light show videos

try making the scanners go in a smooth circle! that will tell u a lot about your lights and your controller aswell. i have the dmx operator from elation. the one with the joystick and i like it. it is a nice beginner controller. to make a circle create a 4,6 or 8 point hexagon and then adjust the fade time and play it back and just keep tweaking it till u like the results.i will try to post a video of my syuff sometime soon. peace out! jingles! p.s. for now here is a link to see some pics of my stuff! click HERE!

sup jingles, I have seen your posts and pictures. saw you on elations forum also. like your kit, ck out my set up, I do have a video on there but its with only 3 pocket scans and a bunch of other lights. but now I have the 5 scans with a controller. my website link I will get a new vid up soon of the new set up. how ya like my drums?

when you say a circle say on a 8 point, you put each point as a different scene right? how do you get a smooth circle out of that if it goes from point 1-2-3 and so on?

yep point 1 is scene 1 and point 2 is secene 2 and so on. how u get a smooth cicrcle out of it is you put a fade on it. on my lights i put a 1 sec hold time(speed) and a .90 sec fade time and i get a nice smooth circle out of it. well smooth enough to make me happy. just to clarify that you should program the circle like this. scene one left side, scene 2 left side but up a little more, 3 start to turn right, etc,etc let me know if u ned more help! jingles out! nice web page. cool vid. u got a nice big drumset. why is there a link to center stage lighting on your site? how r u affilated with them. cause i was gonna buy from them but changed my mind. peace!

Mudcon,

The reason a 'smooth' circle is produced from a 5 or 6 pointed set of chase steps is due to the fact that by adding a small fade time/adjusting the chase speed (gauged from the fixture's own speed), it essentially never allows a fixture to quite reach any of those 5-6 points. The beam heads in the direction of where a scene/step is located, but then the chase progresses to the next step, virtually interrupting the movement to send it to the next point, and so on. The purpose is to not allow the beam to sit still at any one point. It never really reaches any of those 5-6 points.

Best,
-Tech

thanks tech that is what i was tryin to say but it didn't come out like that! lightech to the rescue!!! lol! jingles out!

my console has a ballyhoo button

I noticed some of our posts in the thread here were Lightech was helping me is gone? does anyone know if I posted something wrong? I am new to the board but I didnt really see any reason for them to delete our posts when someone is trying to help another member. specially when it involved pocket scans and and elation board which is owned by american dj? just didnt know if you knew why?

what is a ballyhoo button?

yes what is a ballyhoo button!!! ??? im curious bout that!

Mudcon, what did you use to make your video?

a ballyhoo is a sinewave movement on the pan/tilt channels of a fixture. instead of having to create a circle/figure8/ballyhoo effect, some consoles have them built into their effect library

any real console has ballyhoo option.

Hog, GrandMA, Vista etc

in addition to placing them on the pan tilt channels you can also apply them to any other channel of the fixture allowing for interesting effects to be created quickly and easily.

One of my major problems and dislikes about the Show Designer consoles is the lack of this feature

MadMikey:

Next time I am at a big show, I'll look for that ballyhoo button. It better be clearly marked.

Sort of like my large audio console, there is NO button marked "suck". So, if it's garbage coming INTO the console, it's garbage coming back OUT of the console. It's NOT my fault!

Seriously, think about it. ADJ and Elation, while trying to offer quality products, can't put those sort of expensive features into their controllers and expect to maintain the degree of affordability that their main clients expect. It's the difference between someone like me who bought a very expensive Allen & Heath ML5000 48B console(retails over $50K in my configuration) versus someone looking to buy a little Mackie or a Behringer.

When a company has big corporate dollars, money becomes less of an object. While I'm a small sound company that has over $250K in ressources and equipment, lighting isn't my main thing. So, I'm not going to spend a few thousand on a lighting console at this point in time when a small affordable rack mount unit will suffice quite nicely. And I've really just started to scratch the surface of what my DMX Operator can do, and with some imagination and creativity, a LOT can be done with such a basic controller.

Programming a light show on the fly is not something I get the luxury of doing at my events as they barely give me time to set up sound and lights, much less free time to program the stuff!!

Not saying you don't get what you pay for. As an audio engineer, I've been forced to create miracles with what basically amounted to metal cans and string in order to make major events work. If I can do that with sound, imagine what I could do with lights if I apply myself.

Costlier consoles have more stuff. But a DJ making $300 a night, probably working 2 days a month can't afford a $12,000 lighting console either! People who buy and use those sort of consoles tend to have a dedicated lighting operator. Just like people who hire my company are doing so because I am their dedicated audio engineer.

Point well made, but think of their target audience.

Chris,

I value your opinion... and your points are well put, and are intuitive.

As a fellow certified audio, lighting, video and show control engineer I understand your thoughts completely.

I understand the industry thoroughly.


This feature that I speak of would be very easy for the software engineer to implement into there existing show designer consoles. It is a simple sweep of the dmx values up and down with simple control parameters that allow limits on the values and speeds, it is rather simple, however creates really amazing effects that any programmer would value greatly.

This is simply american dj/elation allocating their software engineer time to implement this feature.


I think the show designer 2 and 3 are good consoles for the price however i also feel that they could offer a few more options that their customers would really appreciate. It would also allow them to increase there market to designers and programmers that expect these features otherwise they simply will not choose the console.

Again this one feature that I'd like to see would not be difficult or costly to implement.

I would also like to see monitor outputs on the console .... this i realize would be more difficult to accomplish as now the need for a processor and more hardware would also be needed in the controller to achieve this. Yes I know the software is available to get a make shift version of this using a computer and running the software on there ( which I do ) but i dislike it. As an owner of a show designer 2 and 3 console I know their capabilities as well as their limits quite well.

This is not intended to bash american dj or elation but in all honesty I've been very disappointed with them lately for a variety of reasons.

Based on your description, I don't think this "ballyhoo" feature would be super expensive to implement, but I think it might be time to go for maybe a Show Designer 4?(concept) were some of these more advanced features are added. That's not just a simple thing to implement, and I know working from a modem firmware point of view. Granted, writing modem firmware and DMX operation code are two different beasts. Still, the DMX stuff would be significantly more to implement as you do require a smarter console with more bells and whistles, if not buttons and switches.

I think Elation and ADJ, in a quest to offer an inexpensive solution for people/customers, has to cut corners. And like you said, I don't feel this is a bash at ADJ or Elation by any stretch of the imagination. I think ADJ and Elation knows their typical client isn't corporate and is probably trench-diving workers looking to get the most out of their hard earned dollars.

The next step up is for people who are seriously making their living at this and are spending the big bucks for the big features. Just different categories. It's like with sound systems. Not to knock anyone, but you typically see a DJ with a couple of junky speakers on sticks with a cheap amp, and if lucky, you see a second amp, a cross-over and a sub or two, probably run in parallel off the second amp. Then you get the guys like me spending $40,000 on subs, amps and mains to do live sound production. Clearly, different categories. Likewise, my lighting can do shows, but it is NOT appropriate for BIG shows, although it can within reasonable limitations. I'm not going to fool myself for one second and think I can properly handle an A-list performer with my lights unless they just want simple washes.

The ADJ and Elation products are priced right for what they are. And based on the pricing, they offer just about the right amount of features. Look at me, I'm just now, 5.5 years later, finally realizing the potential(and now limitations) of my DMX Operator. I've had this thing for that long and only now am I getting into programming it. And now that I am programming it, I'm liking what I see, but I am seeing it doens't have enough storage. But considering what I spent and how well it served me just turning stuff on and off, I'm pretty darn satisified with the rush purchase that it involved. I learned this stuff by doing, and sometimes i do good and sometimes, well, it ain't pretty. But for a low end controller, it has served me very nice and I see myself getting another 5.5 years of usage out of it, maybe more. My next steps in lighting control are unclear, but I like the concept of a control surface tied to a computer, with the computer running the show mainly and the controller being a supplemental controller and/or fail-over unit.