Ready… GO

You’ve probably found that playing back looks live on stage from the grandMA is fairly easy… and you’ve no doubt used the OFF hard key or an OFF button on an Executor to stop that playback. There’s a super handy window named “Running Programs” that will allow you to quickly see (and stop) different types of playback. You access this window by simply pressing the OFF key twice.

The Running Programs Window

From within the window you choose to globally stop everything (EVERYTHING OFF) or choose to stop all playback of a certain type (like all Chasers, Sequences, etc). Additionally you can choose to turn off playback tied to hardware (like Executor Faders or Button) or you could choose a very specific item like an individual Sequence or Effect to stop.

All of these are great options, but – if you’re anything like me – you might want some hard key options as well. The syntaxes listed below are all for use in stopping playback, and they don’t even require that you open the “Running Programs” window.

Hold OFF and press GO+ = Switches everything off (the same as if you’d hit the EVERYTHING OFF on screen button in the Running Programs window)
Hold OFF + EFFECT = Turns off all running Effects
Hold OFF + EXECUTOR = Turns off all Executors
Hold OFF + MACRO = Turns off all Macros currently running
The following do not require holding the OFF button:
OFF PAGE ENTER = Turns off all Executor faders/buttons on current page
OFF PAGE 5 ENTER = Turns off all Executor faders/buttons on Page 5
OFF PAGE 2.5 ENTER = Turns off all Executor faders on page 5 (this will not affect Executor Buttons)
The same style syntax can be used to turn off other specific running programs like Timecode, Macros, Effects, Executors and more.

Since I love overriding timing.. lets throw this into the mix: Next time, instead of just hitting OFF and then hitting that button on the executor that you want to turn off, try speeding up or slowing down the time by adding fade and/or delay time to the syntax. Something like OFF EXECUTOR 1 TIME 10 ENTER might lend a more graceful exit…

Forget about playback for a moment – OFF can be used while you’re programming to essentially knock-out or erase values from your Fixture and Channel sheets. Here, we’re using OFF and selecting the units that we want to remove from our Sheets. For example:
OFF FIXTURE (#) ENTER
OFF CHANNEL (#) ENTER
OFF GROUP (#) ENTER
And, yes, you can type syntax like OFF FIXTURE 101 THRU 110 ENTER.
Additionally, you can choose to knockout attribute types – like pan & tilt or color. To do this – first, select the fixture(s) you wish to work with, then press OFF followed by the preset filter you wish to remove (like Pan/Tilt, Color, Dimmer, etc). You can choose the filter from the Preset Control Bar or by touching the title cell of any preset pool (or, press PRESET followed by the corresponding Preset type number). If you need to be even more specific – you can even use OFF to knockout an individual attribute on a wheel.

This list of OFF commands is not a complete list of the offerings available in the console, but, once you understand the syntax behind the commands – it’s fairly easy to achieve whatever you’re looking for.

Quick Tips are exactly what the name should imply. We’re adding these to our blog in an effort to help programmers and operators of all levels. If you’d like to suggest a Quick Tip, drop us a message on this blog, or on our Facebook page, or even via Twitter.

Tags: grandMA programming, tips

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 11:05 am and is filed under MA Series 1 Consoles, Quick Tip Tuesday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.