Multiple output adresses on a single light channel

[olivie...@gmail.com]

Hey light guys !

How to patch a single instrument on two different adresses ? I’m a bit in a hurry, I need 3x1kw lights on a single channel !!

Please tell me there is a simple way !

Thanks !

[Chris Ashworth]

Hi there,

You can put the instrument inside a group, and then add more instruments to the group. 

If you change the name of the old instrument and tell QLab to NOT change the name inside existing cues, then create the new group with the same (old) name, the existing cues will now address the group with multiple instruments inside.

Best,

C

[olivie...@gmail.com]

Thanks a lot Chris ! This is the easiest way to cheat !

Almost all the lighting desk we use here in theaters (in France) allows us to affect multiple outputs/adresses to a single channel... 

I think it's a small but good thing to upgrade in Qlab to do list !)

Best,

O

[Christopher Ashworth]

Hi O,

We have instruments, but we don’t really have channels — an instrument is defined by being exactly one address. Talking to multiple addresses is exactly what a group is for. 🙂

best,

C

(mobile)

On Apr 4, 2022, at 2:36 PM, olivie...@gmail.com <olivie...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks a lot Chris ! This is the easiest way to cheat !

--

[Sander Salden]

I can understand the logic of not wanting to work with channels but it is very common in most lighting consoles that you can multipatch.

The idea is that you have a lighting show pre programmed and have one instrument programmed as the house light, but when you Tour and come in a theatre where the houselight is 10 different addresses (this happens a lot) you still have one instrument in your show, and you can do the “dirty work” of addressing all the dimmers of that particular theatre’s houslight in the patch and not in your show.

The workaround you gave is pretty handy and I’m happy to use it, but for me the patch seems like a more logical place to deal with these kind of situations.

Greetings,

Sander.

[Chris Ashworth]

Hi Sander,

I do think we should improve the tooling here — to make it extremely quick and seamless to convert a single instrument into a group, with the old instrument inside it.

But yes, the group is exactly our version of this idea. 

-C

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[Pieter Nys]

Hi friends,

Me, as theatre production designer, agree completely with Sander, Olivier and many other light designers. The idea of multipatch is a way we like to work. I think Qlab needs to listen to the technicians on the road. I know how to work with the group's, but I don't like it. What I do: I create my shows by only using groups. Next step is by adding fixtures and add them to the groups. So I will never use single fixtures. 

That's a solution. 

Disadvantage: your list of 'channels' gets double as long and makes it not easy to organise.

So I start using capitals or numbers to get a clear difference. 

A solution could be:

Hide fixtures, and show in the list only the group's.

But that option does not exist...

I really hope for an upgrade of the patch in a future release. This question is asked me several times by other Qlab users. So please Qlab, try to make this possible and make it like as a professional light console works. I don't know any light console that works with groups in the way qlab does.

Greetings,

Pieter

Op ma 4 apr. 2022 23:11 schreef Chris Ashworth <ch...@figure53.com>:

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qlab/CADv1a4-b3cKWzbmyx4ovw8PJRDMs9zr_iA8wtzTiJti65T7Q1Q%40mail.gmail.com.

[Christopher Ashworth]

This is very helpful, thank you! The key to these observations is helping me understand what they key usability differences are that you are looking for. When I hear “multiple addresses on one instrument” I think “well, that exists!” but when I see “organizing and reducing the length of the list” then I understand what some of the driving desires are… so thank you! Very helpful.

C

(mobile)

On Apr 4, 2022, at 5:52 PM, Pieter Nys <pie...@pnpbvba.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qlab/CAA-4HqkL9XJd%3DGoutktCgjm8ny_5tHq-px_H2%3D0KqU1j1wNuhQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Chris Ashworth]

I also want to be transparent that this particular design question is the subject of significant discussion and debate within our team — my particular way of understanding this idea should NOT be considered representative of our stance as a company, nor even as an indicator of what most folks here thing about the question. 

While I have often pushed at this request to try to understand what the underlying needs are, and how they are different from how groups work, I also want to be super clear that:

 - There is definitely something here that is driving many people bonkers

 - It is real and legitimate 

 - I absolutely do agree that we should change QLab so that this thing works more easily and also feels right to people

Threads like this, and the internal conversations we have had because of this kind of feedback, has helped me understand this issue in much more depth, so truly thank you to everyone taking time to help me understand.  Much progress has been made in our internal conversations today (some would say, “much progress has been made in getting Ashworth to understand the g.d. point” 😜), spurred by this discussion here. Thank you.

-C

[gar...@compositelight.com]

Joining this conversation late:

I've given feedback on the lighting side of QLab previously, which you could summarise as:

"Here are some things you're doing differently to conventional lighting consoles, which are going to catch people out, and you might want to reconsider from the point of view of trying to get existing lighting folk to transition easily to QLab."

So I agree with a lot of the above in spirit. Having said that, it's important to always look at new ways of doing things.

My suggestion for a solution here would be to be able to have a tick box for the Instrument Definition that says something like "Allow non sequential patching". You could then have an instrument with X number of address slots, and set them accordingly. In the Light > Definitions > Parameters tab there is some space next to the Home column for a "Take From #" to get them all in sync.

Non sequential patching would also all a more conventional use of scrollers - one channel for dimmer intensity, one for colour scroll (they will never ever be sequential!) Maybe I just miss my Strand 520...

For my part, it's been a while since I gave up the practice of patching all the house lights to one desk channel. At a certain level of venue it makes perfect sense as there literally is just one channel to control, but you will increasingly get caught out. All the time I run into house light setups that need certain channels to be at certain values ("aisle downspots @ 80%, chandeliers @ 40%, wall boxes at 20%" for example), and increasingly common are LED actual fixtures as house lights, which - for right or wrong - are RGBA 4 channel affairs (times many). Yes, you can just patch the RGBA channels down to one, but the colour never looks right.

My standard approach therefore is to have a House Light submaster or playback, which is either operated manually or triggered from my main stack at the appropriate time. This means you just have one cue or look that is "house lights up", and how you get to that - might be a single channel on Friday, might be 100 fixtures on Saturday, is up to you on a venue by venue basis. I don't currently use QLab for lighting - it doesn't do what I need it to, yet - but it can certainly cope with the above: "all = cue houselightsup".

It's slightly more long winded to set up, but on difficult days it can save you a lot of time, and on easy days it's basically just as fast as mass patching to a single channel.

My unsolicited 2p!

Gareth