LXConsole Times and dips

[Johan Söderberg]

I´ve tested the Console for just two days but I like the console already so let´s start evaluating and make suggestions!

First of all I like the clean and simple look of it a lot! - That said to emphasize the importance of being quite restrictive with all the funny ideas and suggestions people like myself will be making... The simplicity of it all is an important quality that needs protection from us designer-nerds.

Here are some problems Ive had in my first encounter with it, first one that I think may be because Im European - the time IN and OUT is not like Im used to, I think.

In the most common scandinavian controldesks (AVAB, that is) the time IN refers to the NEXT incoming Preset and the time OUT refers to the active Preset. It seems that in LXConsole both IN and OUT-time refer to the active preset, - the "live one".
That means that I can´t edit any "real crossfade information" - I don´t know what previous preset had as time OUT or what the next incoming has as a time IN. I can see it in the cuelist but to edit the crossfades I need to go to previous or next, which can be pretty annoying if you have times round let´s say a minute or so...

Lets say I decrease a presets time OUT to 3 sec from 10 sec.
To avoid an ugly crossfade I then need to go to the next cue and shorten its time IN to let say 4 seconds.
When that is done I must go back in the sequence (which takes X time) and then try what my new crossfade looks like - does it dip etc...
If I´m not fully satisfied with what I see I have to repeat this jumping back and forth some times, every time with one extra jump to change times also in the incoming not just the active preset.

To me it seems quite unfamiliar and strange


Playing around with this I also noticed something else:

If I run ch 1 at 100% in preset 1 and also in preset 2 but my time OUT for preset 1 is 5 seconds and the time IN for preset 2 is 10 seconds I get a dip during the crossfade. Channel one will go down to 50 % and then start rising to 100 again. Most controlboards I know automatically keep the channel at 100% during such a crossfade where the level of ch 1 obviously isn´t supposed to alter at all.
The same if channel 1 in preset 1 was at 80 % and in preset 2 at 75%.
The console ought to work with the differing 5 % only during a crossfade - not go all the way to/from zero.
In some lightdesks this "stay-function" is an option you can select in a "parameter setup" or "preferences".
Its very useful!

Bye for now!

[admin]

Hi,

I believe the confusion is partly from the live window and its former terminology. The up and down times apply to the cue that you are going into. The up time is the time for the rising channels and the down time is the time for the dimming channels. I hope the new Live window makes it clear which cue you are in vs which cue is running (you are going towards).

What you may have seen as a dip (if you were watching the display and not the output of the interface) was a bug where the end of a fade, the cue momentarily altered the dmx address of the level display by 1. So a channel that remained at ful in both the new and prior cue, could be seen to change level to the level of an address that was off by 1. This would not have happened in the actual output of the DMX interface, but only in how it was displayed.

[Johan Söderberg]

The Live window is improved, that´s fine.
But it still lacks the times for the upcoming crossfade.

I can find times by pushing the "i" button in the main window and open cue info sidepanel.

There I see a cue X and the times
Up, wait up, down and wait down.
I don´t get the info there either about what´s actually coming up.

I see only the out or "down" time for cue X, not the "up" or incoming time for next cue. That info shows up after the crossfade is done.

I think it´s this sidepanel thats confusing me, not the live window in which no times at all are seen.

[admin]

With v1.1.7, the Live window shows the time for the cue that will be run by the go button.

It also shows the time as well as the % complete of a cue while it is running.

[Johan Söderberg]

It´s nice that the live window shows what´s coming up.
But the fields are not editable.

If , in the live window I see upcoming times that I want to change for some reason, I can´t.

I have to run the que first and then (when I´m in the next cue) alter the times in the sidepanel. After that I can step back in the sequence and see if the change had the desired effect.
If not, I have to keep repeating this skipping back and forth until it does.

Since timing isn´t that complicated when youve done it enough a first and qualified guess normally is right from the start and no changes need to be done.
That means I could spare myself some of the annoying running through of sequencesteps that I know, and can see on the screen, will have bad crossfades. All I need is the possibility to edit them before they are executed.

I´ve been trying to adapt to "the LXConsole way" now the last 12 months and I still don´t know if its just me being conservative and having trouble rethinking my old routines, but to me this still is quite backwards and strange.
My experimenting with it has however lead to some understanding.
I don´t waste so much time on it anymore since I´ve finally understood how it works and learned to work around it.

If all times were in editable fields in the tracksheets left columns I guess I could use that a lot more and spare me some frustrating skipping back and forth. That would however cost some well needed space and would not change the fact that it would feel a lot more natural to have outgoing and incoming time in the sidebar referring to what is actually coming up, not what just happened.

Yours Cato...

[admin]

You have mentioned this issue about how the cue times are presented a number of times. The thing is that the cue times are the way they are because of the USITT ASCII standard. Even so, the behavior is as expected: The fade times represent how fast the executing cue changes--channels moving upward in the up time and channels moving downward in the down time.

You apparently have another way of thinking about this. Is there an example you can point towards that shows another method? Perhaps the manual of a console that can be viewed online? Does this have to do with a series of follow cues rather than regular cues that are played one at a time?

The live window is strictly for playback. But, it will be possible to add the cue times to the tracksheet window in an upcoming version so that you could edit the times there. Would you want to see all 5 values or just the up/down?

[lanternz]

Some older AVAB desks that came into Australia demonstrated a similar issue with cue times stored in a way that does not make sense in the UK/USA world of lighting desks. I always suspected it was to do with the way different languages deal with lighting cues - AVAB desks had the notorious "number/function" way of accessing. "66 channel" rather than "channel 66" as we would say in English. It is to do with the grammatical structure of the language in which the desk is conceived. I suggest Johan try to get used to the USITT time structure as all the current range of top end lighting desks work like this.

[Johan Söderberg]

We´ll I guess the answer to that is both yes and no.

The strange language old AVAB desk spoke was RPN - reversed polish notation.They stopped using that many years ago, out of quite understandable reasons
As I recall they claimed that some scientist had figured out it was the most efficient way to send commands with a minimum of buttonpushes.
That may have been true but it still was not very user oriented so they finally, and quite reluctantly it seemed, dropped it.

But the RPN has nothing to do with my difficulties with the timing of a sequence.
In for instance the old avabs, and most other consoles apart from LX console I´ve worked with, every sequence step has fields for editing:
Time out (down as you say) for the present active step.
Time in (Up, that is) for the next incoming step.
plus delays, waittimes etc which can assigned to any of the two (outgoing or incoming preset)

In LXConsole however i can Edit:
Time in (up as you say) for the present active step.
Time out (down, that is) also for present and active step.

That means I edit the times in a way I´d expect to edit a master field with the ability to assign times to it (usually only one for both up and down), not a sequence step.

And by the way - Mastersfields go up or down, but to me sequence steps don´t. Sequencesteps (or presets) can, unlike masters usually, contain for instance blackouts and therefore I prefer to think of them as coming in or going out. That´s a silly detail, but it took me a few days when I had to remind myself about the fact that sometimes in LXConsole what´s coming up makes all lights go down.
- But I got over it...

In an LX Consolesequence I Edit a time that belongs to the past - the time in for the preset that I already have gone in to.

I would prefer to work in present and future tense with what is on stage and in the very position of the sequence where I happen to be in any given moment. That is in a sequence just before the active presets out-time and the next presets In time.

I´m sorry if my old schoolengllish confuses this.
At least I gave up the reversed Polish language many years ago, that helps some hopefully. That was confusion on a quite different level, I assure you.

Greetings Johan S.

[admin]

LXConsole 1.3.1 (latest build) has a new Cue List window. This allows spreadsheet editing of cue times.

[Johan Söderberg]

I found an image on my own drive showing the screen on an AVAB Presto.
I'll get back back if I find a better and newer example, but anyway I hope it can clarify some.

I put it here:
http://www.distingo.nu/bilder/LXForum/screendump.html

[admin]

I think I finally see what you are getting at. It appears that is an effect sequence rather than regular cues. There is typically different timing terminology for effects than cues.

LXConsole has very rudimentary looping capabilities for effects. Essentially they are a string of cues that follow each other, linking back to the beginning cue for a number of iterations. But, editing is like any regular series of follow cues.

It may be possible to add an ability to execute a list of cues (similar to what is shown in your screenshot) in place of a regular cue. In which case there would need to be a separate sequence editor and the timing could have more of an effect like terminology.

[Johan Söderberg]

Hm.... Maybe you do, and maybe not. Now I´m getting confused as well and I don´t know if thats's a good sign. I think I´d better explain what's in the picture.

What you see in the image is a simple cuelist. -not an effect sequence.

The only difference from LXConsole in that sense is that in column 5 the time up refers to the NEXT cue in order, not the present.
So if I had been in position 1 with preset 1 lit on stage I would be editing the time in for preset 1,5 which is the next, in column number 5 named "In".

There is one waittime in the window - preset 3 will wait 5 seconds and then jump to preset 4 which will fade up in 20 seconds while preset 3 fades out in 30 after a 5 sec delay.

On top of the window is the last preset also visible. it´s also an automatic jump, to a B-O I guess, after 2 minutes it fades something out and updates the masterpage so that the technician can run houselights or encores manually with faders.

There are no loops being performed within the sequence.
But as I recall all the effects which can be as seen as masters 11-16 named E:1 to E:6 are chaseeffects which all loop in a certain number of steps.

I desaturated other parts of the window but you can still see them below in Masters page 1 they all have individual fade up/down times. Other masters are either empty or they contain some Group or a preset.

LX Console has no such effect controlling unit and that has never been my point nor desire. The difference of importance is in column five only.
The fact that I can edit time in for the NEXT cue before I run a crossfade.

In LXCconsole I can´t.

Time in or "up" in LXConsole refers to time in for the present cue, not the next upcoming one.

The same logical order can be seen on the same page in ETCs latest version of congo.
The first thing that happens in order when you edit a cuelist is that you give the present cue a time to fade out and then you decide what time the NEXT cue will have to fade up.
Since it refers to the NEXT cue (whatever it may be named) its quite logical that the order is Down, Up rather than Up,down as in LXConsole where editing only can be done to the presently active cue, not the next incoming one.


And thats all...

[lanternz]

Forgive me for jumping in on your conversation but it seems to me we are in danger of taking a step backward. Why all this talk of presets when modern desks all run in tracking mode so that each cue is merely one event in a series of events that deal with the whole lighting rig? The event can have channels increasing or decreasing or locking in place or changing parameters or turning on the coffee percolator or sending a report to the production management. The point is to deal with all these instructions that pertain to the event in one specific place in the cue list. I think it would be a confusing and retrograde step for lx console to deal with incoming channel speed and outgoing channel speed in two separate places when the event of the cue is one complete thing. Especially when the trend for most contemporary desks is to offer the capacity to deal individually with any channel or parameter in terms of it's speed, profile or delay. I think this would be a better development area for the application - a global time edit combined with the option for individual channel control within the event.

[Johan Söderberg]

Please jump in!
It sounds like a good point, although I can't see why it has to lead to an inability to edit upcoming cue info and instead being forced to jump back and forth between sequencesteps to be able to evaluate them.

If there is some sort of programming conflict making editing of cue timing in a more logical order impossible, I'm afraid I can't see it.
Obviously they shared this my disability at ETC up til last year at least. Therefore I´m not quite convinced that modernity must mean inability.
What you say makes perfect sense and I agree completly, but I really can´t see the presumed conflict rising with your suggested approach.

So please jump in again!

[lanternz]

I think the problem is that the whole time edit function is a bit clunky (no offense meant to Admin). It would benefit from a live / blind sort of split so that times and contents can be edited separate from the playback / output window. I prefer the window to normally display live channels rather than "next" as it seems to do - although this surely allows you to edit the incoming time before it is played. I don't really like the way that when you call a cue in to edit it, then the live playback window automatically puts it in the "next" window. I think it would be useful to have an editable field in the live playback window so that the "next" cue can be edited there for last minute changes and for the main channel window to normally display output. I wonder too how you grab a cue to speed it up or slow it down during it's playback. And should the "stop" function be labeled something else as it seems to cut to the end of the cue that is running and loads the next cue - "cut" or "next" might make more sense to me. I am perfectly happy that the incoming channel time and the outgoing channel time is set at the same place for each event / cue.