In almost every theatrical dimmer control system, there is a relatively simple ability to run a cue "live", modify the cue live and then record on top of it so that the cue is updated. Unless I am completely missing something, this isn't easily possible in QLC+ and creates a huge workflow problem for updating cues while running tech rehearsals.
Please let me know I am wrong because tonight I go into the second huge tech rehearsal for Jesus Christ Superstar and we are using QLC+ to run our lights (which is AWESOME for the things we can do with movers, color changing etc., but which has sucked for fixing cues "on the fly").
The best I have been able to do is as follows:
1. When we need a change to a scene, make the necessary changes manually either with buttons/sliders/etc on the VC or using the SimpleDesk to override the specific current level settings (relatively straightforward and similar to what I would do in a regular board).
* Use the Dump DMX Values to create a new scene which can be optionally added to the current "chase cuelist" at the bottom.
* Leave the live mode to Live Edit ("blind mode").
* Find the current cue-list chase.
* Delete the current step/scene and copy the new scene into the correct place.
* Restore the live mode.
* Release all the changes ("reset the Universes") to remove the "hard-coded" changes I've made, and also turn off any manual VC buttons (and ONLY the ones that I added, got to be careful not to turn off something that is part of the cue itself).
* Step back in the cuelist.
* Press forward again to see the new cue and make sure it is right.
This MOSTLY works although it is horrifically slow, especially when using a cuelist of 380 steps (cues) and 200 fixtures, many of which have 12-20 channels. I have partially allevieated the performance problem by breaking up my production into 5 separate "partial Acts" (3 parts for Act 1 and 2 parts for Act 2) so that the individual cuelist chasers are a lot smaller, but it still is pretty clunky.
I long for a classic Record/Cue Number/Enter option which writes on top of an existing scene automatically (and even better would be an UNDO capability for when I make one of those idiot mistakes we all make at times!)
And what would be AWESOME would be a tracking record option that is pretty much required in theater work (not sure if it is important in concert lighting) so that every change you make gets copied into every scene after the current one if the level in the next scene is the same (i.e., you change the level of a light from 80% to 70% at the top of a scene, but you have 5 more scenes following this one with the same light at 80% and what you really want is for all 6 scenes to change to 70%.
I can't figure out how to do any of this easily in QLC+ and it seems like a big "miss" for theater folks. I wish I was a better C++ programmer (I rock in Python) because I would seriously consider tackling this project myself. But I expect my C++ skills wouldn't be sufficient to do this job, sigh.
Best regards,
Jon Rosen
Q Light Controller+
Official forums of the QLC+ project