Compu Live Questions

hey and welcome to the board. well i can tell this is gonna be a long post for me lol! now i acn answer most of these with ways that have worked for me but we should also see what elation says about the best way ot do some of these things.
1) you can assign a fader to adjust the speed of each individual button u have created by right clicking on the fixture page or if u have it in a master scene the master page scrool down till u see live toolbar button. u will see a size and dimmer andspeed button as well. that should work for your qhole page.

2) if it is not doing it in the visualizer but u know it will do it on "real life" then don't worry too much as long as ur 100% sure it is doing what it should be doing. you can also make a profile of the led can on ur own.

3) when u program moving heads or any fixture u have a lot of u can hold down the shift key wilhe u move individual faders and it will to the same to all the same type of fixtures across the board. but to get a inverse pan u go into the constuction mode and open ur fixture folder if u scroll a lil to the right u will see a arrow goin up and down and next to that arrows going left to right check the relevant boxes for the heads u want inversed it should be the box with the arrow going left to right, understand?

4)i know of no way to do this unless u delete them. we will have to wait for elation to respond to that one.

5)you know again im not really sure if this is possible but im sure u can create different sized stage with the same gear and just switch between stages. just make sure you save all the fixture positions once ur done. made that mistakes too many times!! lol.

well i hope this helps and is easy to understand if u have any more questions ask me. best of luck. peace! sincerely jingles!!

Jingles,
Thanks for your help. I tried what you said, and here's what I found:

1. I do have my Cycle created under the Master page, so I tried using the Live Toolbar Button. I do see the size, dimmer and speed controls, but only when I have a scene (like Blue) selected. When I click my "Cycle 1" button, the size, dimmer and speed controls disappear and are replaced with the text: "Cycle: Cycle 1". It's like all of those features are being disabled b/c I'm running a cycle instead of a scene or switch.

2. I suppose I will just have to wait until I buy the program to see if it works in "real life". Until then, I'll wait for the new LED Pro fixture to come out. No big deal.

3. I tried this and it worked...success!! However, it would be very nice to have control over pan inverse per scene and not necessarily apply globally over all scenes that the fixture is associated with. I don't suppose that is possible though.

4. OK

5. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. Here's what I did...I created a scene where all 4 of my MH's were on and lighting up each of the 4 corners of the "stage" (really called the Podium in the construction mode). I saved that as Show 1. Then I resized the Podium to be twice the size as it was. Saved that as Show 2. I also tried resizing the actual "Stage", which I like to consider the room dimensions, and saved that as Show 3. In all three cases, when I activated the scene I created, the lights went to exactly the same place in space. What I was hoping is that they would "re-scale" themselves with the new stage/podium dimensions and point to the new corners. I may be wishing for the moon here, but I can't help but wonder, what do lighting designers do when faced with different size stages from show to show, but don't want to manually re-adjust all of the light positions for each scene?

Thanks again,
Brian

Hi Matchless1
I wanted to jump in and help out a bit.

For Q1.
You cannot control the speed of a cycle with 1 slider.
What you would need to do for this is create steps using EASY STEP in the edit window of a scene.
After multiple steps have been created, you need to convert the Easy step to EASY TIME using a yellow button labled Easy Time.
This is where the faders Jingles was talking about kick in.

Q2.
The 3D window works seperatly from the real life fixtures.
The attributes created are primarily inteded to make the fixture work perfect.
In order for the 3D window fixture to work perfectly you need to work with the profile your self and tweak it to your needs.
You can modify a fixture using the Fixture Library Editor.

Q3.
I don't understand this question much.
I am guessing you have 4 MH's?
In the Page settings options you will find X/Y button. This lets you invert the pan or tilt of any fixture in the page you are working in.

Q4.
Nope. no way to turn off the view of switches.
I have been requesting this feature for 2 years and will be a funtion that may be available in 2008.

Q5.
This feature is known as focus presets.
and is yet not perfected on this version of the software.
It will be available on the 2008 edition.

Best regards,

hey brian just let me know if u have any more ?'s for me. i'll be here all weekend but nobody from elation works the weekend. peace! jingles!

Hi John,
Thank you for your responses as well.

1. I tried what you said and made my chase a Scene using Easy Step. After that I was able to control the speed via the Live Button Toolbar. So, in other words, I did not need to do anything further using Easy Time. I tried it any way (yellow button making the channels Easy Time), but it just seemed to mess up my chase, so I went back to making all channels Easy Step. I notice that the F7 and F8 keys allow me to adjust the speed up and down. Is there any way at all though to have one key be an actual "tempo key". For example, I'm listening to the tempo of the snare drum of the band and I want to match it quickly w/o adjusting up and down (F7 and F8). I just want to be able to "tap" a key to the beat of the snare (w/o knowing the actual BPM). This seems to be a common feature on ALL manual (non-PC based) lighting controllers, and I've gotten used to this feature over the years. Surely this can be achieved somehow with CompuLive.

2. I've spent a few hours in the Fixture Library Editor like you recommended. When I first pulled up the profile for the AMDJ LED PAR 64, immediately I noticed that the strobe channel (Ch.5) had no "effect" setting in the edit mode of Ch.5. So I changed the effect setting to "Shutter strobe". Upon doing so, the icon automatically changed to SStrob.ico (what I think I want). I checked the DMX level settings...everything looked good. I thought, surely this has to fix the problem. Well, it did...sort of. Now, I have control over the strobe rate, but I cannot make the shutter just stay open w/ no strobe effect. I've tried many different things like adjusting the DMX levels of the Red, Blue, Green channels to 255 and the Dimmer channel to 63 (full intensity) and the Strobe channel to 0. Whenever I set it like this, I see white light strobing every 10 seconds. Of course, as I increase the DMX level on the strobe channel, the frequency of the strobe increases, as expected. I tried attaching a screen shot of my settings in the Fixture Library Editor of this light, but I cannot figure out how to post images to my reply?

If all else fails, do you know when we can expect the profile for the LED Pro to be out?

3. I have figured out what I need on this one, thanks to you guys!

4. OK, I'll just keep checking back for the 2008 edition. Any ETA on its release?

5. Same as #4.

Thanks again for all of your help John and Jingles!

Brian

Brian,
I am really impressed on how you picked everything up. So to move forward, you can achieve the tempo your looking for by activating the Audio function in Compu Live.

Step 1.
In the "controller" drop down menu look for "Starting parameters".
Then in the Options box, choose "Audio/Midi"
and in this new window, click on the check box with the speaker icon. Then close all windows.
You will be prompted to restart, and the Audio Analizer box will open automaticly. Minimize this for a second. We'll come back to this.
Step 2.
Convert one of your Easy step scenes to Easy Time. This is a must.
Go to the Easy Time window, and you will see an Excel type graph, with the postion coordinates of your easy step converted into easy time.
The top of the graph displays the dmx channel.
Click on the DMX address you wish to control by tempo, then right click on it.
you will see a few options as music pulse and music bpm.
make sure you select Music BPM.
Close and save it.
Step 3.
When you have the scene selected, you will want to maximize your Audio Analiser window.
You will see a "sound to light" and a "BPM" tab.
select the BPM tab, and you will see three options.
The learing option is the tap sync you are looking for.
You will need to play with all the functions here to get you going.

For the Library you are working on, you need to remember that when a lighting fixture is created, they don't take account someone creating a 3D version of it.
Check the Defualt option check box. If you have the defualt check box selected in one of the strobing parameters, then by defualt it will want to strobe.
Or sometimes you need to invent a simple black value from 0-1 so that by default it will be off.
Then strobe when you select the strobe button.
From what I'm reading you have it on the slowest strobe for the value of "0" this is why it is still strobing.

Best regards,

John,
Thank you and Jingles for your help. It all really helped!

I actually went ahead and ordered the program about a week ago. Today was the first chance I've had to make sure what I had programmed matched what actually happened. I have figured out most of the bugs, but there is still one I can't quite get:

My 4 moving heads (Design Spot 250) initialize to a different position than what is shown on the visualizer. For example, in reality when I look at the MH's they sit on the ground in front of me with the address lights of the base facing me. The "U" shape of the yoke arms runs left to right (not front the back). The head is tilted all the way down, pointing away from me (back). The visualizer shows the base orientation correctly, I think (b/c the visualizer doesn't show address lights). But, the yoke arms are rotated 45 degrees from how they should be, and the head is tilted all the way down pointing towards me (front) and to the right (45 degrees).

I need to figure out how to fix one or both things (the light setting and/or the program setting) so that they match. I've tried everything I know how in the Construction mode, but all I can do there is change the Base orientation, not the yoke or the head. I also tried adjusting the INIT scene, but I can't get that to work either.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Brian

well does it affect the actual light when programming? like when it is in the home position on ur real life stage does it move to where the head is positioned on the visualizer? also to edit a scene in init u need to turn on the fader. cause in init everything is locked down. so to edit ur init scene so that way ur heads are the same as u would on stage u need to click on init so that way it is on then hit ctrl and then hold down alt at the same time then left click ur init button. (you can also do this for any scene to edit it quickly and on the fly) now once ur edit scene window is opened click on the easy step button the one with the blue line in it and then click on the all ur pan and tilt channels u should see once u put the easy step things on there the faders will go from gray to white and u should be able to move them. now once u can move them move. get them in ur desired position and save it. and i think that should work just fine. if u have any probs let us know and we will try to figure it out for ya. also do u know how yo use the chaser racks and such? peace! jingles. p.s. sorry it took a long time to get back to ya.

Hi Matchless,
Yes, I know what your talking about.. and you have a few simple modifications to work with.

1. The Design Spot 250 has two pan degree settings. The degree is the amount of spin from left to right that the light can move.
It should be set to 540 degrees on the light to match the 3D window.

2. Once this is done, then on the 3D window you may want to invert the pan and tilt to match the direction of the actual light. Here is a picture to help you find the pan and tilt inversion.

ahhhh!! i got to start studying those manuals more closely or buy some gear. well i tried.

John,

1. I changed the degree angle from 630 to 540 on the light. I even reset the pan motors on the light. Unfortunately, this did not affect the "home" position of the light. It looks like I'm still off by 45-90 degrees on the pan.

2. Also, I did invert the pan last night to get the movement direction corrected (i.e. Clockwise vs. Counter Clockwise pan).

So anyway, ?????, still can't get my "home" positions to match the viewer. And, yes, it does affect every movement in real life after that...it's not just the "home" position. I say "home" b/c it's my best point of reference.

I am using v.1.2 of the DS250. Does that matter?

Thanks again,
Brian

Brian

Ok.. Try to open the profile using the Easy Scanlibrary editor, and change the pan to 540 degrees.
Then recreate the page.

oh man but then all his work will be gone. match, man i hope u ain't been programmin a lot. lol

Thats true,
The other option, and I am not sure if it will work, would be to rotate the position of the fixtures in the 3D window.

So what you need to do is hit center and Tilt the fixtures to hit a wall, then pan the fixtures all the way to the left.
Once this is done match the 3D fixture to the real fixture.
Then try to pan from there.

Ok, I tried changing the rotation angle in the fixture library to 540, and it actually works: the "home" positions match! In fact, in the viewer, the head points down and away from me and the U of the yoke arms run left to right. So NOW that matches what I have in real life. I even went ahead and checked the actual degrees of rotation both in the viewer and in real life, and in both modes (540 and 630), the fixtures really do rotate the full range of degrees they're supposed to.

It's just that when I use the pan range of 630, the "home" position is off by 45 degrees. I did try rotating the whole fixture 45 degrees and then everything matches up. But, now the bases don't match. Ugghh. There must be a way to set the initial pan position of the light either in the software or w/in the light itself.

I realize I could just use the 540 degree setting, BUT then I only have 540 degrees of pan. And I do notice the difference.

Jingles,
Fortunately, I have not done much programming at all with the MH's...more so w/ my static LED's. Not a big deal (right now) to create new pages for the MH's. That's why I'm trying to nip it in the bud before I get too far along.

Thanks again,
Brian

Hi Brian,
I recommend you stick with the 540 setting.
This is standard in most all moving heads, so you wont miss much from not using the 630.
Also the 540 is more of the standard. So you will have less headaches!
Trust me.

Yeah, I guess I don't have a choice. It would be really nice though to see Elation somehow fix this issue with the DesignSpot 250 fixture profile. Why have the option on the light if you can't use it in real life with Elation software?

Anyway, thanks again for your help John and Jingles.

Thanks,
Brian