Sunlite Forum

Hi,
I'm just after some help with a particular problem. I'll outline the problem first, and then describe the context.

The Problem
- When you click on a button on a fixture page, there is a tab that appears at the top of the page with the button's name on it, and dials for speed, dimmer, phase & size.
- Sometimes the dimmer dial is turned down to '0' (or some other low figure) without me having done anything to it.
- As it says in the manual (see page 34) this is a problem!

The Context
- I'm doing lights for a dancing concert, using a large number of audio tracks (30) in Easy Show.
- After having prepared a whole range of buttons, I'm programming cues in Easy Show, and previewing them in Easy View.
- Every now and then while previewing cues, I've noticed that a fixture either isn't turning on when it should, or it's output is very low.
- When I investigate by clicking on the button (in the main Sunlite software), and then clicking on the tab mentioned above, I can see that the dimmer dial is either turned way down, or is turned right off.
- When I manually adjust the dial by turning it up, the fixture turns on/up as it should.
- I'm just not sure why it's turning down in the first place.

The concert is in a week's time (6 days) and I'm getting a little concerned that this will be a problem during the show.

I'll explain a little more about what I've been doing.
- At first, I thought the issue might have been because I've been using the 'Dimmer' function in Easy Show, drawing in fade-in's and fade-out's.
- Maybe I'd 'faded out' a cue, which left the dimmer for that button on '0'.
- But when I went back and tested this, it seemed that the fade-in's and fade-out's in Easy Show don't affect the dimmer dial on that button's tab (in the main Sunlite software).

-Then I thought, maybe when I made the button that I somehow made it with the dimmer dial down.
- So I went through every button I'd made for a particular fixture, clicked on each of them & looked at the dimmer dial: every one was on 100% or I moved it to 100%.
- Then I went through a few of the songs programmed into Easy Show which used that fixture & those buttons.
- Soon I noticed that the fixture's output was low, I clicked on that button (that was earlier confirmed to be 100%) and the dimmer dial was down low.
- I moved it back up to 100%, went back to Easy Show, played that part of the song again, triggering the same cue, and it worked fine.

So I'm just not sure why this is happening, or how to fix it. I would appreciate any help or comments you could make.

I'll mention something else, which may be related.

- When I was programming all my buttons, I grouped quite a few using 'compression', to save screen space.
- I always use the 'External window list' type.
- When I open up one of these windows, with all my buttons there, at the bottom there are dials for 'speed', 'dimmer', 'phase' and 'size'.
- Whenever I would try to adjust the 'dimmer' dial, the whole program would crash.
- I don't know if this is related to my problem listed above (they both involved the dimmer dial) or not.
- I haven't sent a 'dmp' file of the crash because this computer is not set up to send emails, but the files are there if you would like me to send them. I'm also happy to send you all my show files if you would like (although the audio tracks are .wav files, probably too big to send).

My specs are listed below. Thanks for your help :-)


Firmware Date: firmware 1.19 (July 12 2012)
Software Date: Aug 1 2012
OS: Windows 7
Product: Suite2-FC

Hey guys, I have a show which starts tomorrow, and I'm still having problems with dimmer values 'mysteriously' going to zero or other low settings. I'd appreciate some help. I just went through the buttons for my movers last night, and at least 2 of them had zero output.

Thanks,

Chris.

Hi Chris

This will take a while to solve as we cannot reproduce it. We're going to need some more information, for example:
-how often does it happen?
-is it only on certain scenes/fixtures/pages?

Hi Simon,

I understand. At the moment I can't work out a pattern for it. I did the show last weekend, and just in case it helped I went through every 'button' in EasyShow and activated the dimmer function at 100%, except for those that already had fades written in. To be honest, I don't know if any lights played up or not - I had my head down on the main video camera for both shows, as well as coordinating between backstage & the tech team, etc. I'm still in the middle of crazy season here (doing lots of Carols), and won't get the chance to have another look at it till after Christmas, but I will see if I can identify any patterns in what's happening.

For the show I used 4 different types of fixtures: LED wash movers; LED par 64's; LED wash strips (all generic chinese makes, mostly from Trilights); and a mixture of profile/fresnel/par 56 white light. I definitely know that I had issues with the movers, the LED par 64's, and the LED wash strips, and I think (okay, it was a bit hectic leading up to the show) with the white light too, but not as much as the colour lights.

The issue with the dimmer dials was the main issue I was dealing with in the lead up to the show last weekend, however there are some more issues I came up against in the process of using EasyShow. I'm not sure if this post is the best place to mention them, or you'd like me to start a fresh one, but I'll mention them anyway.

Other issues:
1. EasyShow crashing. Firstly, this happened when I tried to access the dimmer dials at the bottom of an external list compression window. Just crashed every single time I clicked on the dimmer dial, without exception. Secondly, EasyShow would just crash every now & then. I would estimate that it would be 2 or 3 times in 3 or 4 hours of programming. It also crashed at the start of Saturday night's performance, giving us an extra 5 minute's delay to the start of the show. I have to say that it didn't crash in the middle of the show, however, and I've generally found it reliable when just doing playback, and not programming.

2. Expanding track views. Sometimes when I went to expand the track view of a track (eg in order to access the dimmer functions) clicking on the little triangle thing would actually expand the track above it, not the track I wanted to work on. This was a slight problem when I wanted to work on the lowest track for a fixture, but was solved by adding another empty track below it.

3. SO MANY MOUSE MOVEMENTS!!! (Capitals for emphasis, not suggesting anger :-) To program adequately meant continually zooming in and out. I used the magnifying glass at the right hand of the zoom window to change the zoom quickly. However, zooming in means that the place where the 'song position line' is (where playback would begin from) would usually disappear off the right hand side of the screen. This would mean having to take the mouse over to the left hand side of the screen, and then drag the scroll bar across until I found the song position line again. Might I suggest that zooming in should leave the song position line in place, and zooming focuses in on this? Or something like that. I estimate that this would save about 30% of mouse movements in programming shows.

4. Colour scheme. I understand why you have the tracks in EasyShow colour coded yellow and red, but to my eyes they are too dominant colour-wise. Could we please fade their colours so they are not so noticeable? Would help when you are staring at the screen for 8+ hours a day.

5. Undo window. Okay, I give up. How do you make the undo window work? I couldn't make it work, and couldn't find any reference to how you actually do it in the manual. When I tried, all I managed to do was crash the program. A very simple and reliable undo function/button would make life much easier.

I think that's it. Sorry to hit you with so much stuff, but they are all important issues. I really like the idea of EasyShow - in fact, it's the main reason I bought the program over a year ago. The concept of programming lighting cues in a timeline-based way, and being able to just drag in pre-progammed effects and cues is FANTASTIC, especially when combined with internal playback of audio tracks (and video tracks). And combine it with the 3D visualisation of EasyView and you've got a hands-down market winner. However, and I don't wish to criticise, but it's taken more than 8 months to get EasyShow to a workable state where it can successfully play audio tracks, and, with respect, even a year later the program still feels like a beta version. I really hope you continue to develop it, I love using it.

Thanks,

Chris.

Hi Chris

Since Suite2 I've always used cycles with the timeline view. EasyShow hasn't been updated in over 6 years (other than using the new GUI ribbon system). I've found cycles to be more reliable. If I want to sync with audio/video I use a dedicated audio/video software package and sync with MTC. I'd like to create a new EasyShow from the ground up within the next couple of years, it's just a case of finding the time.

Hi Simon,

Yeah, fair enough. Certainly the cycles are very reliable. Last year I did a similar show with Suite2 synced to Logic running the audio tracks - was 100% stable & didn't play up at all. Is it just my imagination or is it harder to program using a cycle? For some reason it just seems a lot easier and more intuitive dragging things down onto the timeline of EasyShow - maybe it's because I have a strong background in audio recording using timelines. I really hope you get the chance to develop/redo EasyShow - would be so good.

I've started keeping a spreedsheet of when the dimmer issues occur, and with which buttons - still can't pick any pattern to it. Will forward it when there's enough data there.

Thanks for your replies,

Chris.