Original LXSeries Forum

Hello,

I'm hoping to use LXConsole to take a show to several different venues over the summer - after designing the show on an ION originallly I've already toured it twice with LXConsole, which is working out well with QLab integration.

The issue I have is the time taken to plot in venues with very limited tech time (not more than an hour in some cases) and house rigs - I'm faster at plotting in LXConsole than I would be on a Jester which is the board of choice in many of these venues, but it could be better - I have around 80 cues, which I programmed in about an hour last week (having programmed dummy cues with all the correct times in advance). There are probably around half a dozen basic states in the show though, so there's a lot of recording one cue as another cue going on.

Are there any tricks I could use to avoid this legwork during the tech - ie somehow program in references between cues so that for example I'd only have to program one blackout state and one general cover state and the other cues which need those states would automatically be updated (keeping the times as they were)

Thanks!
Dominic.

Thanks to recent developments and improvements - YES .

check out this one: http://macluxpro.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=385

Basically, you put the content of the repeated cues into a group with the affected channels marked (I use the same group numbers as the original repeated cue), and then dynamically (with "G" instead of "g") include these Groups into the cues where the content is supposed to be repeated.

When you then do the adjustments in the 2nd - nth venue, just go to the original cues, change the channels that are involved, and than hit "U" - this will update the content of the group, and dynamically all that dynamically include that group.

As you can read in the above, you can even to something that I would call "tunneling tracking" , meaning, say the referencing cue has a CHANGE in one of the channels coming from the original Group, then you just record this change into a new Group, and dynamically include that group AFTER the original cue (i.e. LX 12 is a variation of LX 4, than LX 12 would include Group 4 and then Group 12 as well).

Hope that helps - it certainly helped me GREATLY, as my ORIGINAL show bump-in time was the shortest, so I actually greated empty groups and cues with all the referencing built in already, so that even at the original venue, I just had to edit original cues and the variations (but not the full repeats).

All hail to Claude !

One or more groups can be used as a source of channel levels that are added into the contents of a cue. This can be done by the command line as Freddy mentions. Or, can be managed in the advanced tab of the drawer attached to the main window.

Included groups are somewhat similar to the idea of Palettes in Eos family consoles in that they achieve similar results. A way of thinking about included groups is that they are an automated way of executing a list of group@level commands that update a cue. If a group that is included in a cue is changed, the channels it affects in any cues that include it are also changed.

Included groups work exactly the same way that recalling a group from the command line does. When a group is recalled, any channels that are marked in the group are set in the receiving cue. This differs from the HTP behavior of a submaster in that levels can be set higher -or- lower by recalling a group. If all channels are marked in a group, it will completely set and replace all the levels of the receiving cue.

If your show consistes of a set of looks that are always the same and repeated in different cue numbers, you could set a look and then do a series of record commands: "record cue 1"; "record cue 4"; "record cue 9"... etc. to duplicate the look into all the cues that use it. Or, you could include a group (for example group 1) in all those cues. Then, you would set the look onstage and record it as group one, which would then automatically propagate to all the cues that included it. Both methods accomplish the same thing. Included groups may take longer to set up. But once that is done, recording repeating looks can be a lot quicker.

Because groups allow specific control of what channels the affect, you can also use them to control only a set of sub-channels, like pan and tilt. This could be used for defined locations for moving lights that are used in a number of cues. By including these as groups, it allows you to adjust the location of a light and have it change in all cues that use that location.

Thanks both for the info and detailed walkthrough! It looks like I can do what I want to groups - will make sure to get the latest release first..