Ready… GO

If you’re anything like me, then the OOPS key is probably your favorite key on the desk. Because the OOPS option is actually fairly processor intensive on the console, you might want to think about optimizing your settings.

Pressing the SETUP key will take you to the Setup menu, where you will want to locate the “Oops Settings” option on the right side of the screen under “Misc.” Here are your options:

GENERAL (Enabled vs. Disabled)
General Enabled: Allows you to use the OOPS functionality to undo errors you made in your Commandline.
General Disabled: Turns all OOPS functionality off.

Oops for Views: Lets say you hit the wrong View button, well if Oops for Views is Enabled, you can simply hit OOPS to go back to your old screens.
Oops for Programmer: Enabling this option extends your Oops functionality for fixture editing to include selections/deselections in the Fixture Sheet along with attribution activations.

Ever wonder what that whole note at the bottom regarding “loud environments” is all about? Well, it has to do with the line above it regarding permanent hard disk access. Having permanent hard disk access in an environment with a lot of vibrations is very very difficult to pull off because of the mechanics of your basic HDD. In some clubs, operators would find that the vibrations were causing so much trouble that the console’s speed would drop significantly. Turning off OOPS functionality releases the permanent access resulting in a much faster console. If you’re in a quiet theatre, this won’t be a problem for you. Also – if you have a grandMA2, this also won’t be a problem because you’re lucky enough to have a Solid State Hard Drive!

So, which options are best for you if vibrations are not an issue? It’s up to you, but I like to use General: Enabled and Oops for Programmer: Enabled leaving the Views option Disabled. This isn’t cause I never hit the wrong View button – believe me, if there’s a contest for hitting the wrong keys, I could probably go Pro. It’s just that it’s too easy to simply hit the correct View Button afterwards!

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.

This week’s tip comes from Joe Cabrera, Director of Software Support at ACT Lighting.

Lately, we’re seeing more and more show files of bigger and bigger size. It’s not unheard of when you have an extensive rig (especially a large number of LED’s and/or media servers) and a band with an extensive catalog of songs. At a certain point, multiplying lots of parameters by numerous cues starts to add up.

Building habits for effective data usage can help stop your file size from spiraling out of control. Two big keys (when used efficiently) that will help you to keep your show size down are the Tracking and User Profiles.

Unblocking any unnecessarily blocked cues (trusting tracking to maintain the correct stage picture) can remove quite a bit of excess data from the show file while maintaining all of the truly necessary values. Unblocking can be done directly within the Tracking Sheet (right-click on any value in the sheet) or with Commandline syntax (look for the Unblock key in the QuicKey Pool).

They may seem pretty innocent, but User Profiles (especially their Views) can take up quite a bit of space. If you imagine that the setting of every possible display option for any sheet on the screen must be saved within the view, and that you can have multiple sheets on a screen, and that a view can contain all of these settings for up to all five screens, you can see how this data starts to pile up. Deleting any unneeded views from within your profile, and of course any unused profiles altogether, can also save quite a bit of space.

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.

Temporary windows are those that can be called up independent of a View, and don’t require that you clear off the desktop to open them. Accessing them is easy. To do this, press and hold the LIST key and press any of the following keys to open the corresponding window:

CHANNEL opens the Channel Sheet
FIXTURE opens the Fixture Sheet
GROUP opens the Group Pool
SEQUENCE opens the Sequence Pool
EXECUTOR opens the Executor Sheet
MACRO opens the Macro Pool
VIEW opens the Views Pool
EFFECT opens the Effects Pool
PAGE opens Channel Pages*

Tip: Some of these keys are associated with multiple windows, which means that by holding the LIST key and hitting certain other keys twice, you’ll open other windows. The PRESET key is a great example of this. Each time you hit PRESET while holding down the LIST key, you’ll be given a new PRESET window (Dimmer, Pan/Tilt, Color, etc).

*Also try holding the LIST key and pressing keys like CHANNEL, FIXTURE, GROUP, EXECUTOR, PAGE and EFFECT more than once…

All temporary windows can be closed by pressing the ESCAPE key.

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.

Ever work with on a show where you need to adjust the speed of your chases on a nightly basis? This could be because the performer chooses to play a song faster or slower each night… or maybe because you want to use the same chase for two different portions of your show at different times, or you just want the chase to speed up or slow down during the same number. An easy way to adjust the speed of your chase live and on the fly is by using the LEARN key.

Now, there is a hard key labelled LEARN, but I recommend changing one of the keys on your Chaser Executor to LEARN. You can do this in the ASSIGN menu of the Executor (in the SETTINGS tab). Once you have that, you can simply tap your new LEARN key as if you were tapping along with the music. You’ll need to tap it at least 3 times, but once you’ve stopped – the chase will remember the duration between the taps and treat it as BPM, or Beats Per Minute. You can even change this live while it’s playing.

Also note: Try using the LEARN option with your Effects as well…

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.

This week’s Quick Tip comes from Joe Cabrera of ACT Lighting.

The setup: You select a group of fixtures and recall an existing pan/tilt preset. As they move into position, you see one of the fixtures move in a different direction. They all end up pointing to the same spot on stage, but the transition just isn’t uniform for all of the fixtures.

This is, of course, one of the pitfalls of having a wide pan range on a moving-head fixture; there are often at least three different orientations the head can be in and still point in exactly the same direction. And it’s sometimes very easy to get a few of your fixtures flipped around differently than the rest.

Thankfully, the grandMA includes a very handy Flip function (available in the QuicKey Pool), which will cycle your selected fixtures through the different orientations that all point in their current directions.

The trick becomes figuring out exactly which fixtures out of the lot need to be flipped. In times past, this meant re-running the transition, keeping an eye on the stage to try and pick out the unruly few. But the Fixture Sheet in the grandMA includes a very subtle display that will quickly show which fixtures you might want to flip.

In this image, all of the ACT Spots are in the same USR preset, but one of them is in a different orientation than all the rest. Notice the white square just to the left of the names of the fixtures. This is a very basic indicator of the pan range. Looking at the placement of these dots, it’s easy to see that the pan for Fixture 203 is in a very different place than all of the others. So, we know this is the fixture we need to select and flip. Keep in mind that it may need to flip twice to find the same orientation as its friends.

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.

A Group Master is a Fader Assignment that allows for a maximum intensity to be held for a group of lights in your showfile. Some consoles call this an “Inhibitive Fader” because it can inhibit the output of your lights regardless of any other higher values currently in playback. Think of it as a GrandMaster, but only for a particular group of fixtures instead of all fixtures.

To assign a Group Master, you first need to have a Group of the fixtures you wish to inhibit in the Groups Pool. Then, enter the ASSIGN menu of any Fader and enter the FUNCTION tab. Here, by pressing the GROUP MASTER option, you can then pick from your established Groups- which will show up in the list.
Alternatively, you can simply press the Group you wish to inhibit from the Groups Pool, followed by any button on an empty Executor Fader.

Using these Group Masters are simple, but if you’re likely to be changing pages a lot in a show, keep in mind that your Group Master might be on a different page- and might have been previously lowered- which might result in less output on stage than you might expect. A quick way to locate all of your Group Masters is to press the GROUP key twice. This will open a new window showing all of your Group Masters and their respective levels. Here, you can press the FULL or OUT options to quickly change the master levels without changing pages (there is also an ALL FULL option). However, if you would like to go to the page containing that Group Master, simply press the name of the Group Master.

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.

We’re not talking cutting color and then getting out the china marker. Rather, if your apt to be using grandMA3D to pre-render your programming and you’re using conventional fixtures (lekos, pars, fresnels, etc) – your rendering will look more complete if you add color to your fixtures.

This process can actually be completed from within your showfile on the console. Enter LIVE ACCESS or FULL ACCESS and locate your conventional fixtures in their respective layers. If you scroll to the right, you’ll find a column labeled “Color.” Select any cell(s) in this column and click to open the Change Color window. At the top of this new window, you’ll notice a button with an arrow pointing up. If you click this arrow, you’ll be presented with various gel manufacturers. Here, pick the manufacturer of the color you’re using, then you can type in the Gel number, or scroll through the list to find the color you’re looking for. No cutting required.

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.

Looking for a quick way to give your musical show a tighter look? Try using Speed Groups. The basic idea of a Speed Group is to link the playback speeds of multiple Chases and/or Effects. With the speeds linked, not only do they begin playing back at the same rate, but adjusting the speed of any member of the group (or the master control) adjusts all members of the group. This way, if the band happens to speed up or slow down, you only have to make one adjustment to keep your whole rig in line.

Assigning a Chase or Effect to a Speed Group happens in the Edit Menu for the object. In the Chase Edit Menu, you will see an option that is labeled Individual Speed above the choices for the different groups. When editing an Effect, you will see a button, marked Speed Group Individual. Touching this will open a small menu, which will allow you to choose a group or set the Effect back to Individual.

Although you may see your Chase or Effect initially jump to match the current speed of the group, you shouldn’t think of it like a preset speed. Once your Chase of Effect is a member of the Group, you can adjust the speed as per normal. The addition being that you’re actually adjusting the speed of the Group.

While adjusting the speed of any member of a Speed Group is a viable way of adjusting the whole group, you can also assign one of your executor faders as a master control for the group. Simply open the Assign Menu for the desired Executor, touch Special Master, and choose the desired Speed Group from the list.

Using Speed Groups to control multiple parameters during the same song adds quite a bit of utility to the Rate adjustments of Chases and Effects. For instance, you might set your Pan/Tilt chase to follow the beat of the song exactly, but you might like your Strobe Chase to subdivide the beat. So, while both are set to follow the same Speed Group, a Rate of 4:1 on the Strobe Chase will multiply the the speed for that chase.

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.

While this tip won’t be new information for everyone… we find that there are still some programmers and operators who are not aware of an extensive (free) resource online called ma-share.net.

This website contains a wealth of information relating the grandMA series of consoles. For example:

Fixture Share: find fixture profiles for new instruments not contained in the console. This can be a HUGE time saver.
Effects Share: custom effects created by programmers
Gobo Share: gobo image libraries
Forums: support and conversation relating the the grandMA
wikiMA: a user created wiki for grandMA programming

And, for those of you with a grandMA2, you’ll also have access to custom Macros that can be added to your showfile.

Please visit the site to learn more, or to submit your own content.
http://ma-share.net

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.

This week’s tip comes from Will Murphy, our Technical Support Specialist at ACT Lighting.

Have you ever hit the highlight button and wished that your fixture highlighted to a different state? Have you ever wished that a particular parameter would default to a setting of your choice? Well, you’re in luck because these settings are very easy to change.

A good example when altering the default value may be useful is related to pan and tilt default values. If you would prefer your moving fixtures default to pointing directly at the stage, you can change the default DMX values of the pan and tilt parameters to make the lights point towards the stage.

Some programmers may prefer to alter their LED fixture defaults to have the dimmer channel default to full. This would allow a programmer to add RGB values without have to worry about first rolling the dimmer to full.

In the ‘Full Access’ window, tap the button on the bottom right that says “Fixtures Types.” You will be presented with the following window:

The top of this window lists the fixtures in your show; the bottom of this window lists the channels of the fixture. You’ll see the “Default” and “Highlight” column pertaining to each parameter here. The default value for each parameter specifies what value will be output on the particular DMX channel when there is no information for that parameter coming from the programmer or any executors.

The highlight value for each parameter specifies what value will be output on the particular DMX channel when the highlight button is activated. A blank cell in the highlight column means information for that particular parameter will not be altered when the highlight button is activated.

As an alternate option, you can change the default/highlight values on a fixture-by-fixture basis in the ‘Patch Sheets’ “DMX List.” You can find the ‘Patch Sheets’ button on the right side in the ‘Full Access’ window. The “DMX List” is shown below:

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.