I have been researching software based lighting control so we could add moving lights and
RGB LED fixtures to our
conventional lighting capabilities for our
current production of All Shook Up and future shows. Our theater has a 72
channel dimmer system and an older
Colortran (now
Leviton)
Encore 24/48 Expanded lighting
console. The
Encore is limited to 550 stored cues and does not include any features for intelligent light control. Based on comments here and elsewhere that LightFactory does LEDs, Movers, and
conventional lights well, I tried out LightFactory (V2.12
build 260) in demo mode and later bought a 1
Universe license. Our hardware interface is an
ENTTEC DMX USB PRO
dongle. I'm still working my way up the learning curve but I have been successful getting the show programmed and we are pleased with the results. We opened this past Friday 9-13-2013. Patching in LightFactory was fairly easy and intuitive. It included
fixture definitions for the Chauvet COLORado 3
LED fixtures and
High End Systems Studio Color 575 and Studio Spot 575
CMY movers we rented for the production but the definitions needed some improvement. I used the included
fixture editor to modify the definitions a little to get them to work better for us and also imported more representative
fixture images. I also created some simple definitions for some specific
conventional fixtures.
Cue storage and modification has been a little more difficult to get used to but I did get things done eventually. The
Cue List Editor
screen allows cues to be copied and deleted. I managed to lock it up once when I moved or deleted a
cue and somehow got a next
cue link pointing to a no longer existing
cue. I later found LightFactory includes a Clean Up Next
Cue Numbering option so they have a way to fix it. Even though the
cue list locked up, I was able to kill and restart LightFactory and all the cues I had done to that
point had been saved. The
Cue List Editor also has an pop up
Cue List Details
screen that allows channels/fixtures to be added or removed from the
cue,
dimmer levels to be changed,
fixture attributes to be set or changed,
etc. It is not obvious how to get to the
Cue List Details
screen and I have to admit I found it by accident and then later spent hours looking for it again. There is little
button with just ... as a label in the
channel list with each
cue that brings up the details
screen. I have also modified and created some new effects for the LEDs and movers using the FX Editor
screen and some additional palettes using the Palettes Editor
screen. I have not yet used the
Macro Editor or the Interface Builder. Hope this is helpful to someone else going through the same kind of research.