BACK button or PAUSE last cue

[matthew chapman]

I'm the technical coordinator for a regional theater's black box space which in practice means i program and mix lighting and audio for all the shows and concerts.I just started playing with QLab 4's lighting, and already i love it. We currently use QLab for audio, but i don't know if i can convince the lighting department to switch over, though i'm certainly going to try. Now that lighting is in the mix i'm wondering if there's a simple and elegant way to approximate a back button found on most lighting consoles. Not that i ever misfire cues... ::ahem:: I understand the difficulty in going back when it comes to audio files, but even if there was a way to pause the most recent cue fired it would be hugely helpful. Currently the smoothest i can pull off is selecting the running cue and hitting panic. The more console-like i can make it seem, the easier it will be to convince them to switch over...

Thanks!

-matt

[Chris Ashworth]

Hi Matthew,

In the case of lighting cues, this is actually a possibility if you construct the workspace in a certain way.

Specifically, the Light cue has a feature we call “collation” which can be enabled per-cue.  When collation is enabled, the effect is to ensure that all of the commands from previous light cues in the same cue list will be applied by the end of the cue (in addition to whatever the cue does).

Put another way, if ALL your light cues have collation enabled, firing any on of them at any time will always produce the same output, just like a traditional light board.

Thus if you programmed lights in linear manner and enable collation, and put those cues in a dedicated cue list, you could fairly easily assign triggers that move the playhead up and down the lighting cue list and go forward or backward in the list like a traditional board.

Does that makes sense? Lemme know if I can clarify further….

Best,

-C

[Mike Post]

A question about Collation, Chris:  Does this record all previous levels into the collated cue as hard values, or is it still dynamically referenced and just the actual changes for that cue are recorded?  No real opinion either way - just wondering.

Mike Post

mdp...@mac.com

http://mdpostdesign.com

(601) 307-8657

-- 
-- 
Change your preferences or unsubscribe here: 
http://groups.google.com/group/qlab
 
Follow Figure 53 on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Figure53
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "QLab" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qlab+uns...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qlab/etPan.5872a532.236a85fe.546b%40figure53.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Chris Ashworth]

It dynamically recomputes the values each time the cue is run.  Specifically, it marches through the list and and literally collates the text commands of all the previous cues, and then adds the commands of the current cue to the end.

There’s a bit more logic to it — it ignores commands from cues that are currently running or paused, for example.

But the basic idea is it just simply adds up all the text that represent all the commands for all the lights in the list up to that moment and runs that instead of just the commands you’ve entered into the current cue. 

[matthew chapman]

This is a great feature i had missed - very useful in programming, But in applying it to the running of a show i'm having trouble figuring out how to use triggers to move backwards in the cue list.

-matt

[Chris Ashworth]

Hi Matthew,

There are few tools you can use, including the settings for the workspace under “MIDI Controls” and “OSC Controls” you can assign messages that will move the playhead up and down the list:

http://figure53.com/docs/qlab/v4/general/workspace-settings/#midi-controls

If you’re looking for a way to both move the playhead and also trigger the cue all in one action, you could perhaps build a couple of “helper” cues in a separate cue list that you’d trigger to both move the playhead (e.g. with a Network cue) and then trigger the new playhead (with a start cue)

Depends on the exact behavior you’re aiming for, of course.

Cheers,

C

[Nathan Schroeder]

I was confronting this issue - I'm trying to use QLab to run the lights for a moderately complex show (lights and sound, often linked together), and every now and then the operator hits Go too soon, so I wanted a Back button.

I've create a Script cue, given it a hotkey trigger of "B", and given it this script:

tell application id "com.figure53.QLab.4" to tell front workspace

set theList to cues of current cue list as list

set currentcue to playback position of current cue list

set lastcue to 0

set secondlast to 0

repeat with a from 1 to count of theList

if item a of theList is currentcue then exit repeat

-- set x to q type of item a of theList

-- display dialog x

if q type of item a of theList is "Light" then

set secondlast to lastcue

set lastcue to item a of theList

end if

end repeat

if not secondlast is 0 then

set savecontinue to continue mode of secondlast

if not savecontinue is do_not_continue then set continue mode of secondlast to do_not_continue

set savecollate to always collate of secondlast

if not savecollate then set always collate of secondlast to true

try

start secondlast

end try

if not savecontinue is do_not_continue then set continue mode of secondlast to savecontinue

if not savecollate then set always collate of secondlast to savecollate

set playback position of current cue list to lastcue

end if

end tell

At least in my testing, it goes back to the light cue before the most recent one, runs it (turning on collation and turning off continue), and puts the playhead back at the most recently run light cue.

I haven't tested this in real use yet, but it seems likely to work.

Nathan Schroeder