One Visualizer to multiple desks on a network?

[theatre4jc]

Question for you guys. We have 3 Jands Vista consoles in 3 of our 4 rooms and hope to have the last space using the same console before the end of the summer. Next budget year I am pushing for a Visualizer and am researching which would best suite out needs. We are a large church with a 7,500 seat room, a 2,500 seat room, a 500 seat youth room and a 600 seat youth room. Our services and styles are both contemporary and traditional plus we do multiple theatre shows a year as well as concerts and a few large scale hybrid productions. Our IT department has a large network system already built and I will be utlizing this to network all my consoles together and have a computer in my office with a Visualizer on it for programming. Now my question is, can any visualizers have multiple consoles hooked to it at the same time? My goal is to be able to program one room, quickly and easily switch to another, and then go back to what I was working on. So I would have 4 consoles on one visualizer with 4 different shows. Would this be as simple as closing one file and opening another or can the visualizer be linked to only one console at a time?

Also what visualizers would you suggest? I'm debating at this point between Wsy and ESP but am open to others. Need 4 Universes at this point.

 

[JChenault]

The question I have is how many universes of control do you have in each room. I the total number of universes is less than the number of universes your visualizes can handle, and you segregate them between venues ( ie universe 1 in the big space, universe two in the second space, etc ) I don't see that you are likely to have an issue. The last time I used ESP it was restricted to four universes using Artnet. I can't imagine they don't support more universes now.

Are you currently running Artnet to control your lights? I so you might want to ask the IT folks to set up a physically separate network for the lighting.

 

[theatre4jc]

I am running 3 Universes in my large room (2 full and 1 about half full), in my mid sized room I'm running 1 full and about 60 channels on the second, and in both of my small rooms I'm running less than 1 universe of channels however I have it spread across two different universes. I am pretty sure that ESP can do as many Artnet universes as the dongle allows to run. Unfortunately I cannot afford to get a dongle large enough to run each room on it's own and have all going at the same time in ESP. In WYS I can do this because buying the Perform it will give me everything I need. However I am hoping to be Mac based and WYS only works on a PC, I want to avoid dual boot because it scares my IT guy and while we are working to get a separate Mac network with our own IT guy, it hasn't happened yet.

As of now I am not using Artnet to control and am coming out the physical ports on the Vista consoles. But if the theory that I can have mulitple consoles hooked the visualizer is solid then I can always load a new show for each room and tell it which console to go to.

 

[JChenault]

Re reading your post - my first question is why do you want to do this ( have a single visualizer in your office being driven by consoles in four rooms ). Is your intent to do programming ahead of time in your office? If that is the case, I do not understand why you want to connect four consoles at once to the visualizer.

If that's what you are trying to do, you will need a console in your office for programming, next to the visualizer. So you move a console in there. You connect the artnet output of the console into the visualizer. Load up a show file for ( say) the 3 universe room into the console, load the 3 universe room into the visualizer, and start writing cues. When you want to shift to the two universe room, you save your work, load in the rig for the second room, load in the visualizer for the second room, and away you go.


Is that what your are trying to do or am I missing something?

 

[soundman]

I'm with JChenault on this one. I can't think of a reason you would not want the visualizer in the same room as the console. How else would you see what is being programmed? If all your desks are the same model vista I would just grab one not in use and bring it to the pre-viz suite and bang away at it. It won't matter what room the console is from or what show is being programmed, its all about the show file not the hardware.

I've been impressed with what I have seen from ESP. At Coachella there was a suite set up and we swapped between GMA2s, GMA1s, and Avos all week long seamlessly. Load the file for the acts day with their rig trims and let them bang away. It helped alot for acts that needed to clone a bunch of stuff and create filler if their daily rigs were smaller. Most still had to spend a couple hours doing touch ups for focuses and what nots on an overnight.

 

[theatre4jc]

Yeah I am wanting to turn my office into a pre-vis suite. Going to mount a screen on the wall for viewing and was planning on starting with the PC version of the console and then adding in a physical desk when needed or as my needs grow.

My goal for having all four consoles tying to the same room is so I can build it in my office and spit it out but I'm all the time having to walk room to room to turn on lights at the console for someone. So I was hoping I could tie it all together and be able to be programming one show, grab another room in my vista software and turn the lights in the room needed and go back to my programming. I guess I don't have to have it that way, it would just be nice. I'm just trying to keep from having to stop my work, walk across campus to press a few buttons then walk back and pick back up where I left off. Trying to maximize my time and I seem to be going about it wrong.

 

[soundman]

Ah that clears it up a bit.

The consoles being networked has little to do with the pre-viz suite. Not sure how it would be done with a Vista but with a GMA2 with some tweaking of worlds and users your office PC could access the full rig but each room could only control that room.