Capture patch import: Ability to swap to "virtual dimmer" version of a fixture

ONYX Suggestions
1

Hey guys,

I’m testing things out with capture,
I’m loving that you can import the patch from capture but ran into a quirk…

I have a multipart fixture: an Event Lighting - WIP1320
(6 addressable sections, IP rated, RGBW LED Flood / Strobe)

I’ve patched it in capture, I’ve synchronised the patch with onyx via CITP, it’s found and linked up the fixture profile, fixture id, fixture mode and address.

However, I realised I didn’t have access to the “Virtual Dimmer” feature for the parts.

I’ve hit a minor snag.
I don’t have the ability to “swap” this fixture to the version with “Virtual Dimmer” enabled. I actually can’t swap it to any other fixture either (it seems locked to what it is in Capture) and as there’s no way to define the “Virtual dimmer” version of this fixture profile inside capture, I think it gets me kind of stuck

I’m assuming I could disconnect capture and then take control of my patch independently inside of Onyx, and that will get me through what I need to do now, but I was wondering if there could be a way to improve things here. Especially if there’s more complex shows and if you’re dealing with revisions, it would be excellent to strengthen this streamlined workflow…

Either:

  • a way to toggle Virtual Dimmer without needing to “swap” to another version of the fixture?
  • a way to send this information to capture and have it not freak out, or to just change it locally inside onyx without having this locked out, nothing actually needs to change on captures end. (I don’t know how these apps handshake and talk to each other, you guys would have an idea of what’s possible)
  • or, perhaps the simplest solution: could we just load the “virtual dimmer” version of fixtures by default and users can choose to ignore that extra intensity parameter if they wish?

If there’s a method I’ve missed, please let me know, but just passing on that the intuitive and my regular way of correcting this, appears to be locked.

The capture integration with onyx is an excellent feature to have!
There’s already far less steps than in other consoles I regularly work with and this is something I appreciate.

2

@Andrw_Waugh,

This is great feedback for the development team to look into and consider. I know the fixture “swap” of multi-part fixtures does seem to be a little strange. That said, I’m not a developer and have no idea of the coding needed. But here’s what I have to offer as a suggestion for a “work-around”.

As you said, Capture really doesn’t care about the virtual dimmer and as long as “channel / addressing” is not affected it will visualize the DMX output. So I’m going to work off of the “local change in ONYX” solution.

I’m guessing that some of the issues you may be running into is in the way ONYX handles the “swap” of multi-part fixtures. I think in this situation the terminology is mis-leading, as you cannot swap a multi-part fixture. You actually have to add your new fixture type (use a new ID and leave it unpatched). Once added to the show file, you then need to clone the “individual parts” from the existing (no virtual dimmer) fixture to the new (virtual dimmer) fixture, one by one. Meaning Master to Master, and parts to parts. Or one part to many parts. This does make it a little more time consuming, so when cloning make sure to have all your options (preset, groups, cues) set the way you want.

Once you clone to the new fixture, you can unpatch the previous and patch the new into the same addresses and you should be good to go. Capture shouldn’t care.

I would also like to mention (in case you didn’t realize this), but before you import your patch from Capture, you should be able to click on the fixture that capture suggested and change it to what you want before you actually input it. Of course, I should probably double check this myself, but I’m like 99% sure I did it before for this reason. But I could also be recalling when we had to do the fixture exchange between 4.4 and 4.6.

Hopefully this helps,

Watson