While looking at the new ilumo ZOOM LED Spot, On Stage Lighting considers the future of colour in stage lighting control and revisits an old problem with a possible solution that leads to further questions.

The Colour Mixing Problem

In a past article, we looked at a specific problem concerning the crossfading of colour mixing lighting units and the possible visual hideousness that can be the stopping off point between one colour and another.

Briefly, the principle of channel value controlled colour mixing and state based lighting create an problem. When channel levels create a mixed light colour based on the intensity of individual colours like Red, Green and Blue (RGB) sources, a fade between these colours sends the values through a series of colours including what might be termed Dull White.

Colour Mixing and Crossfades suggests ways in which these transitions can be managed, either by hand or using additional cues as stopping off points that create an A-road bypass around the Dull White and avoid unwanted colours between two lighting looks.

The Colour Control Problem

The way we currently run colour mixing fixtures using additive RGB, RGBW et al and subtractive CMY uses control channels for each colour component intensity. This used to simply translate to a series of 8-bit values on an encoder (or even earlier, a fader) but lighting console makers wanted to give us more. They created ways in which we could “pick” the colour or align it to a simplified colour model that might approximate, say, a Lee filter. By somewhat crudely mashing up a series of values, a colour was produced that didn’t involve wheely-wheelying each individual colour emitter to it’s desired intensity.

But “crudely” is the key. The actual resulting colour output is, of course, very much based on the light source it is being used with, what colour temperature discharge lamp, the colour of the Magenta flag or which “Red” LED. This mashing of values and the variable nature of the light source depending on fixture type, has always led me to create my colours while avoiding things like “colour pickers” and any adjustments made are directly controlled by said wheely-wheelying the specific colour channel.

Some professional consoles give the programmer the option to use Hue, Saturation and Intensity (HSI) or some similar model to set the exact colours. These systems don’t really address the issue that a lighting console doesn’t actually see the colours it thinks it’s outputting and can’t really judge if the Cheapo-LED Pro is actually the same steel blue as the Lari*lite 2000 Wash.

The CIE Colour Space

Before we go anywhere, you should probably know about the CIE colour space. It’s extremely interesting and science-y if you are extremely interested in science-y things. If not, it’s basically a mathematical way of describing a particular colour, based on coordinates and can be visualised with a lovely rainbow thing shaped like, well, something. The important bit is that, using these coordinates we can describe colour. Handy.

The ilumo Zoom LED Spot

I recently took a look at the ilumo ZOOM LED Spot, following it’s formal outing at the Frankfurt show. The last time I saw the prototype, it was more of a non-working model, but this time Lumonic’s baby was full of life and I had plenty of questions for the designer of the ZOOM Spot.

Well, ok, so it’s not really a spot. If you expect it act like a projector or profile spot, it doesn’t.

The Zoom LED from Lumonic is a fixed PAR style colour mixing fixture, with a remote motorised zoom. It’s based on OSRAM high brightness LEDs in an array and goes from pretty darn tight to nice ‘n’ wide. The ilumo is DMX controllable, has all the things you’d expect from a professional level colour mixing PAR-like and a load of other things too. We’ll let you head over to the website to mug up on all these things, but notice that the design pedigree of this fixture is not insignificant, having a heritage with the orginal JTE Pixel range of LED kit including the famous “1044”. If you know your MAX2s from your RGB DMX modes, hold that thought.

There is much to talk about in this LED fixture, but this article isn’t a product review. We are more concerned with the concepts for colour mixing control , of which the Zoom Spot flags up.

Fixture Personality

The ilumo ships with range of possibilities regarding the way the unit is controlled via DMX (or similar: Artnet, sACN etc.) and these possibilities are wrangled into what they call “personalities” but you might consider simlar to fixture “modes”. These have been put together by the designers to give the user a single point of access to a specific setup, a bit like a stored series of settings, rather than what we think of as modes, which seem to be most manufacturers way of making sure you end with a fixture that will Pan and Tilt, but won’t open it’s dimming shutter!!

Within this personality, one channel of DMX control may be given over to what the ilumo call “Colour Control”, which in reality sets up the unit to behave in certain ways regarding it’s use of colour. Remember, this is controlled remotely from the console using ranges on a single 8-bit channel, effectively giving you control over the colour model at any given time, right there in your cues. In P6 (Personality 6) the channel map looks like:

• 0-40 RGBW (raw)
• 41-80 RGB (calibrated)
• 81-120 CIE x & y
• 121 – 160 CIE Colour Temperatures 2000K to 10000K
• 161-200 Palette Selection
• 201-255 HSI (& Colour Temperature)

The first part of this channel range simple sets the fixture to a standard RGBW model, in which a Red at full equals all the Red emitters are full pelt. But take a moment to look at the other models, all interesting in their own right. HSI is there and is what is says on the tin, plus something called calibrated. There is mention of the CIE coordinates x and y, but more on that in a moment.

Colour Calibration

With all the mention of colour temperatures and the problems outlined at the start of this article regarding the somewhat vague nature of colour mixing, it’s worth looking at how calibration works within the ilumo. For a start, what you are looking at is the fixture itself designating what colour it is, based on things such as your chosen CT or calibrated Red, Green and Blue sources.

What this means is that you can set the Red at the fixture to be “LEE 106” or “LEE 027” and other possibilities, customisable or standard. Obviously, the LED units themselves don’t swap out for new ones, the fixture creates the base colours with a combination of it’s given raw material and an uplift in this calibrated “Red” might involve a change in all RGBW LEDs. You can see why this is called a Colour Engine already. We are pretending to control this RGB fixture in a simplistic way, and it’s busy doing stuff under the hood.

CIE X and Y Coordinates

As we now know, you can pick a colour using the CIE colour space using numbers, and this is where the CIE x & y comes in. Again, we are now looking at taking out the vagaries of the console colour picker and identifying exactly a colour that the engine will attempt to reproduce. I have to say at this point, that these in-fixture calcs presumably don’t take into account the age of the LEDs themselves or the batch, possibly not even the model generation of the ilumo range. Anyone that has worked with a large quantity of JTE 1044 Pixelline of different ages, from different hire companies, will know the shenanigans involved in putting all that “that sort” next to “those other ones” when it came to getting and even colour. Now, of course, LED technology has advanced and perhaps such variance is less common.

But keep the CIE model in your mind as we move on to…

Palette Control

In lighting programming, we know what “palettes” are with regard to consoles. They are a preset thing, including colour, that we can save away for later use and update centrally. They are the centre of our world. The ilumo uses the term “palette” accurately, but not in the way we moving light programmers think of it. So let’s call them “Stored Colours” for the minute.

These stored colours are recalled by one of two DMX controlled channels, I didn’t get if they stored the same colours or different ones on each channel, to be honest. The key thing is that the two channels act like an A/B buss, like a DJ mixer. One channel sets up one colour, the other, another a second colour. The final piece of this puzzle is the third X-Fade channel – it’s the sideways slider-y thing that DJs like to fiddle with. It fades between the two colours, loaded up on the A and B busses.

“But why?” I hear you ask. “Surely, we don’t need to set up a colour on a channel and another on another channel, and upload and store it in the LED fixture to then crossfade between them. I spent good money on a lighting console that does that for me and without so much faffing about!!” Well, it’s a good point.

The interesting thing about the ilumo ZOOM Spot is the reason it bothers with all this in the first place. The colour engine goes out of it’s way, to, well, go out of it’s way!

What I mean is, the crossfade from colour A to colour B deliberately doesn’t take the path that leads through Dull White or other colour nasties. The fixture finds a route from one side of the CIE colour space to the other, while trying to avoid Yuckville around the middle.

I’m not entirely clear how the routing decisions are taken but tested it out and it does actually work, presumably the engine interpolates between the two colours, rather than simple changing intensities in a linear fashion. The acid test for an RGB fixture is something like a Red to Cyan crossfade, taking the LEDs at their extremes and crossing them over. The colour route wasn’t half bad and there was no discernible dips or bulges in intensity during the transition.

The Questions

All these interesting solutions and options for more accurate colour control create some interesting questions, which probably don’t have one answer for everyone:

Are colour mixing fixtures expected to make a better job of their colour business within the fixtures themselves, making it easier on the end user and the lighting console?

Is it better that the dumb kit just takes instruction from a calculating console, which in turn needs a lot more information about the light source than it currently has? (Cue minor rant about the nature of console fixture personalities)

Is the additional effort of creating and storing colours in a fixture, in order to make use of it’s colour cross fading engine, offset by the benefits to the lighting designer of better transitions?

Can I ever think in CIE coordinates? And if I do start with a CIE colour, can I edit in them or do I need to return “bumping up the Green a bit”? I don’t mean “Can the kit do this?”, can my brain?

Are we happy to simply create console colour palettes up for various fixture types, adjusting them and matching them by eye, and putting up with dealing with transition issues using the various workarounds we have at the moment?

How does a fixture with such proprietary colour control fit onto the consoles of today and tomorrow, with their current colour setting arrangements? If other colour mixing kit doesn’t use such a control system, does it even matter?

Are we finally seeing the limits of DMX and other dumb channel based one-way control for complex fixtures? And are workarounds like the A/B Colour buss just pandering to an old system when we should just get up to speed with our controls?

The ilumo ZOOM LED Spot is a very interesting piece of technology and control implementation, as well as being a very nice piece of kit from the lighting designer’s point of view. Lumonic says their mission is to “challenge the status quo” and there are elements within their patent pending Colour Crossfade Engine that certainly does that. It also asks questions of us as programmers and those that design our interfaces.

Do you have any thoughts on the subject? Let us know in the comments below as usual.

Appendix for DMX chart nerdery – Personality P6 channel mapping:

1. Red (or Red calibrated or Hue)
2. Green (or Green calibrated or Saturation)
3. Blue (or Blue calibrated or Intensity)
4. White (or White CT)
5. Zoom
6. Dimmer Speed
7. Master Intensity
8. Strobe
9. Colour Control (mentioned above)
10. Colour Temperature
11. CIE x coordinate
12. CIE y coordinate
13. Palette A (colour buss discussed above)
14. Palette B
15. Palette Crossfade (A/B)

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

You May Also Like:

• LED Lighting and Colour Output
• LED Light Control – DMX Controllers for LED Stage Lighting
• LEDs, Colour Mixing and Crossfades

In a world where both traditional lighting and digital visual media are the domain of the modern lampie, On Stage Lighting considers the forthcoming release of media software Resolume 4 Arena which looks like it has potential in the small to mid scale show visual market.

Here at OSL, we don’t really do product reviews and the following piece continues that tradition. In order to give you a look around the software, we finish up with a video poke about under the hood.

This article simply looks at Resolume 4, which is in Beta 2 at the time of writing, from the point of view of a Lighting Designer/Programmer and asks if we should give the new Arena offering our attention. If you have some experience of media servers or the complexities of current projection and mapping trends, you’ll find some ideas on using Resolume 4 instead of your more familiar Arkatalyst Hippo Box software (see what I did there?). If you didn’t get that joke and have little experience of media servers in show production, read on anyway after checking this media server primer from a few years ago.

What might we want from our media server?

To precis, media servers are used on all kinds of show to play digital media which is then either projected on screens, the set, the floor, or even pixel mapped to starcloths or other low resolution outputs. They come as hardware/software or simply as software that you run on your own machine such as a decent spec laptop or desktop PC/Mac. Resolume is in the software camp and the interesting thing for us about Resolume 4 Arena is that they have added features to their Avenue VJ platform that are relevant to what we do. We will completely ignore the fact that it does quantised audio playback for simplicity today. Resolume has a setting to Hide Audio Controls, which clears thing up for us.

So what do us lampies really want from a media server and how does Resolume stack up? We’ll start with our typical Lampie Demands and see where it gets us.

Content playback

The ability to pick and mix video files and play them back whole, or in loops, or backwards or in a specific order.

Resolume 4 Arena plays stuff back as you would expect. Unlike some other lampie media servers, it’s a little different to simply picking a media folder between 0 and 255, the picking a clip between 0 and 255. It does have the usual Play Modes: Forward, Backward, Bounce, Loop etc. plus Pause, Stop,yadda yadda yadda.

The thing that is different is the way it organises content, something you do at the terminal, not from the lighting desk, as it’s extremely flexible which is code for saying “You are likely to get yourself into a muddle.”

Composition:

The file/workspace you are working on at the time and the final output of your combined content.

Decks:

Within the Composition, a collection of layers and clips you’ve set up, that you can toggle between from the desk if you like. You could use a different desk per song, for example.

Layers:

If you are into media servers, you know what layers are. You can set the number of layers and drag and drop clips from your media folder onto slots on the layer. The difference with these layers, is that although they are numbered by default, the layer order is not set in stone and you can bump order around so a different one is “on top”.

The layers have the usual Opacity and other manipulation controls such as scale, size, rotation and a whole bunch of others.

Columns:

The slots that you drag content in live in Layers on the X axis, but in columns on the Y axis. Now you might be starting to see that Resolume differs from things like Catalyst. Columns can be triggered ie. all the clips in all the layers of that column can be “Go”ed at once, firing off your final look of combined layers. You can also set the columns to auto fire along the line in a time you specify. You can bump the order of the columns…. uh oh…. so much choice….

Clips:

These are the slots where your media file is put ready to play, in the Layer you choose and in the relevant column to taste. The file can be triggered by a Column or individually and get this, you can move the clip around within the Layer. Holy confusion, Batman. Fortunately, I don’t think you can do this from the console by default.

So, unlike some media servers, Resolume Arena doesn’t so much have a timeline in the conventional sense but it does have options for the firing of cues, using pre set up columns is probably your best way. Either way, the flexibility in this means that you should decide on some kinda ordered system of how you use your layers and columns and clips and decks. And stick to it.

Along with conventional video content, Resolume can also deal with Flash and Quartz Composer stuff, which is fandabbydozey because that kind of realtime rendered content is just loverly and opens up huge possibilities that don’t rely on particular videos of particular resolutions.

Content Manipulation

To be able to layer, mix and generally mess about with video content, to come up with something original and fitting the visual look of the show. We want to be able to muck up the 4 loop clips we have in so many ways, so that it looks like we have endless content hidden back there.

OMG. Forget scaling and rotating, the tools you have for manipulating content at every level, Composition (output level), Layer and Clip are like having real time After Effects that you can plug in wherever you like.

With the standard manipulations such as scale, you have constant access to them from the console but the fun starts when you look at plugging in your effects such as Colour Shift or Waves. These effects can hit any level, can be applied in different orders and you can assign certain parameters to the eight Dials at the top of the Clip, Layer or Composition tab. This translates to dials on the console, meaning that in one instance, an encoder could be controlling Red level of a Layer, the next could be tweaking the Noise or Mask across the whole Composition.

If you can’t get a whole show outta 4 clips and all this visual trickery, you ain’t trying. The key point is, again, you need a structured approach and to spend some time setting up what you want to be able to control. And keep it simple. My suggestion would be to assign Add/Subtract Colours Red, Green and Blue at Layer Level to your dials, giving you the option to blend your visuals into the rest of your stage look.

Live Media Playback Control

If we wanted to play an hour long piece of edited content, we could simply make up our video and get the boys out back to press play on the ‘ol Beta tape machine. This millennium, we want to be able to busk our visuals live during the show. There are people that do this, they are called Video Jockeys (VJs). We would like to be like them, please. We’ve done it with a rig full of moving lights, how hard can it be?

If you’ve been reading the above section and your brain is still intact, you might see how live playback is Resolume’s strength. Assign this to that, fire this using the other, hold your pretend headphones to one ear and mix, man. Apart from all the above methods of busking your content real time, I need to mention the DJ style A/B buss that you can assign layers too, giving you the option of flicking that particular bean. Standby for sideways crossfaders on yer console…

As with moving lights, how you play back your show live is entirely up to you. Resolume 4 is good enough for VJs, it can work for us lampies too!

Control from the lighting desk (console, if you must)

We want to be able to use our nimble fingers to wiggle faders and bump buttons right at the lighting control surface. We want to control the world with our GrandXZY Hogolites VII, every atom in the venue directly connected to our wheely wheely encoders and fondly touchscreens.

Resolume Arena allows for both ArtNet control and via the Enttec USB DMX Pro box, so no excuses for not being able to plug your desk into it. If you so inclined you could follow the lead of some big gig LDs and use a cheap MIDI interface with keys, knobs and faders. Or use SMPTE timecode to trigger your stuff. The choice is yours.

Not only that, but you can map any DMX channel to any attribute by setting the software to listen and sending that channel while selecting the attribute. Oh no, more choice.

Luckily, the Auto DMX Map facility sets our channel mapping in stone so that it ties up with available fixture personality files and means you have some kind of stationary point in a turning world. The composition (remember, the overall output) uses 28 DMX channels and each Layer requires 37 channels, both include the all important 8 Dials as well as their various options.

I’ve been using the MagicQ with the default personality file and it works well enough with Avenue 3.x, although I might make some changes to create my own custom personality to reflect my workflow. These would be to move things like Dial 1 – 3 (which could be Colour) to the Colour mixing area of the desk meaning it appears in the right place for me and can take part in any colour mixing shenagins I care to throw at it. By default, an awful lot of the parameters are accessed under Beam because they have no set function until you decide how you are going to run your show.

At the time of writing, the beta 2 version of Arena 4 needs work as the DMX Auto channel mapping is muddled up. Resolume tell me that they are working on this and as Avenue 3.x works fine, I’m sure it’ll all come out in the wash.

*Update: The full release of Arena 4 DMX Auto Map includes extra channels of DMX control for both the Composition and Layer fixtures.  This means that a DMX personality file created for Avenue 3 will not work as expected, you will need to use an updated file specifically for Arena 4.

Accessibility

We do not want to wait, we need to press buttons now and see results yesterday. This should work if I press that. Don’t worry I know what I’m doing, I can’t possibly break this, I remember saltwater dimmers, y’know…etc.

We do not want to type in an entire sentence of DOS commands into a fiddly keyboard, just to have our dreams appear in front of us. We like drag, we like drop. We like “I want this, over there.”

We also want it to be affordable and not involve piles of expensive kit that we don’t already own.  It’s all very well for PRG, we just can’t afford vast warehouses stuffed with throbbing rackmount media wotsits.  We do have a Macbook, however.

My seven year old has worked out how to get a clip onto a layer and set it’s opacity, before adding another clip and adjusting the colour or jitter. Everything in Resolume is super intuitive, you drag things into position, drag effects into where you want them and even drag parameters on the those magic six Dials.

I’m a lampie and even I can work this. Having used some pretty unsexy media server interfaces, I can say that I really get on with this.

However, that’s in the software interface. What about the lighting desk? Here’s the rub. Resolume 4 does not currently seem to support MSEX or CITP or whatever it is that you like to send your media thumbnails between your server and your lighting desk.

You can see why this might be hard to implement.

Given that you can fire stuff at Column and Clip level and that you can reorder clips and layers and columns, where exactly would it get it’s thumbnail from? This is easy when all you have is Folder 254, Clip 127 but I assume it’s less easy when what you are about to output is not based on the media file itself, but the result of a media file that lives in a bucket such as a Clip, Layer, or Column. But still, this means when looking at the console you are not looking at a bunch of pretty pictures. And we like pretty pictures, we are visual people.

Given that many other of our current media servers can do this, and that lighting consoles are often equipped with enhanced media server control areas, this seems like a weakness in an otherwise strong offer for us. Time spent deciphering text legends, or heaven forbid, looking at the software, is time spent not looking at the stage or the control surface.

Being software based, Arena is priced at a point that brings it within the realm of an owner/operator LD that wishes to bring a bit of extra something to their clients without major financial commitment.  Let’s face it, you don’t get paid extra to bring these goodies, they just give you the edge and make a show that is better than just OK.  You get booked next time.

Pixel mapping

One day, lampies decided that they didn’t know much about big LED screens or things with many pixels but they did understand starcloth, RGB LEDs and a way of turning that into a huge telly using an ArtNet network to transmit lots of DMX universes to an array. This mapping of digital content to a lo res grid of starcloth-like pixels became known as, er, pixel mapping and gave rise to actual products that made your stage look pretty.

Resolume isn’t designed to be a pixel mapper and I’m not sure if I see why they would need to add that feature. We have stand alone mapping systems that take a video input, plus things integrated with lighting consoles that serve our needs. Pixel mapping as we know it at the moment is dependent on the fashion for particular bits of output kit and while it’s principles can be used to create lighting effects as well as send pretty pictures to large arrays, this is not what Arena is for.

Multi-mapped bledge ending thingys..

We want to do things Vidiots can do. We‘d like to make big screens out of multiple projectors without having to learn complicated videoperson software or pay for for said videoperson to eat into our fees and drink our coffee. We want to map bits of our mind-bending visual vomit to funny shaped things strewn all over our stage. We do not like boring 4:3 projection screens, they are for Powerpoint.

The possibilities of edge blending (using multiple projectors to create one large picture) and projection warping/mapping (projecting onto strange shapes) is where my interest in Resolume Arena began. Given it’s price point of less than 700 Euros, it’s seriously attractive as these features are often found as add-ons to already expensive hardware or software. So what can it do?

Within the Advanced section of the Output settings, you have control over your final input to the , er, Output stage. This is your Composition, the result of all your hard work of layers etc. output as a single picture. You can slice up this input picture, eventually sending different portions of it to your connected screens (video graphics outputs).

These can overlap and you can apply a soft edge to them, meaning you can edge blend as you stitch the results back together again with your projectors.

The other side of this Advanced output is, er, the actual Output stage. This is where you assign the slices of your input to an actual output which is assigned to a real world video graphics output. These outputs slices can be manipulated too, stretching and skewing, mapping them to your final surface which could be a rectangular screen, a curve or even an angled funny shaped thingy.

The way that you can slice up the inputs, assign them to an output and overlap them means that you have very simple but quite powerful control over your mapping. Being able to overlap the input stage, and then send that to different parts of an output stage enables you to be able to edge blend across something as cheap as a Matrox TripleHead To Go. Or get a seemingly flat image across multi angled surfaces. Cool beans.

You can save the output settings to a preset. It would be great if you could recall presets as part of your show running, allowing for changes in projection set up. At the moment, this is a set and forget job.

Conclusions

Resolume Arena 4 is still in beta. Their beta tester forums suggest that there is still work to do, which you might expect. See update below*

They are currently offering a pre-New Year release discount on the pre-sale licence price, which added to the educational discount, made it an offer too good to refuse for me. I have students that want to know about this kinda thing and money is always tight. As an early Christmas pressie, I’ve been living with Arena for a couple of weeks now and I can already see potential in markets that we all understand.

Content, live manipulation, mapping, blending, it’s the kind of thing I’ve been trying to do on the cheap for clients since before anyone had heard the term projection mapping. It was hard to sell, even using existing kit with a bit of ingenuity and creativity. No one could see the point and kinda smiled and changed the subject. Now, everyone is on this particular page, they all want their shows to look like “that thing off the telly.” Sure, if you are used to a particular media server, you might have to look at the world a little differently from time to time.

If you are in the business of creating visual stage magic without access to boundless budget and racks of hardware, Resolume 4 Arena could be the very thing that you were looking for. Just thought I’d mention it.

*Stop Press: The day following publication of this preview Resolume 4 was taken out of Beta and is now available as a full version for all users to trial.  Great stuff.

(Now take a look at the Resolume 4 via our 15 minute bonus embedded screencast. Any issues with the embed, the link is http://www.screencast.com/t/hfDBDWSAvl1A )

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

You May Also Like:

• Media Servers and Digital Stage Lighting
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Armed with nothing but a well worn pair of shoes and four days supply of anti-migraine pills, On Stage Lighting hits Earl’s Court in London for the 2011 assault on the senses that is the PLASA show.

If previous PLASA shows were an indicator of the direction of travel in style, visitors to the PLASA (Promotion of LEDs And Screens Ad nauseum) show 2011 were going to have to steel themselves. At past shows, in order to keep the nausea at bay, you simply had to pace yourself, avoid protracted stints on any stands serving beer and decline the strange coloured cocktails that Avolites might offer.

This year, the unsuspecting punter at Earl’s Court also had to deal with two halls full of exhibitors trying to induce various forms of visually stimulated ill health with their products. Despite being a few stands bit heavy on the sub, it actually seemed quieter this year in audio terms – light was the weapon of choice.

So what was it all about this year? Apart from getting yer retinas frazzled…

LEDs, LEDs, LEDs…Oh, and a fresnel

OK, so LED lighting technology has been developing rapidly in recent years and previous shows have featured an increasing number of LED based products. PLASA 2011 (the Chinese year of the LED, apparently) often seemed about little else. This is especially true when you take into account the fact that designers of digital audio desks are now stuffing them full of colour changing illuminated bits everywhere in an order not to be outdone by the lampies.

Don’t you wish you’d bought those shares in, well, whatever it is that they put in those chips that makes them light up, now?

PLASA shows have seen plenty of LED wash lights, moving LED wash lights, LED arrays and panels and this year was no exception. The improvements in colour rendition, the continuation of development of multi LED colour systems like the ETC Selador and others, the use of warm white, cool white and what the Americans call toonable white, continues.

This has led (ahem) to cutting edge LED driven fixtures being used in all genres of the industry and most notably in television. This is significant because TV lighting is particularly picky when it comes to things like CRI and colour temperature, multi chromatic shadows and the flicker on camera caused by fixtures that dim using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) – as LEDs do.

The adoption of LEDs in the TV industry was demonstrated by the excellent LED Shootout area, organised by Paul Middleton and others from the Society of Television Lighting and Design (STLD) which had demos, seminars and the opportunity to see a choice of over 80 LED fixtures in use. While the title of “shootout” suggests a quest for the ultimate in LED product, the stand followed the STLD ethos of the free exchange of ideas between lighting directors and was more of an opportunity to consider the options, rather than find the killer fixture, and to share best practice. Useful.

The perceived holy grail in LED based fixtures was genuine point light sources, either multi coloured or not, in order to produce an LED based profile spot (lekos, in the US) and also an LED fresnel replacement. PLASA 2011 was where a clutch of these things came to the party and joined the few already in this space such as the Robert Juliat Aledin, and really showed us that LED and high quality optical systems were a reality and a long way from the horrors of El Cheapo units.

In terms of form factor, Coemar and Strong profile offerings seemed familiar in appearance if not quite light output of a 750w HPL loaded Source Four. In the “bright and sharp” stakes, the Prism RevEAL garnered a lot of interest due to it’s extremely punchy output and high quality optics – and not the fact that it’s large size and shape made it look like something that would make your average Ann Summer’s customer eyes water. Prism were showing in the ever expanding White Light Zone, confirming the WL strategy of partnering their way to the top with JB Lighting, iPix, Core, Coemar, W-DMX and Arkaos, with popular MD Bryan Raven smiling down benignly on the hub of activity that is the White Light bar.

Along with the RJ, Philips Selecon and others were displaying LED based fixed washlight / fresnel replacement fixtures either with familiar stepped lenses or not. Everyone had an cannon of LED wash lights, often moving yoke, aimed at a particular market – and more often than not, right in our eyes. Particular thanks go to Clay Paky, Martin and Robe for that, plus an additional shout out to Avolites who had managed to program a flying purple splodge that kept assaulting anyone that dared to try to study the demo screen in their AI media server area.

Anyone playing “Spot the conventional” might have stopped by the ETC stand to look at the Source Four fresnel, the answer to the question of how you mount a lamp designed to be used axially in a base-down fixture design. Like many lanterns past and present, the Achilles heel seemed to be the focus mech, that had only been on the stand a day by the time we tried it and was looking a little awkward in terms of design and snagging – not an issue with just this fixture I might add, but plenty of others from other stables. The overly complex colour runner door latch thingys were also bust by then.

Control and Media

Back at the Avolites stand, an excellent demo-er took me through the new pixel mapping features of their Titan control platform which also gave me an opportunity to see  Avo really getting there after a shaky start on their journey into modern control platforms.

The key to Avolites products is their simplicity, hands on use and visual nature and with Titan they finally seem to have managed to claw back some of the Avo Way while offering the things that a modern LD wants from their controller. Titan now looks more intuitive, complete and attractive (LD attractive, not just shiny graphics) than earlier incarnations and the hardware in the form of a working Sapphire Touch plus Tiger Touches and Pearl Expert were showing off it’s chops, along with Titan Mobile hardware and some posh touchscreens. Their solid dimmers stood stoically by, including the great Power Cube that has been around a little while, even though the mention of RDM induced a coughing fit.

The Avo Life didn’t yet seem to extend to the AI media server which Avolites have bought the rights in a strategic partnership with Immersive Ltd. which looks like a fantastic piece of software for the Aspergic but didn’t have an ounce of Avo ease of use stamped on it. Whether complex projection mapping and rendering is a good fit with the Avo brand isn’t totally clear to me. But it’s early days and in recent years, Avo have demonstrated that while they might falter in early moves, they are cabable of ironing out the wrinkles even though it’s done in public. The carrier bag pushing beauties didn’t seem to outnumber the number of Avo people that actually knew something this year.

In other stories of ever increasing complexity, the wonderfully visual Vista with it’s Bryon release software is beginning to look devilishly complicated to the untrained eye. Seemingly more menus, buttons, screen areas and sub layers to keep up with increasing features and tool sets, one can’t help but wonder if we shouldn’t be looking elsewhere for inspiration in our interaction surfaces. And keeping it simple.

This theme was touch on by self confessed data junkie Rob Halliday in his seminar on lighting control, who actually simply called for more intelligent use of data within consoles. A small element of this features in my own personal nemesis, the Strand Palette. Given his console history, it’s hardly surprising that Rob is at his most comfortable with a numeric keypad and a spreadsheet on screen and still many of our current forays into the multi touch environment only really augment what are essentially way of presenting data and manipulating it.

On other stands at PLASA, we saw the Emulator DJ software used with a large rear projected touch surface or the rather fun Interactive Visions media projection and interaction on a tabletop or floor. While maybe in lighting all we need is an iPad, the idea of giving the Lighting Designer the tools to create without data manipulation being so intrusive, is an attractive one.

The notion that technology innovation might be driving the design was a theme covered at an ALD seminar on the “The Next 50 Years” in lighting, held in a back room while out on the show floor that technology continued to assault the senses.

Future gazing and self contemplation was a feature which ever side of the fence you were on, certain quarters hankering for the good old days of Patt 264s (What???? They were horrible and everyone said so at the time!!!!). Certainly everyone was looking forward, whether vying to have the brightest, modernist LED fixture or discussing the Quality of Light. During a lull in the reminiscing and misty eyed eulogies for the Pattern 23, it was back to the floor to look at what the kit makers had brought us for “Going Back To School” in lighting control.

ETC were showing their new Gio console, the one that is more portable than the EOS but bigger than the Ion. It’s common for touring theatre shows to program on an EOS and tour with an Ion, gone are the days when the show just schlepped about the UK with a Strand 500 series show disk. The Gio looked attractive with a sensible desk footprint and is nicely made to stay together while touring. I can think of a few smaller theatres that would perhaps prefer something a little more than their recently purchased Ion, maybe ETC should run a buyback scheme!

If small was your thing, the Cham Sys M60 filled in the gap between their PC wings and a full size MagicQ console, with a familiar set of hardware including a smaller touchscreen that looked nice. Ham fisted programmers might see the benefit of the old fashioned “Hog Ops Pencil” (a pencil with an eraser at both ends) to help them with their prodding.

Along with the visual barrage from the waggly LED wash light brigade, more eyeball battering came from the large number of hi resolution module LED based screens – more than ever before. In the past, large walls of lower res stuff have provided colourful displays but PLASA 2011 was increasing about quality content rendering on panels made up of clip together modules.

The LED craze in screens too meant that the fashion for projected things waned, apart from a few small pockets where the media server guys showed off their projection mapping capabilities. If forced to predict something that would be a whole lot more evident next year, it would be the area of 3D projection mapping and larger scale displays of this. Along with the usual Hippotizer, Pandora’s Box and the aforementioned Avo AI servers, Earls Court 2 saw the commercial version of the well regarded D3 system used on many shows including running the central LED screen on U2s 360 tour.

Anything Interesting?

On Stage Lighting spent four days asking this very question of everyone, from some of the biggest luminaries in lighting to young BTEC students coming for a day out. For all the square footage of shiny toys, no single item or trend was cited as floating the boat of the punters, despite the leaps in technology and showing of “new” things such as a profile spot, albeit an LED based fixture. Perhaps PLASA goers will have to wait until next year for that life changing new thing.

That isn’t to damn the show as a waste of time, as there was plenty of opportunity for networking and future gazing which leads to the shaping of our industry. And hey, it’s fun once you’ve found a quiet corner away from the strobing to recover and just talk to good friends. A lot of those friends were wondering what the future in performance lighting might look like, and despite the stands telling us that they were it, many didn’t seem that sure.

Others talked of disconnect between manufacturers and users, even between the needs of distinct genres and the production of fixtures that are supposed to please every market. TV seemed happy with their LEDs in the studio, the Rock and Roll guys will be loving the new iPix colour mixing LED ACL bars while many theatre users just seem to wish it would all go away and stop making so much noise so they can dust off the 264s. That doesn’t include the RSC, who have embraced the modern lighting world and even invented a solution to their specific problem – the RSC LightLock, which was there again.

A particularly big trend that is interesting to me, following on from PLASA last year, is the use of batteries and wireless DMX. Initially what I would call the “Plonk and Play” wall washers from GDS, Core LED, iPix et al, the totally portable market is growing to integrate push up stands (GDS again) and features that make a wireless way of life more possible. The start of a trend for modular (different heads, same power base), “come to pieces” kit that allows for the light source to be sited separately from it’s normally attached power and control station, give the LED/Battery/Wireless DMX solution a load more flexibility.

Add this to the fact that, despite it’s challenges, all the major players in Wireless DMX solutions (W-DMX, City Theatrical and Lumen Radio) seem to have cracked the timing issues associated with sending RDM DMX over a wireless system – it’s all very interesting in the truly portable market. Perhaps our shows will be a lot less wire heavy in the future, particularly at ground level where cable management can be an issue.

Once the brochures had been put in the recycling and the last motor had been boxed in Earl’s Court, the key take away from PLASA 2011 was how tiring the show is becoming to attend on a sensory level. I’m sure exhibitors found it more tiring than ever, I certainly did. It’s worth the exhibitors remembering that the kind of lighting, sound and media that you reserve for a few hours of spectacle during a single show is not a good environment to do business in over four days.

Next year, I’ll certainly be planning more quiet time, seminars and spend more time exploring the darker corners that West London might have to offer, possibly from under the duvet of the hotel. If there is anything interesting to see, I’m sure someone will tweet me

Did you attend PLASA 2011? Got anything you’d like to add, stuff you liked or hated? Comments in the box as usual, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

You May Also Like:

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Following the recent news of several stage and event structure collapses, On Stage Lighting looks at where we have come from as a fledgling industry and where we might look for a path in the future.

This last month or so, it’s been a regular event: The reporting of a temporary structure failure at a show, leading to serious injury and loss of life. In recent years this kind of news is no longer unheard of, either during a build or a show, something in a roof support or rigging system fails and sets off a chain of events that is putting people in danger.

There has been, and will be, a lot of speculation about specific recent failures, much of it temporal conjecture and even more of it political wriggling, blame and avoidance. Once the bereaved have been comforted, scapegoats cited (like the Weather Gods), legal proceedings done and lip service paid to future event safety, there is the horrific possibility that the “show will go on.”

My hope is that there will be some actual lessons learned and disseminated throughout the industry – but how?

We Are Toddlers

The live event business has grown up fast, now calling ourselves an “industry”. Not long ago it was nothing more than a collection of individuals putting on shows with whatever they could hack together. Look around you at the tools and systems we have now, many of them nicked from a wide range of unrelated industries, construction, lifting, cargo, shipping, military, telecoms, rescue – the list goes on.

Not so long ago, we were using electric hoists in vibrant colours with the decals “upside down”, the casings sprayed black to make them less obtrusive in a show environment. Spansets only came in a range of colours based on their working load. Now they come in black and are sold by sales reps that actually know which way is “out”. We design structures using things we already use, added to other things that we already use with some custom fabricated items. And then put a roof covering on it.

We have a short history of finding ways of doing things quickly, cheaply and to satisfy the needs of the show for the short period that it runs.

What we don’t have is a long history of shared design standards and practice. The industry has just started, in relative terms, we have the beginnings of all these things and have come a long way in the last 40 years.

The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) was founded nearly 200 years in a London coffee house and continues to provide a platform for the sharing of knowledge, as well as being a qualifying body and promoting the profession. We have PLASA (encompassing ESTA), which produces things such as “ANSI E1.21-2006 – Temporary Ground-Supported Overhead Structures Used To Cover Stage Areas and Support Equipment in the Production of Outdoor Entertainment Events”, written by industry professionals and currently under review. It is, however, important to remember that PLASA describes itself as a “pro-active trade association”, which means it rightly represents the interests of it’s members.

On the structures guides front, there is also the “Temporary demountable structures. Guidance on procurement, design and use” from the Advisory Group On Temporary Structures at IStructE (see, another professional body).

This continuing professional body model, like the ICE or IStructE, is surely vital in our future and hopefully still doing great work in 200 years time.

A professional body should be able to collate and disseminate design or implementation failure information, outside of the politics, lobbying or blame investigations, and make recommendations specific to the industry that it understands.

The Show Must Go On

It’s a badge of honour in our business. No matter what, by hook or by crook, the audience will not be disappointed and the show must go on. It’s a great way to galvanise the highly committed individuals in show business, getting the best out of people against the odds. But it leaves a legacy.

The idea that someone would dare to put their head above the trench and say “Stop” isn’t entertained. Stop, it’s dangerous. Stop, this person is too tired. Stop, this needs to be done in a way that costs more time and money. Stop, it’s just not possible. Sometimes, someone needs to have the conviction to walk out on that stage and say “Sorry, 20,000 people. We just need to stop.” I’m not talking about the automation tripping or the show Mac locking up and stopping the show, I mean saying “OK, things might seem fine right now but there is a risk…… And we can’t continue.”

The transient nature of live events is that, unlike a permanent building, it only has to get us to the end of the show – not last 50 years. This leads us to bodge perfectly safe solutions when a smoke machine duct hose goes missing or we need to use a road box as a table but it’s that same culture can lead to holding out and hoping that things will be ok for the next couple of hours. This is obviously not acceptable when it comes to serious stuff like the stability of structures.

Pseudo Safety

Sometimes people like to feel safe, so they do things to make themselves (or someone else) feel better. That might be using some form of under-spec’ed secondary safety bond, or attaching it to a point that is not actually going to take a decent shock load. It could be fitting an anemometer to a PA wing and occasionally checking the Met Office website first thing in the morning.

Say you have a structures guy with your gig. He clears the standing water regularly, keeps an eye on how the rig is loading the roof and generally sorts stuff out with 5 ton ratchet straps. The anemometer spins away on the PA wing, telling somebody that things are “safe” – it’s there reading wind speed after all.

What is the procedure if the wind speed reading gets to a certain point? Does he mention it to Production and what is their response? Is there a system in place to quickly remove the coverings to reduce wind loading? Now the structure is fully loaded with kit, can he even get to the coverings? Are the stage crew briefed on how to do this? Will anyone even entertain the idea that the covers need to come off, despite the thousands of pounds worth of moving lights and other kit that will get soaked by the rain? At what point will someone make the decision to systematically clear the stage area and crowd and stop the show? Who will make that decision? Will anyone actually do it – especially if the weather is not even on site yet?

Without all the following questions answered BEFOREHAND and the system in place, the anemometer is pointless.

I’ve seen many instances of pseudo-safety and box ticking in my career, things that don’t in themselves make life any safer but reassure you or others that something is being done. Luckily, most of the time this pseudo-safety isn’t actually tested.

Design Standards

Safety procedure is about having systems in place and actioning them. But we are also responsible for designing and erecting these structures.

Looking again at engineers in other industries, if you designed or built a structure that flat packed after a few 70 mph gusts that would be the end of your career and rightly so. Being responsible for a permanent structure that couldn’t stand up for it’s lifespan is unthinkable and even then the unthinkable happens, it’s because of a genuinely unforeseen set of parameters that were not understood at the time (like the collapse of the WTC.) These events change design standards for good.

Engineers design things to withstand certain conditions, in some disciplines this might be a weather event that occurs once in one hundred years, or once in five hundred. If you designed a building to withstand a 100 year event, if the building was going to be useful for 100 years then you would assume that such a design standard would be prudent.

Our temporary structures might not be up for more than a weekend. Does this mean that a 1 in 50 year weather event isn’t going to happen in that time? Of course not.

A lot of the catastrophic failures of temporary alloy structures in our business play out as a cascade of events. Something fails and the rest of the system follows. We are using lightweight, portable and demountable components that seem to be nearing their limits as a system without a more fail-safe approach. Let’s not forget that in recent years we are asking so much more of our temporary structures – the average moving light weighs 10x more than a PAR can. In the 70’s if a bit of tarp blew off the meagre scaffolding structure, it wasn’t a big deal. All of a sudden, we are putting more in terms of weight overhead than we have on the deck.

A fail-safe design takes into account the possibility of individual component failure, without jeopardising the rest of the structure as a whole and seeks to avoid further damage or injury. So many entertainment rigging failures have caused additional failures, rather than behaving in rip-stop fashion.
Another design standard that should be considered is the time it takes to avoid injury and loss of life. This is not somehow coming up with a design that is never, under any circumstances, going to become unstable and collapse – that would be uneconomic if not technically impossible.

Given that failures occur, how long can a building remain in an unstable state without complete failure, in order for the occupants to be alerted and evacuated to safety? Back in our world of temporary event structures, time between the initial failure and the catastrophe is unreasonably short at the moment.

The Future?

It is important that us toddlers are grown up enough to realise where our tiny industry is and how far we still have to go, including in areas of safety procedure and design standards. We need to continue to follow any good examples set by more established professions in terms of the sharing of knowledge and qualifying.

We also need to ensure as an industry that we make our own investigations and are realistic about the facts when things go wrong, it would be too easy to go along with the idea that it’s just “one of those things” and walk blindly into the next catastrophe, muttering “The Show must go on..”

Image based on a picture from helixblue on Flickr

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

You May Also Like:

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A question from On Stage Lighting reader Michael prompts an article looking at a common consideration in modern stage lighting – successful transitions with colour mixing lighting fixtures.

***Note: Interesting product update at the bottom of this article.

Colour mixing facilities is rapidly becoming the norm on many types of show across a range of budgets. Lighting fixtures in all markets are now sporting technology that allows for a range of mixed colours, either in the form of CMY subtractive mixing or additive LED based mixing using RGB, RGB+W and more.

At the cheap end of the market, RGB LED PARs and floods are finding their way into every DJ rig, while at the other end of the scale pro kit such at the ETC Selador range and Vari*Lite VLX colour mixing engine are providing high intensity, consistent colours for shows all over the world. For the moment, this looks like the future even though there is still a place for good ol’ white light sources and gel filters.

While these technologies vary in output quality across price ranges, all are rapidly improving but they present the lighting programmer with a specific programming problem. It’s possible to control simple colour mixing equipment with the simplest of desks.  But whatever control you are using, how do you create acceptable colour transitions with colour mixing lighting fixtures?

Colour mixing technology might be relatively new, but the question isn’t and is only too familiar to anyone that used colour washes as the basis for their concert and theatre lighting or lit a cyc by mixing multi coloured battens. Getting from one “state” to another in full view of the audience without accidentally visiting some unwanted colours en route.

What is the problem?

In lighting, we commonly use crossfades to provide a smooth and seamless transition between lighting looks on stage. Cross fading of light intensity isn’t too complicated, some fixtures get brighter, some less bright or go out altogether.

The only possible issue is that intensities that are remaining roughly the same in each scene may fade down a little with the outgoing state, before being pushed back up again by the incoming cue – causing an unwanted dip. We have this mostly covered by dipless crossfade features within the lighting desk or the judicious dexterity when pushing faders by hand. We can also use split fade times or even channel specific fades or waits to overcome this and achieve visually pleasing crossfades.

The issue with intensity dips is a function of the transition from look to look in a fairly linear format – Scene 1 fades down, Scene 2 Fades up at the same time and in the middle somewhere, we have the potential for unwanted results while the intensity levels float to their new values.

The problem with colour transitions is the same, only this time the unwanted results aren’t a dip in intensity but a journey via colours X,Y and Z during the crossfade from A to B. For example, using a simple RGB fixture, a simple crossfade from Red to Blue starts at:

Red @ 100%
Blue @ 0%

and fades to

Red @ 0%
Blue @ 100%

With a simple linear fade, the mid point of this cue has values of Red @ 50% and Blue @ 50%, creating a Deep Pink / Magenta colour and a range of mixes at other points in the fade.

Now, a fade from Red to Blue via Pink might be fine for your needs or even look quite good. But what if it isn’t what you wanted? Another RGB example which might not be so forgiving is a Yellow to Blue. First up, let’s say we have Yellow values of:

Red @ 100%
Green @ 100%
Blue @ 0%

Again, with a straight crossfade between the two, there is a point where all RGB values are at 50%, creating a dirty white colour not to mention the hundreds of other colours that result from all other steps in the fade.

What’s more, now we have a situation where we were using R and G LEDs at Full, then just Blue, theoretically halving the intensity of the second look. But that is for another day, we are concerned with colours during the fade. What can we do to “pretty up” our transitions?

Getting Better Colour Mixing Transitions

The first step to improving live colour fades is to understand what is happening, in particular how additive and subtractive colour mixing actually achieves the colours. That way, you can make informed changes to your cues with the tools at your fingertips. How do you get Amber from an RGB LED, what makes up RED in a CMY moving spot? Read up on light colour mixing theory and experiment with your fixtures.

Blackouts

The simplest and most effective way to manage your colour fades is never to allow the unwanted mixing in the first place. This involves fading the outgoing colour to black before bringing in the new one. No piling on of colours that take you to whacky disco land between beautiful scenes. But blackouts are a statement in themselves, causing an obvious dip.

Multi Part Fade Cues

Either using automated playback or good ol’ finger pushing technology, you can create multi part cues to avoid colours you don’t want. That doesn’t mean the physics can be changed to allow for an “in view” fade without going via another colour, but it does let you choose the route. How about going from Yellow to Blue in a more orderly fashion?

Q1 Yellow = Red @100%, Green@ 100%, Blue @ 0%

Q2a Red = Green to 0%
Q2b Pink = Blue to 100%
Q2c Blue = Red to 0%

While this goes through a few colours, it does avoid a whole bunch of dirty white and pastelly ones on the way. You could equally take this multi part cue through Green and Cyan, although I’m not sure how many people choose green as a stopping off point in many shows. These part cues all run smoothly together, creating a single transition, but via colours you choose within the confines of colour mixing physics.

The key to this approach is to take something away first (in the example, Green), then add (Blue). Take away, then Add. I’ve used this trick by hand on many live shows, where I am performing long, long cross fades on colour mixing kit during the action.

Cross Fade Behaviour

Another way to tidy up your colour mixing transitions is to change the way the fade happens from it’s standard linear format. Professional lighting consoles often have powerful fade curve controls, but the principle can be applied using multi part cues, split fade times, follow ons or just finger technology during a live show.

Taking our Red to Blue example, we might not like the 50/50 Pink that a linear fade takes us through but instead try spend more time of the fade on shades of Lavender.

In this case, we might retard the fade in of the Blue, while taking some of the Red element out before quickly ramping up the Blue quickly past the more pinkish shades and then easing the fade to travel through some pleasant Lavs and slowing removing the last of the reds to rest at Blue.

It sounds more complicated than it is, especially if you experiment using your eyes and controlling a fade by hand, before diving down into cue fade curves if you have the facility. Alternatively, you could set up a few individual cues or part cues and then experiment with fade and wait times to get the cross fade you are after.

Hasn’t this always been an issue?

The effect of colour mixing in lighting cues has always played it’s part in cross fade decisions, well before RGB LED kit came along. Fading out a Straw scene into a Deep Blue wash, while less obviously travelling through other colours, can suffer from unwanted results.

But the use of single light sources with colour mixing, and the fashion for high intensity, saturated colours in all kinds of show lighting, has made live colour changes even more obvious and needs our careful attention.

The future?

In the future, lighting desks should continue to develop user friendly ways of taking control of what happens to your stage picture between A and B for all attributes including colour. This could be the ability to visually pick a path through the available colours between the cues, based on a calculation of the possible permutations, so the user could avoid some colour combinations. The software could indicate reasonable accurate predictions of the more complex mixes which would mean less mental calculation and guesswork by the programmer, or even better align the transitions between a set of RGB additive and CMY subtractive colour mixing fixtures in a single cue.

If colour mixing really is our future, lighting controls will need to continue to reflect those particular needs when programming cues and not settle for a simple graphical colour picker and leave it at that. Good stage lighting is as much about transitions as destinations and we need control over both.

In the meantime, it’s up to us to use the tools we have and to understand the basics of colour theory to continue to have command over new technologies to create great art.

What’s your strategy when it comes to wrangling those colour mixed cross fades? Leave a comment in the box as usual. Cheers.

UPDATE:

Bleep ……..March 2012…..Interesting product news…….Bleep……!

Since we had a poke at the (very) prototype last year, it’s worth mentioning the new Lumonic ilumo Zoom Spot LED PAR-like and it’s advertised Colour Crossfade Engine.  According to Lumonic, not only does the fixture profile include the “standard” DMX channels of control for the LED colours, but also a calibrated CIE colour model with hues etc. set using X,Y coordinates.

Not only that but Lumonic say that the issues in the above article are removed, using channels to select the Current and Next colour to which a Transition is added to, avoiding the round trip through a whole lot of LED mixed colours on the way.

Bearing in mind that a pair of hands behind the ilumo range brought you the original James Thomas Pixel Range and the Pixeline 1044, I’d say Lumonic has to be worth a look.

Colour mixing image by Madcrow_Maxwell on Flickr

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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An introduction to the Compulite Vector lighting control, a guest article by UK Vector trainer Joe Bleasdale. If you don’t really know much about the Vector, a favourite in control for TV lighting, read on.

I’ll keep it basic. I’m Joe, I am a Freelance Vector Trainer & Programmer and this article is an introduction to a great console. I run Training on request and look forward to bringing some more Vector knowledge to the stage lighting community. Enjoy.

Image from Craig Finch at Shock Solution

The Desk

In 2002, Compulite introduced a new console to the lighting control market. This new console, Vector, ran two separate systems “under the hood”. The idea behind this was that one system processed the DMX output and front panels of the console, whilst the other system (Windows XPe) run the GUI. This way if Windows was to fail, the output of the console would remain unchanged and the operator would be able to continue firing cues and commands until it had rebooted.

Vector is in fact a product family, not just one console. There seven console solutions in the family, Vector Red, Blue, Green, Orange, Ultra Violet, Violet and Node. Red being the largest and most expensive and the Node being the smallest and cheapest. The family of console have been used in a wide range of production applications. Credits to the console include Trans-Siberian Orchestra, X-Factor (UK), Guns ‘N’ Roses world tour, Strictly Come Dancing, Got to Dance (UK), Britain’s Got Talent, Royal Wedding, Royal Variety Performance, Bundevision Song Contest and many more.

Compulite have a world wide distributor network of people and companies pushing the Vector consoles. I used to be the UK Distributor with a colleague of mine. Nowadays I reside as a Freelance Programmer and Vector Trainer in my own right. The consoles are not massively common, but once you have been behind one it is a programming experience you will not forget…

Using The Compulite Vector

The consoles have two modes and two syntaxes. This means, almost any programmer can walk up to the desk and have it working how they like it in a matter of seconds. Firstly there is Tracking Mode and then “Compulite Mode” – the latter is effectively Cue Only Mode. The first Syntax is Action and the next is the Enter syntax. In my opinion, Action syntax is the best to use, it allows most flexibility and fits the desk functions perfectly, however Enter works just as well.

The action syntax allows super fast programming and as you guessed it is based on your direct actions with the command line. For example selecting a channel would consist of [CHANNEL] [X] then you can go straight to altering parameters of that channel without having to confirm the selection. In fact, the Vector has tools to enable programmers to split fixture types up. It has 4 Sets. Channel, Spot, Matrix and Media Server.

Channel can be dimmers and dimmers with accessories such as Scrollers or Apollo Right Arm type devices. Spot is effectively Compulites name for “Fixture” it does not mean a hard edge fixture; you can patch anything under Spot.

Matrix is designed for patching large amounts of LED fixtures to use with the Matrix (Bitmap) feature of the desk.

Finally Media Server is for putting your Media Devices in. Spot, Matrix and Media Server are “cross compatible” so you could (if you wanted) put a VL 3500 in the Media Server set if you so wished. Each set also has its own “live view” (Programmer). This makes for easy show layouts and navigation during programming. It also helps the Programmer number crunch within the desk because Channel 1 just relates to “1” in that set. You can then have Spot 1, Matrix 1, and Media Server 1 – all their own fixture types.

By now your probably thinking, nothing special… other desks can do similar things. You would be correct, but Vector has more powerful features up its sleeve. Built in bitmap capability, Desktop, Media Server integration (Hippo V3, Catalyst V4, Arkaos), Contextual Displays, Attach Files to Objects, Parameter Pickers, Macros, Softkey Colour Coding, and an Effects Engine ™ a Programmer would die for…

Parameter picker for the Rotating Gobo wheel on a Mac 500. Pickers are available on all Parameters that have “steps” in them, I.e. Gobo Wheel, Colour Wheel, Shutter etc. For linear parameters such as Dimmer, Pan, Cyan there are no pickers.

The main tab of the Vector Effects Engine™. The advanced tab contains other Effect Primitives, and functions such as Sync which allows you to sync effects together quickly so they run in perfect sync with each other.

Vector Effects Engine

One of the most sought after features of the Vector is its Effects Engine™. It allows simplicity and power in one package, which nowadays is rare. Deep down, Effects are applied to parameters with Effect Primitives or Curves that apply mathematical functions (such as a Sine wave) to values against a set time. However you don’t have to be a maths wiz to understand this Effects Engine™!! By looking at the image above, you can see that the layout is very simple and graphical making for easy selections and quick Programming.

For example… If I set my dimmer level to 50% then hit [EFFECT] then press {STEP} set the direction to {UP} and then set the size wheel to {50%} then hit {WAVE}. In these few simple steps, my dimmer is now stepping between 50% and 100% in a wave type offset. How easy was that!!

The only down side to this console is its availability, not many exist in comparison to other consoles out there. Most of the consoles I work with in the UK are owned by individual Programmers – not hire companies. This shouldn’t put you off however, Compulite distributors run training on request, and people like me run tailored courses to teach Vector on every level. Once you know who has them, hiring then becomes easier!

I hope you have enjoyed this little introduction to the Compulite Vector. I am hoping to write tutorials on the subject here at On Stage Lighting.

The Professionals – On The Vector

Reliable, Faithful and does everything we need it to do.
Roger Williams – Lighting Director & Moving Lights Operator UK.

I’m using Vector because it provides professional features in a fast easy-to-use way. Its stable, offers a lot of networking/backup features and customer support is very good.
Matthias Schöffman – Vector Programmer

When specking a lighting console for a tour, there is only one clear choice. The Compulite Vector series of consoles are ideal. Quick, Powerful, Reliable, and all any Programmer needs.
Greg Shipley – Lighting Designer & Programmer. Guns ‘N’ Roses World Tour

1) Its ability to do Automated Lighting as well as conventional equipment with ease and not take a ton of time to Program it.
2) When I use them on rentals, they are easy enough for a beginner lighting tech to operate them, but still have amazing power to create any show you desire.
3) The extensive fixture library and ease of Programming make it a great console for any LD to set up for any type of show.
That’s just a few things I like about the Vector console
Nate Ross – NJN Productions

What I like about Compulite desks is you get a lot of desk for your money. The new Ultra Violet is ideal for me with twenty playback faders and two internal touchscreens all in a package that is easily carried and easily fitted into a cramped lighting area.
Bernie Davis – Lighting Director. Royal Wedding 2011 – UK

Thanks Joe – Rob

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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On Stage Lighting readers love to read interesting and relevant blogs and articles on lighting design and technology.  But the web is a big place and there is lot to choose from when it comes to working out which stuff to give your full attention.  So, we created the Dimmer Buzz RSS feed and email subscription just for you.

OK, let’s just be clear. This isn’t a guide on techniques to deliberately wind the Sound Dept. up (although that is always fun…). It’s about something else.

Get More…

If you’ve been enjoying the RSS feed of the world’s most popular stage lighting blog (er, here, btw), there is something that might have escaped your attention.  So, I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss out.

The Dimmer Buzz feed is a special feature here, alongside our regular feed that is enjoyed by 1000′s of subscribers that get new articles in their RSS readers or via email the minute they are published.

Compared to the main feed, Dimmer Buzz is just starting out but it’s aim is simple:  To editorially hand pick the best quality and most relevant writing from stage lighting related blogs around the world, and syndicate those pieces straight to On Stage Lighting enthusiasts.

Why?

Because there is a lot of noise in our online lives and it’s easy to miss really great stuff out there unless you subscribe to 100s of RSS feeds AND actually find time to sift through them every day.  Dimmer Buzz also hopes to bring your attention to the lesser known stage lighting writers and sources online and celebrate really good work, so that you can choose to pop over to their blogs or websites.

So, you just republish any old stuff then?

Nope. Getting a piece of work through editorial at Dimmer Buzz is a huge deal.  We only pick stuff that is hyper relevant to OSL readers AND of real originality or interest.  It’s gotta be really worth your time to get included.

I could go on about the really great things that the feed has promoted and found a wider audience, give you examples of articles and our reasons for picking them.  But the quickest and easiest route is for you to just grab the feed, either as either RSS or get it sent to your email and take a look.

Plenty of OSL readers get our latest articles via email. If that’s your bag, fill in the familiar Feedburner form, set and forget until the next cracking piece pings your inbox.

Do you have a stage lighting related blog?

If you write about lighting, via a blog or online publication and have an RSS feed that you want to share with us, drop a comment in the box below. If you reckon you read a great stage lighting related blog feed that is worthy of having some work included in the Dimmer Buzz feed, do likewise. Then subscribe to Dimmer Buzz.

If not, just grab the feed now!!

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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In a brief foray off our core topic of production lighting, On Stage Lighting presents a few Qlab video tutorials for beginners. Looking at the popular show running software, we take you through the interface and working with audio cues before moving on to playing back video and other visual media.

Regular readers of On Stage Lighting will know that I am currently teaching Technical Theatre subjects at a UK university, leading modules in Lighting, Sound and Video in Theatre Production. Although my specialism is obviously stage lighting design and programming, I have been known to break rank occasionally in my professional life and my current gig requires the teaching of many areas of technical production in performance including sound and AV.

In order to streamline delivery of teaching I regularly use screencast video tutorials, particularly when it comes to learning software. The recent release of the On Stage Lighting Vectorworks tutorials for beginners proved to be very popular and valuable for many.

As we believe in teaching current industry practice, our recorded sound and video playback system currently centres around the popular cueing software Qlab from Figure 53. Qlab is a regular feature on many professional performances around the world and is one of those pieces of software that seems quite “simple” in operation, yet manages to be extremely powerful. And, it’s basic and very usable free version is, well, FREE.

Yes, it’s free and you can actually use it to playback your audio cues on a real show!!

Running on the Apple Mac OSX platform, Qlab organises and fires audio and video content, can be used to build up soundscapes and automate the playback of recorded media. I wouldn’t claim to be an expert on the use of Qlab, my speciality as an educator is explaining things in simple terms and quite often people that are starting to learn a piece of software don’t need complex and technical tutorials, they just need to know the basics.

With that in mind, On Stage Lighting has some Qlab video screencasts to get you started. ( You don’t have to watch the tutorials at the small embedded size, you can fullscreen them).

Qlab Introduction – The Software and Interface

The first tutorial covers a look some of the things that Qlab can do, it’s interface and how to find your way around it. What you need to know before you start.

Note: There are a few specific references to our facilities at the University, you can ignore those.

Qlab – Audio Tutorial

This longer video takes a tour of the audio tools, organising and playing back cues, setting auto follow ons, adjusting levels and automating fades.

Tools worked with include: Audio Cue, Group Cue, Fade Cue, Auto Follow, Auto Continue, Audio Levels, Audio Output, Settings tab, Loop.

Qlab – Video and Images

The final Qlab Basics tutorial deals with the use of movie files, replaying of video and images and the tools that Qlab has when dealing with visual media using the Video and Animation cues.

So, if you are interested in starting to use Qlab, hopefully I’ve given you a good base of knowledge to work with. I can assure you that On Stage Lighting has not gone over the dark sides of Sound and Video but I know that many of our readers are interested in all areas of performance production. Your diet of stage lighting reading will recommence shortly

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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Looking at the Samoiloff effect, an old stage lighting trick using the physics of reflected colour, On Stage Lighting brings together the old with some new technologies in the form of colour mixing LED fixtures.

In our article on Reflected Colour in Lighting we looked at how using saturated colours, particularly the primary light colours (Red, Green and Blue), can dramatically effect the way a coloured object looks to the eye. In a practical example, it meant that my blue LED keyring torch was pretty useless when it came to hunting for cables marked with either green or red PVC tape because the two marking became a dirty brown colour. It also told us something useful about lighting scenery and costumes with saturated light colours. If you haven’t already, check out the article.

Adrian V. Samoiloff – Lighting Magician

In the 1920s “electro technician” Adrian V. Samoiloff developed the use of this colour phenomenon to dramatically change a stage picture in the theatre, costume and sets using simple lighting changes. An article on one particular show in the New York Times describes a scene and then states:

“Then behind the scenes, somebody does something and everything is altered in a flash. The grim mountains become a Hindu temple, the frowning rocks melt into sands and palms and the tall, slender young woman becomes a stout Indian maiden.”

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F40C13FC3B5A1B7A93C2AA178BD95F458285F9

The “something” that somebody had done was to change the colour of the light on stage, having carefully used reflected colour theory to hide and reveal different elements in full view of the audience. A lighting magic trick.

Samoiloff apparently took the basic effect further by analysing the chemical make up of dyes and how they reflected different parts of the spectrum. Reports of these experiments suggest the use of minute differences between dyes that under white light look similar, but react to saturated colour in different ways. Samoiloff also stated that he used these effects along with “dazzle”, a camouflage technique. With regard to the science of dyes and their reflection properties, I am not sure how much of the dye analysis part of the story is puffed by the reports but either way, the basic magic trick still works!

Old Tricks, New Technology

With the advent of different forms of colour mixing fixtures, we have an even greater opportunity to use many different saturated colours on stage – and change them in an instant. Samoiloff made use the development of the “compartment batten” flood lighting system that became known as “Sammies”, a version of which can still be found as S63 battens in a few schools halls. Today we have Subtractive CMY and Additive RBG colour mixing in our moving lights and Red, Green and Blue in LED based fixtures such as cheap LED PARs.

As part of a colour theory lecture I take, we look at how different coloured light reflects on different fabrics of a costume. Using combinations of the light primary colours (Red, Green, Blue ) and secondary ones (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow), experimentation shows that sometimes a costume colour reflects well, sometimes not, depending on the spectral makeup of the light shining on it.

An extension of this is using three banners that are specially designed to demonstrate the principle behind the Samoiloff effect. The banners are each a pair of complimentary colours. The pairs are:

• Red / Cyan
• Green / Magenta
• Yellow / Blue

One colour in the banner reflects one part of the spectrum (eg. Red), the other complimentary reflects the other two light primaries (eg. Cyan = Blue and Green). This gives us the biggest opportunity for shift in reflected colour. Using an LED PAR shining at the first banner, outputting white (well, white for a cheap LED PAR) the colour appear to be Red and Cyan. Changing the LED to output only Red, the banner seems to be Red and Black but then changing the LED to Cyan, the pattern reverses to negative in Black and Cyan. Your eye almost assumes that the Cyan portion is, in fact, white fabric with a Cyan light on it. This large shift from +ve to -ve is startling and it doesn’t take long before you can see a whole host of magical reveals and possibilities using the Samoiloff effect.

Taking this demo further, using a colour mixing fixture (or simply gelled conventional fixtures in Red, Green and Blue) we blend light colours on all three banners and adjust, moving through parts of the spectrum where all colours look quite similar, before then snapping out to a dramatic change when they suddenly become different. The interesting thing about LED light sources is that they are quite “spiky” in different parts of their spectral output, throwing a whole extra dimension to this old theatrical effect. Subtle fades between levels of Red, Green and Blue creates major shifts in the reflected colour.

Create Your Own Samoiloff Effect

You will need:

• A piece of white paper
• Marker Pens – Primary Red and Primary Green
• Torch
• Gel Filter Swatchbook
• A dark place to be

Physics teachers use this technique to demonstrate how reflected light works. Take your paper and write “Red” using the red marker pen. Underneath it using the green pen, write “Green”. Finding some primary red and green gels in your swatch book (Lee 106 or Lee 026 and Lee 139 are good), turn all other lights off and fire your torch at the paper. Using no gel, you see both words written on the paper.

Adding a red gel to the torch, the word “Red” gets fainter and, if you are lucky, disappears. Moving onto the green gel, the opposite happens, hiding your word “Green” while making the “Red” writing appear black. Once again, reflected colour theory doesn’t fail us and the magic trick is proven to still be good in 2011…

If you want to move further onto more complex effects, you can try not only the primary filters; L106, L139 and L132 (or L079 or L119); but also some versions of the secondaries in the form of:

• Lee 116 Medium Blue-Green
• Lee 126 Mauve
• Lee 101 Yellow

These are just one take on the secondary colours, there are other gels which fall within the secondary ranges, there are others that you might like to look at such as L172 Lagoon Blue, L128 Bright Pink and Lee 104 Deep Amber. They all produce slightly differing results.

The Magic of Light

But all this is a pretty crude demonstration and highlights the extremes of the Samoiloff effect. Using complex coloured fabrics and patterns on stage, it’s not hard to see what a massive influence we as lighting designers have on how colours are seen, or not, by an audience.

We can create magic on stage using light and colour. We can also really mess things up.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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So you have a projection project and a deadline AND a budget? Didn’t pay as much attention in the video class? Fear not! A solution is here….Video Signals for Dummies – from On Stage Lighting.

There are a great number of factors when trying to spec and pull off a successful video presentation, but like all things in our business, break it down in to it’s component parts and it will be manageable (pun intended for the vidiots).

In this guest post by  projection professional Jeff  Gooch over at ProjectionFreak.com, we start to get our heads around things us lampies may have managed to avoid so far – media and video.  Lighting and projection were often the domain of the lighting designer, especially in theatre and the work of pioneers such as Richard Pilbrow. While video projection has become a specialist job with dedicated technicians,  the convergence of digital media and lighting has brought new skill requirements for those of us who used to spend most of our day “focussing” PARcans with an extended stage brace (don’t worry, I still do that too!).  The first hurdle to get over when dealing with vision is simply the different signals and connectors used.  Help us out here, Jeff…..

I tell my students a general rule of thumb is this: IMAGE Acquisition, PROCESSING, and OUTPUT with the following graphic:

Consider what gear is in each category:

• IMAGE Acquisition: your graphics, camera feeds, and any other sources- decks, etc.
• PROCESSING: switchers, scalers, scan converters, etc.
• OUTPUT: displays, projectors, record decks, screens.

All the different pieces of gear in the bookend categories are all going to have different resolutions and different capabilities. PROCESSING is where we want to equalize everything to hopefully make the output to the display the highest possible quality.

Regardless of the equipment you use, a basic understanding of the connections,cables, and the signals that are carried down them is a great starting place to understand video signals a little better. Let’s now consider basic video signals first- from lowest quality to highest- and their connections:

• Composite Video Signals
• Y/C or “S”
• RGB (or some form of analog component)
• HDMI
• SD-SDI
• HD-SDI

Composite Video Signals


RCA – Composite Signal

Composite is a signal that travels down a single conductor (shielded) cable. It is all the video information “composited” to one signal, that is, color, sync, and brightness. It’s usually the single, yellow RCA (Phono) connector on the back of the TV or projector. This type of connection, while still in circulation, is rapidly disappearing as it has no support for HD, unplugs easily, and has no audio path (although it is commonly used as an unbalanced audio connector). Composite is usually carried down single BNC connectors as well.

Y/C or “S” Video


S Video Connector

Y/C- or “S” is the video signal divided into two separate paths, Y (or Luminance/white level) and C (Chrominance/color). It’s a generally flimsy connection that is rapidly disappearing as a standard on TV’s, projectors, and cameras. Y/C cable is usually 2 conductor, shielded, with 4 pins on a Mini-DIN connection, and limited in length. Y/C cable has no support for HD or audio.

RGB Component Video


Component Signal with BNC connectors

RGB (and all it’s variants RGBS, RGBHV, and RG&SB) flavor is an acronym for Red, Green, Blue, meaning the signal has been split into separate paths for each color.  This is an analog signal but it is capable of HD resolutions for everything from 480p to 1080i (1080p is not supported), but the color depth has no real limit.  It does need an extra channel for sync though,
1. composite sync- where the horizontal and vertical signals are mixed together on a separate wire (the S in RGBS)
2. separate sync- where the horizontal and vertical are each on their own wire 3. (the H and V in RGBHV)sync on green- where a composite sync signal is overlaid on the green wire (SoG or RGsB)

It’s carried on 3, 4, or 5 conductor cable, shielded and can be terminated in RCA or BNC. Many projector manufacturers will use a DSUB15-to-BNC breakout to accomplish this.

HDMI


HMDI Signal Connector

HDMI is High Definition Multimedia Interface. Different versions offer different levels of support for Audio and Video Signals, but all versions are capable of ATSC video standard resolutions, 8-channel, 192kHz, uncompressed digital audio and the DVD related compressed formats (Dolby Digital and DTS).
HDMI is used on Cable TV, FIOS and Satellite STB’s (Set Top Boxes) , Receivers, Display devices such as HDTV’s, LCD’s, Projectors, Plasmas, DVD players, Blu Ray Players, HD DVD players, gaming consoles, and most newer cameras. The connector has no locking mechanism so it is easily pulled out by accident, and HDCP copy protection does not allow conversion to analog for compatibility with older HDTV’s and other displays. You’re also very limited by cable length.

SD-SDI and HD-SDI

SD-SDI and HD-SDI are acronyms for Standard Definition (or High Definition) Serial Digital Interface and represent the holy grail family of signals. These signals are outlaid in SMPTE 292M with a nominal data rate of 1.4 Gbit/s for single link. It’s faster cousin, Dual Link (outlaid in SMPTE 372M) has a nominal data transfer rate of 2.9 Gbit/s. There’s a single link version of this out called 3G (as if we haven’t heard enough of that acronym…).  These types of signal are used for the transmission of uncompressed, unencrypted digital video. It’s extreme speed is unfortunately limited to distances of 300m or less (without signal re-clocking). They’re usually carried down Single conductor RG-6 cable or better and terminated with a BNC connector.

In all cases, quality is paramount. Does this mean you have to go broke buying ridiculously priced cable? No. As in all things, shop around, ask questions, read the data sheets of reputable manufacturers. You’ll learn everything you need to know.


Editor’s Note : “VGA” Cable and Connectors

To add to the confusion, industry has a habit of referring to VGA cable / VGA connectors when referencing one particular system of  moving video signals around, often from a computer output to a projector or monitor.  Let’s just clear something up.  While it may be in common usage and I myself am guilty of this, the trapezoidal 15-pin connector often called VGA is actually a D-Sub 15, Jeff used it’s name in the article above.  It’s not a VGA connector.  If that wasn’t enough misnomers for one day, the output resolutions commonly used in this system  are also not actually VGA – being often XGA or UXGA.  Next time you  are sent to get a “VGA cable”, keep your mouth shut and remember that no one likes a pendant.  Just sayin.  ;-)

Thanks, Jeff!! Don’t forget to head over to ProjectionFreak.com and check it out.

Following a cheeky request  from me, Jeff has also created a really straightforward video tutorial on the basics of setting up a projector. Here it is.

If this has helped you, consider buying me a beer and CLICK HERE to donate a few bucks to On Stage Lighting (why should I donate?). Thanks, - Rob

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Video Signals – A Quick and Dirty Guide was first posted on March 2, 2011 at 6:07 pm.





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