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Using moving heads with moving and light effects

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 5:47 pm
by lgweb
Hi everyone,

I do theatre lighting for about 1,5yrs with QLC+ now, and it's exactly what I was looking for. Next week I want to test and use moving heads with QLC+. So far everything is fine, but I have a little understanding problem:

We will have a band which performs live. There will be multiple LED PARs, these are also fine. But there should be moving lights, and I currently don't know, how to move them _while_ also run light effects (strobe, gobo changes, color changes...)

Is there a possibility to run movements and light changes at same time? What is the easiest way?

Thanks!

Best,
Lucas

Re: Using moving heads with moving and light effects

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 8:08 pm
by janosvitok
You can pre-program movements basically in two ways: either by scenes containing PAN/TILT channels or by EFX.
You can also control movements live using sliders controlling PAN/TILT (level mode) and XY Pads (with or without presets).

Scenes: if you include only Pan/tilt channels, you can start/stop the scenes independently to other scenes for color/dimmer/etc.
I suggest to create scenes for several positions (center stage, upstage, downstage, drummer, guitarist, lead vocal, etc.) and create buttons for them.
You can also create chasers with those scenes - with proper fade times they will create movement.
In current state of QLC+ it's best to not include Fine (16bit) Pan/Tilt channels or at least set them to a fixed value (0 or 127 are good values for that).

EFX: add fixtures, choose movement pattern and that's it. Set intensity to 0 for all fixtures so you can control dimmer independently. Be conservative
with EFX width and height (start with something in 20-40 range and adjust from there). Create a set of buttons for EFXs.
Read about relative mode in the online help or here in forum - you may find it useful.

I don't know how are you going to run the show - are you going to prepare it beforehand, or busk it live? For the former collections may be useful - you can put together
positions scenes/EFX with color scenes etc. and then put collection in a chaser. For busking, create a bunch of buttons for positions, for (relative) efx, for colors, etc.
sliders for dimmer,... and start them as needed. Solo Frames are another friend :)

Re: Using moving heads with moving and light effects

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 8:08 pm
by Ovis
janosvitok wrote: In current state of QLC+ it's best to not include Fine (16bit) Pan/Tilt channels or at least set them to a fixed value (0 or 127 are good values for that).
What's wrong with 16bit control's?:)

Re: Using moving heads with moving and light effects

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 8:53 pm
by janosvitok
This. :)

I mean: for static scenes, 16 bit PAN/TILT work fine. It's when you fade between positions when fine channels may not be computed properly, causing erratic movement (within the fine channel).
Also relative EFX have fine channel disabled since those channels do not blend properly with static scenes. For details see the post.

Re: Using moving heads with moving and light effects

Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2015 9:36 pm
by lgweb
Thank you! The independent control of dimmer and movings was a good idea.

Best,
Lucas