'X Position' fade jumpy

[SourceChild]

I think we've all had the phone call where we're told "It's not us, you just don't do it right." GOD! That pisses me off.

Running a cue with fade timing will directly triggers the DP2000 to complete a fade. Using a fader however requires the console to transfer new state data which must be processed by the DP2000. As Richard mentioned, the fade characteristics of the faders are a bit different from what a user might expect and can sometimes produce choppy results. This is actually inherent in many control surfaces. We just don't tend to notice it when it's only with light. The positioning of video is much more complex.

If you look at the Hog 3 forum, you'll see for yourself a number of posts relating to this.

I have dealt with this tons using automated lights to track performers. The only solution is to mark out a performer path and create something like 10 steps. Each step is a cue with a tenth of the movement. I then record the cues with "damped" fading. Since the performer never really stops, the damped is good because the beam will slow down subtly as it approaches the end of a step. The good thing though is that if you're at cue 1 and the performer walks too damned fast, you just step through to stay a cue ahead.

The way this works is that instead of fading with each individual movement, a GO which jumps several cues will cause the DMX processor to calculate the "current" state at the GO press and then render the final state before calculating a DMX transition rate.

It gets a bit simpler on Catalyst though since there is an image speed. All of us from the old days when the only way to set position speed was to dial in a speed channel know this already. Here's a solution that works.

On the hog 3, set the X pos timing to zero in the x-fade and set your image speed to whatever it needs to be to accommodate each step of the whole move Also set the timing to zero. Then in each of the 10 steps progress the X pos a tenth. The image speed will track through and the DMX signal for each step to Catalyst will be instantaneous.

Therefore, the product with higher resolution (Catalyst) will transition smoothly and you won't have to worry about the dynamic unreliability of DMX.