Working Submasters

SketchyCroftPpl

Active Member
Alright

So recently (yesterday) my school finished a set of changes that I think would be a very usefull thing to do for anyone that has the capability. Basically I learned how to make submasters and then used the patch assignments in the board (the place that tells the number you use on the board which number dimmer it should go to) and using that switched things around so that the channels the submasters are required to use were free. After that, on my board we have 24 submasters and each 1 can be 4 different ones that are interchangable giving us basically 96 different ones. We're using them now from anything to controlling just 1 light or everything on or just the warm and things like that. I must say they are incredibly usefull and I'm really happy that we got permission to go in and do the changes. If anyone has this capability I would deff recomend trying to put in these changes, it makes simply bringing up lights and writing cues amazingly simple.

~Nick
 
So basically you learned to use submasters. That's kind of the point.

Perhaps i'm confused, but why are you changing the soft patch? What board are you using?

I'm having trouble grasping the change you made. were the subs programmed one sub to each channel?
 
Basically Yes I'm just wicked happy I learned to use submasters.

I'm changing the soft patch because we use an omega 2 board and scrimmer stiks instead of a big dimmer room. I changed it in the soft patch because normally everything has a 1-1 patch so 78 goes to 78 and 79 to 79, that way I could change everything and make room for the submasters w/o actually having to go around to each of the scrimmer stiks and manually change its address. If the changes work out well then we can perminantly change the numbers on the scrimmer stiks and go back to having a 1-1 patch.

The changes I made are like this. The reason why I had to move everything is because the submasters have to work on channels 97 - 120 and normally it was telling lights to work on those channels, and both can't exist at the same time. I used the first 3 pages of each of the 24 submasters (there are 4 virtual pages which gives you a total of 96) in order to control every light that we have in the theatre on a set of sliders that comes with the omega 2 board. However it normally only has 120 sliders in 5 rows. The first 4 rows never change and the last one controls the levels of the submasters. Basically by changing the page, you change what that slider controls. So for the first 3 pages they each control 1 individual light so that each one can be used on a slider instead of typing # at %(#) into the board, and the last page (page 4) can be used for combinations of lights like everything, just the catwalk, the backbeam, the sides. So if we want to write cues instead of turning all the lights on manually we can just bring up the submaster and record its levels into a cue.

Hope that helps, keep asking things if you wish, I need to learn the right way to explain / teach all the changes.

~Nick
 
I suppose i'm not familiar with your board. Traditionally the idea of submasters are that they do not operate on channels, but rather are computerized "presets" that allow the control of several channels or any combination. Such as programming one submaster as "full wash" and another as "center special".
So why submasters would work on "channels" i don't really get. Also, making room for submasters i don't get.
In my mind, your soft patch should be 1:1. Let's say you have 40 channels. that's 10 4-channel dimmer packs. that's 40 dmx channels being used. from there you have 40 submasters for individual lights, then whatever configurations you need.
I guess what i'm saying is that submaster control is just an internal function of the board and shouldn't need channels simply to exists. Does that make sense? It just feels like there may be a more efficient way of doing this. I could be totally off base.
 
Yeah our board is alot different than that. The basic idea that a submaster gives control is serveral channels is the same, but after that its different. Out board can handle up to 240 Channels, so theres a big screen that has the numbers 1-240 on it and the % of the lights. Submasters can only be created on channels 97-120 and they always send out their signal on that channel. Normally channel 97 would send to dimmer number 97, but since the submaster needed it, I had to move it to 121. I did that in the soft patch instead of changing the actual number on the dimmer.

~Nick
 
That's a very weird board. If i were you, for practical purposes i wouldn't think of it as "sending out" on that channel. Simply because it isn't. It's all internal. That's really really odd.
If you're thinking of continuing light work, you may want to find other boards to get experience on because this one is rather peculiar although this is defnintely a good description for those who also use this board and may be confused.
Who makes this board?
 
Ha ha ... yeah I know. Its an Omega2 which is about 10 years old. I have some experience with new boards and alot of it is the same, this part is just oddly made. I enjoyed very much learning how to do it all however cuase I pretty much had to learn to use the entire system and computers are a love of mine and how I work. And now I kinda know most about it out of everyone there which is fun.

~Nick
 
Ha ha yeah ... somewhat even more than that though I just like the fact that they let me go in and do all that w/o actually really knowing what I was doing or how I was going to do it. Its a great trust by them esp with how expensive everything is. I've started teaching it now though and the other main light people know all the changes and how I did them and what the new features we can use are, and there are some freshman / sophs which are desperatly trying to jump right in on it.

~Nick
 
Hmmm, i believed i played around with that board before. I only got to use it for like 20 mins w/ the preset channels that were set up. By any chance do you work in Norwood? Thats were i used the board.
 
No actually I'm near worcester in Mass. I don't actually exactly know where Norwood is but its cool if they have the same kind of board. All the changes are still working pretty well. 1 Little thing kinda messed up but its not really that bad and was just a 5-6 min fix. Late work call tonite to do a lot of the set so I'm off.

~Nick
 

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