This time, I'm not asking yet another question but rather I'd like to answer one. At least I think this is how the Magic 260 software works, but of course I found no documentation concerning this.
If you are creating your own custom profiles using the editor, you very likely have been frustrated by your carefully arranged control names getting scrambled by the time they get to the lighting board. Perhaps this happened to you: the DIMMER or MACRO control was assigned to the third, fourth..eight channel of the fixture but on the board it appears first!
Turns out there is an (illogical) method to this and you can get around it. In short, you must conform to the order of the provided labels in the list.
An example, you assign channel 1...3 to the color "Red", and then "Green" and then "Blue", and on the fourth channel, you call it a "Dimmer". Calling it a Dimmer is what is causing the problem. You must assign it a name that appears AFTER the 'Blue' label in the list. Since "dimmer" is before the labels red, green and blue, it will mix them up. Even if you call it "Laser",it will work, since laser is later in the list. Try to find a label that makes sense but is further down the list - you can't go back up. The best option is to create a new control name using the (almost hidden) editor - but that can be tricky too.
So when assigning names, start with the first channel and pick the first useful name for that control. When naming the second channel, you must use a name BELOW the name you chose for the first channel - also you can't use the same name over again! Each successive channel must be asigned a name further down the list.
Sometimes you will have to make up your own names to make sense and keep the order correct if the name you want to use has already been passed in the list order. For example, instead of "Strobe", I used "Flasher" which I assigned last. "Dimmer" is a common one, for this I've used "Intensty" or "Britnes". I also found that using a different combination of capital letters works well. For example, "Red" is early in the list, but you can make "RED" at the end of the list and sneak it by the software!
Here's where it gets really difficult: There is only ONE list that you must use for all fixtures! That means that if "Gobo" is the first channel on fixture type "Alpha", and the last channel on fixture type "Bravo", you must make sure that your "Gobo" label is in the correct order for BOTH fixtures. Example:
Say fixture "Bravo" has a dimmer on ch. 1 and Gobo on ch. 2. You assign ch. 1 to 'Dimmer', and ch. 2 to 'gobo'. All is well.
Next you program fixture "Alpha" which has the gobo on ch. 1 and the dimmer on ch.2. So you use the name 'gobo' on ch.1. But now, when naming ch. 2 , YOU CAN'T go back up the list and use 'Dimmer' again, or the channels will be mixed up!
In this case, just make up a new name for one of the channels and place it further down the list then any of the previous names. You could make a name called "Gobe", or "GOBO". Or maybe instead of using the name "Dimmer", you make a label called "Intensty", or "DIMMR" - that would work also. Just make sure that after "DIMMR" you then have another label for 'gobo' for fixture "B", because you can't go back up the list.
I hope you get this concept, once you do you can again enjoy making fixture profiles that are not a worthless waste of time. Good luck too - I had seven different fixture types and five of them had scrambled control names, and getting all seven names in order took quite a bit of time. I wish the programmers would have made more of an effort to fix these bugs! But at least now you can work around it.
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