Chaser fade-in with a button? [Was. Cue fade-in with a button?]

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mitscherdinger
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Hi!

Using QLC+ in theatres, I often stumled upon finding no way to fade in a cue with a button or to use the cue in a cue list fading in.
Is there a possibility to do that or I'm forced to do that manually with a slider?

Greets!
Mitsch
Last edited by mitscherdinger on Fri Dec 15, 2017 5:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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GGGss
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Huh?
See annex ... very easy ;-)
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mitscherdinger
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Indeed - fading in a scene is very easy. :D
I asked for a cue fade-in (not using a slider)...
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mitscherdinger
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Okay: It IS possible, if you use devices with an extra channel for dimming - all the modern lighting device have that included. But what about using conventional 1-dimer-per-lamp devices?
I like QLC+'s philosophy to cut things down to simple tasks to reach nearly all approaches you can have. That keeps the UI uncomplicated and clean. One is that you use scenes in chasers. Another one is, that you use a chaser to make a cue-list.

What you can't do is using chasers in scenes or even chasers in chasers (and that's the point why you can't use chasers in a cue-list). I don't know if one can implement this in software, easily. But this feature would complete QLC+'s easy and logic way to handle things...

Massimo, what do you think about it?

Greets!
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mitscherdinger
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Any of the developers?
It's not really an issue for me. I can handle things... It's just that it doesn't feel complete if you program a cue-list and it is not done by hitting the space bar (or whatever).
In theaters, it's not guaranteed that the one that sets the light and does the programming is also the one that is sitting in front of the desk doing the show, day by day. So, this is not exactly a "nice to have" issue, if you're looking in the theater world. Using a chaser in a cue list is something I've already seen 20 years ago in lighting desks that even didn't know about fixtures...
That's just my few cents about it and I'd love to hear about other peoples (especially developers) opinion...

Greets!
Mitsch
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DESIGNFactory
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a cue list is associated with a chaser that you have created, correct?
...if so, go to the functions window, select the chaser u use for the cue

on the bottom check the "per step" in the "fade in speed" panel
then double-click in the fade-in or fade-out and set the time you need for the fade


(if you are generally speaking about the playback of the whole cue list happening with a fade, adjust the fade-in time of your first scene)

...anyways, that's how i use it in the theatrical jobs :) hope it helped
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mitscherdinger
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Sorry, that doesn't work for me.
If I change the time for the cue to fade in (or out), my chaser's settings are overwritten. I can see it in the monitor view: It changes the whole chaser.
I'm very excited, how you make this work - Can you please edit my attachment, so I can see, how it's done?

Greets!
Mitsch
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test-fade-in-button.qxw
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bcordes
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I think what you're trying to do is build a cue list (chaser), then be able to use a key press to advance from one cue to the next.

The best way I know to do this is to use the Virtual Console. Add a cue list, then double-click on it (or right-click and select "Properties") to edit. In the "Cue List" tab click the button with the green checkbox to attach the virtual console item to the correct cue list. (You have the cue list "CueList" set up properly to do this, with infinite hold and duration settings.) Then in the "Next Cue" tab under "Key Combination" click the keyboard button and enter the spacebar.

Now hit the green "play" button in the top-right corner to grab control. You'll have to hit the "play" button on the cue list to start, but once you do that you can use the spacebar to advance to the next cue whenever you want.

Here's your example code back:
test-fade-in-button.qxw
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mitscherdinger
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Damned! I am so ****!
I confused cue and chaser so often, nobody could understand, what I was missing!

So: I'm not searching for a cue fade-in, I'm searching for a chaser fade-in with a button.

The idea is, that I might have scenes that include a chaser - for example a scene playing in a living room with a fireplace. The fireplace is like two or three lights flickering like flames and the rest is, well, a static scene.
You can easily save the static scene in a cue list and select fade in and fade out times - but you are forced to use a slider to fade in the chaser. At least I haven't found a clue, saving the whole scene with the flickering lights in one piece of whatever and handle that like a simple scene.

That was the point. I'm sorry! Hope, it's clear, now...
I will change the subject. Embarrassing...
bcordes
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Huh, okay, I didn't understand what you were looking for. But the fireplace-within-room example helps...

You can't add a Chaser to a Scene, but you can add a Chaser (consisting of multiple Collections and transitions) to another Chaser. I don't fully understand how fade times interact with a Chaser-inside-a-Chaser, but it's at least possible.

If you set up a Scene with your general room lighting, and then a series of Collections that include the "room lighting" Scene plus one portion of your "fireplace flicker", you can build a Chaser for the fireplace flicker that cycles through the Collections. Add that Chaser to the show's Chaser and you'll be able to start the dynamic sequence as if it's another cue.

See if this does something like what you want:
chasers-in-chasers.qxw
(7.5 KiB) Downloaded 51 times
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mitscherdinger
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Thanks for showing interest and taking the time.
It - kind of - works as long as the fade-in time of the scene doesn't exceed the time of the chaser. That's the behavior I always experienced and I doesn't seem to find a clue for.
If you need a faster flickering - and that's what you usually need when using the example fireplace - you're lost.

In the logic of QLC+ and using my attached example, I'd expect that the chaser would be faded in in 1s to full brightness. But it doesn't reach that, because the fade in time of the chaser is overridden by the "cue" (which of course is nothing else than another chaser).

Technically, it would be necessary to introduce another layer of time if a chaser is used in a chaser. This would solve the problem and would open a bunch of possibilities: Imagine a cue (with - of course - fade in and fade out time) where you have multiple places of flickering lights that alternately go up and down in brightness. I know, this is not a task for everyday usage, but sometimes you need such weird things (in theaters) and I know professional grade lighting desks can realize this...
[Edit: Typos]
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chasers-in-chasers-fast.qxw
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mitscherdinger
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I haven't dived into the "loopback-technology" QLC+ lately introduced... Could this be a solution? If yes: How?
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