I don't really have a lot of experience with large lighting consoles, just some small ones.
I use FreeStyler a lot, sometimes MagicQ PC, also I have a small Elation DMX Operator Pro that I feel I have outgrown.
On the Elation board, I had (8) fixture buttons on the left and 8 faders below (with a channel bank fader, like a layer 1/2 for 1-8 or 9-16) and each fixture button addressed a single group of 16 channels starting at 1. There was also a handy-dandy joystick.
The right side of the board was designed for 8 channels of conventional lighting that I used for LED control, all LEDs on the stage set to the same address. Both sides had scenes and chases but they were very limited all-or-nothing approaches, so I only used them for abrupt changes. The chases were a little better but only pan and tilt (or all channels) could be set to fade instead of snap.
I got very comfortable with simply operating two fixtures from a single fixture button (with the pan inverted on one fixture), and using the faders themselves to set channel values. After I decided to upgrade from this console, I looked at FreeStyler and MagicQ because they both supported my OpenDMX dongle. Freestyler was pretty easy to pick up, mainly because of it's homegrown nature and it's relative simplicity.
MagicQ was another story. The programmer is quite cool, as is the FX generator and built in LED mapper. But how do you create something like an 'Override button'? Can't I have a button that forces the entire stage into a 'Safe' look, or perhaps sets a couple of related features like the mover's beam functions into one coherent appearance across 4-6 different channels (intensity, shutter, prism+rot, gobo+rot, iris, focus, etc)? I don't really use intensity much on any of my fixtures except my conventionals, so the entire playback/submaster fader seems like a waste.
Now trying to move to more complex consoles seems to be somewhat of a culture shock. Some consoles do have palettes or libraries, but I'm finding it really difficult and time-consuming to program a decent library of cues to cover the types of situations that busking a music festival needs to be able to cover.
One other thing: I hated losing my fixture channels on faders. Encoders are nowhere close to the feel of a fader for changing channel values. My Elation allows you to patch channels within fixtures, so I always had the same channel order (Pan, Tilt, Color, Gobo, Shutter, Intensity, etc) for each fixture. I could run this thing without looking at it once. I did a lot of research into Freestyler (see my walkthrough post in this forum that's still a work in progress, but mostly complete) and bought a BCF2000, but submasters just feel so clunky compared to direct control of each feature.
When you guys are working with intelligent lights or LEDs, what do you even use the submaster fader itself for? Do you Do you make it a speed control for the cue, if possible? How do you lay out your work on a console like an ETC or a GrandMA or something like that while controlling multiple types of lights?
I use FreeStyler a lot, sometimes MagicQ PC, also I have a small Elation DMX Operator Pro that I feel I have outgrown.
On the Elation board, I had (8) fixture buttons on the left and 8 faders below (with a channel bank fader, like a layer 1/2 for 1-8 or 9-16) and each fixture button addressed a single group of 16 channels starting at 1. There was also a handy-dandy joystick.
The right side of the board was designed for 8 channels of conventional lighting that I used for LED control, all LEDs on the stage set to the same address. Both sides had scenes and chases but they were very limited all-or-nothing approaches, so I only used them for abrupt changes. The chases were a little better but only pan and tilt (or all channels) could be set to fade instead of snap.
I got very comfortable with simply operating two fixtures from a single fixture button (with the pan inverted on one fixture), and using the faders themselves to set channel values. After I decided to upgrade from this console, I looked at FreeStyler and MagicQ because they both supported my OpenDMX dongle. Freestyler was pretty easy to pick up, mainly because of it's homegrown nature and it's relative simplicity.
MagicQ was another story. The programmer is quite cool, as is the FX generator and built in LED mapper. But how do you create something like an 'Override button'? Can't I have a button that forces the entire stage into a 'Safe' look, or perhaps sets a couple of related features like the mover's beam functions into one coherent appearance across 4-6 different channels (intensity, shutter, prism+rot, gobo+rot, iris, focus, etc)? I don't really use intensity much on any of my fixtures except my conventionals, so the entire playback/submaster fader seems like a waste.
Now trying to move to more complex consoles seems to be somewhat of a culture shock. Some consoles do have palettes or libraries, but I'm finding it really difficult and time-consuming to program a decent library of cues to cover the types of situations that busking a music festival needs to be able to cover.
One other thing: I hated losing my fixture channels on faders. Encoders are nowhere close to the feel of a fader for changing channel values. My Elation allows you to patch channels within fixtures, so I always had the same channel order (Pan, Tilt, Color, Gobo, Shutter, Intensity, etc) for each fixture. I could run this thing without looking at it once. I did a lot of research into Freestyler (see my walkthrough post in this forum that's still a work in progress, but mostly complete) and bought a BCF2000, but submasters just feel so clunky compared to direct control of each feature.
When you guys are working with intelligent lights or LEDs, what do you even use the submaster fader itself for? Do you Do you make it a speed control for the cue, if possible? How do you lay out your work on a console like an ETC or a GrandMA or something like that while controlling multiple types of lights?
