Masters and submasters in theatre

[xhpohanka]

Hi all,

I'm thinking of using QLC+ with Korg Nanokontrol2 in our theatre as a backup or for touring. Except of few RGBW we have just conventional lights and use Smartfade 24/96 console. I can say that Smarfade workflow is probably fastest and most understandable that I have seen. I would like to know if I can use QLC+ in similar way - 'direct control' mode for setup of cues/scenes and then switch to 'submaster' mode for playing the show.

I found that I can create a frame with several pages in virtual console and then relatively easy control eg. 32 dimmers with nanokontrol. For saving the scenes 'Dump DMX values' is probably the right way. Now I would like to switch to 'submaster' mode and control the scenes with my controller but I'm not sure how to do that easily. Another great option would be to insert created scenes into cue list and use 2 faders of nanokontrol to crossfading (or is it possible to use just sinle fader?).

Can you please give me some hints how to use QLC+ for described workflow? Or are there some better ways to do such simple theatrical lightning?

best regards
Jan

[siegmund]

Hi Jan,

sorry I don't know the workflow you described but at least crossfading in a cue list is possible. See http://www.qlcplus.org/docs/vccuelist.html

Regards
Lukas

[janosvitok]

Jan,

I am not at home with theatrical terminology. If you mean by submaster that you fade in/out a scene with a fader,
then yes, you can assign a scene (I think QLC+ "scene" is called "cue" in other consoles) to a fader ("playback mode") and do similarly like you did with dimmers (e.g. multipage frame with faders).
You can either add more pages to your current frame, or create a new one and enable/disable them as needed.

Jano

[xhpohanka]

Hi and thank you for answers.
I think that I understand what you mean @janosvitok. I just would like to know how to do quick and easy switching between mode when I use physical faders on midi controller for fading single fixtures/dimmers and mode when faders control cues.
I would like to do something similar to following steps

• setup the scene and save the cue
• press a button to switch to 'submaster mode'
• control the recorded cue on fader
• press a button to switch back to 'direct control mode'
• record next cue
• ...

[siegmund]

Just as Jano said, I think the solution for your problem could be a frame with multiple pages.

[bleurose]

My experience is that this is not so simple to do. The theaterical work flow you describe (which is much like other theatrical boards I have worked on like the ETC Expression and the Melange) is pretty straightforward. But QLC+ has different analogues and you need to think things out a little more in advance.

What I have done is to create scenes as I expect I will need them, with all the fixtures that I need (and you can use the mutil-channel generic dimmers to create "racks" of 8 or 10 or 16 dimmers in a single "fixture" so you don't need to have huge numbers of individual fixtures in each scene). I put all the scenes in a chase which is then attached to a cue list in the VC and I start the cue list. I can make "blind mode" changes to the scenes although this is a pain because I have to use the blind mode icon (I have put in a feature request that would allow you to click on the "step" in the chase while running a cue list and immediately enter blind mode edit for that step/function) which requires several clicks to find the appropriate scene.

Alternatively you can attach each scene to a slider so you can "replicate" the theatrical "submaster mode" and you can attach the sliders to the BCF2000. If you need multiple sliders (more than you have on the BCF2000, you will definitely need to create pages of sliders in a solo frame and attach them to the BCF2000 as shown in the tutoral for doing that so that you can run all of your sliders on the BCF2000 in different pages.