QLC For High School Theatre Group?

[ibuprofen1590]

I am working with a high school theatre group with virtually no budget. The school district does have 6 Elation Colour 5 Profiles https://www.elationlighting.com/colour-5-profile that we have access to use. However the ADJ board they have is not really suited to theatre. I was looking to use MagicQ, and purchased an Enttec DMX Pro before I found out it is no longer supported. Enter QLC.

Most of my light experience is pre-LED, back when you had to physically patch lights to dimmers, and swap gels mid show to change a scene. And I am working with mostly freshmen with zero experience in this. I have worked with LED and DMX, so I have an understanding of how it works. But I have very little experience programing (I worked in a university theatre for a few years doing audio) shows, and doing the patching in a program (we had an ETC console at work). Are there a good amount of tutorials for this that I can use them to teach my crew (and myself)?

I am hoping to have a larger budget next school year so we can add a USB wing and additional lights.

I was looking through the library and the fixture forum, and see the engines I have are not yet listed.

As for our show, it is going to be relative easy. We are using a dark stage with the 6 lights basically white illuminating different spots on stage. It is nothing too intricate.

I appreciate any insight as we are just over a month from show time.

[janosvitok]

Hi,

first, if you want to use MagicQ, you may use QLC+ as artnet to Enttec translator:

- patch enough dimmer channels in universe 1
- patch input to artnet
- patch output to enttec dmx
- enable passthrough

It may be better to run QLC+ on another machine. Or you may use raspberry + ola to do the translation.

Now back to QLC+:

First, you have to create fixture definition for your lights. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3omuD6F9RI
For start, don't bother with all the color macros, but do bother with the 19 channel mode with 16 bit dimming.
Latest QLC+ may support 16 bit dimming (I've not tested, I've just noticed some code was added recently).

For even faster start, add at least the 6 channel mode (RGBAM + dimmer).

QLC+ does not support Mint channels, use Lime for now.

WIth the fixture definition placed in proper place (#4 in https://docs.qlcplus.org/v4/basics/ques ... nd-answers), you should add fixture to your workspace
and patch universe output to enttec. Now you should be able to control the lights with simple desk (don't forget to click the red x buttons to release the channels afterwards!).

Finally, create some scenes, collections and put them in a cuelist widget in the virtual console. For further details search the forum or maybe the theatre guys will chime in.

Good luck and ask again if you get stuck!

Jano

[MichelSliepenbeek]

Here's your Fixture Definition:

Elation-Colour-5-Profile.qxf

(8.01 KiB) Downloaded 43 times

Save it in your User Fixture Folder (for help read: https://docs.qlcplus.org/v4/fixture-definition-editor).



To get started you could watch these videos: https://www.qlcplus.org/discover/tutorials
If you want more videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXvJ-s5 ... q&pp=iAQB

[ibuprofen1590]

Thank you so much for the helpful and informative replies! I do have an extra Pi laying around so I may try using that as go through for MagicQ -> Enttec. Thank you for the definitions as well.

[Yestalgia]

Go with QLC+, it will prove a much easier thing to teach students especially with our extensive documentation and the plethora of online video tutorials.

The ability for students to download and play with QLC+ is much easier as well.

[MichelSliepenbeek]

Be aware that when you use the MagicQ software without Chamsys hard ware, there are limitations: https://chamsyslighting.com/pages/magic ... -licensing

How likely will it be that for next year you get a budget that is large enough to buy a MQ50 or MG70, as well as the extra fixtures you really need?