Hi!
The building where I work (new university arts center) has been outfitted with
Strand Light Palette Classics in all the performance spaces.
We've run into some general questions and problems using them, haven't been able to find any helpful information in the
manual, instructional videos, or online, and I was wondering if you might be able to help.
1. There are only 12 physical sub masters, though 48 "looks" per
submaster page. Is there a way to have the physical submasters control looks other than 1-12 of that
page? So far, we've only found it possible to use the bump buttons around them to flash those looks. It would make running shows on the fly using them much easier.
2. Is there an easy shortcut to switching
submaster pages rather than having to click in the upper left corner of the
screen?
3. What do the up/down arrow buttons to the left of all the submasters do? They aren't referenced in the
manual, but it would be fantastic if they were mapable to any of the above two functions. As far as we can tell, hitting them has no
effect on anything.
4. Is there an easier way to
block cues than to have to right click the individual
cue and say "
block cue lists?"
5. Why in the world is a
chase called a "
Square Wave Wrap?" Is there a way to make a more complex step-based
chase short of creating/running a separate cuelist?
Any help would be fantastic!
Thanks a ton,
David Goodman-Edberg
My first recommendation would be to
call tech support or myself. I manage this product
line and can likely help here. Tech support 800.4.
STRAND. I can be reached at
[email protected].
Question 1, 2 and 3. Since different
console hardware versions (there are several) have different hardware layouts there are usually multiple solutions to any programming task. The hardware does have limits (if you are on a LP Classic you have 12 multifunction faders. By default these are playbacks and the buttons on the left side will "
Page" the playback pages if you have multiple cuelists pages set up. If you have these multifunction faders set to be "Looks on Playbacks" (turned on/off in Hardware Setup>AB/CD>checkbox for Looks on Playbacks) then they will be active for your first 12 submasters. We like to think of the hardware as the Submasters and the content to be Looks. There is no limit to how many Looks can be stored on a
Submaster Page or Look
Page. There is also no limit on how many Look Pages you can have. If you want your Submasters to be 1 - 12, that's the default. If you want them to be assigned to 13-24, just type LOOK in the command
line and softkeys will allow this to happen. S11-Sub
Page -> and S12-Sub
Page <-. This is also where you can change pages using command
line. Again type LOOK in the command
line and M1-Sub
Page 1, M2-Sub
Page 2 and so on. If these are not automatically populated, press S10-Sub
Page to see what Sub Pages you have in your
current showfile.
Block Cues - there are many commands that are available with a graphical solution (of which you have found) and a command
line solution. Once you press the
CUE button, all of the softkeys change to show you commands that apply to cues. You can see that S6 is Unblock. I use this frequently to clean up redundant values in cues and it's very quick. Should I want to
Block a
cue, notice there is a plus key in the corner of the Unblock soft key. This means that you have a "Shifted" version of that key. Press,
Shift and you'll see that S6 changes to be
Block. So now that you know, just press
CUE SHIFT + S6 and that will
block the
current cue.
Effects. At first I was confused by this then frustrated because when I say it I sound like Porky Pig. However there is method to the madness. If you think about looking at this from a mathematical perspective (or looking at it on a scope) a
square wave means that the
level goes straight from 0 to Full (represented by a
line going straight up on a graph - representing a 0 count), then it stays at full for a period of time (represented by a straight
line going to the right on a graph - representing time), then the
level goes immediately to 0 (represented by a
line on a graph going straight down) then it moves to the next
channel (represented by a
line on a graph going to the right), and repeats for the quantity of channels that are selected. Say 1 through 10. 1 ON, TIME, 1 OFF, TIME, 2 ON, TIME, 2 OFF, TIME and so on... Once it finishes with
channel 10, it "wraps" around to repeat the process until the channels are given a different instruction.
There are 3 different ways to do effects with the PaletteOS software. 1. The
effects engine. This is likely the quickest and most powerful. Grab the desired channels, set them at the desired levels, apply the
effect engine. Record the
cue or sub. That's very simple but basically that's it. The second way is to go old school and do a separate
cue list, record your steps as cues. Set your times and follows, then go back to the main
cue list and in the
cue that you want to trigger the
effect, create a
macro that triggers the
effect cue list. The third way, is to create the separate
cue list with the steps that you need as cues. But don't worry about any of the follows. Now go back to the main
cue list, select the channels and go into the
effects engine and select
CUE LIST
CHASE. You can then select the
cue list from soft keys. This is called the Hybrid
effect method because it combines the
effects engine with a
cue list for the step content.
One of the advantages of using the
effects engine, is when you GOTO a
cue, it will always have the correct effects running. Say you have an
effect that starts in
Cue 5 and the
effect continues running until
Cue 10. If you are in
Cue 15 and go back to
Cue 8, even though there is no instruction in
cue 8 to start a
cue, since the
effect is actually stored IN
Cue 5 (not just a trigger to another
cue list), it will be running for you automatically. None of this has to be "managed".
That's a VERY simple definition of this. There are several
Palette Tips and Tricks Bulletins on our website and 3 of them go into detail about Effects.
www.strandlighting.com/clientuploads/directory/downloads/PALETTE_TIPS_AND_TRICKS_LIBRARY.ZIP
There is a lot of
power here if you know how to unlock it. Email me and I'll be happy to get you more training.
Bobby Harrell
