Q Light Controller+

Hi folks
I have been involved in amateur theatrical productions for several decades and for the majority of our shows find that the biggest issue with programming the lighting is being able to set new scenes quickly during a single tech run. Besides the lights on dimmer circuits, we typically run about 20 LED cans/bars. I wrote a relatively simple program many years ago and have not upgraded because other programs I have looked at are too slow to configure in "real time". From one page, I name the scene, dynamically select a number of groups of the named LED lights and then set the group colours and levels via a colour selector. Chases involving several pages are more time consuming, but used far less.

I have looked through the tutorial videos of qlcplus and am impressed by the elegance and features of the project and would like to be able to use the chase options. Correct me if I am wrong though, but it appears to me that to set up a single "scene" as above with qlcplus involves the following steps (if one does not want to set each lamp individually):
1 On the functions page, select New Scene
2 Name the scene
3 Select "Add a new fixture to scene" (channel groupings are not dynamic)
4 Control-click on the set of LED lights to use
5 Select "Enable all fixtures' channels"
6 Select the first LED tab
7 Click the colour tool
8 Select the desired colour and level
9 Click "Copy current values to all fixtures"
10 Repeat steps 1 through 9 for other colour groupings
11 Select "New Collection"
12 Name the collection
13 Click "Add functions to collection"
14 Select scenes created above and add
15 In virtual console add collection to a button or frame
16 Switch to operate mode to see result
By the way, I do not see how one would easily edit a created collection "scene".

Would appreciate your thoughts.
Colin

- for single scene, you can skip creating collection (unless you actually mean chaser)
- for chasers over the same set of fixtures, you may use sequence.
- you can see the result directly in editor (unless you need some special channels set like shutter/dimmer that are not part of the scene - in that case, use either simple desk to raise those channels or switch to operate mode, set the channels and in scene editor disable blind mode)

Can you post an example result (qxw + any custom qxf's)? Let's see who comes with fastest way to create your file!

Jano

Colin,

That would be one way to achieve your results. Lengthly explained by yourself

Edit a scene in live mode: go to 'live edit' http://www.qlcplus.org/docs/liveedit.html and select the underlaying scene (used in the collection you want to change). Make the changes there and unselect 'live edit'
Voia... (if you like the newly edited situation and want to save, use the dump dmx to save the new values into a new scene)

Succes

Hi guys
Thanks for your quick responses and the tip about liveedit. An example of the what I am trying to do is simply explained. Take a set of 20 generic LED lamps and set 6 of them with one non-standard RGB colour, 7 of them with a different RGB colour and the last 7 with yet another RGB colour. My software requires one name and about 30 mouse clicks (mostly group selection ticks with 3 RGB colour picks).

Cheers
Colin

I have looked at the Functions page options a bit further and see that I can simplify the task somewhat by using the clipboard to do the following:
1 On the functions page, select New Scene
2 Name the scene
3 Select "Add a new fixture to scene"
4 Control-click on the set of LED lights to use
5 Select "Enable all fixtures' channels"
6 Select the first LED tab
7 Click the colour tool
8 Select the desired colour and level
9 Click "Copy current values to clipboard"
10 For each additional fixture in my group, select and "Paste clipboard values to current fixture"
11 For my other groups redo steps 6 through 10
Scene setup now uses one name and about 55 mouse clicks, a lot better. If only the "paste clipboard to current fixture" would happen on one of right, shift, control or alt clicking a fixture tab it would be really nice.

Hi Colin,

I am a bit of a hobbyist really but have done lighting for a few theatre productions. There are a couple of things I do in my workflow that might be useful.

Create fixture groups so they can be added to scenes in one go. http://www.qlcplus.org/docs/fixturegroupeditor.html

When you add lights to a scene add them in a logical order. This order makes for easy selection.

In the 'fixtures used in this scene' pane highlight the lights you want to adjust and then click the 'tab view and all channel view' (double folder icon) as this will allow you to edit subsets of all the fixtures you have added to the scene. (this is a very useful process especially when you are editing the look of a scene)

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Mark

Hi Mark

Thanks for your comments, I understand these operations. My main issue is with the number of steps involved with quickly setting multiple dynamic sub-groups within a scene to the same settings in real-time. It is this scene-setting operation that I do most often during a tech run so I want to do it as easily as possible. I looked at using channel groups but the additional "Channel Groups" tab just uses up valuable real estate for no added value (a grey fader?). One of the reasons that we need different settings for some of our fittings stems from the significantly different colour purity of the two brands we own. Cut and pasting looks to be the quickest sub-group setting method even though it is tedious to have to toggle between selecting a fixture tab and the paste button many times.

Cheers
Colin

Hi All
Further thoughts. If one makes a number of fixture groups of generic RGB lamps and then picks a number of these to make up a scene then the Functions "Channels Groups" tab shows a single RED fader for each group. Setting this fader gives a "grey" output on all the group lamps. If the channel groups "group" was a palette-selectable set of 3 RGB faders that controlled the RGB colours of every member of the group it would be extremely easy to set up simple scenes with groups of colour and you would have a new convert!

Cheers
Colin

Ahah! After reading a forum comment about curious fixture button behaviour I have found a solution that works for me now. These are the steps to follow:
1 On the functions page, select New Scene
2 Name the scene
3 Select "Add a new fixture to scene"
4 Control-click on full set of LED lights to use
5 Select "Enable all fixtures' channels"
6 In the "Fixtures used in this scene" panel, select (highlight) a sub-group of fixtures
7 Click "Switch between tab view and all channel view" TWICE
8 Select first fixture tab
9 Select the desired colour and level from palette
10 Copy current value to all fixtures
11 Reselect General tab
12 Repeat steps 6 through 11 for other sub-groups
Voila! Simple desk now shows the groups of fixtures with the different selected colours

In line with the qlcplus philosophy of making the user interface as simple and self evident as possible I would like to suggest a small change to the hint text on a Functions - New Scene panel control from "Copy current value to all fixtures" to read "Copy current value to all sub-selected fixtures".

Hi Colin,

Sounds like you are having fun finding your preferred work flows.

The intended use of channel groups, I believe, is to allow you to quickly alter a particular channel on multiple fixtures. For example, you create an LED Red group and an LED blue group and an LED Green group etc and then this will allow you to adjust that channel on each fixture.

Referring to your previous post, it is not absolutely necessary to enable all fixture channels. When you copy current values to all fixtures (as per your step 10) then the required channels will be enabled. There are some advantages to not enabling all channels particularly if you have more complex fixtures.

I too have found being able to make quick adjustments during tech rehearsals or dress rehearsals quite a challenge. You might be interested in this very long thread... viewtopic.php?f=18&t=10004 as many of those involved were using QLC+ in theatre type situations. The new 'over-ride' slider is available in the test release section viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3135

I use a mixture of VC DMX dumps and editing scene directly when setting up a show.

Cheers

Mark

Hi Mark

Channel groups do not help me much as I like to have arbitrary sets of fixtures in my groupings. Also when I have several groups in a scene then I need to individually select fixtures to make use of the "copy to all" feature. In many cases I want to pick my colours as well so R, G, B groups do not help there. I simply enable all channels as it is fewer clicks than having to separately enable individual fixtures (I really go for minimum input where possible).

I have just looked at the first link you provided and the very first item mentioned "The Simple Desk is NOT integrated in the VC operating mode and so sort of stands independent of it which makes it difficult to use while running cues in a cue list, etc." is exactly what I have just come across myself (and is probably a show-stopper for me - next show in a few days time).

I can live with the scene setup of RGB fittings as I have outlined but was looking to use Simple Desk for the dozen or so dimmer channels we use for the wash lights. It is so frustrating that I can bring up a scene in VC along with dimmer channels and see the faders where I want them in Simple Desk but cannot record what I see into a cue (not WYSIWYG)! Another pain is that Cues get created with 0 duration. If one wants to manually step through a show then infinite duration is a far more logical default choice in my opinion. It would also be nice to be able to choose a default fade-in/fade-out (ie 2 secs).

Cue-editing channel take-over that requires clicking the X under each red-highlighted channel if one has many active channels is just downright awful (I could live with a master reset).

A pity, I was beginning to like qlcplus too.

Cheers
Colin

Hi Colin,

It is interesting that you are trying to use simple desk to set scenes. I rarely use it for anything except for testing purposes.

I use the widgets in Vitual Console to make an environment that controls the various channels I have. It is incredibly flexible and powerful. You may need to explore some of the options. Also it is possible to dump dmx values into a new or existing scene (remembering that Qlc+ Generally uses HTP intensity channels). I then tweak scenes in the function manager.

I am assuming you have put your scenes into a chaser and then using a cue list in VC?, if so it is possible to select ll the cues at once and give them common fade in times for tweaking later. You can also make them lock to the same timing values.

I would be interested to see you workspace. Would you mind sharing?

Cheers

mark

Hi Mark

After playing with qlcplus a little more, I agree that the simple desk seems to be mainly for testing. That said, although qlcplus allows me to do most things I want it does not fit with how we run our shows. You asked for more detail on our "workspace", so here goes:

Most of our shows are community theatre or dance shows and are typically programmed "live" during one or two rehearsals (especially when children are involved) so a scene has to be set up in a minute or so. There are two lighting guys, one using a TheatreLight desk to program up general wash, spots and parcans. The second (me) uses software I developed using a python backend and browser frontend that specifically handles RGB fittings. It is a work-in-progress, I made a few improvements just before this current show. Pre-show, I assign names to fittings as set up in the rig and configure a mimic display to see the DMX output (as jscolor fields in mimic). Scene programming is done from one browser panel. I create or copy to an input name. This brings up the fittings as rows of name, jscolor field and four radio button groups A,B,C,D. All fittings within a group get set to the same colour when a corresponding jscolor field is set. Programming can be selected blind or live. Copying a default scene that just has an often used groupings preset (eg FOH, CYC) can reduce scene setting to a few jscolor selections. Individual fittings can be set if no group is selected. Scenes automatically get appended to the RunTime panel. By default all scenes/chases have a 2 sec fade-in/fade-out but that can be overridden to snap. Chases are programmed by adding 3 digits to the name (step fade-in, duration, fade-out [each in multiples of 50msec]) followed by a comma and the number of steps. Fade-in/fade-out can be selected to be sequential or as a crossfade, so flashy or smoothly varying chases are possible. The grouping buttons set A,B,C,A,B,C,... across the cyc for example allows one to get colours moving across the screen. Typically step 1 colours assigned to A,B,C are assigned to B,C,A on step 2 and so on. Thus left-to-right, right-to-left, front-back chases are easy to set up. Using a single group gives steps of just one colour, two groups gives toggling colours and so on. Colours are arbitrarily chosen from jscolor palette. From experience, I can usually get a chase that matches the mood and tempo of a song or dance.

Independently, I had been toying with setting the lights in a grid (similar to the RGB matrix) but have found that my groups approach to be adequate and a whole lot simpler to implement.

I can think of one change in qcplus that would help me would be a few user-set defaults for chases. For example, when creating a new chaser there could be a couple of selectable user default buttons. That would save me having to select Run Order, FadeInSpeed Common, FadeOutSpeed Common and then after the first step is entered set the FadeIn time, Hold and FadeOut time. I would also like to be able to read in from a DMX device the scene channels from a dimmer board (or alternatively from a file I could programmatically create).

Cheers
Colin

HI Colin,

Your development of your own processes and software is very impressive and really interesting. Thanks for sharing.

I guess when you have done all the programming and customisation it is going to be very familiar to you and much quicker. I must admit, initially I found QLC+ quite slow to work with but once you have a good virtual console set up then it is much easier and quicker to set up a show. I have created one page that basically is set up as a lighting desk and I use that to adjust and then record the scenes. Then when it comes time to run the show, I use another page with cuelists (and the odd button) so I can basically just step through the show. QLC+ has issues when applying fade times to RGB Matrices from within a cuelist so until that is sorted I occasionally need to trigger those events with a button or slider outside the cuelist.

I use many RGB matrix effects. Even with straight dimmers they are useful for quickly creating chases. Now I have enough variations for the dance numbers that I get with Primary School productions, especially if I am making it up live.
For more complex set-ups, especially as I am on my own and rehearsal time is limited, I have taken to recording the dance numbers etc and then building my lighting cues when I have some peace and quiet. I have a 3-d visualiser of our auditorium lighting rig and that can help when programming off line.
For our 'real productions' i spend far more time fiddling cue lists and being precise about light levels and times.

Cheers

Mark