This is gonna be a long one, fellas. please bear with me...

mucking about today, trying to get to a workable set-up on the S3 for a RnR concertvenue.
the regular desk is a Hog II, but I want to do more shows on my own S3. the more experience the better, after all...
Now, for the Hog, I've a disk that I load every time, and it has tons of stuff on it that I can easily throw together to make just about any show work quick. that's were I want to go with Vista , too. Obviously, most of my little Hog-elements are cuelists with no more then 3 or 4 parameters active per cue (for example, a stack of gobo's has - per cue - both gobowheels, focus and zoom active).

One thing I like to have, is a stack of gobo's on one of the faderless choosebuttons on the Hog-wing, with the rotation completely separate on the fader-enabled choosebutton underneath, running as IFCB.
I can't, for the life of me, make it work properly on the Vista, and the way I figure, it's the generic fixture model working against me...

Here's what I did: I started out by placing all the rotating gobo's of the MAC700 in a clip. I used the presets I'd made, and deleted all rotation info out of the clip. I placed this clip on one of the upper playbacks, set to "play" on the lower button, and "skip back" on the upper button

(incidentally, a timed "go back" function would be most welcome, but this has been asked before, I know...)

then I made a clip containing nothing but one-direction, full speed rotation for the gobo's. I set this up on a fader, setting the playback options to "go on fader up" , "release on fader down" and "fade all attributes". This worked as I intended it. Sort of...
most profile spotlights have both indexing and rotating functionality, that you need to separately access, either by selecting the gobo in a specific value on the gobo wheel channel (Martin) or by activating a separate channel that sets indexing, rotation + direction etc (HighEnd). Vista does away with such differences, by having a dedicated "rotate/index" function, that works regardless of how the fixture treats this function internally. this is great, but unfortunately it seems to dictate that I cannot separate functionality (rotation) from value (be it either "stop" or "full speed" or anything in between).
The problem manifests itself twofold:
- making the clips as described above results in a less then smooth stop of rotation upon fader down. the moment the fader reaches zero, the gobo reverts back to "indexable" meaning that it "jerks" back to "00 index" the only time you do not see this, is if you're lucky enough to stop rotation at the exact moment the gobo has made a complete revolution. hardly very subtle...
- the most obvious work around, would be to assign "rotation" to the gobos in the gobo-clip, so that they would never revert back to "indexable". unfortunately, by doing this, you are no longer able to skip through gobo's while retaining the rotation speed set by the fader. Activating "rotate" in the generic fixture model means you're automatically selecting a value for the rotation speed(being, initially, "zero" or "stop"), and if you look in the timeline, you can see these two pieces of data are irrevocably linked.

As I had time on my hands, I decided to go another route. this showfile was intended for use in the same room, with the same fixtures, after all. Why not bypass the generic fixture model by using raw DMX? as easily said as done, really, but here something strange occured.
I made a clip with the rotating gobo's selected in raw DMX, making sure every one had the rotating gobo value, not the indexable. additionally, i made sure the events in the clip were recorded as "gobo wheel 1 only".
I made another clip then, containing raw DMX, one-direction, full-speed rotation. upon playback, this had solved the first problem completely. No more jerky stops, but full smooth linear speed both up and down. However, if I now step through the clip all the way, with the separate clip's fader dictating rotation speed, all the gobo's respond fine only in the first complete cycle. If I step through the gobo clip, reach the end, then step forward to go to the first gobo again, the rotation becomes stuck. releasing the rotation clip does not help, only releasing the gobo clip solves this. in other words, it seems as if the gobo clip is somehow forced to take the rotation speed on board when stepping from the last event through to the first.

is this clear? does this make sense to anyone, because it doesn't to me. Ive spent way too much time trying to figure this out, then even more time explaining my findings here, but I think this is not how the desk is supposed to behave, is it?
also, it raises questions about other parameters behaving in the same way, that is, not being able to be (completely) separate if one so desires...

I'll be back on the desk again tomorrow, so I'll be sure to post more findings here if I encouter similar behaviour.

... unless it turns out I'm being an idiot again, missing the simplest of playback options that I should have enabled.
In which case, I'll crawl in a corner and be ashamed of myself for at least a couple of minutes...

thanks for your time, my friends...

I do the gobos on a button, rotation on a fader all the time. And you are describing it perfectly. I too , ahve tried to figure a way around the "fader down, spin back to zero" but have not found it yet.
I iwsh I had an answer for you.
I will say though, that what you are descibing makes sense... not WHY it is happening. but WHAT is happening, is very clear (to me at least).

When doing this on the Hog, I would change the fixture personalities, so that the default rotating at zero speed. I've hunted for a way top do this on Vista... instead of fixtures defaulting to indexed position... and have not found it yet. If that could be done... I'd be one happy puppy.

I'll be sitting by eagerly watching this thread.

I ran across this issue as well recently. I'll be interested to see what develops from this thread. Thanks for explaining it very well

Yet once again this brings back my last issues! don't you see? when you release the clip the fixture will go back to it's "default" position, mode, color, intensity, speed, ...

thats WHY! when I release a clip on my Xspot (i.e.) I get the "ghastly" bright moving gobo while going back to "home" crossing all over the stage (annoying ain't it?)

Can we create an option (cause this wont be good for all fixtures and all occasions) again REQUEST! to simply kill a clip dead in its track like a "NO HOMEING WHEN RELEASED ON/OFF" ?

Imagine: release your gobo wheel 1 clip and wheel 1 just STOPS! so if its at 89degrees, whatever, gobo 1 will stay there, imagine the possibilities!!!

If you do a release on a light that is randomly moving accross stage and you release it it will just STOP IN TIME until you activate it again. or modify it. you can tell me that the board is ALWAYS LTP (latest takes Priority) all you want and that's bonkers! otherwise it wouldnt matter what the clip is doing, if I move a fader past the level say a Sorce4 Leiko that is @ 23% when I hit 24% the fader should take over, so if I decide to bring it back down to "modify" a scene it SHOULD take over until i call for the next step on the clip and the new (LATEST) value takes over, be it higher, lower or simply OFF! the fader would be 'released' since it's now the clip that took priority.

It makes perfect sense to me as most basic ETC theatrical boards can perform similar functions.

The generic fixture is a core part of the Vista and it facilitates many key features (copy & paste between fixture types, seamless fixture swaps...) BUT as it is presently, it can also cause some unexpected downsides for the "power user".

The 2nd generation generic fixture model is part of a large package of core enhancement currently being planned and worked on. I can't give an accurate ETA, however I can assure you it is getting dealt with.

So what your really looking for is not so much a "release" function, more a "clear" function like that on an Avo, i.e. when you pull down a fader, or hit clear in the programmer, the light just fades out, all other attribute stay as they were?

Carl

The only way to store individual channels and work with them in the way you requested is to use RAW dmx. This limits you in obvious ways but does let you store each and every parameter in separate presets/clips as desired.

Jason,

I'm not sure who you're responding to, but this is a good moment to draw attention again to a strange behaviour of (some) RAW DMX channels, as described in my initial post:



this issue has not been adressed further in this thread, but I hope we can get some more info on what might cause this, as it's screwing with my only workaround...

Erik,

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed post. The first scenario you mention, using the Generic Fixture Modeller, is not surprising, and as Glyn mentioned, we are working on some improvements to that part of the console.

However your workaround, using Raw DMX, SHOULD work, and the behaviour you're describing sounds like a bug - however - I cannot reproduce it here on my Mac! I have patched 10 x Mac 700 Basics from the main library; created one clip with raw values for each gobo on wheel 1, each corresponding to the rotating gobo range; and another clip with generic control of gobo rotation from slow to fast, with Go on fader up, Release on fader down and Fade all attributes set to on. When I cycle through my raw gobo selection clip, my rotation fader clip continues to operate normally - no sticking.

So, somehow we've missed a step. Which Library are you using? Are there any *other* clips running that may be affecting Gobo? etc etc. If all else fails please send us your showfile via the contact form on this site. Also, I'm here only looking at the DMX screen as I don't have any Mac 700's in my living room, so maybe there's a quirk with the fixture that I just can't see...

Like I say, using Raw DMX should work, and *does* work for me.

Oh, and you do know that Pause acts as a "Go back in time" when the clip is already paused, right?

Kind Regards,

Alex Mair
Jands Pty Ltd

Alex,

the first scenario did surprise me for a second, then I thought about what the Generic Fixture Model actually is (or what I take it to be, anyway), and I went "well, yeah. obvious, really..."
I think my initial post reflects that I kind of grasped this.

I used the workaround with Raw DMX with actual MAC700's, and will try to replicate the problem with both MAC250 entours and Technobeams sometime this weekend. Of course I'll get back to you on this.
It doesn't surprise me you can't get a software read-out on this, as far as I can see, this is behaviour that the software displays outside of anything it should do. think about this, I released the rotation clip, yet the gobo kept spinning. Opening the gobo clip, no rotation info is seen to be stored in it.
No desk I know would do this (intentionally), in fact, it's sort of against the nature of what DMX should be.
I don't think it's the fixture itself, because (and I now realize i did not mention this earlier) the rotation clip keeps working as it should:
-use the raw dmx gobo clip to place a gobo
- use the raw dmx rotation fader to set rotation to 25%
- step through the gobo clip until you've done a complete cycle, then step forward more to get to the initial gobo
- the rotation is now still 25%, even if you bring the rotation fader back to zero
- bring the rotation fader up even more (say 60%) and it will work as it should.
repeat this procedure and watch the rotation become stuck at 60 %
etc, etc...

I patched this show in the previous build, using the regular library items. No other clips were running, I released all clips several times while recreating the behaviour.
As said, I'm not done with this yet. I'll get back to trying to figure all this out ASAP, taking into consideration anything suggested here. I'll send you guys the showfile with as detailed a description as I can manage after that.

I did not know about the "pause" as "go back in time" functionality. It would make sense that it acts this way, it'd be like the "pause"button on a Hog working like a timed "step back" in conjuction with the "manual fade" time.
I'll check this out, I never thought of it that way. this function has been requested earlier somewhere in the forum, I don't recall this option being mentioned back then...
After that, all I'll need is the ability to step back from the first event in a clip to the last. Or does the "pause" do that as well...?

Erik,
I was able to replicate your problem using 1.11 on my mac. I haven't actually tried it on my T2 at work so I have just been watching the DMX output screen. This was with Elation Design Spot 250's and not MAC700's so the problem is not light specific. I have forwarded a report of my problem and a copy of the show file to Jands for their evaluation.

Just wanted to let you know that you were not the only one out their experiencing this problem

Cheers!
Geoff Gooch
ggooch@purdue.edu

Ahh, OK - I think I've found where the bug lies...

The key thing that the Design Spot and the Mac 700 Basic (Prerelease) have in common, is that when you set RAW Gobo Rotate, the channels end up in the "Gobo" feature type rather than the "Gobo Rot." type (you can see this in the timeline when the view is set to "Summarise Features"). The Mac 700 in the main library has its raw Gobo Rotate channels in the right feature type.

Of course, the channel *shouldn't* stick regardless of this, but it does, and we'll get that fixed...

Erik - as a workaround try using the Mac 700 Basic from the main (By Manufacturer) library, rather than Pre-release. That was the library I was using that did not display the problem.

Thanks very much to Geoff, who gave us the final piece of the puzzle. If you're at LDI I'll buy you and Erik a beer

Kind Regards,

Alex Mair
Jands Pty Ltd

Alex,
Thanks for getting this sorted so quickly. I look forward to seeing software that permanently fixes this issue as I actually just took delivery of 18 of the Design Spot 250's.

Not to hijack the thread, but maybe instead of a beer, we could put together an evening of drinks for Vista users? Put faces to names of the rather vocal community here and on the lightnetwork that does so much to support the Vista. Anyone else here interested?

Cheers!
Geoff Gooch
ggooch@purdue.edu

I think this is a fabulous idea - I know a few folks, but would love to meet more of our little community!

J

No way I'm gonna make LDI, Alex. I'll take a raincheck...

In fact, slim chance of me being stateside at all for the foreseeable future, but anyone using Vista in Western Europe and/or the UK should get in touch, we could have our own little soirée...

...and I already missed Plasa...