The Lighting Controller

Hi All,
I understand the current methods for making chases: 1) Design a scene as a set of distinct changes or, 2) Engage "Chase Play" on a Live page and have it run through all the buttons on that page. But what about a third, more-useful method?

Just as the "Macro" button is easily designed and updated by selecting the buttons you want it to engage at the same time, why not have a "Chase Macro" button that runs through the selected scene buttons sequentially? This would be a quick, intuitive way to design and use chases...especially since it takes a known process (the Macro feature) and simply expands how it engages the chosen scene buttons based on their designed timing. The only hitch I can see is that the "Chase Macro" feature would need to engage the "No Loop" option on buttons so that the scene runs once and proceeds to the next. Another plus would be the possibility to design chases that use buttons from any page, not just one page.

Any opinions on this suggestion?

In software side, this would be a long job.
We already have:
- steps
- chase of steps = scene
- possibility to chase scenes in one page
- possibility to have several pages with chase of scenes
- possibility to show up to 16 pages on screen, each chasing several buttons with several steps per button

Are you sure "chase Macro's" are really required ?

Actually, YES.

Step chases are tedious to build. Page chases are inflexible, and they use up an entire page for one chase (no less than 1/16 of the total Live viewing area). A "Chase Macro" button would be a way to incorporate dozens of custom chases from already-built scenes, change it in seconds, and take up no more space than a Live button (which can be placed in any page and moved around for the most intuitive use). A Chase Macro button makes far more sense to me than a chase page.

Besides...why limit the usefulness of your software? You already have the code that creates a regular Macro button. The overall Live screen probably has a priority hierarchy already in its code (top left to bottom right?), so I'll bet it's not that difficult to design a Macro button that turns the selected buttons on and off in that order.

Yes...I think a Chase Macro button would be a superior design to the current page chase.

In Live, the timelines are chase of scenes that we can run from a button in Live.

Please note also that, it is already possible to stack scenes via the menu "File > insert" in Editor, and we can save the result as one complete scene. Then we can run this complete scene from a button in Live.

Awesome! I wasn't familiar with the "File > Insert" capability and I didn't think about using a Timeline for a simple 1-button chase (I haven't tried Timelines at all yet)! I'll try those to simplify my needs for chases. The "File > Insert" may be a very handy shortcut if it does what I hope. Thanks!

After thinking about it some more, I still support my suggestion for a "Chase Macro" button or a right-click chase option for regular Macro buttons. Here's why:

While the "File > Insert" route allows you to place several known steps into a scene at the same time, it doesn't offer any way to track changes to the original scenes those steps came from. That's fine for some things, but I think many users would like the ability for a chase to adapt to new setups automatically. For example, say you have a (chase) scene of moving heads built from the inserting of (10) other single-step scenes, then find (3) of those scenes have pan/tilt parameters that don't work well in a new venue. With the current method, you would need to adjust the (3) original scenes in order to use them, then also adjust (3) steps on the chase scene...(6) steps total. With a "Chase Macro" containing the (10) scenes, all you need to do is correct the (3) original scenes and everything else accessing those scenes will auto-correct.

Any time software can use links to variables instead of absolute standalone values, it's more flexible and easier to use.

The Timeline structure looks to have more promise in this way, but I'm not sure yet...

Detour DJ wrote: it doesn't offer any way to track changes to the original scenes those steps came from. That's fine for some things, but I think many users would like the ability for a chase to adapt to new setups automatically.

Don't forget that Sweetlight/Showxpress does not follow a pallet based programming method. The features that you are suggesting are all very standard in pallet based consoles.

Tom,
Sorry...I'm not familiar with what you mentioned. Much as I'd love to, I've never had a chance to play with a professional DMX console. I'm simply going on age-old principles in smart software design that use links to master data instead of new data itself. If you're familiar with common spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Calc, then you know it's tedious and time-wasting to enter the same value for the same parameter in different places. It's best to have a "master" entry for a given parameter, then have all other instances of that parameter be simply links to the master.

In DMX lighting control, this is especially important with moving heads that must aim in the right direction at various venues (i.e., a nice lighting rig for bands playing a different club each weekend). You can have a set of "master" scenes that aim the heads, then have any number of chases that link those scenes together. Since the chases are a subset of the originals, they follow any adjustments made to the originals.

ShowX already has the ability to use one "macro" button to call up any combination of scene buttons. What I'm suggesting would take that same capability one step further by simply introducing a one-at-a-time sequence of those chosen scenes without having to write whole new "chase" scenes.

I think this topic may be of interest to you: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1254

Thanks, Tom! Some day, I'd love to see first-hand how the big guys run a huge lighting rig. Maybe I'd be familiar with pallets then...