Electronic Theatre Controls

We have collected a number of useful macros over time. They're all on our Web site here.

If you have others you'd like to share, please feel free to post them in this forum.

Thanks!

Sarah

 

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Sarah Clausen
Controls Product Manager
ETC, Inc.

Sarah,

 I've had the honor of using Express/Expression consoles with moving lights and I've found that macros are the way to go when striking/un-striking the lamp on a unit or having to reset the fixture, either on a global or individual basis. 

 All it requires is the DMX mapping for the fixture in question and a little time with your console.   OH. . and playing with the Macro wait timing to make sure the command takes at the fixture. 

 Dan

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Dan Weiermann
Lighting Designer - Freelance US
Staff Designer/Sales - Mainstage Theatrical Supply, Inc.

Is there any macro available that can perform the +10 or -10 level feature that is on a strand board?

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Alan Wang
Control Board Op/technician
Vestal High School tech club

While there is no specific Macro for plus 10 and minus 10, it is very easy to write.

 

Simply create a macro with the following steps:

@ + + + + + + + + + for the plus 10

and

@ - - - - - - - - - - for the minus 10

the application is enter a channel or range of channels or group number  and press the macro button to bump their intensities.

While you can not select Q and plus or minus 10 like Strand does, you can press Chanel and the enter key twice which will select all non independent channels. This gives you the ability to bump a cue up or down 10%. Take care however if you have moving lights as it may effect attributes as well depending on how they are set.

 I came up with these years ago when I was programming Intelibeams on an Expression 1. I also did another set of plus macros without the at symbol so I could next and last through my fixtures ( in the case of I-beams it was plus 7 or minus 7). Fortunately with the 3.0 software this is no longer required as the fixtures can be patched as fixtures.

 

Hope this helps

 

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David Fox
Training and Documentation Specialist
888-908-2193
608-824-5056

Here's a solution I found to presetting/postsetting moving lights on the O2.  The macro is "attribute all - 1(intensity) @ group cue".  So say we have a cue stack as follows: 11=preset, 12=fade up, 13=fade out.  The sequence is: record the look in 12, go into 11 (blind or live), select fixtures to preset(optional, assumes all fixtures if omitted), run the macro, type source cue(12), rerecord cue 11(if in live).  Do the same to postset in 13 if necessary.

Occasionally I run into the following problem: moving light is up in cue 10, fades out in 11 and fades up in a different position in 12.  The traditional solution is to use point cues.  I find using part cues to be smarter as the stage manager and board operator don't have to be concerned about waiting for a follow and ending up in the wrong cue if they "jump the gun".  Here's my "part-Q-creator" macro: "blind part 1 time 1 wait".  The sequence is: go into cue 11(live or blind), run "part-Q-creator", enter wait time(the fadeout time on part 8), run preset macro(see 1st paragraph).  This sucks the parameters into part 1, delaying them until after the intensity has faded out in part 8.

The only other problem I've run into with this method has to do with the fact that "group cues" don't normally contain hard zeros.  So if a fixture already has some values set and you try to use the "preset to group cue" method, it won't clear the old values if there aren't new values in the group cue (i.e. "why can't I get the gobo to stop rotating").  The solution is to temporarily make the source cue a "block" cue.  This fills all the empty spaces with hard zeros.  Just don't forget to unblock the cue after you're finished presetting.

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Josh Gubler
josh.gubler@gmail.com
joshgubler.dnsalias.com

The presetting/postsetting solution has to be slightly modified for the Expression.  The macro is "fixture 1 thru 6 only position beam image none record focus point 1 solo".  With the same cue stack as before, the sequence is: record the look in 12, run the macro, go into 11(blind or stage), hit "focus point 1 full", roll fixture intensities out, rerecord cue 11.  Do the same to postset in 13 if necessary.

 

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Josh Gubler
josh.gubler@gmail.com
joshgubler.dnsalias.com

Is there a way to program a macro to channel check only the channels displayed in flexichannel? 

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Phil Jorgensen
Stage Electrician
pmjorgensen@csbsju.edu

UPDATE: In Obsession NEXT and LAST stay within the Flexichannel channel set, so for Obsession the answer is "yes". In Expression, however, +/- will add new channels into the view, so unfortunately the answer there is "no".

 

Hmm. That's a good question. I think the answer is "no", but I'll ask and get back to you.

 

Thanks -

Sarah 

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Sarah Clausen
Controls Product Manager
ETC, Inc.

Solo essentially does what RemDim does when you're writing cues, but what it doesn't do is let you slam through focus doing RemDim over and over, so I wanted a macro that would let you enter a channel number and then hit the macro to bring that channel up and dump the old one out.

What I came up with is [FlashOff][Flash]. To write it you have to do a learn in stage mode and hit "Flash" twice. Then you edit the macro, which will read "Flash FlashOff Flash FlashOff" to read "FlashOff Flash". Essentially what the macro does is hold the Flash softkey down for you.

Enter a channel number, key the macro, the channel comes up FL (assuming that the channel is below 50% to begin with, which is the state you'd be in during focus or lightcheck). Enter a new channel number, key the macro again, old light goes out, new one comes up FL.

Now, enter a channel number, key the macro and try hitting "+" or "-". Because "Flash" stays lit, you can bump through channels forwards or backwards to do channel check.

Whee.