cruiser said:
It can also happen from having a
gel too close to the lamp tray, the
fixture not been focussed properly, or been left on for wayyy too long at FF. (why do we say FF? does it stand for anything...???)
FF is computer geek-speak for 255 - the maximum value (full-on) for a DMX-512
channel. It's
hexadecimal (base-16) notation.
DMX-512 sends data as an 8-bit
binary number in the range 0-255, where
decimal 0 = 00000000 and decimal 255 = 11111111. Writing out the 1's and zeros is a hassle. Converting, in your head, from
binary to decimal, is a pain. Us geeks figured that we could further confuse the issue by splitting the
binary number into two groups of four bits. and using a single digit to represent each group.
0000 = 0
0001 = 1
0010 = 2
0011 = 3
0100 = 4
0101 = 5
0110 = 6
0111 = 7
1000 = 8
1001 = 9
when we ran out of regular digits, we adopted letters of the alphabet, so
1010 = A
1011 = B
1100 = C
1101 = D
1110 = E
1111 = F
So FF stands for 11111111, the biggest number you can
send as an eight-bit signal - full-on for a DMX-512
channel.
John