Emulating a fade time for SET CL VALUE macro

Thought this might be helpful for others…

I’ve needed (and suggested in the past) for the SET CL VALUE macro to have a fade time option. Because without it the CL level just instantly snaps to the new value - kind of jarring when the CL is live and it snaps from 10% to 100%.

One example of the need for this is a single-cue CL I have that I want operators to always have control of its intensity level with its fader. But I also need to have a couple of playback buttons that adjust its level to a particular value - called ‘LO’ and ‘HI’. So the operators can adjust the intensity level with the fader, but also can easily and quickly set it to exactly (and consistently) one of those values.

If the SET CL VALUE macro had a fade time option it would have been all I needed. But since it doesn’t I had to get creative.

So I created a cuelist with:

Cue 1 - Recorded a clone of the look of the primary cuelist, with intensity at the level I want it to go to and fade time I want for that move. So the stage now has the equivalent look of the primary cuelist at the new level.

Cue 2 - With a Follow time of 0, execute SET CL VALUE macro on the primary cuelist to set it’s level to the new level. - It jumps to that new level, but that’s okay since it’s no longer visible on stage (Cue 1 is). Then execute TRIGGER macro to give control back to the primary cuelist - which makes no visible change on stage since Cue 1 and the primary cuelist are now the same.

Cue 3 - Execute REL CL macro to release this cuelist, with a Follow time matching the fade time of the primary cuelist (so the primary cuelist is fully engaged at the new value before I release this cuelist).

Finally, I set this cuelist to a Priority level slightly higher than the primary cuelist - so it won’t release on override when the primary cuelist is triggered in Cue 2. Otherwise this Cue 1 starts to fade before the primary cuelist has fully reached the new value.

This works great. I’ve made several of them and they do exactly what I need them to do. Of course, it’s more work if/when I need to change the value but not too bad - edit Cue 1 and update the level, and modify the value in the macro in Cue 2.

Here’s what these SET CL VALUE WITH FADE TIME “macro” cuelists look like:
image

3 Likes

Joel,

Thanks for sharing. I also agree that we need a fade time option for the SET CL VALUE macro.

Watson

1 Like

+1

thx

r.h.