Palette Won't Play Well With My Spectra Cycs
- Thread starterderekleffew
- Start date
Well, my first reaction is to point out that after several months of issues with a Palette trying to run LED's live, we switched out to an ETC Ion and never looked back.
Barring that as an option, a couple things come to mind. Please understand this was 3 years ago for me, so my memory is fuzzy on the exact keystrokes but I can at least generally advise you.
1) The subs on a Palette have a number of modes. Most prevalent, they apply the color and intensity on the upfade, and remove the color parameter proportionally with the intensity of the sub. So if your "Live" channels for your units are set to White, 0%, as you fade up your yellow sub, the lights will gradually mix over to Yellow at 100%. Bring the sub back down and the lights will "rubber-band" back to their "Live" state of White, 0%.
I was lobbying Strand to add a fader mode where color attributes on a sub would become fully applied when the sub reached 100%, and returning the sub down to 0% only affected intensity and the color wouldn't rubber-band back to its original state. They seemed reluctant to go that route, but I thought they were in consideration of it. You should investigate if they've since added a submaster mode that alters how attributes are applied in situations such as this.
We ended up resigning ourselves to recording lots of color palettes onto the keypad banks of the VL and all subs were recorded as intensity only. 1 bank was used for selecting different groups of LED's, and the other banks had lots of colors we could press to apply the colors to the selected groups.
Seem to recall there was a key command to gradually fade into the colors being selected if you didn't want to snap into those colors instantly.
2) There is good reason for this issue. When you record your subs, if you don't mask off the other color attributes, Red will be recorded at 100%, Green at 0%, Blue at 0%. Without a mask to prevent the 0%'s from being recorded, Red isn't just Red at full, it's Red at full and Green/Blue at zero. Thus, if you have a Red sub and a Green sub, whenever you adjust one, it will snap into that color and kill the other colors rather than blend each color together.
There is a way to record subs so that they mask out the other parameters, giving your Red fader only control of the Red attribute. I forget what this is but it should be in the manual.
The other option is that there is an attribute control mode for faders. You can set them to control the designated parameter of a device. So that Red only does Red, Green only Green, etc. Appears you've not had much luck this route though. Probably as much luck as we had.
We weren't wild about either option, even if they had worked. We had Selador 7-color devices, multiple flavor with different configurations of emitter colors, so nobody was going to be able to mix colors on faders on the fly. This is why we went the route of using the faders only to control intensity, and then color palettes on the banks to handle all of our color.
If you go this route, you have to be sure to also mask the color parameters when you record the subs. Otherwise your subs will default to the color Black, and after you bring your subs up and apply a color, moving the sub faders at all will snap the colors back to black.
--
Biggest issue we had was inconsistency. Those Light Palettes had very inconsistent behavior of their submasters. We had a lot of issues where colors would momentarily strobe to white once or twice bring a fader up or taking it back down. Strand wasn't able to offer us any support on that issue to my recollection.
I'd try masking out the other color parameters when you record your subs, and see if you can get a sub that only talks to the Reds, another only to the Greens, etc.
Hope this helps. My vernacular may be off. I've been on ETC consoles primarily the last couple years so it's possible Strand uses other terms for what I call Sneak, Direct Select, Submaster Mode, Mask, etc. Post if you need more clarification. I should be able to jog my memory on those terms after a few minutes in the manual.
Best regards, and good luck,
MN
Barring that as an option, a couple things come to mind. Please understand this was 3 years ago for me, so my memory is fuzzy on the exact keystrokes but I can at least generally advise you.
1) The subs on a Palette have a number of modes. Most prevalent, they apply the color and intensity on the upfade, and remove the color parameter proportionally with the intensity of the sub. So if your "Live" channels for your units are set to White, 0%, as you fade up your yellow sub, the lights will gradually mix over to Yellow at 100%. Bring the sub back down and the lights will "rubber-band" back to their "Live" state of White, 0%.
I was lobbying Strand to add a fader mode where color attributes on a sub would become fully applied when the sub reached 100%, and returning the sub down to 0% only affected intensity and the color wouldn't rubber-band back to its original state. They seemed reluctant to go that route, but I thought they were in consideration of it. You should investigate if they've since added a submaster mode that alters how attributes are applied in situations such as this.
We ended up resigning ourselves to recording lots of color palettes onto the keypad banks of the VL and all subs were recorded as intensity only. 1 bank was used for selecting different groups of LED's, and the other banks had lots of colors we could press to apply the colors to the selected groups.
Seem to recall there was a key command to gradually fade into the colors being selected if you didn't want to snap into those colors instantly.
2) There is good reason for this issue. When you record your subs, if you don't mask off the other color attributes, Red will be recorded at 100%, Green at 0%, Blue at 0%. Without a mask to prevent the 0%'s from being recorded, Red isn't just Red at full, it's Red at full and Green/Blue at zero. Thus, if you have a Red sub and a Green sub, whenever you adjust one, it will snap into that color and kill the other colors rather than blend each color together.
There is a way to record subs so that they mask out the other parameters, giving your Red fader only control of the Red attribute. I forget what this is but it should be in the manual.
The other option is that there is an attribute control mode for faders. You can set them to control the designated parameter of a device. So that Red only does Red, Green only Green, etc. Appears you've not had much luck this route though. Probably as much luck as we had.
We weren't wild about either option, even if they had worked. We had Selador 7-color devices, multiple flavor with different configurations of emitter colors, so nobody was going to be able to mix colors on faders on the fly. This is why we went the route of using the faders only to control intensity, and then color palettes on the banks to handle all of our color.
If you go this route, you have to be sure to also mask the color parameters when you record the subs. Otherwise your subs will default to the color Black, and after you bring your subs up and apply a color, moving the sub faders at all will snap the colors back to black.
--
Biggest issue we had was inconsistency. Those Light Palettes had very inconsistent behavior of their submasters. We had a lot of issues where colors would momentarily strobe to white once or twice bring a fader up or taking it back down. Strand wasn't able to offer us any support on that issue to my recollection.
I'd try masking out the other color parameters when you record your subs, and see if you can get a sub that only talks to the Reds, another only to the Greens, etc.
Hope this helps. My vernacular may be off. I've been on ETC consoles primarily the last couple years so it's possible Strand uses other terms for what I call Sneak, Direct Select, Submaster Mode, Mask, etc. Post if you need more clarification. I should be able to jog my memory on those terms after a few minutes in the manual.
Best regards, and good luck,
MN
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