Motorised fader questions

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surfdabbler
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Feb 21, 2024 12:13 pm
Real Name: David Ab

I'm setting up QLC with a motorised fader surface to control 10 stage lights, some white cans, white spots, RGB LEDS and a couple of moving heads. I'm mostly working with 'live' lighting control, rather than pre-programmed shows. I have some general questions that might just be limitations of the software, but I need to ask - perhaps there is a solution.

1) Is there a way to globally switch to LTP instead of HTP? Maybe it's because I am coming from an audio mixing background, but HTP doesn't make any sense to me, and I can't see why it would ever be useful over LTP, particularly when using motorised sliders. As an example, I have some RGB lights, and if I have a global scene that sets all the lights to white (RGB all on), and then I select a mini-scene to set some to blue, the red and green channels will not turn off, even though the 'blue' scene sets these to zero. With HTP, it seems I need to create lots of 'mini-scenes' for each light, and then put them into solo boxes, so than activating "blue RGB1' will de-activate "white RGB1", and get around any precedence logic. Then the actual scenes can be built as collections of these mini-scenes. Maybe this is the best way to do what I need, but I feel there should be a better way, such as as a global "LTP" switch, or something else?

2) When reading and updating the MIDI sliders, the update frequency seems to be low, like maybe 8 times a second. This results in a few problems, e.g. when fading up/down using the external control surface, the lights visibly flicker. Instead of going smoothly and quickly through the levels 10, 11, 12, etc, they jump from 10 to 20 to 30, and this is visible in the light output. Adjusting the light with the on-screen controls does not have this problem. Is there a way to update the frequency for reading/writing the MIDI sliders?

Thanks!
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GGGss
Posts: 2733
Joined: Mon Sep 12, 2016 7:15 pm
Location: Belgium
Real Name: Fredje Gallon

surfdabbler wrote: Sun Apr 21, 2024 1:51 am I'm setting up QLC with a motorised fader surface to control 10 stage lights, some white cans, white spots, RGB LEDS and a couple of moving heads. I'm mostly working with 'live' lighting control, rather than pre-programmed shows. I have some general questions that might just be limitations of the software, but I need to ask - perhaps there is a solution.
Welcome to the forum,

surfdabbler wrote: Sun Apr 21, 2024 1:51 am 1) Is there a way to globally switch to LTP instead of HTP? Maybe it's because I am coming from an audio mixing background, but HTP doesn't make any sense to me, and I can't see why it would ever be useful over LTP, particularly when using motorised sliders. As an example, I have some RGB lights, and if I have a global scene that sets all the lights to white (RGB all on), and then I select a mini-scene to set some to blue, the red and green channels will not turn off, even though the 'blue' scene sets these to zero. With HTP, it seems I need to create lots of 'mini-scenes' for each light, and then put them into solo boxes, so than activating "blue RGB1' will de-activate "white RGB1", and get around any precedence logic. Then the actual scenes can be built as collections of these mini-scenes. Maybe this is the best way to do what I need, but I feel there should be a better way, such as as a global "LTP" switch, or something else?
LTP to HTP comes from within the fixture profile. There is no general switch.
Some like HTP, some like LTP. It's a matter of mental logic. In theatre, LTP is common. If you want to use the latest set of values in conflicting situations, LTP will be your friend.
You will quickly learn: " What happens when your so-called mini-scene is offed?" Does the master scene come up again? Then you will have to set those values again to previous ones since again, the Latest are played.
surfdabbler wrote: Sun Apr 21, 2024 1:51 am
2) When reading and updating the MIDI sliders, the update frequency seems to be low, like maybe 8 times a second. This results in a few problems, e.g. when fading up/down using the external control surface, the lights visibly flicker. Instead of going smoothly and quickly through the levels 10, 11, 12, etc, they jump from 10 to 20 to 30, and this is visible in the light output. Adjusting the light with the on-screen controls does not have this problem. Is there a way to update the frequency for reading/writing the MIDI sliders?
Midi is implemented as a control layer, not an intervening layer to the QLC+ engine.
Midi is 'only' 7b so all values are doubled inside QLC+.
Do not try to fade using midi changing values... let midi set or call a scene with fade times - it will look that more fluent.

I have the impression that you are now a little bit too much focused on what you want to achieve as looks on stage. You are skipping the necessary steps to build recipes namely: the ingredients...
In lighting world, we always have to setup some basic show and then the operator decides what has to be mixed together to get some wanted outcome.
The use of external controls only comes after we have build a working show and want to have possibilities to automate it more or handle the controls with hardware keys.
All electric machines work on smoke... when the smoke escapes... they don't work anymore
surfdabbler
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Feb 21, 2024 12:13 pm
Real Name: David Ab

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate the help. :)
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