Fading to black

did u record the fade time into the scene? im not too fluent with the magc 260 but i can try to help you. Welcome to the forums. sincerely,

I sure did. I originally tried a small value (8 seconds) then I did a really high value and received the same result.

Its likely you're fading the DMX channel that controls the dowser/strobe effect which would explain the "instant out". If you're doing a "grand master" type of fade (all DMX channels to zero) lights will NOT fade out properly. You need to build the cue so that the other channels DMX remain at the same levels and you're only decreasing the actual DMX channel that affects the dimmer of the fixture via the dowser.

Thanks Chris,

The only DMX channel I was adjusted was the DIMMER channel (channel 7 according to Magic-260). All other channels remained the same. The piece that eludes me is how do I get a slow fade between the scenes from full illumination to a black out and unfortuately the fade time did not appear to work.

I did some experimenting and the only time I got the fade time to work is when I was repositioning lights from point A to point B. In this scenario I could use the fade to say do it in 10 seconds and it worked fine.

My temporary solution is to program my scenes into a show and have the light operator manually press the GO button and use the Master Fade to blackout between scenes. This this works well but I am hopeful for an automated solution because the operator has two boards that she is dealing with (and a lot of quick light changes) and I trying to keep it simple.

Jay

I think the problem might be that you are turning off scenes and don't have them into a show. The fade times written in scenes only have an effect in shows or jumping between scene to scene.

Try programming a show with your scenes and see if that fixes it.

Or you can program a scene that has the shutter all the way up and the dimmer out over however much time, that should work. But you will see color, position, gobos, etc change with this. Try doing like I do in the Hog and make the 'scene' below it a BO but keeps the same values for all other attributes, this way it is a smooth fade to black with no crazy colors/gobos/movements etc.

i'm not 100% sure on the Magic 260. But on the Show Designers' you have an option to have special settings on each channel.
So for example on a Gobo Channel you will want a snap before setting and on a dimmer you will want a cross fade setting.
I think your Magic 260 has a snap before setting instead of a cross fade setting. Check out your modify fixture settings if there is any. I will check this out Mon morning. Let me know how it goes.

Best regards,

I just tested a Magic-260 with a Design Spot-250 and was able to program a fade out. To program a fade out, set your dimmer to zero (0), add your desired fade time and save it to a desired page/button location.

I was back it again this evening and tried several of the recommendations with no luck.

ronr -- those where the exact steps I took. Even with my dimmer set to 0 and a fade time to 30 sec, it snaps to a black out. No slow fades.

John -- could not find any snap or cross fade feature on the Magic 260 and nothing is mentioned in the documentation.

Since we open the show this Friday. I have trained the operator to use the master fader. I'll keep looking for an automated solutions. Let me know if you have any other ideas.

Thanks,
Jay

Jay- the problem may be with your Design Spot-250 profile. I don't recall it ever having a problem but from what you’re describing, it sounds like it was written incorrectly. Like John was describing, there is an option to set how you want your channels to react to fade time but it isn't in the Magic-260 controller. It's in the PC profile creator program. You can select between "Snap After Fade", "Snap Before Fade" or "Fade" for each channel. From what you're describing, the Dimmer channel, in your current DS250 profile, is set to "Snap Before Fade"... it should be set to "Fade". I can send you the most recent profile library to update your controller. Send me an e-mail to ronrock1@msn.com and I'll reply to you including the library.