Dim light then flash then dim... sort of "twinkle"

[n9yty]

This may be related to the light itself, but if QLC could pull off what I want it would be awesome.

We have a part of our theater show where we are going to use some moving heads as a "transition", to have them do some sweeping. We wanted to have a few of them have sort of a dim color and then occasionally strobe.

The units I am using share a channel for intensity (0-134) and strobe speed (135-250 or so).

I can't think of anyway to stage this so they could stay at dim with occasional flash to full like a strobe every so often, but keep moving while doing this. Perhaps this is a limitation of the fixtures more than anything else...

I may also be doing the whole thing wrong... I have some EFX elements set up to control the positioning of the moving heads, another for the light colors (so they change)... I put those all in a collection along with the intensity for each head. This is the problem, I can't have it at, say, 60% for XXXms and then FLASH and then dim for XXXms... Unless I'm missing something that QLC can do for me.

[GGGss]

Create a chaser with 0 fade time, some hold time and a random running order?
Include many identical steps and some strobe steps. With the chaser doing random, the lights will mainly stay dimmed and occasionally do their flicker.

[n9yty]

Thanks @GGGas - that worked perfectly! I was a little bit worried because of problems I ran into with embedding a cuelist in another cuelist, but this seems to work exactly as I needed. I am very thankful!!

[Yestalgia]

Another neat trick if you're wanting twinkle is to use the RGBMatrix to control the dimmer channels. It's a pretty new feature but works great!

[GGGss]

Another neat trick if you're wanting twinkle is to use the RGBMatrix to control the dimmer channels. It's a pretty new feature but works great!

I know ... but for a real twinkle, the RGB matrix is not quick enough - RGB matrix introduces some unwanted latency.

[Yestalgia]

What kind of latency are you experiencing? - Is it when you dim/start the matrix or when other stuff happens?

I'm using an intel NUC with 6 Sunstrips (Bar with 10 tungsten lights = 60 dimmer channels) plus a club rig and haven't seen any misbehaviour.

Cheers

[GGGss]

Tungsten is already very slow (180ms on, 320ms off), so you won't notice this latency.
If you'd do the same with leds, you will start noticing the internal cycle of QLC+ in conjunction with the matrix. I'm not sure but to me the matrix needs multiple QLC+ internal cycles before it calculates and sends out values.

[Yestalgia]

Ahh I see what you're talking about.

I know that there is a way to up the internal clock of QLC+; If I have a faster machine, would it be an effective way to resolve that?

[GGGss]

No ... it doesn't make sense to increase the tick speed of internal processes, because this might lead to output buffer overruns. Since DMX refresh frequency is (should be) set to 44Hz, there is no need to have QLC+ work faster. In the current version, a multi-threading system has been built in taking care of the split power needed for the processes. RGB matrix is a script, so it has to be interpreted, ran, and resulting values have to be put ready for the output thread to be processed. Hence my presumption, RGB matrix needs multiple ticks.