Help Programming Cues for Beginners: Moving Heads

I’ll set the stage:

We have 2 moving spot fixtures and 4 stationary color wash fixtures. We want to fade in blue from 0 to 100 on cue 1, then we want to fade in both spots in a specific position.

Both spots have been pre-set to a specific default position when we clear the programmer.

Any time we want to fade in a moving head in a pre-defined position without seeing the light move as it fades in, do we need to create an interim cue that moves the head, then a 3rd cue for the fade in?

It seems that I need to program the final result first, then take one step back and re-record the same cue without the spots faded in.

Is that the normal way of things in the lighting programming world?

you want to use mark cue.
in cue 1 also record the moving lights into that cue with an intensity of “0”
in cue 2 and put the movers into the specific position with a intensity of anything above “0”

then when you play them back it should work

Ahh…this is good information, however, following the instructions to a tee on the Mark Cue documentation page does not produce the result expected in the description on that page.

This statement:

“Execute cue 1 again by pressing the GO button and observe that fixture 1 has magically faded to its cue 2 values, but has no intensity. Also note that fixture 2 is unchanged since it has no intensity value (active or tracked) in cue 1. Fixture 1 is Marked and ready for cue 2.”

Is not true after I follow the instructions here:

Mark Cue List

Matt, what happens if you have two cues back to back that use the same fixture, and it’s a moving fixture?

Is there a way to fade out that fixture before moving it, then move it, then fade in using a single cue transition?

the way I would do that is making point cue in between the 2 cues and set them to flow
or
some fixture have a move in black fixture you may want to look into that