Basic feature request - Delay times in cuelists

[Nolaz]

Hello, I'm a theatre guy ! I would like to reproduce in D-Pro a very useful option encountered on a lot of theater ligthing desks wich consists on having a delay time for the fade out and the fade in the cuelist when pressing the GO button.
I can't find a way to do this behaviour in D-Pro, even with a fake empty cue in between, or something like that.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thank you fo your help.
(and if it's not possible, it would be a very very useful feature ! )

[Nolaz]

Nobody ?

[flippatspace]

I didn't really get what you are trying to do

[APT Tech]

Yeah, also I'm not clear on what it is you're wanting. We fade cues in and out all the time... not sure what it is you're wanting that's different. Can you post a sample .dsf file maybe?

[Nolaz]

This feature is called "delay in" and "delay out" in the cuelists/sequences of theatre lighting desks. It consists in the possibility to specify a waiting time for the fade in or the fade out when we do a GO, and this, for each step (line) of the cuelist.

In my attached example, when we do a GO, the memory B goes up in 6 seconds and the memory A goes out in 7s after a delay time of 3s.

Capture3.JPG (91.79 KiB) Viewed 7084 times

In the D-Pro cuelists, it could look like this :

Capture4.JPG (47.11 KiB) Viewed 7084 times

It would be the same reasoning for an IN delay instead (it has no sense to specify a delay for the fade in AND the fade out)

Very few (if any) cheap lighting software have this feature, and I think it could be a big benefit for D-Pro.For me, that's one of the main thing I find lacking (as well as the ability to assign curves on the DMX outputs !).

[APT Tech]

I guess I have the drawback of never having used a theatre lighting desk all of my experience is with D-Pro.

We use QLab to trigger our cues, not just lighting but also mics, projections, sounds, etc. So what you're trying to accomplish, is something we'd do with two separate cuelists in D-Pro and a "pre-wait" on the 2nd one in QLab. So we'd hit the "Go" button, the fade-in cuelist starts immediately, then 3 seconds later the fade-out cuelist starts.

[Nolaz]

Ok thanks, I see the idea, even if it seems a bit weird for me because what I expect from a software like D-Pro is to be able to manage the lights by itself, without the help of third-party software.
It's the kind of software I'm looking for right now, and unfortunately I haven't found the right one for me yet...

[Nolaz]

In fact the Hold Time has no sense in a theater perspective, because it's the time that the operator waits between two cues, no need to have this paramater in the cuelists. The cursor in the timeline could stop at the end of the fade in, and at the GO from the operator, the next transfer could happen with the next specified in and out times (and delay times ! )
Anyway, this software is just not at all adapted for theater shows. It's a pity because otherwise it's a nice software, simple, powerful and robust.

[APT Tech]

Give QLab a look. It actually has internal handling of DMX now, though it didn't when we first started using it. We're still using D-Pro for lighting with it since we're familiar with D-Pro and as of when we last compared, D-Pro was easier to handle movers and effects like color fans, etc - though that's been a while since we looked at that, QLab may be more powerful on lighting than it used to be. They offer different licensing options depending on what features you needs, so if e.g. video isn't important you can get it without that.

Of course, you've gotta be on a Mac

[Nolaz]

I'm a on a PC