Happy, Sad, Frustrated.

[Geoff133]

Happy, sad and frustrated.

My first show of the year last night, Friday, was a great success.
It was not with Qlc !.

My shows are part time and through recommendation. They provide a little income to add to my pension each year.

The show is two and a half hours long with videos, stills, music and DMX lights controlled from a midi board. On the Thursday I ran the show three times to check all would be well for "the night".
Two out of three times it failed with some buttons or slidders not doing what they were supposed too.
After resetting, deleteing and replaceing as necessary, rebooting, reloading and some work correcting others I ran again for one last time. Not a problem as only minor issues.

This final run was nigh on perfect but left me worried that things could go wrong and I could not trust Qlc.
So I got last years laptop out that worked with last years software. Added the new fixtures I had bought and ran it. No issues, All was good. Show success.

So what are the issues ?.
Firstly I was running QLC 14.4.0 which did have issues but I found work arounds or simply forgot about something I wanted to work. The problems below were there.
I decided a week ago to try 14.4.2 as earlier issues with 14.4.1 looked like they had been resolved.
Some of my problems with 14.4.0 were solved. Great.

However !
Some dimmer sliders and buttuns did not work correctly.
Some, set to "intensity" or "gobo" had reset to "None" !. Why? How?. Changing them back did not work either. Had to delete and recreate them.
Some of these were not on the screen and still worked which was great. Less clutter. Some were on the screen and yet did not work. I don't use multiple pages function. Work around needed by me.

If value range set to zero and zero to shut function (dimmer) off for that set of lights the slider returned 74836 instead of a percentage and did not work.

Some gobo lights have a reset function. I did not want that active in any sequence so I would disable it only to find it had reset itself back to active in that sequence even though it was off in "simple console". This left me uncertain whether it would suddenly function during a sequence changing all associated lights back to factory settings. Nightmare !!

Other issues are minor and annoying but can be lived with.

At the end of the day QLc is a great piece of software and has enourmous potential compared to what is available AT A PRICE. It should be remembered that QLc is free to use. It is not gauranteed or technically "supported" only by the grace of many programmers in their free time.

For now, QLc will go back in my projects list and I will watch with great interest for future updates for I do beleive this will be my future show software for which I will happily contribute to the team for thier work.

TTFN

I forgot the "frustration" bit which does apply to the above which I decided today to get to the botom of..

The Simple Desk control area seems to have two sets of settings. When the green editing mode is on there is one set of sliders set at various settings then switch to live red mode and a diffrent set of settigs are shown. I found that if you select a blackout sequence it will reset the green side but not the red. What I have now done is input a blackout sequence before every chaser point before the next sequence change which is a nuisance.
The other problem I have had is whenever you restart and reload a project the Simple Console reverts to its last settings which means some settings are wrong before you rerun your project.
I have found that you actualy need to set a preset when Qlc starts which in my case is a "Blackout" sequence and the first "sequence" at the very start of your chaser should be a "blackout" so the Simple Console has both red and green modes set to "0"

This has caused me a great deal of frustration because my routines behaved in diffrent ways each time I started them.

So a "blackout" which sets ALL fixtures to "0" before an action has to be added through out your chasers to avoid odd things happening.
The other thing that drove me nuts is remembering to click the green tick box in every frame before you start or that frame will not work.
This was a nuisance until my MIDI key board arrived and then I set one button to do a "prestart". Only problem with this is if any one of the frame tick boxes is on it will go off when the "prestart" is pressed so end up with one frame not working !!.
Not sure why you would need that tick anyway as surely when you go live with the big red square button top right then you want to go live !!

Oh! one other issue is the "big red button" is right next to the Windows close window button and there is no propmt to save your work. That has happened to me several times and it takes extra work and patience rememberiing the last changes you made. Very annoying.
Is there a way to set the "go live" button with a function which then can be controlled by the MIDI board or a keyboard sequance. ?

Its now 3am in the morning of which I spent many times on this project over the last seven weeks after I found QLc !!.

i still stand by my last two paragraphs before the TTFN above.

Here's a picture of the current "Techno Train"

Cheers

https://www.qlcplus.org/forum/download/ ... w&id=14601

[Yestalgia]

Hey mate,

First of all, congrats on getting your first show of the year up and running! Sounds like a lot of work went into it, and even though it wasn’t QLC+ powering the night, it’s clear you've put in a heap of time and care into building a really impressive setup. That "Techno Train" sounds like a blast!

Thanks for taking the time to write all that up, I know it was 3am when you posted, and it really shows how much you care about getting things right.

Just wanted to chime in with a few thoughts on the issues you raised. Hopefully they help you stick with QLC+ a bit longer, because we'd love to see you back on board for your next gig.

• Sliders and buttons not functioning – That definitely sounds like something we’d want to investigate. If you’re up for it, could you share a minimal project file where the problem can be reproduced? That’ll help us pinpoint the bug and fix it quicker.
• Gobos reactivating when they shouldn’t – I suspect this is related to LTP mode being used without a default “off” scene. If the fixture doesn’t receive a new value, it can hang onto the last one. Try creating an “ON” scene that explicitly sets all your gobo and reset channels to 0 (or a known safe value), and activate that at the start of your sequences. That might smooth things out.
• Simple Desk green/red inconsistency – I’ll admit, I’m not 100% sure what you mean here. If you’ve got a screenshot or can explain a bit more about how you’re switching between the modes, we might be able to help figure out what’s going on.
• Simple Desk resetting on QLC+ restart – That’s actually expected behavior, since Simple Desk is a temporary live testing tool. One workaround is to dump your current DMX state to a scene before exiting QLC+, and then re-load that scene when you re-open the project. That way, you’re picking up right where you left off.
• Tick box in every frame – You don’t actually need to manually tick each frame; just click anywhere inside the frame to activate it. That should save you a bit of frustration and streamline your pre-show workflow.
• Go Live button next to the window close button – Yep, that’s a fair gripe. A few users have been caught out by that. One option might be to stay in Live Edit mode inside the Virtual Console — that way you can tweak things without switching between modes constantly, and avoid accidental closures altogether.

You're clearly doing some amazing work, and it’s super encouraging to hear that despite the challenges, you still see the potential in QLC+. That kind of persistence and creativity is what keeps this community strong. We’re here to help however we can — and when you're ready to dive back in, you’ll have plenty of folks in your corner.

Catch you again soon, and well done on the show once again!

[GGGss]

Some gobo lights have a reset function. I did not want that active in any sequence so I would disable it only to find it had reset itself back to active in that sequence even though it was off in "simple console". This left me uncertain whether it would suddenly function during a sequence changing all associated lights back to factory settings. Nightmare !!

If you need a channel in a 'hard' lock status, the Simple Desk is your best friend. I haven't experienced a situation where something else but the Simple Desk can send a new value to the DMX bus.
If you're willing to share your project, I could investigate it a little more.

[Geoff133]

Hi Yestalgia and Freddie,
Firstly, Thank you for your response. You might be interested in my post "Revelation" which I am currently writing.
Basically I have started from a compltetely new project. Said I would not give up !!
The project is "SHow" based with some controllers in VC.
Check the post out.
In regard to your above I will provide what you need however there will be a delay as I am currently running my show several times (two and half hours long) to check it is consistent. So far, so good, getting excited !!
Cheers
Geoff