Stevens R. Miller
Well-Known Member
I have returned with another of my vague and bumbling questions.
This time, I am in a theater with an ETC ColorSource 40 desk, and lots of Chauvet LEDs. I'm not sure of the model, but hanging in the house are four ellipsoidal LEDs that provide the main fill light for the stage. When I program a cue on the CS40 and follow that with another cue, the crossfade I expect is usually what I get.
Except that, some of the time (mabye when an instrument is changing color from one cue to the next?), my ellipsoidals will begin to fade to black and, about half-way through the fade, suddenly just black out completely.
Manipulating their individual faders confirms that they have no problem operating in the low end of their range of values. In fact, they often do fade smoothly down to black in most other cross-fades in my cue stack. Just some of the time, for no obvious reason, they interrupt their smooth fade-outs with sudden black-outs.
The CS40 is a bit mysterious to me. Unlike other ETC devices, like the Ion or Element, one's ability to edit the cue stack's individual cues seems a bit limited. There is no "tombstone" display where you can see (much less adjust) the intensity of an individual channel. The only option is to edit the cue live, on stage, by eye. There are separate "In," "Out," and "Wait" times for each cue (all of which are 1, 1, and 0, respectively).
I know that's hardly enough info to diagnose my problem with, but can anyone suggest things I might look into in order to find out why this is happening? Are there per-instrument settings that might be relevant? Anything particular to the CS40 I ought to investigate?
Thanks for any guidance.
This time, I am in a theater with an ETC ColorSource 40 desk, and lots of Chauvet LEDs. I'm not sure of the model, but hanging in the house are four ellipsoidal LEDs that provide the main fill light for the stage. When I program a cue on the CS40 and follow that with another cue, the crossfade I expect is usually what I get.
Except that, some of the time (mabye when an instrument is changing color from one cue to the next?), my ellipsoidals will begin to fade to black and, about half-way through the fade, suddenly just black out completely.
Manipulating their individual faders confirms that they have no problem operating in the low end of their range of values. In fact, they often do fade smoothly down to black in most other cross-fades in my cue stack. Just some of the time, for no obvious reason, they interrupt their smooth fade-outs with sudden black-outs.
The CS40 is a bit mysterious to me. Unlike other ETC devices, like the Ion or Element, one's ability to edit the cue stack's individual cues seems a bit limited. There is no "tombstone" display where you can see (much less adjust) the intensity of an individual channel. The only option is to edit the cue live, on stage, by eye. There are separate "In," "Out," and "Wait" times for each cue (all of which are 1, 1, and 0, respectively).
I know that's hardly enough info to diagnose my problem with, but can anyone suggest things I might look into in order to find out why this is happening? Are there per-instrument settings that might be relevant? Anything particular to the CS40 I ought to investigate?
Thanks for any guidance.