How to use cuelist with chases within the main "chase cuelist" to have real chases coupled with regular scenes that end

[Jon]

Sorry for the complicated subject but this is a really important issue for theater usage.

Problem: I have several scenes where I want regular lighting changes running on "top" of (or "below" depending your perspective) a looping chase. For instance, we have a background of lights that need to pulse on our cyc from low red to high red, (0-255) but the rest of the scene has several light changes going on at the same time.

I need to be able to move the regular cues forward each time I press go, but have the background cue start with the first regular cue of that scene and then continue until the last regular cue of the scene.

In most theatrical dimmer boards, this is accomplished with cues that run independently so that the looping chase can start and continue indefinitely and other cues run in parallel, but ends with some kind of "All Fade" cue that terminates all other running cues. I haven't yet figured out how to do this in QLC+ (although it may be my limited experience).

I have figured out that I can couple EACH "regular cue" with the same looping chase in another chase (which then nests inside the outer "cuelist chase"). The chases that are in the outer level of the cuelist chase can each be started and then run "indefinitely" until I press go and then it moves to the next "chase" at the cuelist level which runs the next regular cue and the chase again. The problem is that since I can't start the next cue precisely when the previous cue's looping chase is done, there is a "jump" in levels almost always which is very disconcerting. I want the looping chase to run completely independently of the rest of the cues.

I realize I could separately start a looping chase independent of the cuelist and then just start and stop it separately but that isn't really a good solution for a board operator who is pretty much trained to "press GO" for each cue.

If anyone has an idea on how this can be accomplished, I'd greatly appreciate hearing your ideas (or what I missed when reading the manual and experimenting).

Thanks!

Jon Rosen

[Matt]

I was waiting to see if anyone who had an answer posted. I've used chases with sub chases and collections (with chases and scenes) to bundle motion effects on top of a base look, similar to what you are doing. However, I have not tried to have a chase span multiple manually cued scenes. I don't know of a way, short of a separate button for the chase on the virtual console, to do what you want. I'm trying to think of a way using a chase within a collection but I don't have a solution for you.

BTW, I've found a bug with collections and chases. You can't have a scene in a collection then use the same scene adjacent to the collection in a chase. I want to do this all the time when I have a scene then need to add a special. For some reason the chase will jump over the scene in the chase. For now I make a copy of the original scene which takes much of the benefit from the collection. If I need to make a change to the base scene I need to make it twice.

Good Luck!

[Matt]

The closest I can come is doing what I mentioned in the previous post then putting a chaser window for the main and sub chases on the virtual console. When the main chase activates the sub chase you need to use the controls on the sub chase window. Still not the single go button solution but it will get you close. I have attached a sample file.

[Jon]

Matt, thanks so much. At least I know I am not completely insane LOL. Yes, that solution sounds like another option, but as noted, it would be fine if I were running every show (as I would know precisely what to do), but for our typical board ops, they are NOT "skilled" QLC folks (or even skilled lighting folks) all, they know how to do is press the "GO" button when they are told . This show the solution may be to do this myself anyway, because we already have some manual stuff that will need to be run no matter what (we need haze and our hazer is DMX-connected but we can't really "program" it precisely as it will depend on the way the air is moving each performance, so I will probably have a few "squirt haze" buttons in different lengths/quantities or maybe a slider for that.

Jon

[Matt]

For a show we just finished I had a scene with the hazer full on. I then hooked a button and a slider to that scene. That made it easy to either just toggle the hazer on or to use the slider and dial it back. You are right, the hazer is something that's more of a run it till it looks right kind of thing. Hard to program that.