Q Light Controller+

Glad to announce that we had the first corona proof concert since the start of 2020. Limited to 60 pax.

QLC+ on win10 laptop with touch-screen
12x 18x18W RGBWAUV IP64 fixtures - 4 facing stage, 2 contrast front stage (on the ground facing up), 2 contrast stage back, 4 in long-throw (22,5° lens) mode at the back facing the trees.
16x Astera AX3 battery-powered dots (unfortunately not captured on the pictures) - twinkle lights, little stars, ...
6x Astera Titan tubes (on the floor around the drumkit) overkill but asked by the performers.
1x Enttec pro MK2, 2 artnet universes, wireless solutions Blackbox F2 W-DMX transmitter (for the Astera's)

Pre-production: project file built from scratch, created all fixture profiles new: ~5 hours
loud-in, addressing, running tests: 3h
production: 2 live bands performing: Sumi, Noedels (2 Belgian bands): 3,5h
loud-out: 2 man-hours.

Financial balance: positive - was heavily sponsored by local authorities. Entry fee €8,-
Great fun !!

Hi Fredje, thanks for sharing.
I'm just curious about those 5 hours of pre-production. 5 on 13,5 is almost 40% of the whole time.
How many products are we talking about?
Do you see anything that can be improved to reduce that time?

4 fixture types,
2 types were RGBWAUV -> so setting colors on one fixture-type is done by simple desk + dumping DMX (the W + Amber (UV) channels need a separate approach.)
But then the colors had to be 'copied' to valid colors for other fixture-types. Copy cues for the other type, add a fixture-type, copy values to all, change the channels for the new fixture, delete old fixture. <- takes quite some time this process. See solution (1) and (2)
The Astera's all have W channels. Again, colors had to be matched visually. After that, creating cues, copying values, etc.
So the standard color picker helped, but you have to do the extra mile for the other colors.

Then the creation of a VC (fool proofed), because this setup will be reused, without me being present.
the standard tap-button, fade-in fade-out by sliders (loopback magic and limiting the range).
Creation of sequences, ...
twinkle star (used the RGB matrix for that - very nice to work with), ... it all takes its time.

(1) A transposed copy tool - this would surely speed things up.
When you have a cue and you want to copy the values to another fixture-type; the option to transpose or translate values would be nice.
Like the remapping-tool, but then within the copy-paste functionally.

(2) it goes without saying - a color picker. V5 has it already. You make a custom created color as a 'apply to cue' function. You create 14 colors and use them over and over again. Changing the preset, changes it everywhere. The color information reflects back to the palette.

(3) a highlight possibility.
I set up cues with intensity information present. After everything works, I implement the intensity VC faders. They only control the intensity channels of the fixtures. This means killing __all__ intensity information inside __all__ cue's. (This is a real tedious part and I do it editing the project-file with notepad++). If highlight would exist, I would not have to do that. The same goes for identifying the fixture under edit.

(4) like V5 a fast selecting tool for fixtures within a group.

After all the intensity work has been done, I create group-masters (submaster sliders) for all functions, over all subsections in VC. Loopback is intensely used here.

But hey, rest assured that, if I would have brought my Grand MA - the creation of the fixtures alone would eat up half the amount of time... Once that would have done, the creation of palettes, groups, cues, speedmasters, ... would be quicker I guess. So in the end you'll end with more labor hours for this production and a skilled operator to handle the desk.
That is to say: really starting from scratch on GrandMA - pfiew (!) I guess 30-40 hours. The custom color picker alone ...

I'm very happy how QLC+ performs.
For this specific project, I started from scratch. In other productions, where I am the operator, I'd reuse an old project file limiting 60% of the time (when fixture definitions are present)

Hello Fredje, great to hear your success story. I hope, the world will somehow learn to open more of such events and lead them to a successful and fun end.
Would you mind posting also a screenshot of your VC (or the QLC+ file)? I would be interested to learn how you organized it. I assume, you applied many good practices to make things reachable in the limited amount of time you were given.
Thanks a lot,
Hans-Jürgen

Congrats Fredje on the gig!

I've had the same issues with QLC in the past. 5 hours sounds about right. With a lot of smaller shows, where venues often throw a bunch of different fixtures together, I've had this time go waaaay up, and is usually why I end up just bringing my personal MA2 OnPC setup. There's a LUA plugin for MA2 by Giaffo Designs that automates the whole process (I think you can buy the code for $40 USD). If I'm building a new showfile, it takes 5-10mins to setup the color grid (or any other grid of palettes you'd like).

When I heard about JavaScript being implemented in V5, my initial thought was being able to use it to create a macro like this (where the script would automate the creation of the color grid from the color palettes and fixture groups).

Congrats again on the gig!