look for them later.

I'm a little confused about what you mean where it asks you the file name before you save. If you do a Save As, you are telling the console where to save it. Are you just hitting Save instead when making a new show file?

4) When I build a look with submasters, are the subs recorded in the cue, or the channels they contain?

As long as your sub-master isn't set to be an exclusive sub, it'll record the channel data into the cue. One of the things that trips many people up coming from and Express(ion) world is that when you save or update a cue, the values are live in the playback. Meaning if you bring the sub down, the cue level remains on stage (simplified explanation). There are ways around this if that is your desired way to program shows.

On a Smartfade, if I build a submaster with 3 channels and stack it, the *sub* is in the stack, and if I put it 5 places, and then change the sub, all 5 change. Does EOS work that way too?

I don't believe sub-masters count as referable data. If you store groups of channels, colors, looks, etc. into palettes and presets, then it becomes referenced data so when you alter the palette or preset it will also affect anything that references it*. I think Intensity Palettes may be what you are looking for. You should be able to assign palettes to faders with the new software, thus linking the two and making it act similar to what you are used to on the Smartfade.


*There are ways when recording to turn referenced data into absolute data. Also, be sure when updating cues that you are on Make Absolute if you intend to make cue level changes to a fixture that you initially gave it information from a palette or preset. Otherwise when you update the cue it will also update the reference, thus affecting everywhere else that references that data.
 
Out of curiosity from a guy who thinks in terms of piano boards, what O/S do these consoles use? Can't you get out to an O/S prompt and deal with files in the equivalent of Windows Explorer?

(My last job before retiring was network manager for an engineering firm with 85 employees and 3 offices scattered around the state. We had 5 servers for different purposes and usually over 200 open projects, and good file management was rather necessary.)
 
Out of curiosity from a guy who thinks in terms of piano boards, what O/S do these consoles use? Can't you get out to an O/S prompt and deal with files in the equivalent of Windows Explorer?

(My last job before retiring was network manager for an engineering firm with 85 employees and 3 offices scattered around the state. We had 5 servers for different purposes and usually over 200 open projects, and good file management was rather necessary.)
Eos originally shipped on Win XP embedded, now it ships on Win 7 embedded. Due to that, there are some hardware and peripheral differences, but the software is identical and will run on either platform. Grand MA uses Linux I believe as the underlying OS.

Pretty much all of the features you would need for file management are located within the shell or Eos itself. If you want more, you can always export the files from Eos and then manage them on your personal computer for storage and archival purposes.
 
Yes, you have to exit into the shell. If my memory is correct it's under settings and maintenance(?) and then there's an option to let you access the show files and move them around. I'm fairly certain it's under the settings button.

Yeah; I thought I remembered seeing something in there.

Nope. Best thing to do is to make many copies and keep them safe. Follow the 3, 2, 1 rule of backups if you feel so inclined! Maybe get a flash drive that has your master file on it and then just merge from it every time you are creating a new show. Merging will keep you from "opening" the file as it's just pulling data out of it.

Yeah, but, as is usually my answer, our environment isn't really conducive to that working as well as you'd like.

When doing a Save As, I find it reasonably intuitive. You drill down into the folder you want to save the file in. [ ... ]
I'm a little confused about what you mean where it asks you the file name before you save. If you do a Save As, you are telling the console where to save it. Are you just hitting Save instead when making a new show file?

Absolutely not. ;-)

I'm gonna have to sit in front of the desk with a camcorder (or run nomad and camtasia or something) to illustrate what I'm talking about, but it's doing the job of a file-browser dialog, a design 2 decades older than EOS, and doing it differently.

As long as your sub-master isn't set to be an exclusive sub, it'll record the channel data into the cue. One of the things that trips many people up coming from and Express(ion) world is that when you save or update a cue, the values are live in the playback. Meaning if you bring the sub down, the cue level remains on stage (simplified explanation). There are ways around this if that is your desired way to program shows.

We've already gotten to Disable-AutoPlay in a different thread, and I can live with the extra work *that* entails better than having it on, in which I differ from my boss, who's done it the 'traditional' way for too long.

I don't believe sub-masters count as referable data. If you store groups of channels, colors, looks, etc. into palettes and presets, then it becomes referenced data so when you alter the palette or preset it will also affect anything that references it*. I think Intensity Palettes may be what you are looking for. You should be able to assign palettes to faders with the new software, thus linking the two and making it act similar to what you are used to on the Smartfade.

Yeah; Intensity Pallettes. I hadn't gotten that far. I'm still not sure that's specifically what I'm after, but once I've played with them, I'll know.

I do have to say though, that, coming out of a Smartfade environment, where all the operational metaphors were intuitive, the continuing habit of the EOS family to say "oh yeah; you can do that easy common thing... with second- or third-level power tools piled on top of the basic software" is a bit frustrating. (Yes, palettes are a power tool.)
 
I'm glad this question came up. I manage an Element, and every so often, someone will go to [File] [New Show], which of course removes the patch for all my LED's and sets everything 1-to-1... I've been saving everything to my flash drives, but was curious if there was a better way.

That said, I also find the process of saving a new show a bit disorienting.
 
Pretty much all of the features you would need for file management are located within the shell or Eos itself. If you want more, you can always export the files from Eos and then manage them on your personal computer for storage and archival purposes.

I assume it's obvious why "export the files from EOS to a PC" isn't an answer to "how do I make an "OLD SHOWS" folder and move things to it?"

The point I'm trying to make is that while I understand that EOS family software has its own backwards combatibility to maintain, that doesn't really serve as justification for why simple things like "load a file", "save a file" differ so markedly from what counts as a standard in the industry... which standard was pretty well established when EOS 1.0 shipped in... when was that? After 1994? :)

"If you want to use our tools, you'll learn our way" only gets you so far, and as I age, that's less and less far... :-}
 
I'm glad this question came up. I manage an Element, and every so often, someone will go to [File] [New Show], which of course removes the patch for all my LED's and sets everything 1-to-1... I've been saving everything to my flash drives, but was curious if there was a better way.

That said, I also find the process of saving a new show a bit disorienting.

FYI: I just saw the EOS 2.6 release notes earlier, and they mention that in the new release, Element people get most of the rest of EOS they didn't have already; you might want to look into it if you didn't already know.
 
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We've just rehung the FOH bridge, in consequence of which our Rep plot showfile (and all its children) are now inaccurate (pending a repatch, which we're probably not going to do*; there are only about 3 persistent children we care about, and it was time to clean those up too).

This leads me to the questions:

1) Can I batch move shows into a subfolder named (Don't Copy Out without Cleaning Up)?

2) When we create our new grandparent show file, can we mark it read only, so people *have* to save child showfiles with a new name?

3) Is there a really good treatment of how Save handles where it's going to put the file -- in the Show Archive, or in a subfolder thereof? This is one of the least intuitive parts of the UI, for me; I can almost never figure out where it's going, something not helped by it asking for the filename *before* it shows you where it's going.

And

4) When I build a look with submasters, are the subs recorded in the cue, or the channels they contain? On a Smartfade, if I build a submaster with 3 channels and stack it, the *sub* is in the stack, and if I put it 5 places, and then change the sub, all 5 change. Does EOS work that way too?

--

* Part of the motivation for the rehang was to give me a better collection of specials at FOH (thanks, boss), so more thought went into this one than previously.


1) Yes as stated above, you will need to exit EOS software go to Settings and then the Maintenance tab on the right. Part way down is a File Manager button.
This works nearly identical as windows explorer in the sense of selecting files. If you want to move things around within Show File Archive, just have both sides of File Manager focused within that folder.

2) There is no way to Lock or make Read Only a show file. But each time you hit save, you are not overwriting a previous show file. You will notice there is a Date/Time stamp on each show file save, no matter how many times you save, EOS will not overwrite the original file.

3) I'm not sure what you mean by this? When I try to save a show file as a new name, in the CIA I go File>Save As>Show File Archive>Select folder(s) I want the file to be under>Create new folder if necessary(using <new folder> option>Once folder is created/found I double click on the folder and a prompt asks what I want to name it>I name it and hit enter and it saves.

Are you hitting 'Save' instead of 'Save As' after creating a new show file? I believe it just saves directly to the Show File Archive folder not in any sub folders.

4) No, EOS records channel data, so it is not looking at what each submaster is doing but what each channel is doing. That is where Pallets come in as they can be recorded into cues as referenced data(so when you change the pallet everything referencing it will change as well).

As always if your issue is pressing or you want more information, give us a call.
Tech Support is there for any and all issues you may have. They are here to help with all issues from how do I program this to how do I clean my ETC gear to my ETC gear just died.
I recently had a user spend an hour figuring out how to change from Cue Only mode to Tracking mode.
If he had contacted Tech Support, we could have helped made the change and gotten him back to programming in less than 10 minutes.

For technical support in the Americas,
please call 608-831-4116
or toll-free in the U.S. at 800-688-4116
[email protected]

https://www.etcconnect.com/Support/Contact-Us.aspx

Also, the ETC forums may have some answers you are looking for too.
EOS Family(software and hardware) forum is https://community.etcconnect.com/control_consoles/f/eos-family

Hope this helps and much of what I have said has already been pointed out, sorry for any double answers.
Joe
 
1) Yes as stated above, you will need to exit EOS software go to Settings and then the Maintenance tab on the right. Part way down is a File Manager button.
This works nearly identical as windows explorer in the sense of selecting files. If you want to move things around within Show File Archive, just have both sides of File Manager focused within that folder.

Yeah, I thought I'd seen that in there; I'm in and out of the house, so...

2) There is no way to Lock or make Read Only a show file. But each time you hit save, you are not overwriting a previous show file. You will notice there is a Date/Time stamp on each show file save, no matter how many times you save, EOS will not overwrite the original file.

And there you make it easier for me to have a handle on what's bugging me about the Open/Save stuff.

It's difficult -- at least for me -- to distinguish between the representation of File Versions and Folders in the tree under Show Archive.

Based on the things I see in our file tree, I'm not the only one having a problem. :)

3) I'm not sure what you mean by this? When I try to save a show file as a new name, in the CIA I go File>Save As>Show File Archive>Select folder(s) I want the file to be under>Create new folder if necessary(using <new folder> option>Once folder is created/found I double click on the folder and a prompt asks what I want to name it>I name it and hit enter and it saves.

I'll be over there again today or tomorrow, and I'll try to document my through process better there.

Are you hitting 'Save' instead of 'Save As' after creating a new show file? I believe it just saves directly to the Show File Archive folder not in any sub folders.

Likely, yes.

4) No, EOS records channel data, so it is not looking at what each submaster is doing but what each channel is doing. That is where Pallets come in as they can be recorded into cues as referenced data(so when you change the pallet everything referencing it will change as well).

Yeah; I haven't quite climed up the tree that far yet, though I have been through all of the Basic Ion videos, and some of the Programming ones.

My overall problem with most of the documentation and training I've seen so far is that *it's for lighting designers* -- that, is, it says what and how, but assumes *you know why*. I'm sure I can't be the only person who is learning both lighting design *and* the Ion simultaneously...

Now, in a related story, some time in the last week or two, in a frantic rush to get to somewhere else on the web, I came across (I think), what looked like an Ion/EOS programming *tutorial manual*, in PDF format. I'd thought I saved it, but cannot find it in the history or downloads on either of my computers. I wasn't entirely clear if it was an ETC product either, but I can't find anything in the ETC documentation downloads page that remote resembles it...

As always if your issue is pressing or you want more information, give us a call.
Tech Support is there for any and all issues you may have. They are here to help with all issues from how do I program this to how do I clean my ETC gear to my ETC gear just died.

Sure. I've found, so far, that getting multiple viewpoints on the same question has been useful to me, which is why I ask here first. And it's not actually my desk; I'm overhire. But still...

I recently had a user spend an hour figuring out how to change from Cue Only mode to Tracking mode.
If he had contacted Tech Support, we could have helped made the change and gotten him back to programming in less than 10 minutes.

Absolutely. I've been lucky enough, so far, to succeed in not putting myself on the firing line for stuff I don't know how to do.

[email protected]

Any reason that's not (also) support@, as is conventional? :)

Thanks, Joe.
 
I'm glad this question came up. I manage an Element, and every so often, someone will go to [File] [New Show], which of course removes the patch for all my LED's and sets everything 1-to-1... I've been saving everything to my flash drives, but was curious if there was a better way.

That said, I also find the process of saving a new show a bit disorienting.

Next time you create a new show deselect 1to1. Now it creates shows with empty patches. no channels. an obvious mistake. you than can easily import the patch from another show file if desired.
 
Yeah, I thought I'd seen that in there; I'm in and out of the house, so...
Now, in a related story, some time in the last week or two, in a frantic rush to get to somewhere else on the web, I came across (I think), what looked like an Ion/EOS programming *tutorial manual*, in PDF format. I'd thought I saved it, but cannot find it in the history or downloads on either of my computers. I wasn't entirely clear if it was an ETC product either, but I can't find anything in the ETC documentation downloads page that remote resembles it...
.

Tea Break Tutorials. http://www.etcconnect.com/Support/Tutorials/Eos-Family-v2-2-Tea-Break-Tutorials-Series.aspx

It's for version 2.2, but as it approaches Eos from an entry level viewpoint which is great for learning the desk, it should be fine. Everything else you can learn about in the manual supplements. I am a fan of the TBTs and I've found they are a great way to learn the basics of how the desk thinks and operates. It also includes a Capture Polar standalone file so you can run it on ETCnomad and see things change in a visualizer.
 
On file management, one of the best options is to get a network attached storage unit (external HD with a USB to the switch, or a full network drive) and move your show archive to there. Then any other device on the network can backup, see, copy, move the files freely. Though I could unload onto ETC for reinventing a file management system different than every other modern system!

I second and 3rd the Tea Break Tutorials. They are hands on exercises with step by step instructions where you can also go off and try something else.

SmartFade is so radically different and simplified that I've had LDs rant and rave over it. A 2 scene preset is a better starting point for learning Eos. Forget the old process, concentrate on the goal.
 
My trick is to run a laptop as a backup and set it's ShowArchive directory to a cloud drive, in my case Google for non-Profits where our theatre company has an account. Doubly redundant with virtually instant offsite storage when the laptop is WiFi connected to the external router.

ETC's file system is very reminiscent of the DEC VAX journal file system from the 70's and 80's, except the VAX system had better purge functionality. One way to clean up the console's drive is to do a full backup, verify the backup, then delete all the ShowArchive content, then restore only the latest versions from the backup. It's the "delete everything" step that's scariest.
 
Well, I would move it all to an OLDSHOWS folder, except the newest versions, but yeah.

The Tea Break stuff isn't what I was looking for, but I'll take a look at it; thanks.
 

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