MagicQ vs Insight 2x with Seladors and other LEDs

[tayklor]

I have a choice to make regarding a show I'm designing next month. I'm designing a community theater show, and it will be fairly technically complex. I have about 120 conventionals, 3x 11" Seladors and 2x 21" Seladors, as well as up to 6 RGB LED PARs (the plot is not finalized, so I'm unsure of exactly what I will use). The cyc will be lit with old 4-circuit Century strips—RGBW—from above and 3-circuit R40s from below. I'm also finding a way of working amber into it using some other type of unit. There is also one gobo rotator.

We expect that there will be around 120 cues. Paper tech happens tomorrow.

The question is this: what are the advantages to controlling this rig with an Insight 2x vs MagicQ PC? I'm more familiar with the ETC product, and it has plenty of channel capacity to do what I need. However, I'm worried about keeping track of the 56 channels that the Seladors alone will occupy on it. MagicQ, though, understands color mixing paramaters, and I have already learned the basics, and I don't find it too difficult to use. I'm worried about the power of MagicQ with conventionals.

A second question would be if anyone knows how to make MagicQ properly import a patch and cues from an Eos-line system, as there's a good possibility that I can track down an Ion to borrow for tech but not the rest of the 3 week run. I've tried it and it brings in the cues but not the patch, and it's impossible to rebuild the patch without making the cues meaningless.

Thoughts?

 

[jhochb]

Good morning Tayklor

It doesn't look like you have any movers on the show. For this reason I go with the Insight if its is running V3.11
The ML software is a bit clunky but it should be fine for RGBA fixtures. If you can't find the right personality for your fixtures the ETC fixture editor is easy to use so you can build your own fixture personalities.
The ML function will also help you keep track of your fixtures, they'll be in GRAY.

 

[danTt]

Color Mixing on the Express(ion) series of consoles is a bit messy. It's certainly doable though.

A few different ways to deal with color mixing:

1) As fixtures, The insight 2 doesn't have encoders, which makes this a little bit harder, as you are having to page through and use the wheels a lot. I'd reccomend avoiding this.

2) Use the billions of sub on the insight. I think you can set the subs to LTP? and then just mix away. It's a little hard to keep track of this way, but board tape should get you most of the way.

3) Use groups. The insight remembers levels in the groups, so you could make a variety of groups, one that is each primary color for all fixtures (so you can mix) and then you could also make a group that is any of the specific colors you plan on using (You could also use focus points for this, but you are limited to only 99 of them if I recall). If your group had Red-21% Green-0% Blue-45% you could store these levels as a group and then just bring the group to full to recall that color. You'd need to track this information on paper as you went though, which could get fusterating.

One downside to the insight is that you can't do channel-level discrete timing. This means if your LED's have a weird dimming curve, you'll need to part them out, which is not the funnest thing to keep track of on the insight. Doable, but another headache as you go.
I have not used Chamsys enough to be able to compare it, but these are certainly a few options to control everything on the Insight

 

[Pie4Weebl]

Unless your LEDs are all going to share the same address, save yourself the headache and use Magic Q.

And no, there is no way to import a show from an ion to any other desk, other than consoles running the same software.

 

[doctrjohn]

Either console will be able to do what you want to do so I would go with whichever you are most comfortable/familiar with. I am about 98% sure the Insight you would be using is running the last build of Expression software, so if you wanted to create fixture profiles for it you could do so pretty confidently. In any case Groups will be your friend if you go with the Insight, and read up on multi-part cues to deal with channel timing, and a touchscreen will make things faster if you go with MagicQ. I wouldn't worry about the conventionals with MagicQ; just build a lot of groups and they will be fast to recall (this is also where a touchscreen can come in handy). And, if you want to reconsider using a Congo, let me know and I can see if mine is available for your dates...

Best,
John

 

[icewolf08]

And no, there is no way to import a show from an ion to any other desk, other than consoles running the same software.

Actually, this is not true. I have taken shows from EOS family desks and put them on Strand 500 series desks with little issue once I figured out the conversion process.

EOS family can export as ASCII, so any console that can import an ASCII show file can import a file from EOS. Sometimes you may need the help of the OLE, or in my case, the help of the strand ShowPort software.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[chausman]

Actually, this is not true. I have taken shows from EOS family desks and put them on Strand 500 series desks with little issue once I figured out the conversion process.

EOS family can export as ASCII, so any console that can import an ASCII show file can import a file from EOS. Sometimes you may need the help of the OLE, or in my case, the help of the strand ShowPort software.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

This also works well going from Express(ion) to Eos, or between versions of Eos software.