John,
Good points and before I answer I can state that the
ETC implantation with the v2.0
Magic Sheet is far from perfect. It does however and seemingly change the interface (at times) from a command
line,
button pushing method, to a "push the associated
button on the
screen" method. The
magic sheet I posted has purposes from Lightwright inside each box. If I push that "Box", that is labeled
Channel 4 - "Fnt Stg Pink", then I can now manipulate the
intensity of that
channel. That's the LD's choice of terminology (and can be anything you can make fit on the
screen). I added the color info to been seen as well from LW. If that is in the same syntax as what the LD is "thinking" about that light, special, group whatever, then the touch
screen label represents that. If the LD asks for the Box Amber to be at 50%, then the
Magic Sheet touch
screen button allows ANYBODY with that interface to just simply push the
button on the
screen labeled "Box Amber" and either wheel it, or command
line enter, or if you choose, you can place on the
magic sheet screen, a set of buttons "10, 20, 30"
etc.... for intensities and push those, and if you want a "+/-" set of buttons (that are inherent on the
Eos series desks), to raise/lower by 5 %, 10% whatever you set it to, then put that on there too.
The
Magic Sheet display is, for the first time, making me wish I had an
Eos Ti or
Gio, instead of my
Ion. As a
programmer, having dual Magic Sheets right in front of me, rather then the
Ion setup I have, would make me forget where the buttons are on the
desk. As a
programmer, in 5 minutes time, I KNOW where everything in the
plot is located on those screens. I can
call up stuff about as fast as you can ask for it and you do NOT need to
call up
channel numbers. That, to me, is really important as I get a lot of European (and other) events that may
send me a
plot, that I adapt to our
house, but that have no
channel numbers that are useful to the company LD. They only know "Blue
Bax Upstage" and this all makes my job a lot easier.
As comment that our magic sheets for the ML control - what I jokingly
call a "Direct Select Replacement
Page", already has the fixtures labels as "Fix 1, Fix 2"
etc... laid out in the order I see them from the
desk. I no longer think of "
Channel 301
thru 306". I stopped doing that when I used the Group Direct Select pages, assigning fixtures to groups according to how they appeared on the DS
page. I don't do that anymore as a
Magic Sheet lets me place the actual
fixture symbol, plus whatever text I desire in and around the
fixture for whatever add'l info. I need to be seen in a graphical
layout of the
stage. Hell, I can import a drawing of the
stage layout and
overlay my focus palettes right on top, if I want.
As to Marking. The desks can be set to Auto-Mark to
preset the attributes of a
fixture, in the
cue PRIOR TO the next
cue you need them. You can change that to what is known as Reference Marks. You choose the
cue that the fixtures will be needed in (the Reference
Cue), then manually
Mark them to the
point you want the moves to happen. Time, delays, which attributes move when (Pan/Tilt slowly, whatever), can all be manipulated.
Will not comment on the manipulation of intensities of channels across a range of cues, 'cause I'm really weak on that subject !, but I think it does it with
Track (and backwards with
Trace).
As to Groups.
ETC changed groups with
Eos. A group no longer has
intensity (or values). It's only a collection of channels (which is a logical idea when you start to use it). To do a group of channels that have proportional (or any)intensities, you now use an
Intensity Palette. Which I never use. Judy D., LD for the the Martha Graham dance company used to use groups in a really clever way on the
Express/
ion. She would ask me "Group 21". No value. It just highlighted a bunch of channels - say the upper shins, and told her what the
level was. She stopped doing that with the
Eos software. Yes, I use and configure groups to manipulate a range of "purposes", to save time. But I can readily see what all the side blues are doing. The
intensity is read back to me.
Now could you configure a
screen that has
Intensity Palettes ?. Don't know and I can see your need. I can see the need to highlight all the stuff pointing toward the upper
platform SR. Not sure how to do that.
Does it do all YOU want ?. Probably not. Is it changing the way I work ?. Yup and I'm really excited about what I see.
