Compu Show Software User Manual

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Congratulations! Youre about to learn how to use one of the most advanced lighting control
software on the market today! The contents of this user manual are laid out in a manner in
which it should be easy and quick to install the software, set up your fixtures, and start
programming your shows. If at any time you should need to contact us for Tech support
please call:
Elation Professional Tech Support
6122 Eastern Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90040
Office Hours: Mon-Fri 8am-430pm Pacific Time
1.323.213.4593
[email protected]
www.elationlighting.com

NOTICE: The functionality and settings of this software are subject to change at
any time without prior notification by Elation Professional via software update.
The end user is encouraged to periodically check for software and library
updates from the Elation website. Likewise Elation Professional is not
responsible for loss of data or corruption while updating the software or
firmware of this interface. Always backup your important data.

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Table of Contents:
Installation.................................................................................................................................Page 6.
Launching the program..............................................................................................................Page 12.
Overview of Software Layout and UI.........................................................................................Page 14.
Locking the Software.................................................................................................................Page 25.
External windows......................................................................................................................Page 30.
Creating your First Show............................................................................................................Page 40.
Patching Fixtures.......................................................................................................................Page 41.
Fixture Grouping.......................................................................................................................Page 53.
Creating a Scene (Static)............................................................................................................Page 74.
Creating a Scene using Easy Time Effects................................................................................Page 100.
Creating a Scene using Easy Step............................................................................................Page 146.
Palettes..................................................................................................................................Page 156.
Creating a Switch....................................................................................................................Page 187.
Page/Button Settings..............................................................................................................Page 190.
Import/Export Fixture pages...................................................................................................Page 217.
Page Layers.............................................................................................................................Page 221.
Button Compression...............................................................................................................Page 231.
Using Rects to Create a Matrix.............................................................................................Page 238.
Create a Cycle..........................................................................................................................Page 261.
External Control & Triggering...................................................................................................Page 268.
Easy ShowPage 278

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Terminology
DMX: Digital Multiplex, the universal language in which all intelligent fixtures
communicate through standard 3 pin or 5 pin serial data cable known as DMX
cable.
Patch: A list of all the DMX starting addresses for the intelligent fixtures to be
addressed too.
Show file: A Show file (.shw) is the single file that stores all of the DMX patching
and scene, switch, and cycle, MIDI data that have been recorded by the
programmer. It is an entire back up of the programming.
Scene: A Scene is more commonly referred to as a cue. A cue is a static set of
DMX values. However in Compu Show a Scene can have a static level of values
or a Scene can have multiple steps (cues) in one Scene. A Scene can also have
dynamic DMX values recorded into it via a built in effects engine. A Scene can
only be played back one Scene at a time. Clicking one Scene will deselect the
last selected Scene.
Switch: A Switch is a sub level or add too level of DMX values that can be used
for a quick over ride effect on any scene currently being played back. A Switch
can also have dynamic values recorded into it using the effect engine. It is
possible to playback or select more than one Switch at a time. However the
channel types must not be overlapped.
Cycle: A cycle is a list of Scenes and Switches put into a desired order for an
intended effect or sequence of playback. A cycle is also commonly referred to as
a Cue List.
Fixture Page: A Fixture Page is the single window in the program that allows
access to all of the fixtures DMX attributes. Several fixtures of the same model
for example Design spot 250 PRO can be patched as one fixture page.

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Fixture Groups: Fixture groups can be created and organized however the
programmer wishes to set up and plot their fixtures in order as a replicate of the
actual fixture layout for the show. Fixture groups can be organized to allow
quick access to fixtures and their attributes for programming and live/on the fly
control.
HTP: Lets say we set a channel to HTP, all that means is its going to take
whatever value is highest. So lets say you have scene 1 with channel 4 at 100%
and switch 1 with channel 4 at 50%. Even if you trigger scene 2 after scene 1
channel 4 will stay at 100% because it only takes the highest value of the two.
HTP stand for Highest Take Priority.
LTP: lets say we have LTP on, same scenario as HTP, now when you bring up
switch 1 it will over ride scene 1 because its the Latest value getting sent. LTP
stands for Latest Takes Priority.

Installing the Compu Show Software:

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To begin installing your software, you may use the disc that came with your
interface package and follow the onscreen instructions. If you are downloading
the Compu Show software from our website please follow the instructions
below.
The installation procedure is the same across all Windows Operating systems
including Vista and Windows 7, 32 and 64 bit system types.

NOTE: Do not plug in your USB interface until after you have installed
the software and drivers. In doing so before hand may cause
complications when first using the interface with the software. If you
have plugged it in before installing the software please delete the
driver in computer management for the interface and Re-install the
program.
Once you have downloaded the Compu Show.exe from our website it should
appear on the desktop or the chosen file location.

Double click the installer icon to launch the installation program.

Select your language then click next.

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Click next and accept our licensing Agreement.

Now confirm your file path.

Install the selected drivers.

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Confirm the folder for the install.

Select if you wish to have a Desktop icon.

(Shown on next page)

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Now verify everything is where you would like it in the review section and click
Install.

The program will begin to extract the driver files and you will be asked to install
the driver package.
(Picture shown on next page)

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Once you see the pop up as shown in the above picture select next and the
drivers will begin to install. If youre on a 64 bit system type you may be asked
to Stop installing the driver or install Driver package anyways. Please select
install Driver package anyways. Once the drivers are done installing you will
see a window like the picture shown below with two green check marks. This
means your USB drivers for the interface are installed and ready. Click finish.

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Now the rest of the program files will install.

Once the installation is complete you will see a window like this.

If your USB interface was not plugged in please deselect the check box for
Launch Compu Show and click finish. Now you may plug in your USB interface
and Windows will now find the correct driver and a small pop up balloon will
appear in the lower bottom right of your screen and will say your device is ready
to use.

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Launching the Compu Show Software.

First locate and double click on the Compu Show icon to launch the program.

Now the software will launch and the program will begin to load the Demo
Show by default.

If your interface is not detected or not plugged in, the program window will say
Demo mode as shown in the picture above. Shown on the next page is a
picture of a basic layout of the default Demo Show file.

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And shown below is a picture of everything organized in tab windows.

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Overview of Software layout and UI:

For this section we will use the Demo show file as an example of the new layout
of the Compu Show program and User Interface. The main functions of the
Compu show program are in a simple ribbon bar at the top of the program
window with three tabs, each for a different parameter of functions and
control. The first tab is called Controller which contains two sections called
show and External windows.

Each section has a specific function well go over them briefly one by one in this
section.

Lock: Will lock down the program in a way that new scenes or switches or
anything cannot be added or edited or even deleted. The only thing that can be
done is clicking on existing buttons. To turn on the lock simply click the lock
icon.

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To turn off the Lock hold down Ctrl on your keyboard and click the lock button
again.
We can edit Lock settings in the Software Preferences button in the Pages
section.

We will go over in-depth lock settings on page 25 of this manual.

Open/Save Show: Clicking on the open/save Show icon opens the Open Show
window as shown below.
(Shown on next page)

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This window will tell you the currently saved show (.shw) files on your hard
drive. You may also create a new show, Rename, Delete, Save, Import a Compu
Live show file (.ssh) or a previous Compu Show file (.shw) by clicking on the
relevant icons as shown in the picture below.

Additionally you may also display the infos for a specific show file for example
you can display the fixture profiles used in the show file.
(Pictured on next page)
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Software Preferences: By clicking on the Software Preferences button you

can adjust multiple software settings as well as hardware settings.

General: In the general section you can select to show a dialog box at start up
of the program. And you may also choose to show the general Beam control
function in the software. The Open dialog box will appear when you click the
Compu Show icon on your desktop and looks like this:
(Pictured on next page)

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The show general beam controls will appear on the software as so:

The Beam control will control every single fixture that has a shutter function,
dimmer function, Iris function, and a zoom function. These are universal
controls for these parameters if your fixture supports it. By default both dialog
at start up and beam control functions are turned off in the software. To turn
them on simply click either or both check boxes just below of the example
picture in the General section as shown in this picture below.

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Output Hardware: In the Output Hardware section you will first notice a
checkmark next to the Auto Detection text. This means that the program will
auto detect the settings of your interface and load them.

To adjust certain settings, like DMX input. (Only if your interface supports Input)
Or adjust which port the third universe is outputting too. (Only if your interface
supports three DMX universe output) Youll need to uncheck the Auto detection
check mark and you will now be able to adjust different parameters by clicking
on the dropdown menus. Additionally you may also use more than one
interface at the same time by setting them up in this section.

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MIDI Setup: The MIDI setup section allows you to assign MIDI input, MIDI
OUT, MIDI Time code IN, and MIDI time code OUT. You will need to select your
MIDI devices in these windows to ensure proper MIDI communication between
the software and your MIDI equipment. For example if youre using Elations
MIDIcon Controller. You will need to set it up in the MIDI Set up section for MIDI
input and MIDI Output.

Video: The Video section is used to set up a video preview window for
triggering video files on your computer and projecting them through a projector
hooked up to a secondary output on the computers graphic card.

(Shown on next page)

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As you can see from the above picture, you can select which monitor to output
the video preview window too as well as select if it displays full screen and to
display or not the mouse in the preview window. Here is an example of a video
being triggered by the program while displaying the video preview in a small
window.

You can use scenes or switches in the Software to trigger video files. More on
Multimedia triggering later in this manual.

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Button Designs: The button Designs sections allows you to change the look of
the buttons in the software. There are quite a few choices for types and colors
of knobs and button colors.

For example we can change how the scene buttons will look by default, the
color of the button, and when the button is pressed. Here is a default view.

And an example of different colors and settings you can adjust.

(Shown on next page)

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And you can select different styles of buttons from the dropdown menu.

Likewise you can adjust the same settings for switches cycles and different
button styles all from this Button Designs section. You may also adjust the style
and color of the knobs as shown in the picture below. Play around and see what
suits you the best.

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Shortcuts: The Shortcut sections, displays a list of all the default keyboard
shortcuts for the Compu Show software. You can also modify these shortcuts.

You can see to the right of the window there is a preview of what the key looks
like and you can also change the shortcut key by clicking on the right side of the
window in the Shortcut column.

Lastly clicking
displays a complete list of all the shortcut keys by
default and all the possible shortcut keys a user can assign in this section.

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Locking the Software: The software Locking properties or Access

Privileges as some may call it, allow you to lock down certain features or
functions of the program requiring the user to enter a password to unlock the
locked features. This is most useful if the software is being installed in a
situation where the operator is not fully knowledgeable of the program and
may accidently mess something up. To set up the software lock, go to the Lock
section of the starting Preferences section.

First you may set up a password. To do so click here:

The software will prompt you to create a password. It will also ask for an
existing password. If none exist then leave that box blank.

Once you enter in your password click OK.

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To adjust which functions or features are locked when the software is locked,
please look through the Lock window and either check or uncheck a certain
parameter. The different sections that can be locked are shown in the picture
below.

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For example if you leave all of the functions checked as shown in the picture in
the previous page the only things you will be able to do in the software are
playback currently existing scenes and switches, start the Audio function, open

t
he Scan library editor program and Console Editor program, select different
fixture groups and modify them on the fly but not save the modification.
You will NOT be able to create new scenes or switches. You will not be able to
add or delete any MIDI triggers. You will not be able to open a new show or
save the current show. You also will not be able to modify any parameter of the
fixtures from the switches located on the fixture pages. You will not be able to
move the fixture page from its current location. The default settings are almost
a complete lockdown.
Once youre done adjusting the Lock settings to your liking please click OK and
the software will save your settings. Now click on the Lock button at the top of
the program window and you will see that most of the functions you can modify
are locked down, they either cannot be selected or they are locked down in
their last modified or default state.
(Shown on next page)

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You will notice if you try to click on a function that is locked you will be
prompted to enter your password.

Once you enter in your password that function will become unlocked. To unlock
the entire program please click on the Lock button at the top of the program
window in the controller tab and enter in your password and that will unlock
the entire program.

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If you should ever forget your password it is stored in a _globalShow.xml file in

the Compu Show folder on your computer. Here is how you would locate it
should you ever forget.

In this example the password was set up on the Demo show file. Please look for
the folder of the name of your personal show. For example if we had a show
named E spot we would want to open the E spot folder located a folder back
from the picture above called _DataLight and find the _globalShow.xml file
and double click it to launch Internet Explorer to display the XML info. Here is
what to look for once the xml file is loaded on Internet Explorer. In this example
I have used elation as a password as you will see below.
(Shown on next page)

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External Windows:

The External windows are individual windows that can be open and closed at
any time. As you can see from the picture above, each section is open by the
orange glow around the button. To close or turn off a page from displaying
simply click it and the window will go away. You may also click the small x in
the far right hand corner of each one of these windows to close it. In doing so
will also take away the orange glow of the co-responding window.
(Continued on next page)

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For example say we wanted only the Fixtures, Fade, and DMX Level windows
displayed. We simply click the buttons for the other windows we wish to close
and our page will look like so:

Lets go through a brief overview of what all the external windows are and what
they do.

Pages: Pages is a list of all the fixture pages in your show file. In pages you can
select to display the page, lock the page, and freeze the output of the page,
DMX output on/off, Link the page to the master page.
(Picture shown on next page)

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Fixtures:

The fixtures window shows you all of your individual fixtures in your set up. You
can also create fixture groups in this window. Also the fixture window is where
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you will also be able to select any fixture(s) for override/on the fly control of the
selected fixture(s). There is a dedicated section on the fixture grouping window
further in this manual.

Cycle:

The Cycle window will appear when you go to program a Cycle in the program.
This is where all the buttons you select or any data for the cycle will appear in
this window in the timeline. Again there is a dedicated section on creating and
editing a Cycle further into this manual.

(Continued on next page)

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DMX Level:

The DMX level window allows you to monitor all of the DMX channels in your
set up. You can also switch tabs to view all the channels in just a fixture page as
well as all of the DMX Input channels if your interface supports DMX input. To
view the channels for example on the MOVING HEAD fixture page, simply click
on the MOVING HEAD tab and those channels will appear.

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To switch between a channel view and Icon view click on the square icon with a
Level indicator.

To zoom in and out to better see the fixtures click on the small magnifying glass
with the + and in the lower left hand corner of the button.

The icons for the fixtures can display the gobo icon that is being used currently
as well as the iris and dimmer and color of the current DMX data being used.

Here is an example of Icon output from the Master Page.

(Shown on next page)

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Console Window: The Console window allows you to view the loaded MIDI
Map file for a MIDI controller or you may also build your own console for DMX
input using the Console Editor program. The Default console is the Behringer
BCF 2000.

There will be a more in depth overview on the Console window using a MIDI
controller later in this manual.
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Fade: The Fade scene window allows you to monitor your fade times as your
scenes playback. You can also select manual fade when assigning a fade time to
a scene and use the slider in the middle of the fade window to manually play
your fade.

More on the Scene fade window in the Creating a Scene section of this
manual.

Favorites: Favorites allows you to store your favorite scenes and switches
and even windows positions in the Favorites window.
(Picture on next page)

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There is a quick tutorial on favorites after the Creating a scene and creating a
switch sections of this manual.

External windows (Drop down menu button): The External windows

dropdown menu button contains several different functions. For example if you
accidently close or just simply your windows get all out of order or turned off.
You can click on the external windows button and select Organize windows in
tabs to reset the positions of all the windows in a tab position.

Additionally you may also use the external windows button to launch the 3D
visualizer. If you select Auto start underneath both Easy View (3D) and
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Audio that will tell the software to automatically start those programs every
time when the Compu Show program is first launched.

You can tell if auto start is selected by the Check mark box to the left of the
Auto Start text with the orange glow.
You may also use the external windows button to launch the Palette Editor,
Easy Show, Scan Library Editor and the Stand Alone Editor (Not all Compu
interfaces support Stand alone function). All these functions will be covered in
this manual except for the Console Editor; the Console Editor will have its own
manual as it is a very advanced external program that lets you make a virtual
replica of your MIDI controller should it not be in our library of midi maps as
well as design a replica of the DMX console your using as a DMX input device.

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Creating Your First Show: Creating your own show is simple, click on the
Open/Save Show button and select New.

Now enter a name for your show. In this example we will call our Show Elation
Demo. Click OK after you have entered in the name.

Now click OK. Your empty show will load on the software.

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Patching Fixtures: You must first patch in your fixtures. To patch your
fixtures go to the Page tab and select New Page.

Now the Scan Library Wizard will open and you can scroll through the folder to
select your fixture profiles.

In this example we will patch in four Elation Impression 120 rz Fixtures. So

navigate to the elation pro folder.

And locate and expand the Impression folder.

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Now select the Impression 120rz 15ch profile. Once you select it you will see the
fixtures information appear to the right of the menu.

You can scroll through the channels on the right to see which channels are what.
Also displayed at the top are the pan and tilt information and the beam angle.
Click Next.

(Continued on next page)

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In this window is where you assign the starting address of the first fixture. To do
this you can simply click and drag the fixture icon into the DMX universe 1 grid.

Or you may simply select which universe and the starting address and number
of fixtures from the small drop down menus circled in the picture above. For this
example show lets patch in four of the Impression 120rzs.
(Shown on next page)

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Additionally you may also open the Scan Library Editor to verify the profile is
properly made by clicking the small moving head wash icon at the bottom left of
the patch window shown below in the picture.

Now that we have our four fixtures selected, we select next. The next step is
where we can chose to modify the amplitude of the pan and tilt channels for
each one of our fixtures if we chose to do so.
To modify the amplitude of the pan and tilt channels click the Enable check box
and select one of your fixtures.
(Shown on next page)

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Once you select an individual fixture you can then in the grid to the right move
the position of the pan and tilt.

In the picture show above we have centered the 1st impression fixture. Now we
can adjust the size of the area the fixture is allowed to move in by clicking the
dotted line border around the grid. You will notice when you can move the sides
by the mouse changing from a pointer to a left-right adjust arrow.

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Now for example we will make a smaller box around the Crosshairs icon in the
center of the grid.

Now that we have adjusted the area of our first Impression fixture we must
repeat the steps for the other three. Once we are done adjusting the size we
may also select to invert pan, invert tilt, and Swap X and Y.

Please note the warning at the bottom of the window.

Once we have our settings the way we want, click next.

Now we may chose which switches the software will automatically generate on
the fixture page for us.
(Shown on next page)

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In this part of the fixture patch you can select or deselect which switches the
software will create for you. For example if we didnt want any pre-generated
pan and tilt movements we can expand the Movements section and uncheck
the boxes for any or all of the movements in that section.

Now that those are unchecked if we were to generate the page like this we
would not have any generated movement switches. But we will leave the
default settings on and enable all switches to be generated to get a full
experience on this software for the purposes of this tutorial. Click next once you
are done checking or unchecking switches to generate.

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This next step will allow you to edit the generated shape movements for your
fixtures.

To edit a shape simply click the Edit button to the right of the check box.

We will skip the rest of this editing process for now as it is covered in the scene
and switch creation sections of this manual. You may edit these switches
anytime after you generate the page as well. Please click cancel on the shape
editor window and then select next on the Scan Library Wizard window.

(Continued on next page)

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Now you may edit the name of the page and also change the page icon to a
relevant image of your fixture.

To change the icon click on the small red circle in the picture above and a
window with a list will appear.

Select the Elation folder and find the Impression 120rz icon.

(Show on next page)

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Double click the icon to assign it as the icon for the fixture page.

You may also check the box and add the page to the master page. However you
can add or UN-add a fixture page to the master page at any time. So you do not
need to do this now.
You may also at any time add more fixtures to this fixture page in the page
settings window at any time after you generate the fixture page.
Now click

and your page will generate on the software.

(Shown on next page)

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You will see the page generates with a Layer active. Lets change it to the
default view by clicking the icon circled in red on the picture below and selecting
Default

(Full default view on next page)

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What exactly is a fixture page and how do you use it?

A Fixture page is the central location for the fixtures you have patched into the
software. Since normally we use more than one of the exact same product we
can have a fixture page with any number of the same fixtures but there is only
one page generated. As you can see from some of the screen shots in this
manual the fixture page contains buttons or switches for each set of DMX
values for each channel. For example you can see that there is a switch for the
colors from a color wheel or a gobo wheel and the shutter and dimmer
channels. Clicking on one of these switches will affect all of the fixtures assigned
to that one fixture page. In theory you can use a single fixture page for each one
of your fixtures however this is cumbersome and can get confusing very easily
which is why the fixture pages are grouped together in one single page per same
type of fixture. For example, say we had 8 Design Spot 250s and 10 DLED Par
Zooms. This set up will generate two pages, one for each fixture type and
product. Now lets add some other fixtures to our show file.

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For this show I will add some more movers and some RGB LED fixtures and
some traditional Par cans. Use the same method as mentioned above for
patching in fixtures.

Fixture Grouping: The first thing you should do once you have patched in
all of your fixtures is create fixture groups and organize your fixtures in the
fixtures window. You will notice in the fixtures window that you have some
small square icons.

Each one of these small black squares is one of your fixtures on your fixture
page. You will notice from the picture above I have patched in more fixtures for
a total of four fixture pages. I have patched in Six Design Spot 1200Cs and Six of
the American DJ Flash Panel 16s and six Generic Par 64s from the _Generic
folder in the scan library. To make these squares bigger simply Click and drag to
highlight all the squares and right click on the squares and you will see a small
dropdown menu appear.
(Shown on next page)
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Select Size and then select your size.

For this example we will select a size of 6 units for the Impression page.
Now you will notice that the squares occupy exactly six units of the background
grid in the fixtures window.
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Now you can see that the squares overlap each other. To spread them out we
can click on the icon with the four arrow heads on it. And then we can simply
click and drag each fixture square and arrange them in a line or however we
want too.

Now we will go over what each of the buttons and their functions are in the
Fixtures window.

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1) Is the Move button. Once you click on it you will be able to select any
fixture and move it around the fixture window grid.
2) Select fixture with Left click
3) Select multiple fixtures by holding down the CTRL key and left clicking over
fixtures squares.
4) Zoom In and Out of the fixture grid.
5) From left to right. Clicking on the far left icon in this section will
automatically invert the number of fixtures selected in the grid. For example
if I had fixtures 1, 3, and 5 selected in the Design spot 1200C page. Clicking
this button will automatically deselect fixtures 1, 3, and 5 and select 2, 4, and
6. The middle icon will select all of the fixtures in the grid. And the third icon
will unselect all the fixtures in the grid.
6) Will change the square to show either the icon of the fixture or to show the
state of the beam of the fixture.
7) Will display the text of the fixtures name on each fixture square.

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8) Will allow you to show the state of the Iris and gobo on the fixture square
should your fixture support those features.
9) Positions wizard. Click on this icon to bring up an external window to
manually adjust the position of every fixture square in the grid.
10) Will allow you to display only the fixtures assigned to the master page.
This will display only those fixtures at all times no matter what fixture page
youre currently working on.

Now we will go ahead and make the fixture squares for the Design Spot 1200C
page six units as well as the Par 64 page.

Now lets Link these fixture pages to the master page and crate some groups on
the master page.
You will notice your fixtures are not in the same position once you link them to
the master page and click on the master page. The reason this happens is that
you can set two different positions for your fixtures on the grid. One for the
fixture page positions and one for the Master page positions. To have your
fixture in the master page grid appear where they are on the fixture page, click
the select all button and right click and select Same Pos as Page
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Once you do that you will see your fixtures move to the same position as they
are on their fixture pages.

Now we can fine tune their positions to match how they could be set up on a
truss set up. To change the position of any fixture square, simply select the cross
with four arrowheads and adjust the position to your desired position. Or you
may now use the Positions Wizard button to open a new window and make it
full screen to adjust the positions.
(Shown on next page)
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In the upper right hand corner of the positions wizard window, you will notice
you have the same magnifying glass buttons to zoom in and out of the fixture
grid. And you will also see the select all, deselect all, and invert selections
buttons. For starters lets adjust the positions of the Flash Panels to a 3x2
Matrix. First select all six of the flash panel fixture squares. Once you do this you
will notice that four new buttons have appeared in the upper right hand corner
of the screen.

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Those four buttons are:

Line will allow you to move the fixtures in a line and adjust the space
between each fixture square and allow you to adjust the line horizontally or
vertically.
Circle will move the selected fixture squares into a circle shape and also
allow you to adjust the size of the circle.
Square will allow you to move the fixture squares into a square or rectangle
shape and adjust the size.
Matrix will allow you to set a matrix layout.

For our Flash Panels we will want to select Matrix. Once we click on Matrix, a
Matrix window will appear asking us the size of the matrix we would like to
use.

Now click on Advanced Positioning and you will see how the matrix will be
made in the fixture group window.

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As you can see from the picture above this would not be the ideal set up for
the Flash Panels. So lets click cancel and change the rows and columns to
2x3.

And now click Advanced positioning again and you will see the matrix that
we want to do, which is three panels across, and two panels down.

Now click settings and you will see another small window open up.

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The window above allows you to set the direction in which the matrix is
patched. For example if we selected the button with the 1 in the bottom
right corner with the arrow going up we would change how the matrix is
patched and this is what it would look like.

But lets change it back to the default patching order by going back into
Settings and clicking the first upper left button.

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And click OK. Now our patch is back to where we want it by default. You may
also click on the squares in the matrix patch and drag them to your desired
position. For example we can swap the position of numbers 2 and 5.

You can see the matrix positions will allow you to precisely position your LED
matrix to the exact positioning of how they are set up. Lets switch 2 and 5
back to their proper place and select ok.

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Now the matrix has adjusted the position of the six Flash Panels and we can
now move them to the desired position in the grid.

Now lets move the matrix underneath the four impression fixture squares.

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You can see the small black squares circled in red in the picture above.
Clicking on those will allow you to adjust the size of the matrix positions.
Clicking in the center allows you to move the whole matrix around the grid.
Now that we have our matrix position, lets go ahead and move the
impressions into a line but in between the Design spot 1200Cs. The line that
we will make now will reflect a single back truss line with an Impression in
between every two Design Spot 1200s. We will need to space out the Design
spot fixtures squares in groups of two. To do this we will need to click and
drag and select two DS1200s at a time and either drag them left or right.

Now we will place the Impression fixtures in between each set of two
DS1200s starting at the outside left and ending at the far outside right. But
first lets make the Impression squares slightly smaller than the DS1200s to
be able to easily recognize which fixtures are which in the line. Lets make
the Impressions a size of 4 units. Now we can put them in the line.

Now lets adjust the Par 64 fixtures and space them out to reflect a front
truss line.

You can see we have done this easily using the Line button at the upper
right of the positions wizard window. Now lets bring all of these squares a
bit closer together to maximize space in the Fixture window.
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Now we simply click the small X in the very top right hand of the window
to close the Positions wizard window and you will see our current Fixture
positions have been saved and applied to the fixture window.

Now we can start to make some fixture groups. Creating fixture buttons is
very easy. Simply click on the fixtures you wish to create a group for and
then click on the dark grey circle with the white plus (+) button on it.

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To name your group button, right click the button and a small menu of
options will appear.

Select Rename and you will see a small window appear that allows you to
type in the name.

Delete the New Group text and type in the name of your group. For this
example we will name this group Washes as the selected fixtures are the
Impression 120RZs.
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Click OK, and you will see the name of the group button change.

Now we can select any fixtures to create a fixture button for. You can create
as many fixture groups as you want.

You can see from the picture above we have created a fair amount of general
fixture groups. You can also, when selecting fixture groups, select more than
one group at a time. For example, we want just to select the Mid. S/W and
Pars Mid groups. We can do this by clicking on both groups or if we want
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more than two groups selected I can click on as many group buttons as we
like.

Now say we wanted to add some fixture to a group that is already created.
Lets add the Impressions to the LED Matrix group button since they both use
RGB color mixing. The first step is too select the LED Matrix group button.

Now with this group selected click on the impression fixture squares by
holding down CTRL while you click on the individual squares.

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Now we right click the LED Matrix button and select update.

Now you will notice that whenever you select the LED Matrix button the
Impression washes are selected as well. To remove fixtures from a group,
select the group and hold down CTRL on your keyboard and de select the
fixtures you want to remove from the fixture group and right click and select
update.

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As you can see I have removed the impressions from the LED Matrix group
button. Likewise right clicking on any of the fixture group buttons and
clicking delete will delete the selected group. The link to midi controller
option allows you to link the group button to a midi controller. Likewise the
Link to keyboard allows you to assign a hotkey keyboard trigger.
Now we have set up our master group. The grouping buttons we have just
created have saved for the master page. These buttons will only appear if the
master page is selected. For example lets click on the Impression fixture
page tab and you will notice the fixture group window will change to display
only the four impression fixture squares and their default fixture group
buttons.

If you wish to set up additional fixture group buttons for your individual
fixture pages you may do so now using the same instructions as above.
However if you do not wish to set up additional groups, you may click on the
button in the fixture window next to the Positions wizard button to
display only the fixtures linked to the master page. Doing so will make each
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of the fixture group buttons as well as positions of all the fixtures re-appear
in the fixture group window and they will be locked there. They will not
disappear if you were to click on an individual fixture page.

Now that you have created your fixture groups you are ready to start
programming your fixtures.

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Creating A Scene (Static):

Before we explain how to create a scene, you may ask, What is a scene? A
Scene is what Compu Show uses as its main source of playback. A scene can
have anything in it from a static look to a series of steps (Cues) in it.
In Compu Show there are two ways we can create a scene. The first way is
too use the buttons and switches on the fixture page to set up your position,
color, gobo, etc. And then once you have set up all your parameters from the
buttons and switches on the fixture page you can save the data to a scene or
a switch. For example lets set up a position on our Design Spot 1200C page.
First open the shutter and dimmer by clicking on the shutter open button
switch and then click on the Dimmer Intensity switch and move the dial to
the right until it is on

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100%.

Now if your fixture has a zoom or iris or focus functions also adjust their
levels.

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Now to adjust the position of the pan and tilt for your fixtures, find the X-Y
switch as circled in RED in the picture above. If you cannot find the switch as
shown in the picture above make sure youre in the Default layout option.
The layout button is located at the top of the fixture page as shown in the
picture below.
(Shown on next page)

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Now that you are sure you have the correct layout and have clicked on the XY Switch, the Positions window will appear.

You can see that you have a square blue box button for each of the fixtures
on the fixture page as well as a Take All button that will allow you to adjust
all the fixtures positions individually without having to click on the
corresponding fixture number box (
blue boxes are called Take Buttons

). These small

You can also lock the window to its current position by clicking the Pin
button in the upper right of the window.
Once the window is locked the pin will change to
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Additionally you can also have the positions window minimize if the mouse
is moved to an area outside of the positions window. To have the window
minimize click on the small window button located to the right of the pin
button.

The button will change to a small blue bar when the minimize button is
active.

Now lets adjust the positions of the fixtures. Click on any of the Take
Buttons that you wish to move. Notice the crosshair in the middle has turned
red.

Now click on the red crosshair and drag it to any position on the grid and
youll notice that your fixture has been moving with the crosshair.
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Now select any other Take Buttons and adjust their positions to any desired
position. Once you have done this you will see that a border will appear
around the Take Buttons to let you know that this fixture has been selected
and positioned. Additionally you will also see the Take buttons icons appear
in the X-Y switch.

Another tip that is useful, Right click on any of the crosshairs and another
small window will appear.

This is the Take Settings window. In this window you can lock the Pan (X) or
the Tilt (Y) channel during your positioning of the fixtures to help ensure
accurate and precise positioning of your fixtures.
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You can also increase or decrease the resolution of the positions grid to
ensure more fine control while adjust the positions of your fixtures using the
Positions window and Take buttons. To lock either the Pan or Tilt of the
fixture simply click on the circle for Lock X Or Lock Y.

To adjust the resolution click on the dial and move the mouse up or down to
adjust the number of the resolution.

The higher the resolution the more quickly the mouse will move across the
grid. The lower the resolution the more slowly the mouse will move across
the grid. This function is similar to adjusting the speed of a mouse speed on a
computer. Once we are done adjusting the resolution and choosing wither to
lock the Pan or Tilt click OK on the take settings window.
Now that we have our fixtures on this page to their desired positions we can
either drag the window out of the way on the screen and lock it and
minimize it. In the picture below is an example of the Take window above
the pages tab and minimized or we can click the small x in the upper right
corner of the window to close the Take window. Clicking the x will not
change the position of your fixtures in the Take window.

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Now we can add a color from the color wheel or if our fixtures have CMY we
can make a color from the Color mixing switch. To use the color mixing
switch simply click on the switch and a small window will open.

Just like the Take window you can also lock and minimize the color mixing
window. To start mixing a color you must first click on the Color mixing all
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switches. Now drag the small rectangle at the bottom of the vertical shade
selector.

You will notice a square of color appear to the left of the color mixing all
text. This square will always show the current color that is being mixed. You
may also make the color mixing window larger or smaller by clicking the
small triangle in the bottom right corner of the window. (Circled in Red in the
picture below) If we make the window bigger we will see that we now have 3
boxes with numbers in them with the letters R G B to the left of each box.

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The numbers in the box are the DMX values of the color mixing channels on
the fixtures. The R G B stands for Red, Green, and Blue. However in this case
since the Design Spot 1200C has CMY color mixing and not RGB color mixing
systems. The values refer to the RGB DMX values of the color currently being
mixed regardless if the fixture uses CMY or not. CMY Stands for Cyan,
Magenta, and Yellow. Refer to the Glossary on page 4 of this manual for a
more in depth explanation of CMY and RGB.
Now lets adjust the color of the fixtures to blue. You can either drag the
picker to the shade of blue you want or simply for values in Red(R) and
Green (G) make those values 0 and make the value for Blue(B) 255. This is
how it will look if you have done either or of the methods mentioned above.

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Now that we have made our color click the small x in the upper right
corner of the color mixing window. Closing the window does not change the
color of the fixture. The color selected will hold until a new color is made or if
we double click on the INIT scene to blackout everything or Home our
fixtures (All DMX values at 0).
If you wish to add a gobo to the fixtures simply click on the desired gobo icon
on the fixture page.
(Shown below)

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You will notice all the buttons we have pressed on the fixture page have a
darker background than the main background color. This is to signify that
there is a button active on that switch type. Also the button selected will
have a white square border around it to let us know exactly which button is
active on that section of switches.
Now that we have all of our fixtures parameters exactly how we would like
we can now save this as a scene. First go to the button tab at the top of the
Compu show window and select New Scene.

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You will notice that as soon as you click the New Scene button a window
will appear with several options.

First thing you may notice is that we can enter a different name for the scene
other than the default name of Scene. For now we will leave the name as
its default name. Now notice that there is an option to make the scene
empty. Clicking this will generate a blank scene with no DMX data in it. So
leave that unchecked. What we want to do to ensure our DMX data is
recorded from all the buttons and switches we just modified, is too make
sure the small circle is filled next to the As you see now circle. Additionally
you can unselect include the current scene: INIT as we dont need to
include the INIT DMX values as we have made modifications to the fixtures
parameters. We will want to make sure the Include the activated switches
check box is checked and below that you will see a list of all the activated
switches. We can uncheck individual switches by unchecking the check box
to the right of each switch. By default all the switches are checked to record
into the scene. Lets leave it at its default setting and click ok.

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As you can see above we have a new scene button generated below the INIT
scene. If successful this scene should have all the parameters we have just
adjusted using the buttons and switches and color mix and X-Y windows. This
is called creating a scene from the fixture page. Now we will go over how to
create a scene from an empty or blank scene button.

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Creating a Scene Part Two:

To create a blank or empty Scene that you wish to create using the Button
Editor, click the INIT Scene on the fixture page you wish to program to
ensure no switches or other buttons are active. Now go to the Button tab at
the top of the window and select New Scene.

Now you will notice the same window appeared as when we saved our
previous scene, but this time we are creating the scene on the Impression
120RZ page and we are creating a blank or empty scene.

Make sure that you have selected Empty and then choose a name for your
Scene. In this example we will use the default name of Scene and once you
have done those steps click the OK+Edit button. Now our Button Editor will
open.

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Youll notice that the button editor is in Basic view click the basic view
button and the rest of the button editor options will appear and the layout
will change.

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You will notice eight buttons appear to the right of the Control section. These
buttons and their functions are briefly described below.
Fixtures window:

The fixtures window is the exact same window as the one from the main
Compu Show page. It will display your fixtures on the grid allowing you to
quickly access the fixtures channels. Note that you cannot create new fixture
groups inside the button editor. This is only allowed in the main program
window.
Channels window:

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The channels window will give you access to the individual channel faders of
the fixtures youre programming. There are two tabs in the channel window.
All or (Name of the fixture page) In this example since we are using the
impression 120 RZ the name is displayed in this second tab. The all Tab will
allow you to scroll through all the channels of the fixture page.

In the picture above youll notice that the channels window all tab will tell
you which fixture number youre editing. You will also notice that it displays
the channel number of the fixture your programming. This makes it easy to
remember which fixture your programming. Also you can scroll Left or right
to access more fixtures.

(Continued on next page)

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Preset Window:

The Preset window contains several tabs that summarize all the various
effect types from any given fixture.
Position gives you a grid similar to that of the X-Y grid found on the
fixture page. More so the same Take settings window is also available here
as well.
Intensity will give you faders and buttons for the shutter channel of a
fixture.

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Color tab allows you to select a color from the color wheel or mix colors
using the color picker for RGB and CMY. If the fixture does not have a color
nothing will appear in this tab.

Gobo tab will display all of the gobo buttons as well as buttons for gobo
rotation and index with faders to fine adjust the DMX level of the Index or
rotation of the gobos. As the Impression 120RZ is a wash fixture it has no
gobos so this tab will be empty when programming these types of fixtures.

Beam tab will allow you to adjust the effects of the beam if the fixture
supports. Common types of DMX channels that appear here will be Zoom,
Iris, focus, Frost, Etc.
(Shown on next page)

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Effect tab will give you access to all the rest of your channels like Pan and
Tilt Speed, CMY Speed, Color Temperature filters, Reset Commands, etc.

The Palette, Easy Step, Easy time, and DMX input will be explained later on
as we have use for them.
Undo: The Undo window records every fader or preset change as a step in
the Undo window and incase a mistake is made, allows you to go back to a
reference point and allows you to continue to do more forward from before
the mistake was made rather than going and changing all the DMX values.
For example take a look at the picture below.

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You can see that the pan and tilt channels have been modified as well as the
intensity and color channels. If we wanted to start over from nothing instead
of going through all the channels and bringing them down to zero value, we
can simply click on the Reference and instantly go back to where we
began. You can start making additional changes at any reference (modif
channel(s) Level) point. You will see in the picture below we have clicked on
the Reference top line and all the channels have gone back to 0 value.

Now that we have gone through all the windows in the button editor that we
are about to or could use lets start programming our scene.
Say we wanted to adjust our Impression fixtures to center which is pan and
tilt at value 127 and make fixtures 1 and 2 yellow and fixtures 3 and 4 purple.
To do this we need to first go to the fixtures window and select fixtures 1 and
2 by clicking outside of the fixtures icons on the grid and selecting both of
them.
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Now go over to the preset window and turn on the shutter and dimmer
channels to get light output.

Now go to the color tab and use the color picker to select the shade of
Yellow we want to use.

Now go back to the fixtures window and select the other 2 impression
fixtures.

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Now go back to the intensity tab and open the shutter and turn the dimmer
channel to DMX value 255 as we did previously for the 1st two impression
fixtures.

Now go to the color tab and make a shade of purple.

Youll notice if you move the shade intensity you can adjust the precise
shade of the color youre mixing.
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Now lets go back to the fixtures window and select all of our 4 impressions.

Now go back to the Position Tab and drag the red crosshair to the center of
the grid. Youll notice all of the impression fixtures are moving to the same
pan and tilt commands.

Feel free to use the take settings to finely adjust the exact position of the
fixtures. Also you will notice on the channels window your pan and tilt faders
color have gone from inactive (white) to active (dark grey). This means you
can click on the fader and adjust it manually if you wish to do so.
Notice circled in Red on the Position grid in the upper left is the values for
pan and tilt. The 0 above represents the value of the fine channel should
your fixture have a fine (16bit) pan and tilt function.
Lastly we will go to the beam tab and adjust the level of zoom for our
fixtures.
(Shown on next page)

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We have adjusted the zoom level to value 127.

Now we can save our scene by going to the top of the editor window and
clicking on the Save button.

Too exit the editor click on the x in the upper far right hand corner of the
editor window. Once you do this a window will appear asking you, Do you
wish to save changes? click the Yes button.

Now you have created a Scene using the button editor.

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Above is a picture of how it should look on the fixture window and on the
fixture page.

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Creating a Scene using Easy Time Effects:

Creating a scene using the Easy time effects timeline will allow you to
generate complex effects such as pan and tilt movements/sweeps as well as
dimmer waves and color chase effects. To start off lets go to our Design Spot
1200C page and create a blank scene.

Select Empty then click OK+Edit. Now your Scene editor will open. Select
all Six of the DS1200cs.

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If you look at the Design spot 1200C tab in the channels window you will
notice above each fader is a square with a Red off icon in it.

These tell you that the channel is currently set to off. This section above the
faders allows you to link individual channels to different functions in the
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editor. Since we want to create Easy Time effects we want to link channels
to easy time. For example lets link the pan and tilt channels to easy time.
The easy time button is the fifth button down from the red off button in the
left hand side of the channels window.

To link channels to Easy Time simply click the button and hold down the CTRL
key and drag it over to the channel square where currently the red off icon is.

Another option for linking channels to Easy time is too right click where the
red off icon is and a small menu will appear.
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Once the menu appears in this example select Easy Time. Now notice
below in the Easy time window your fixtures are listed on a timeline.

You may notice that each one of your fixtures is listed individually. This is
because we can create an effect for just one or a combination or all of our
fixtures that are linked to Easy time. Lets go ahead and compress the
fixtures into one block as we will want to create a shape movement with all
of our fixtures. To compress our fixture click here (shown below)

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And you will notice all of our fixtures have been neatly compressed into one
timeline.

Now to the left of the timeline we have a small window with effects listed.

Each one of these effects can be dragged over to the timeline and then
edited to create the effect type. Since we have linked our pan and tilt

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channels to Easy time lets grab the Pan Tilt effect and link it to our pan
and tilt channels.

As the picture above says click on the Pan Tilt effect and drag and drop it
onto the timeline as shown in the picture above.

Once you let go of the mouse button a pop up window will appear and ask
you do you want to create a block on the associated channel Select yes. A
window will appear and that is your Pan/Tilt effect generator.
(Shown on next page)

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You will notice five different effects you can generate, Circle, Polygon,
Random Points, Lines, and Curves. In this example lets create a circle. Click
on the small circle next to Automatic Circle. A small window will appear
and ask you how many points do you wish to have in the circle.

The default number is four points. Lets change that to eight. The reason we
change it too eight points is that, the more points you have the smoother the
circle movement will be. This is also useful if your fixtures do not have 16bit
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Pan and Tilt motors (no fine Pan and tilt channels). Click in the box where the
number 4 is and delete it and type in the number 8.

Now click OK.

Now you notice that a large circle has appeared in the grid in the effects
generator window. The circle also has a red square around it.

If you move your mouse to any of the red corners or lines you will notice that
you can drag your mouse to adjust the size of the circle. As well as move the
entire shape around the grid.
(Shown on next page)

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Lets make the circle fit into the size of the lower right square of the grid.

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Now we can change the starting point of the circle by simply right clicking in
the grid and dragging the Red dot to the point in the circle we want the
sequence to start at.

If we should choose to do so we can also move individual points in the circle

by clicking the select button at the top left of the window.

Clicking on a point in the shape with Select active and either drag the point
to a new position with the mouse or use the pan and tilt faders to the right.

We may also add or remove a point to the shape if we wish. Too add a point
click on the blue cross button.

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And then drag the mouse to a point on the grid that you would like to add a
point too.

Then left click and your new point will be added.

Now you may go back and click on the Select and move this point to the
desired position or again, use the pan and tilt faders to the right.
To delete a point click the Red X button

And then go over to the point in the grid you wish to delete and click on it.

(Shown on next page)

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Once you delete the point the shape will go back to its shape as it was before
the point was added.

You can also adjust which direction the shape plays back by clicking either of
the white arrows to the right of the delete button.

To preview the movement at any time simply click on the play button to
preview the shape.

The line with the small grey dot moving across it is to display where in the
sequence the shape is playing.
We can even open the shutters and dimmers to preview the movement with
light output from the fixtures by clicking the shutter open white circle.

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We can arrange the fixtures order of the playback by clicking the icon to the
right of the shutter open icon.

The Rearrange tool is useful for rearranging the order in which the sequence
plays back. For example say these 6 spots were patched left to right but on
the truss the fixtures are reversed. So the sequence we are generating would
be backwards. With this rearrange function we can invert the positioning
of the DMX output of the shape. To do this you can simply click on the text of
the fixture, for example, Design spot1200 C 26CH 1. We can click on this
and drag it to where fixture number 6 is.

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Then drag fixture number 2 to where fixture 5 is, and fixture 3 to where
fixture 4 is, etc. And now our list should look like this.

Now if you hit the play button the fixtures will now play reversed rather than
in numerical order. For example before the fixtures order was 1-6. But now
the order will be from 6-1. Now that we have adjusted the order to our liking
(it is not required to adjust the order to generate an Easy Time shape) we can
click ok and our arrangement of fixtures will be saved.

Phasing can be adjusted by clicking on the dial as shown in the picture and
then dragging the mouse up or down. The higher the number of phasing the
more offset each fixture will be to the next one in the movement of the pan
and tilt channels.

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Shown in the picture above, interval time can be modified by clicking on the
small up or down arrows for each section of time. The times that can be
adjusted are, Minutes, Seconds, and 4/100s of a second. Adjusting the time
will reflect on the total time it takes for one cycle through the shape
movement. The total time is shown just above the interval time.
Now that we have our shape set just the way we would like we can click OK
and our shape will now generate on the timeline.

Notice that by default the software sets the time of the sequence to 4
seconds. We can adjust this by clicking on the ends of the block and dragging
them.

Making the blocks shorter will increase the speed of the sequence and
making it longer will decrease the speed of the sequence. To view more time
in the time line simply click on the button as shown in the picture below and
drag it left or right.
(Shown on next page)
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Now you can drag the blocks to any length of time up to almost any desired
time amount.
It is also possible to have the sequence be triggered by music tempo
synchronization as well as selecting 1, 2, or 4 parts tempo. More audio
functions will be covered in this manual later.

To preview the playback of the sequence click the play button as shown in
the upper left of the picture above. Click the play button and you will notice
the faders will begin to move in the channels tab for pan and tilt and the
shape will be drawn on the grid in the position grid in the preset window.

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Now we can program other functions that we would like the lights to be
doing. So lets link the CMY channels also to Easy Time and create a color
effect. So once again click and drag the Easy Time button and hold CTRL and
drag it across the CMY channels of the fixtures. Be sure to select either all the
fixtures or only the ones you wish to create a color effect on.

Also instead of dragging the easy time button you can simply Right click the
small square where the red off icon is and select which function to link the
channel too.

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Once again compress the fixtures into one section for CMY as shown below.

Open the shutter and dimmer if not already open in the preset window.

Now in the effects window click the color effect icon and drag it to the CMY
timeline.

Once again the software will ask if you wish to create a block on the
associated channel. Select Yes.

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This is the color effect window. Notice an Effect section with a drop down
menu.

This list contains the name of all the different effects you can generate and
modify.
Rainbow, allows you to create a scrolling rainbow effect with up to 10 colors
of your choice by mixing colors using the color picker to the right and the
shade selector.
(Rainbow example shown on next page)

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We can see the effect playback on the fixture in the fixtures window by
clicking the play button. Adjusting the size knob will allow you to adjust the
size of the rainbow. For example if the size was set to one the entire
spectrum of the rainbow will play entirely in each individual fixture and then
move to the next whereas if the size was set to six in this case the effect
would be spread out across all six fixtures. Speed, adjusts how fast the
sequence plays back. Clicking on the arrows will change the direction of the
sequence.

(Continued on the next page)

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Knight Rider (Shown Above), allows you to choose between only two colors
and does a Scroll forwards and backwards type of effect across the selected
fixtures in the sequence. The first color selected is the base color and the
second is the color that will bounce forwards and backwards. To change the
colors click the small colored square and then select your new color from the
color picker on the right. Likewise the size and the speed knobs adjust the
relevant parameter of the effect.
Square Wave, Also only allows for only two colors to be effected. The square
wave is similar to a sine wave but instead of a fade it merely snaps between
the two colors in either left to right or right to left depending on which white
arrow at the top left of the color window is selected. Adjusting the size for
this effect will set the number for how many fixtures display the second
color. For example in the picture below the size was set to the number two.
(Shown on the next page)

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The Speed knob, adjusts the speed of the sequence.

Sinus Wave, will allow you to do almost the same effect as the Square wave
but it applies a cross fade between the colors rather than a snap. The
attributes for size, speed, and number of colors as well as direction from the
Square wave apply to this Sinus wave effect too.

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Random, Will randomly apply any number of colors between one and ten.
The best way to discover the random effect is too experiment with the size
and speed as well as the number of colors.

Effect 1 is best used with only one or two colors but up to 10 can be selected.
In this example we will only use one color. Effect 1 starts at the center of the
fixtures and chases outward and then back in to the center going from the
selected color to black.

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Effect 2, will allow you to set up static colors and then apply a chase to
blackout effect. In this example since we have six fixtures we have selected
number of colors six and we have made every other fixture white and every
other fixture after that blue. Effect 2 will hold the colors to the fixtures but
after one cycle of the colors it will do a blackout chase.

Effect 3, will apply the same effect as effect 1 but instead of the chase to
black the center fixtures will always hold the color and not go to black.

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Now lets go back to the rainbow effect and move the number knob to seven
and the speed to three and the size to one and generate that rainbow by
clicking on OK.

Now notice you have a timeline sequence generated for the CMY channels.

You can also stretch out the block to any desired time or adjust it to the
same time as the pan and tilt effect sequence that way both will loop at the
same point in time of the timeline.

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Notice the picture above the pan and tilt sequence and the CMY Rainbow
sequence are both stretched to the six second mark on the time line. This will
allow both sequences to be in synch with each other however you can
shorten or lengthen either sequence. Lets save this as a scene by clicking
Save in the top left corner of the editor window. Now click the X in the
top right and a window will appear asking you if you wish to save changes.
Select Yes.

(Continued on next page)

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Now lets create another blank scene.

Now select all your fixtures. And link the dimmer channel to the Easy Time
function.

Now compress your fixtures into one timeline.

(Shown on next page)

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Click the compression button until your timeline appears like the picture
below.

Now select the Curve effect and drag it to the timeline.

Now a window will appear and will ask you if you wish to use the channel or
a specific preset. Since the dimmer channel is one entire preset we will leave
it as channel. (Shown below)
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Click ok and now the curve effect editor window will appear.

You will notice there are seven different types of curves we can use. For
example lets use the Sinus effect. Click the circle next to it and you will
notice the sinus wave will appear in the settings graph window.

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There are five different parameters you can modify for any one of these
curve effects, Amplitude, Phase, Ratio, Offset, and Phasing.
Amplitude will allow you to set in DMX values 0-255 the maximum DMX
value for the wave. For example if we take the Sinus wave and adjust the
Amplitude to 127 this will make the dimmer intensity have a maximum DMX
value of 127.

Phase will allow you to set a point in the wave for the sequence to start and
end. For example lets adjust the Phase of the sinus wave to 9 and you will
notice the wave will now start at the maximum value and then go to the
lowest value and then back to the maximum and repeat.

Now if you put the Phase back to 0 you will see the difference between the
two.
(Shown on next page)

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Ratio will allow you to increase the frequency of the selected curve. For
example we will set the ration to 14 and you will notice it increases the
frequency of the effect.

Offset will allow you to keep the size of the curve effect but move it up or
down in intensity. For example saw we wanted to have this curve effect be in
the upper value range of the dimmer channel, we would have to adjust the
offset to 190.
(Shown on next page)
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You will see the red line in the picture above is at the maximum height of the
wave. Any effect over this line will result in DMX value 255 or in this case
dimmer intensity to max.
Phasing will offset the effect to create a scrolling type effect across the
fixtures. Phasing numbers 0-49 are from left to right. Number 50 is every
other. 51-99 is from right to left. For example here are pictures of the
phasing set to numbers 10, 20, 50, 75, 95,

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You can see from the pictures above how the different phasing numbers
affects the playback sequence across the fixtures. Lets Leave Phasing at 95,
Amplitude at 127, Phase at 0, Ratio at 15, Offset at 195 and click OK to
generate the sequence to the timeline. We will leave the curve effect as it is
generated by default on the timeline for a length of 4 seconds. Lets not
forget to adjust the pan and tilt position of the fixtures before saving the
scene.
(Shown on next page)
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Now click on
and then close the editor window and select Yes for do
you wish to save changes.
Now for this next example go to the Impression 120RZ page and create a
new scene and make it empty like we did before and click OK+Edit.

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Now select all the impression fixtures and link the dimmer channel to Easy
Time.

Now like before, compress your fixtures into one timeline.

And then grab a Constant Level effect and drag it over to the timeline.

Now notice the Edit Easy time block window has appeared.

(Shown on next page)

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The constant level effect will allow you to set a static level to the Easy Time
timeline. For this example we will adjust the fader to DMX value 195 for the
dimmer channel of the impressions.

Also notice the side panel for Palettes.

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The Palette section will allow you to insert a palette that has a DMX channel
property recorded into the palette for the channel that we are applying the
constant level effect too. There will be a section on Palettes later on in this
manual.
Now that we have our dimmer channel to the desired level, simply click the
Close button at the bottom right of the Easy time block editor window.

Now we have a static effect on the timeline. This will ensure that the dimmer
level stays at the value we assigned it to be in the Easy Time effect.

The last effect we will go through will be the Gradient effect. Select all of the
Impression fixtures and link the RGB channels to the Easy time function.

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Now compress the fixtures like we have done so before and then find the
Gradient effect icon and drag it to the timeline.

Now when the program asks Do you want to create a block on the
associated channel? Click Yes. Now our Gradient editor window will appear.

The Gradient effect allows you to create color scroll effects. Auto gradient
will simply crate a gradient effect for us and we will not be able to edit
anything. So lets click on linear and double click in the middle of the
gradient and that will add a step.

(Shown on next page)

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Since we have this step selected already we can go over to the color picker
and select a new color. For example lets select Blue.

Notice how we can adjust the shade (intensity) of the color blue using the
shade selector. Now lets click on the small white square on the far right of
the gradient and change the color from white to magenta.

(Shown on next page)

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You can see that the Blue fades and blends into the magenta. Now lets click
on the small Black box on the far left and change the color from black too
Cyan but, adjust the shade to make it a bit darker of a color.

Now we have a gradient with three steps. We can add more steps by simply
double clicking anywhere in the gradient and even dragging the point it
extend or shorten a certain color.

(Shown on next page)

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Now that we have a gradient set up we can now play it back to preview it on
our fixtures.

Also dont forget we can add phasing as circled in Red in the picture above. If
we wish to delete a step of the Gradient simply click on the step here:

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And hit the Del key or backspace key on your keyboard to delete that step.

Now lets change the colors from cyan, blue, and magenta too green, yellow,
and cyan.

Now lets see the difference between linear (shown above) and Shortest.

Now from Shortest to Longest

(Pictured on next page)

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You can see that between shortest and longest it makes the most difference as
far as amount of colors in between the three steps of colors we have made.
Lets go back to Linear.

We can also change the order in which it plays back on the fixture in the event
our fixtures are not in order or if we choose to have the sequence playback in a
different manner other than the current order our fixtures are in. Go to the
Rearrange fixtures order button and click it.

Now the rearrange fixture editor window will appear.

(Shown on next page)
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For example, we want the sequence to start on fixture three then go to number
four then back to number one then too number two and cycle in this manner.
We need to make fixture number three number one. To do this we can simply
click on fixture three and then drag it too where number one currently is.

Now we want to make fixture number four to number two.

(Shown on next page)

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Now fixture three and four are now fixtures one and two.

Notice in the left column in the N section it says one and two but we moved
fixtures three and four to these numbers. That is how we can adjust the order of
playback of the sequence. The numbers in the N section dictate which order
in the sequence the fixture moved to will be, to test the order of the playback
click the play button and the window will highlight the border of the fixture icon
in the grid in the order the sequence is now going to play in.

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Now click ok to save the playback order and then click ok also in the gradient
editor window to generate this sequence to the timeline.

Now click the play button to playback your sequence. Since this sequence is on
the Impression page we will adjust the pan and tilt positions and the zoom
levels and then click save and then close the scene editor. Now our scene is
playing on the fixture page.

Creating a Scene using Easy Step.

To create a Scene using the Easy Step function, lets first create an empty
scene on the Design spot 1200C page.

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Now click OK+Edit and the scene editor window will appear.

Now we must select which channels we will need to link to easy step fade or
Easy Step cut. Easy Step Fade will allow that channel to fade if a fade time is
applied between DMX values in the steps. Easy Step Cut will not allow that
channel to fade in between the steps; it will just snap the value or cut
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straight to the next value. But first lets select all of our fixtures and then
click the Easy Step window as you can see above the Easy time window is still
up.

Now in our channels window in the Design spot 1200C 26ch tab we can
assign which channel will get Easy Step Fade or Cut and it will affect all six of
our fixtures as all six are selected.

The most common channels linked to Easy Step Fade are the dimmer
channel, Pan and tilt channels, color mixing channels, zoom, focus and iris
are also others. The most common to be linked to Easy Step cut are the
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shutter channels, gobo channels, Prism, gobo rotation/indexation, color

wheel. However you can link any channel to both, Easy Step Fade or Cut. So
lets link the pan and tilt and dimmer channels to Easy Step Fade. There are
two ways we can do this. As shown in the Easy time section we can simply
click on the icon to the left side of the channels window and drag it across
the channels as shown in this picture.

Or we can right click where the Red off icon is and select Easy Step Fade or
cut.

(Shown on next page)

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We can easily figure out which Easy Step Icon is linked to what channel by
looking at the icon.

Lets make sure we link the dimmer channel too Easy Step Fade and the
shutter channel to Easy Step Cut.
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Now we can go to the Preset window and use the Intensity tab to open the
shutters and turn the dimmers up and on.

Now we can adjust the position of all of our fixtures to make our first step. In
this step I have used the 3D visualizer to help me better determine the
position of the fixtures. The 3D program will be covered in a separate
manual.

(Shown on next page)

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Youll notice that the fixtures are aimed down towards the middle of the
stage. This will be our first step. Click the New step icon in the easy step
window located here.

Once you click New you will see a second step appear in the Easy Step
window.

Now we are on step two. So lets adjust our pan and tilt positions.

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Now notice we have two steps. Both steps have a 0:00 fade time and a 1:00
hold time. We can change the hold and fade times two different ways. The
first way is to double click on the time in either column. For example lets
make the hold time two seconds for step one.

The very first section (from left to right) is minutes. The following after that
are seconds and the third is 4/100th of a second. The second way to adjust
fade and hold times is by holding shift and selecting the steps you want to
modify.

Now click on the small stopwatch icon in the far right of the Easy Step
window and a small window will appear.
(Shown on next page)
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Adjust your fade and wait times in the boxes below and select either
Selected steps or All the steps and then click ok. Now notice that on both
of our steps we have a 1:00 fade time and 2:00 hold/wait time.

Now if we click on step one and hit the play button in the upper left of the
Easy Step window, notice that step one will hold for 2 seconds and then fade
for one second into step 2.

If loop is selected the fade time on step two will reflect the fade back into
step one. To clarify: Step ones fade time is the fade time that will fade into
step 2. Step twos fade time will fade into step three should there be another
step or if the sequence is set to loop it will fade back into the first step. The
hold time reflects the step it is on. For example step one has a 2:00 second
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hold time. This means step two will not move into step three until after the
software counts 2:00 seconds. Lets go over the buttons in the Easy Step
window. We have already seen the Play/Stop button.

The Loop button will turn on or off the looping function of the steps. If we
created a 3 step chase for our fixtures and we want it to always repeat
nonstop then we would use the loop function. Pressing the loop button
activates it or deactivates. The Loop button will have a thin blue colored box
border around it when loop is active. There will be no border around the
button when it is inactive.
The play with timer button allows the steps to playback according to the
times set in the fade and hold times in the easy step window. Again like the
loop button there will be a thin square border for active and no border for
inactive. We must select the play with BPM button in order to deactivate the
play with timer button.
The play with BPM button allows the Easy step, steps to play back using the
BPM of the audio that the sound to light function is detecting. The sound to
light function is covered later in the document.
We can also copy and paste steps to speed up programming repeating steps
and then quickly modify them. To copy a step, click on the step that you wish
to copy. Then Click the copy button located here:

(Cont. on next page)

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Then click on the step before you wish to paste the copied

step.
Then select the paste button located here:

You can see I copied step one and made it step 3. Now I can simply edit the
channels rather than creating a new step based off of the values of step two.
This can be useful when making chases that use two or more basic positions
or colors but repeat with changes.
Now we have 3 steps. If we are done programming the steps we can simply
click the save button and then click the X to save the scene and close the
button editor. Now we have a scene with multiple steps in one button using
Easy Step.
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Palettes: What is probably the best, most anticipated feature of Compu

Show is the Palette function. In this section we will go through the different
palette types and how to make a palette, which palette type is best for
various scenarios, and how to use a palette in scenes and switches. Here is a
Look at the palette editor:

You can access the palette editor at any time by going to the controller tab
and going to the external windows dropdown menu and selecting palette
editor.

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Looking back at the Palette editor window, at the top you will notice five
buttons in the create section. Click new to see the different palette types
that can be created.

There are four different types of palettes that can be created, Generic and
Standard palettes. Below we will cover each of the 4 different palettes types
and how they can be used across a wide variety of different fixtures,
functions, and channels.

A Generic palette only records a percentage of the DMX channel rather than
a solid DMX value. As we can see if we create a Generic palette by selecting it
from the New button and name it Palette Gen.

The only attributes we can modify for all of our fixtures are shown below.
The rest of the functions become locked and the ability to select individual
fixtures is locked as well.

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We can see from the picture above that the ability to choose groups and
individual fixtures from the fixture group window is grayed out. The reason
for this is because this palette is a generic palette. Meaning that only the
very basic of channels can be used such as position, dimmer, Iris, zoom, and
color mixing in either CMY or RGB,RGBW,RGBAW. Below are two good
examples of how a Generic palette can be used.
Example one: Say we had two different types of moving heads, one has a full
0-255 DMX value range for its dimmer channel, the other has a combined
dimmer/shutter channel and the dimmer intensity values are from 0-127. If
we wanted to make a dimmer at 50 percent switch or function, we would
have to go into the two fixtures dimmer channels and manually adjust them
to be at equal levels. With a generic palette getting a 50% dimmer level is as
easy as ever. Simply create your generic palette and in the global function
area show here:

(Shown on next page)

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Find the beam tab as circled in red above and left click the dimmer dial and
adjust it to 50%. What this will do when it is applied to a dimmer channel in a
scene or switch is automatically figure out the 50% DMX value of the dimmer
intensity function no matter if the dimmer starts at DMX value 0 and end at
255 or 127. This palette will figure out the 50% point in between the
minimum and maximum range of the intensity channel on any fixture and as
many fixtures as we may want even if added later on in the programming of
the show. The same could also be used for Iris channels, and Zoom channels.

Example two: Generic Palettes are also best suited for creating saved color
mixing presets. You can do this by creating a new generic palette and then
going over to the global effects section and choosing either the color picker
tab or the Color by manufacturer tab.

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By selecting either your own color using the color picker or selecting a preset
color from one of the many preset colors by popular color filter
manufacturers the Generic Palette will store the data and convert it to either
CMY DMX values or RGB,RGBW,RGBAW DMX values depending on which
channel type the palette is applied.

A Generic palette per fixture is the same exact type of palette as described in
the Generic palette but it allows for individual fixture palettes to be made.

You can see in the picture above that we have selected individual and groups
of different fixture types. The same common types of channel functions for
the previously mention palette type still apply to generic palette per fixture.
(Shown on next page.)

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You can see the area boxed in red in the picture is the only channels that are
able to be stored in this type of palette. You can only adjust the global
dimmer, iris, zoom, and color from in the global section of the window. No
other channel types for the fixtures are allowed to be added to the palette.
As you can see Generic palettes are not to be used for a palette for say a
fixture with a color wheel or gobo wheel or for a focus channel preset, etc.
any other channel type that is not displayed in the fixtures section of the
window is not available as a channel to be used with the palette type.

A New palette or standard palette per fixture type will allow for more
channels to be included into a palette it also instead of recording a
percentage of the DMX channel, records hard (static) DMX values. However
the beam tab in global section is not used, instead you can enter in presets or
specific DMX values for the dimmer, iris, and zoom channels. Channels that
are not in the global section are available in the fixtures section of the
palette window. (Shown on next page)

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We can still use the global tabs for color picker, color by manufacturer, and
position. We can also as shown above in the picture right click the --- mark
in any preset and select from a list of presets or enter in a specific DMX
value. Switching between the tabs in the fixtures section will allow you to
adjust individual fixture types DMX attributes for the palette. For example
here is a look at the Design spot 1200C page and the Impression page.

You can see the different channel types that can now be included in the new
(standard) palette per fixture type.

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A standard palette per fixture allows you to create a palette for any DMX
channel on your fixtures and also records hard (Static) DMX values like the
previous palette (palette per fixture type). For example in all the previous
palette types you would not be able to create a palette for the focus channel
of individual fixtures, for example a focus palette for just movers 1 and 4.
This palette per fixture allows you to create different palettes for individual
fixtures. Here is an example of all the channels and individual fixtures
available for palette per fixture.

You can see weve only selected 4 of the 6 Design spot 1200s. If we were to
choose so, we could create a focus channel or a gobo rotation channel or
both focus and gobo rotation channel palette for just these 4 fixtures. The
previous palette, palette per fixture type would only allow for all fixtures to
be recorded into the palette at once and would not allow us to select
individual fixtures. We could still use the global area section to modify the
color and position of the fixtures but not the dimmer or iris or zoom.
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Recording palettes: In this section we will cover how to create common

palettes used in an everyday scenario. Lets record a position palette. You
can select either a generic palette per fixture or a new standard palette per
fixture. Both palette types will you give individual pan and tilt control of each
fixture. Lets go ahead and create a new palette per fixture.

And label it drums as we will create a palette for the drum set position.

Click OK and then you will see the palette appear in the list.

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We can even create palette groups to keep all of our position, intensity,
colors, gobo, etc palettes organized. Click on the small tab to the right of the
--- tab. And it will appear as Group 1 We can rename it or delete it by
right clicking on the text in the tab.

Lets rename this group positions.

Now we have a tab called positions and we can drag the drums palette to
this tab to reorganize our different palettes.

Now notice our drums palette is inside the Positions tab.

(Shown on next page)

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Now lets record the Design spot 1200s into position for the drum set. We
will use the 3D visualizer for this or if we had all of these fixtures set up and
operating we wouldnt need the 3D. Simply select one of the DS1200 fixtures
in the grouping window and go to the Position tab in the global effects
window and drag your mouse across the grid. Also remember you can right
click the grid to lock the pan (X) or tilt (Y) channel to get more precise
positioning in the grid.

Also notice the small caution symbol next to the DS1200 tab. This is to let
you know that there are fixtures selected in this page. If you were meant to
record a position on the impression page and you saw this symbol on the
DS1200 page you would know that you have fixtures selected and to unselect
them as they would follow the same commands if the impression fixtures

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were moved into position. Lets take a look at how the positions look in the
3D.
(Con. on next page)

We can see that we need to go back and turn the zoom value lower than
what it is and possible use the iris. We can do this by simply going back and
clicking on the DS1200 individual fixtures in the fixtures window. Also notice
up at the top we have two buttons, one says show the light beam and the
other, Solo only selected fixtures will light up This can be used to turn on
and off the fixtures light beams to help make each individual position easier
to see.

Now lets edit our zoom channel for the drums palette.

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Right click where the mouse is as shown in the picture to bring up the
dialogue for the DMX level or select the preset from the list that appears. For
this example we will make the zoom channel 0 by clicking on the level and
typing in the number 0 in the text field. Now notice you have a zoom icon for
the zoom channel.

Now we can do this for individual fixtures or we can select all of our
DS1200s from the fixtures page and modify all of the zoom levels at once.
(Shown on next page)

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Now all of our zoom channels are at 0 DMX value. Now lets see how it looks
in the 3D.

Now to make sure this palette is saved we can click the auto save button and
from now on any other palettes we create will automatically be saved as we
record them. See picture on next page.

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Right clicking the palette gives us a few options.

Duplicate will create a copy of the palette for us to Edit. This is useful as you
make position palettes. This way we can start our next palette at the current
position of the movers without having to start again from pan and tilt
channels at 0 DMX value.
Rename lets you rename the palette. Delete will delete the palette.
Icon lets you assign an icon to the palette. Take a look at the picture below.

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As you can see from the picture on the previous page there are a lot of icon
groups. You can simply expand any section by clicking the + next to its
name. Lets look at the Intensity icons.

We could use one of these icons for the generic intensity palettes we could
create. Just simply double click the icon and it will show up on the palette.
Since this is a position palette we will not use an icon at this time. However
here is what the intensity icon looks like on the Generic palette we created
earlier.

Now we have our drums position, lets make a palette for colors for our CMY
and RGB fixtures. Create a new tab at the top of the palette list window and
name it colors.

(Continued on next page)

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Now lets create a Generic palette per fixture type and label it colors.

Now lets select our DS1200s and find a good color from the color by
manufacturer tab in the global effects window.

We have chosen Ocean Blue and it is displayed in RGB values but it applies
to the CMY channels. Now if we go to the color picker tab it will allow us to
fine tune the color that we selected from the colors by manufacturer tab.

(Continued on next page)

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As you can see we can modify the ocean blue color however we wish. Now
lets select our Impression fixtures and choose this same color but modify it
using the color picker as the impressions are LED and there are slight
differences in the colors when using CMY and RGB. (Shown on next page.)

Now we can rename the palette Ocean Blue that way we will know what the
color is and also we can select the color icon or a color icon that is close to
the color for the palette.

Now we can make several other palettes using the same methods we just
went over. You can create a palette for anything. We just need to know what
we would like to save and re use repeatedly. For example zoom DMX levels.
If your fixtures will be hung in different heights in different venues you will
want to use a new palette per fixture to really hone in the exact beam angle
and the same for iris channel.

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At any time we can delete a parameter from a palette by simply clicking the
small Red circle above each channel function.

Now lets insert these palettes in some scenes.

Using Palettes in a Scene: To use a palette in a scene simply either

create a new scene or edit an existing one. Lets go back to our Design Spot
1200 page and edit Scene 2 and update the position of the spots to the
drums palette. To do this we must have the palette window open in the
button editor.

Now we will see the palettes off to the right side of the editor window.
(Shown on next page)

You can see that we have all of the groups and the pallets in the groups they
were created in. Lets select the drums palette and the same way we linked

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our channel to easy time or easy step, Click the palette and hold ctrl over
the first channel then drag and drop over the pan and tilt channels.

Now you will see the palette icon appear on the channels and the faders will
be locked to those palettes values.

Now our scene 2 button has a palette in it. If we were to edit the position of
the drums this scene would automatically update the fixtures positions to
reflect what is recorded in the palette. Simply go back into the palette editor,
find your palette, click on it and edit the position or channel values.

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Using a palette in Easy Step:

Lets edit Scene three on the DS1200

page. This scene contains 3 steps in east step already. We can modify this
and use 2 palette positions instead. First link our pan and tilt channels to
easy step fade.

Now we can link the palette to the pan and tilt channels same as we did in
the previous section, by holding CTRL and dragging and dropping across
the channels we want to include from the palette.

Then confirm the affecting the easy step function. (shown on next page)

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Then you will see the channels linked.

Youll notice from the picture above that the palette icon and the Easy step
fade icon are both on the channels. This is to let us know that the channels
are linked to both a palette and easy step at the same time. Ive created an
additional palette for this example lets go ahead and link that to step two.

For step three lets add the color palettes that we made to step three.
For fixtures 2 and 5 lets link the ocean blue palette. Since we have not
previously linked Easy step fade or cut to the CMY channels we need to do so
before linking the palette to the CMY channels.

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Now we can link the ocean blue palette to the CMY channels. Select step 3
and then link the palette. Then lets link fixtures 1, 3, 4, and 6 to the second
color palette Lime green. In the end it will look like this.

These colors will fade in with the fade time on step three. Here is a picture in
order of the 3 steps.

(Continued on next page)

Step 1:

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Step 2:

And step 3:

(Shown on next page)

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Using Palettes in Easy Time:

We will start by making a new scene in the master page. Click on the Master
Page and select new scene.

Click empty and name your scene if you choose to do so. We will leave it
Scene in this example. Click OK + Edit. Now the button editor will open for
our master scene. Lets turn on the beams for our Impressions and our
DS1200s and Link the pan and tilt to Easy time.

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Now we have our pan and tilt linked too easy time. Lets use the pan and tilt
effect on the timeline. Leaving both the impressions and DS1200s selected,
simply click the effect icon and drag it over to the time line.

Now the pan and tilt Effect editor comes up and lets select lines and make 2
points.

(Continued on next page)

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Now we have our two lines. To insert a palette position using the pan and tilt
effect, click the grey mouse button (Red number 1 in picture below) and left
click a point on the grid (Red number 2 on picture below) and then click on a
position palette (Red number 3 on picture below)

Then do the same for the 2nd point on the grid. Link it to the other palette
that is not yet linked. The same options apply from the Easy time section for
palettes. We can phase the sequence and also adjust the time.

(Continued on next page)

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Click ok and the sequence can be generated.

There are some options in the Easy time timeline. Right click the generated
block and you will see the following options.

Edit, Delete, and Copy are pretty basic.

Unlink fixture block will unlink the selected block should it be linked to
several other blocks generated before or after the selected sequence.
Unlink will unlink all selected blocks.
Duration sets the total duration of the sequence. This is a substitute for
clicking and resizing the block on the timeline itself.
Fade will add a fade time into the selected block.
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Phasing Delay will apply a delay to the phasing of the sequence.

Wait time before sequence will apply a wait or hold time before the
sequence starts to play.
Wait time after the sequence is the same as the Wait time before but it
applies the wait time to the end of sequence rather than the beginning.

Now lets create a color effect using the color palettes. Let Link the CMY and
RGB channels to Easy time and then drag the color effect to the timeline.

Now lets select the chaser effect. Instead of trying to guess what colors we
liked before, we can simply save colors as palettes and then use the color
palette in a color or gradient effect.

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Editing the sequence is the same as from the Easy Time section of this
manual. Now lets try palettes in the Gradient.

We can select a palette by clicking on the end points or wherever the points
are to add a new step in the gradient. You can also use palettes in the
constant level effect but it is not possible at this time to use a palette in the
curve effect.
Lastly lets go back into the Palette Editor; there is one more palette function
available to create.

Pre Record palettes are auto generated palettes that provide us with quick
and easy to use generic palettes.

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The picture on the previous page shows us all the pre recorded palettes we
can make and which palette group we can place them in. For example we
will want to put the Gen Blue, Gen Cyan, Gen Magenta, Gen yellow, Gen Red,
Gen Green palettes in the colors palette group. Here is how it will look in the
pre record palette window.

Once we have those assigned click Ok and you will see in your groups the
new pre record palettes.

You will be able to tell which ones were pre recorded as the text Gen will
be in front of the name of the palette.

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Creating a Switch: The purpose of a switch in Compu Show is to allow

for quick snaps into effects without having to select different scene buttons.
For example say we had a master scene paying using both our DS1200s and
the impression washes but we wanted a quick color change and to flash on
the par cans while keeping the current scenes positions and focus levels, etc.
We can do so as a switch. A switch will only override the channels that are
active or used in the switch. Or another example is, say we created a color
chase sequence across the spots and washes and we would like to use that
sequences repeatedly and on any number of scenes. If we could only create
scenes we would need to make numerous copies of the same scene. That
eats up page real estate. We could simply create the color chase sequence as
a switch and whatever scene is playing the switch will override the current
color of the fixtures and playback that sequence. Switches will come quite in
handy as you progress more into programming your show. Lets create a
switch on the master page. Click on the Master page and select the button
tab and then click on the new switch button.

Now select empty and label the switch effect 1

(Shown on next page)

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Select OK + Edit. Now in the button editor window select the washes group
and link the RGB channels to Easy time.

Now we can generate a sequence using any of the easy time effects that
apply to the RGB channels. Lets make a red yellow rainbow effect to give a
fire effect on the washes.

(Shown on next page)

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Now if we click ok and generate this sequence and close and save the scene
we can apply this fire effect at any time to the washes no matter what
scene is currently being active. It is up to the programmer if they wish to
program a position or intensity level to the switch as if it is selected on a
scene where these fixtures are not in a position or have light output enabled
then the fixtures will just output the sequence in the position programmed
into the scene. Likewise if there is no intensity output recorded into the
scene for these fixtures they will not output the sequence as the intensity or
shutters are not set to open or full in the scene thus the switch cannot turn
them on if they are not programmed into the switch to enable light output.
So for this example lets turn on the dimmers and shutters.

Now the shutter and dimmer channels are programmed into this switch and
will turn on once the switch is selected.
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We can also use Easy Step to create effects or static changes to the scenes.
Just make sure to only program or link channels to Easy Step Fade or Easy
Step cut. If you record a gobo into the switch it will use that gobo when the
switch is playing back and override any current gobo recorded into the scene.
It is also as easy as creating a switch and turning on a channel and setting the
channel level by assign the ON function to the channel. In short any DMX
value recorded either static values (no sequence generated) or dynamic (Easy
Step Fade, Easy Step Cut or Easy Time) those values will be outputted to the
fixtures when that switch is selected or triggered.

Page/Button Settings: The Page and button settings windows are a

place for you to modify specific settings for the button or page. For example
say we wanted a switch to always be on, or to trigger a multimedia file like a
mp3 track or a video file. We can do both of those things and more in the
button settings. Lets start with button settings for a scene on the Design
spot 1200C page. Simply click on the page and select the scene button and
then click the button tab and then select settings. OR simply hold down the
shift key and right click the scene button and select settings.

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Now the settings window will open for this scene.

You can see we have several options in the general section. We can rename
the scene in the name section if we want or turn our scene into a switch. We
may also choose a icon for the scene button by clicking the small arrow down
icon and selecting it from the list of icons exactly how we did so in the
palette section. The show faders section allows for us to enable the dimmer,
speed, size and phasing dials on the button. See picture below.

We can also force the functions of dimmer, speed, phase and size to work on
every channels used in the scene button. We can also as you see above in the
picture, turn on the disable reset switch function. Meaning if we have
several switches active double clicking on this scene button would not turn
off the switches if we turn this function on. Or we could enable the other
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buttons to reset when we click on this switch by checking the box for Reset
other buttons when activated. Now lets move onto the triggers section of
the scene button settings.

In the Trigger section we can set up a keyboard hot key to trigger this
scene. Simply type in any single key from your keyboard and select link to
keyboard. You can even use capital and lower case. So you could have one
scene trigger with a and another one trigger with A all on the same page.
Likewise most symbols ?><@#$%^ etc can also be assigned as triggers just
remember to hold down the shift key for any symbol that needs shift held
down to type in that symbol. One other option for triggering keyboard hot
keys is to simply click on the scene and hold down the ctrl key and then press
the key you want as the trigger. For example lets assign the lower case s
to this scene button. Exit the button settings and click the scene button and
hold down ctrl and then hit the s key. If successful the key will have a
small blue s in the lower right hand side of the button. It will look like this.

To delete a keyboard trigger from a scene simply click on the scene and hold
down the ctrl key and press the del key on your keyboard to remove it.
Back to button settings.
(Continued on next page)

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Input ports is a way to trigger scenes using I/O port hardware connectors and
buttons.

Clicking the ports info button will show you a detailed info graphic on how to
set up your connectors for I/O triggering.

You can set the selected scene to trigger to a port number. Clicking on the
dropdown menu will show all the options for setting up the scene to trigger.

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Think of I/O ports triggering as a way to assign a scene button a dipswitch

address and using the ports to trigger them with a custom built electronic
controller for I/O triggering. For more info on this subject, contact support
from the info given at the start of this manual.
Time triggering.

We can set up this scene to trigger at a certain time and date or repeatedly
across multiple dates. Pick a date and an hour to start the scene by double
clicking the grey rectangle block. For example lets double click the 22
Monday at 12pm. Double clicking any hour time block will open a new
window for us to set up precise triggering times and other options.

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Shown on the previous page we can name this time block and set up a
precise time for this scene to trigger, say for example at 12:05:30 pm. That is
hour 12, minute 5 and 30 seconds into minute 5. We can have this scene set
to stay on all day if we wish by clicking the all day event check box as show in
the picture on the previous page. We can even have this scene trigger with
the sun set or sunrise. In the sun trigger section select either sun rise or sun
set.

Lets use sunset. We can setup the scene to trigger and stay on from sunset
through until a predetermined time by clicking the middle check box show
below.

Or if we click on the question mark box we can set up our location and the
program will automatically update itself to know what time the sun will set
and rise for the location entered. For example: Country USA, City, Los
Angeles, California.

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If we click new we can enter in a city not listed above by entering the
Longitude and latitude coordinates and the software will automatically
figure out what time the sun will set or rise for that area. We can also set to
turn this scene on or off or an on/off state.

Once we have set up all our time triggers the way we want we can click Ok
and you will see on the calendar the name of the trigger we have set up. In
this example we have named it test.

We can also switch the calendar view by week, month, day or year by
clicking one of the calendar icons as shown below.

Clicking all will open a new window full screen allowing you to see in great
detail any time you wish too.

(Shown on next page)

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To delete an event simply right click the event text or name in the calendar
and select delete.

Easy Show Triggering:

We can set any scene or switch to trigger the Easy Show timeline program
(only supported on Compu Show SD models or higher). As you can tell we
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can set this scene to start the Easy Show program and also load an Easy show
file.

More on Easy Show later.

Multimedia: We can set up a multimedia trigger for any scene or switch to
trigger audio files and/or video files. The supported files for audio and video
are the same as windows media player will support in windows 7. Lets
enable multimedia by checking the check box and selecting our file.

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Clicking the small box with the small ... in it will open the file browser. Lets
select a small video clip from the multimedia folder built into Compu Show.

Click Open to import the file into the multimedia trigger section.

There are several buttons on the bottom of the window. They are:
Starting and ending points:
Clicking on either one of these will allow
us to set a start and stop time for the length of the selected media file.
Playback only playback zone:
if you have set up a starting and ending
point you can set the trigger to playback only the selected portion of the file.
Jump to start or end points:
end point.

This will set the file to jump to a start or

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Play/Stop Forward/Backwards:
Think of these as your
Play/Pause and fast forward or rewind buttons on a DVD player or music
player.
Loop:

Loop sets the file to loop continuously.

Audio/video:
The Audio/video will let you select to play the video with
the audio or just the audio from the video file.
Scrub wheel:
If we click and drag the mouse left or right it
will advance or rewind from where the current playback position is in the
file.
Scene:

For button settings for scenes we can set up fade times for the scene. Click
the check box next to the fade text to enable scene fading on the selected
scene.
(Shown on next page)

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We can set a time before fade in, fade in, before fade out, and fade out times
here in this section. By checking the Start playing sequence during the
fade, say we had a scene that had a easy time or easy step sequence
recorded in it, without checking this box and apply a fade the scene would
fade in and once the fade is done then only would the sequence start
playing. But if we check this box the sequence will play during the fade.
Manual fade will allow us to have a manual fade via the fade window that
can be accessed in the controller tab on the main Compu show window.

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Also remember we have dedicated fade tabs at the top of every fixture page
and the master page to set fade times instead of having to go into the button
settings every time we want to make a change.

If you go into the settings of a switch you can set the priority of the switch
button and also adjust duration and time of the switch options.

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As you can see from the picture on the previous page we have several
options for the priority of the switch. There is HTP: Highest Take Priority. LTP:
Latest Take priority. Add: Adds to the current level rather than just over
riding. Sub will subtract from the level. ATP is always takes priority. Meaning
the switch will always have the priority over any given scene. LowTP: will set
the switch to the lowest take priority. There is no right or wrong way to use
these priority options, however the best way to learn them is by
experimenting. The auto release under the LTP check box will automatically
release this switch if another switch is selected that also uses some of the
same channels and/or values as the one LTP is selected. Also it will auto
release if an INIT or blackout scene is triggered. You can deselect Auto
release and the switch will stay active until it is triggered off.

The first option in the section shown in the picture above is the auto release.
If we were to deselect auto release in the LTP section and uncheck the box
for This switch will auto release in case of a double click, the switch would
then stay on no matter what other scenes or switches were triggered after
this one and the only way to turn this switch off would be to click or trigger it
again.
The The switch is always on check box will turn the switch on and leave it
on. The only way to turn the switch off would be too, go back into the button
settings for the switch and uncheck the box for The switch is always on.

(Continued on next page)

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We can also limit the amount of the time the switch is active by checking the
box Limited time. For example say we checked this box and selected 5
seconds. Anytime this switch is triggered or clicked after 5 seconds it will
turn itself off.
Switch fade: We can fade into the switch by checking the check box and
apply a fade time. If we have a easy time or easy step sequence we can tell
the switch to start playing the sequence as it is fading in by checking the box
for Switch Fade and selecting a time.
Cycle button settings:

NOTE: There will be a dedicated cycle tutorial later in this manual.

The first cycle setting option we see is for loop. Check this box to have the
cycle loop continuously. Uncheck this box to have the cycle play through
once.

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The second cycle option is a function that will stop any multimedia triggers
either audio or video files once this cycle starts.
The Third cycle option is The cycle can be stopped by calling another scene.
What this means is if we had a cycle playing on the master page and we
triggered a scene that is not recorded into the cycle the cycle will stop
playing and the scene that was triggered will take over and the cycle will
cease to stop going through what it was programmed into it.
The cycle starts in pause mode. This will trigger the first scene but will not
start the timer or advance to the next button recorded into the cycle unless
the play button is selected.

The text from the picture above is self explanatory.

The text from the picture above is self explanatory.

Page Settings: for this section lets go to the Design spot 1200C page and
click it to make it the active page and then go to the page tab at the top of
the program window and select settings.

(Shown on next page)

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Our page settings window looks like this:

In the General section you will see options to rename the page and also to
change the fixture icon of the page. You can also select or deselect to show
the page in the master page here as well. We can assign page shortcuts using
one of the preselect F1-F12 keys or assign it to a keyboard hot key.

(Shown on next page)

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We can also set up a toggle shortcut to freeze the DMX output of the page.

Toggle shortcut to send DMX to the fixture page.

Or we can simply check or uncheck the box for sending DMX from the page.

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Patch:

The Patch section will allow us to view the fixture page patch of DMX
addresses and also allow us to turn off certain function on channels such as,
speed, size, phase, fade, and dimmer. We can also expand the patch of
individual fixtures by clicking the small + next to the fixture.

You can see from the picture above that the patch gives you also the DMX
dipswitch settings should your fixtures use DMX dipswitches. Also to the
very right of the columns you see 5 boxes for each channel. These boxes let
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you decide which channels follow the functions as linked in the boxes. They
are:

You can add or take away the function to the channel by clicking in one of
the boxes that are empty to add that function or to turn that function off.
For example say we wanted to take the dimmer off of the CMY channels for
the first fixture. To do so we would simply need to find the dimmer column
and click the boxes for Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow to turn the dimmer
function off for those channels.

At the top of the window you will notice three small icons they are.

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Lets go through what these buttons do exactly.

Insert chosen Scan Library fixture:

In this window you can add more of the same fixtures to the page or take
some out. If you add fixtures you will have to edit your scenes and switches
to include them. If you take them away you will lose the programming for
those fixtures should you ever re add them to the page. You can also move
the fixtures patch around or even send all of the fixtures to a different DMX
universe all together. The programming will follow the fixtures no matter
what universe they are on. The fixtures highlighted in blue are the fixtures
that we are able to modify. We cannot modify any other pages fixtures in
this window. To do so we would need to exit the fixtures page settings and
go to the other fixtures page and modify the settings for that page. To move
a fixtures starting address simply click on it to turn it a darker shade blue and
drag it onto a open channel or over to the next universe. To select multiple
fixtures hold down the ctrl key on your keyboard then click multiple fixtures
and then drag and drop anywhere a open channels is free or likewise a
different universe. (NOTE: make sure your interface supports the amount of
universes you are patching too before you move addresses as some
interfaces only support 2 universes).
(Continued on next page)

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We can add more fixtures to the patch by finding them in the scan library
folder and patching them in exactly like how we did when we added a new
page at the beginning of this manual.
Rename:

We can rename individual fixtures to whatever we want. Take these 6

DS1200s for example. We know we have 6 but if we wanted to name two of
them DS1200 ends we can do so in this text entry field. This can help us
keep better track of where our fixtures are in our set up.
Pan and Tilt Settings:

In the pan and tilt settings window we can invert pan and tilt channels as
well as re size the area the fixtures will be allowed to move around. We may
also swap the X (Pan) and Y (tilt) channels. With the fixtures set up in front of
us we can modify the area they can travel quite easily. Simply enable the
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light output on the fixture and Draw with your mouse the area you want
your fixtures to move around in. for example say we wanted a square area
from downstage all the way left into the crowd to the right side of the crowd
and back down to downstage. We just click on the crosshairs in the grid and
move the fixture to the positions we want them to travel in. Be careful not to
allow the fixture to point the light into an area you do not wish it too.

You can see that the areas outside of this rectangle the fixtures will not be
allowed to pan or tilt into that area. You must do this for each individual
fixture you wish to limit the range of pan and tilt. Once done, click OK.
Group:

In this area is another way for us to modify or add fixture groups.

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We can add a new group by clicking here:

Then type in the name in the text entry field. We will call it 1st half.

Now we have a group names 1st half. Lets add some fixtures into it. We can
do this by clicking any fixture on the left and dragging it to the right.

We can also select multiple fixtures by holding the shift keydown on our
keyboard and selecting multiple fixtures.

(Shown on next page)

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Then drag to the right column.

If you notice we now have our first three fixtures in the right column as a
group and the first 3 fixtures are highlighted in the fixtures window to the far
right. Also notice at the top of the fixtures window there is a play, stop and
record buttons to the left of the magnifying glasses. Instead of selecting and
dragging the fixtures from the left column to the right we can simply press
the record button and click on the fixtures we want in the group in the order
we want and then hit the record button once more and the group is created.
(Example picture on next page)
(Continued on next page)

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Now if we hit the play button the group will highlight the fixtures in the
order they were selected in.

To delete or rename a group use the button in the groups window as shown
in this picture.

Compressions:

There will be a more in depth tutorial on Compressions Later in this manual.

So we will skip it for now.
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Protections:

In this section there is a complete list of all the protections or lock functions
that can be applied to the page. Here is a look at all of them.

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All the functions with a check mark in the box will be an active protection
function when protections are enabled. We can change any of these by
simply checking or un checking the box. We can also choose to apply the
same protection settings from this page to all the other pages to prevent
having to do the same thing across each page individually.

Importing/Exporting fixture pages:

If we look back at the pages tab on the main program window we will see
two buttons. One is Import and one is Export.

If we click Export it will export a backup copy of the selected page to a

destination on our computer to be saved as a backup should a problem ever
arise and we need to import a backed up copy of just one page rather than
the entire show (.shw) file. Lets go ahead and Export our Impression 120 RZ
page. Select the page and click Export.

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The exported page file (.Pex) saves by default to the Compu Show folder. To
change this, simply browse to any other location you wish for the file to save
too. We will leave it at the default in this example. Now we have exported a
backup copy of the impression page. Now lets import a file. To be able to
import a page the fixture page you are importing must not be present in the
patch already. We will need to delete the page first by clicking on the page
and then going to the page tab and selecting delete. Now that we deleted
the impression 120RZ page we can click the import button and then select
your file. Lets select the Impression 120 RZ page.

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The import wizard will load the file and then display the infos and the
number of fixtures and the profile name that was used.

Now click next and the wizard will let you know if it can find the profile that
was used in the library. If the wizard finds the file it will display fixture
model already in current library if you see this click next.

(Continued on next page)

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The wizard will now patch the fixtures as they were patched in the fixture
page when it was imported as shown above. Click ok on the all fixtures have
been patched with correct addresses now if you wish you can change the
addresses of the fixtures by dragging and dropping the fixtures onto any free
channel or a different universe. Once we are done modifying the addresses if
we chose to do so click next.

Now we can click finish and the page will generate to the show file. If for
some reason your fixtures dont show up in the fixtures window simply press
on and off again the
button and the fixtures will reappear in the position
they were set in. If your fixture group buttons that used the imported
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fixtures do not update simply reselect the order for the specific group button
and right click the group button and select Update.

Page Layers: We can create several different layers for fixture pages and
the master page and have several different layouts to choose from at any
given time. You will notice that when you first load your fixture pages the
layer is set to Layer by default.

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We can create our own layer to customize the playback area for our scenes
and switches. For example, say we are programming for a lighting operator
to just playback the show live and we do not want them accidently changing
gobos or colors live during the show. Well this is where layers can come in
handy. We can create a custom layer of scenes and switches or anything we
want on the page and leave everything else out. Find the layout button in the
general tab on the Design Spot 1200 page.

Now lets click the button and select New from the options.

Now the layer settings window will appear.

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Notice to the left we have all of our buttons from the page with options to
expand them to see ever preset created on the page. To the right is where
we can create our Zones for our layer. Notice the all text at the top in the
zones section. We can double click this text and delete it and rename it
Scenes.

Now we can add some scene buttons to this zone by finding them in the left
column and dragging them over to the scenes zone and dropping them. (Tip:
to drag multiple items at once to the same zone hold down the ctrl key)

Now we have 3 scenes in the scenes section.

Now say we wanted a separate zone for our switches, notice there are 4
small icons at the top right of the zones section. They are:

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Since we want to create a new zone lets click new.

Now lets rename this zone switches and drag our switches into the zone.

We can even adjust the order of the switches after we place them in this
zone. Simply click a switch and drag it up or down to re adjust the order.

Say we wanted to keep the color mixing from the main layer and add it too
this one. Click on the new zone button and create a new zone and call it
Color mix.

Now click on the options icon and set this zone to the color mix option.

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Click Ok and now we have added a color mixing zone to the layer.

We need to add the color mix switch from our list of buttons on the left side
to this layer in order to get the color mix all button to appear on this layer.

Now lets take a look at the fixture page and see how we did with creating
our layers. Click the Ok button at the bottom of the layer settings window
and lets look at our page.
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To edit the layer, click on the layout button and select Layer settings.

Now the layer settings window will open back up. Lets add a zone for pan
and tilt and include the XY switches.

Lets click ok and see how this looks on our fixture page.
(Continued on next page)
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We can move these zones around the fixture page and even stack them by
clicking the name of the zone and dragging it around.

If we move the Color mix on top of the XY zone we can then have a button of
sorts to switch between color and XY.

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Now we can select which zone to display by clicking on the name of the zone
that is behind the current one.

One thing we can do is for the color mix section is create our own switches in
that layer zone to get individual control of each fixtures RGB mixing control.
Create a new switch on the Design Spot 1200 page and you will notice a new
option in create new switch window.
(Shown on next page)

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When we have a layer active we can chose which zone to create a new scene
or switch in. since we are making a Switch for individual CMY control for our
Design Spot 1200s lets select the color mix layer and label the switch Spot
1 CMY make the switch empty and then click Ok + Edit.

Select spot 1 and then link the Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow channels to the
dimmer function as show in the picture below. Now save and close your
switch. Repeat these steps but change the name to spot 2, spot 3, ETC and
you will see that you can now have a switch dedicated to adjusting the color
of each individual fixture. We can also chose to use groups of fixtures for
even quicker color change options rather than individual.

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So you can see layers are a pretty powerful and useful tool to help you
customize your playback space. You can set up as many layers as you want
but only one can be open or active at a time. Also layers can also be created
on the master page. We can also use the lock properties to lock down the
layer that way in the even we have a operator playing back a pre recorded
show file they cannot make any adjust and can only use what is present on
the page. Like many other functions in this software it is best to experiment
with them and see how they best suit you.

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Button Compression: We can create groups of buttons and then

compress them in the fixture page to save space and ease of access. In this
example we have already gone ahead and modified some scenes and
switches.

Instead of having them stacked like how you see in the picture we can create
a compression group for these buttons as they are all named either Look or
Sequence we can compress any group of buttons as long as they share the
same name and are in some sort of order. It also helps to have a button icon
selected. Lets go to page settings for this page which is the Design spot
1200C.

Now lets go to compression.

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Click the new button located at the top right of the window.

Now we can name our compression group. Lets type in Sequence to

compress our Sequence 1, 2, 3, 4 buttons. (NOTE: the spelling has to match
exactly on each button and when you type in the name of the new
compression group)

Now there are options for button type and type of compression group.

(Shown on next page)

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Since the Sequence buttons are switches lets click the bubble for Switch.
And also we can select to have one of the buttons always be on. Then lets
select the icon bubble at the bottom of the type section.

Now if we were to click ok as the compression is set up as of now the buttons

will compress and look like the picture below.

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If we pick a different type for example the External windows icon and pick an
icon for the group below at the bottom of the type section.

The compression group from the settings shown above will generate like
this:

The pictures below are, on the left, the settings to achieve the compression
type on the picture in the right.

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The compression types we have gone through above are the best ones suited
for switches and scenes holding looks or effects. Now lets take our Spot 1
CMY, spot 2 CMY, ETC switches and compress them into a External Color
mixing window. Go back to the page tab, settings, then compression and
create a new group and call it Spot

Now since these buttons are switches we will want to select switch in the
button type section and then chose either External window color mixing list
or external window color mixing icon. Here is what external color mixing list
looks like generated.

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And External windows color mixing Icon.

Now lets try compression on scene buttons. Make a new group and name it
Look.

Now lets set the button type as a scene and select icon for type.

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That group of buttons will generate like this.

You can see that it really helps to assign an icon to the button before you
compress it to allow the button to be easier identified. The compression
could be very useful if numerous scenes are created for section of fixtures,
you can compress them as sections by naming the individual scene buttons
as section 1, 2, 3, etc. for example looking back at how the scenes and
switches were before we compressed them.

Get creative with this function and it will make playing back shows that
much easier.

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Using RECTS to Create a Matrix: Creating a rect will allow you too
create matrix effects on leds and any fixture that has color mixing channels.
It is even possible to create matrix effects on pan and tilt channels as well as
zoom, iris, and dimmer, focus, and frost channels. To start lets go to our
Flash Panel 16 fixture page and create a new scene and name it Rects.

Now in the scene button editor you see the fixtures window and there are
two tabs. One says Fixtures the other says Groups Rect. Click on Groups rect.

Also notice there are three small buttons at the top and one of them is
grayed out. Notice the small page icon with the blue plus sign? Click that to
create a new rect.

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Our mouse pointer has now changed to a small plus sign. This will allow us to
create the size and shape of our rect. Lets click at the top left corner and
drag the mouse to the bottom right corner.

The purple shaded area represents the current area of our rect. We can
adjust the size of this by clicking the 3rd icon circled in red in the picture
above with the small grey gear icon on it.

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We can also resize the rect or move it to a different position by moving the
mouse to one of the small red lines around the shaded area.

Once we are done adjusting the position and size of the rect we must click
the move/resize rect button again to turn the function off.

The area around the button will be a darker color grey to indicate that it is
active. From the picture above we can tell the function is not darker in color
and is off. We can rename the rect by right clicking the group rect button in
the group section of the fixtures window.

Lets name this rect full size and then click anywhere in the shaded area and
drag it to the easy time timeline below.

(Shown on next page)

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Once we see the small shaded box appear on the time line let go of the
mouse button to reveal a timeline for our rect.

Now we have a timeline generated for this rect. Notice the matrix effects are
now active and we can select any and drag it to the time line. Lets drag the
matrix effect to the timeline. Once we have done that the color effect
window will appear. Notice the new effects in the drop down menu.

(Shown on next page)

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Lets try the circle effect function. Select circle effect and click play.

We can adjust the number of color from 1-10 and create any color any of
those colors and even use palette colors. Adjusting the size will either
increase or decrease the colors repeat rate in the effect. Speed will adjust
how fast the sequence plays back. Lets try using two palette colors.

Generic color palettes work best for matrix effects. Lets click ok to generate
the effect to the timeline and see how it looks on the fixtures window.

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We can also resize the shaded rect area as the effect is playing back.

Just be sure to enable the move/resize button before we try to move the rect
area. We can also create more rects of different sizes using the same steps as
creating a rect from above.

(Shown on next page)

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We can see the top half shaded area and the new rect group button top
half. We can now copy the full size timeline effect and paste it to the top
half time line. Right click the effect block and select copy.

Now right click again and select paste and the effect will be pasted to the top
half timeline. Lets edit the top half effect time line and try the rain effect
and make the colors blue and cyan.

(Shown on next page)

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Now with the full size rect resized to only the bottom half of the LEDs. Lets
see how the two effects look running together.

If we right click the effect blocks we will see a small menu of options.

Edit will allow you to edit the effect that was clicked on.
Delete will delete the block effect from the timeline.
Copy will copy the effect. Paste will paste the effect to a new timeline.

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Duration will set the total duration of the sequence; this is a substitute to
dragging or resizing the block on the timeline.
Fade will set the fade time for the effect to fade in.
Wait time before and after sequence will add a delay to either the start of
the sequence or the end or both.
Opacity will allow you to set the opacity of the effect. Check the enable box
to modify the opacity intensity and mask color.

Now lets take a look at some other matrix effects. We will start with video.
Click on the Video matrix effect icon and drag it onto the timeline.

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Now a small window will appear as shown in the picture on the previous page
with the text No Video. Click here:
to open the browser to locate your
video file. Once you navigate to the folder on your PC for the video files that is
supported, Click Open to import the file into the Video window.

You can now see a preview of your video in the window.

The only other option is to adjust the size of the video playback to either keep
the aspect ratio of the original file or to fit the video to the full size of the
screen/playback area. Here is an example of the Keep Proportions off.
(Shown on next page)

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And Keep Proportions on.

Once you have your video set exactly how you want it simply click OK on the
video window and the effect is generated as a matrix effect for the chosen Rect.

(Continued on next page)

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Now lets try the Gif effect.

The Gif window is exactly the same as the video window. The same options are
present for browsing to the file and image size adjustment. You can preview the
Gif file by clicking the play button and then stopping it by clicking the stop
button. Below are examples of the Keep Proportions In/Off.
On:

(Continued on next page)

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Off:

Once we are done selecting our Gif image, select ok in the preview window and
the effect will be generated.
Now lets go over the Picture Effect. Simply find the picture effect icon and drag
it to the time line.

Now we click the file browse button and find a picture to use in our rect. Any
.jpeg, .bmp, .gif image files will work.

(Continued on next page)

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As you can tell from the preview image on our Rect that, we need to have a
higher resolution Led set up to accommodate for the screen resolution for any
of these video, Picture, Gif effects in order to display them properly on the Rect.
The more pixels we have in our DMX patch the better to convey the images, and
video effects used. Again we can adjust the screen proportion by clicking the
Keep Proportions button.

Now lets move onto the text effect. As usual, find the text effect icon and drag
it onto the timeline.

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Lets take a look at the text editor window.

Lets start by entering in our own text and picking a new background and text
color. Simply click in the text entry filed where you see the Enter your text
and delete that text.

For example we have entered in Elation Lighting for our new text. Now lets
change the background color and text color. To do so, click on the color for the
background here:

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And then adjust your color in the color picker here:

Youll notice that as soon as the mouse is depressed after selecting a new color
the icon for the background color changes to the new selected color.

Now lets do the same for the text color. Lets make the color green by clicking
the preset green icon below the color picker. (Circled in Red in the picture
below)

Now lets click the play button to preview what we have done so far.

(Shown on next page)

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We can also change the font of the text by clicking here:

Clicking the font button will bring up a new window for us to modify, font style,
Size, and script.

For now lets leave the font set to defaults and click ok to exit the font window.
We can also choose to scroll the text left or right and up or down. To do this we
can choose a direction arrow as shown in the picture on the next page.

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The middle light orange/yellow circle indicates no movement and is the default
setting. By clicking any of the four arrows as show in the picture you set the
direction of the text to scroll. The blue knob to the left of the directional circle
will adjust the speed.

If we wanted to have a static word in the effect but the word was not centered
we can adjust the position of the text horizontally or vertically by clicking on the
up or down arrows in the horizontal and vertical offset boxes as shown below.

Once we are done editing our text for this Rect click the OK button to generate
the effect.

Color Manager:
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The color manager will allow us to freehand draw colors on the Rect and even
allow us to create multiple steps and pick colors previously saved as a color
palette.

The tools we can use to draw on the rect are as follows:

Pencil.
Paint bucket.
Line.
Rectangle.
Circle. Lets draw a blue
circle in the first step of our rect. First click the circle icon in the tools section to
the right. And then bring the mouse over to the grid and notice that the pointer
is now a cross icon. Once we have our starting point for our circle, hold down
the left mouse to start to drag the circle into size.

(continued on next page)

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Now we can make a green rectangle on top of this circle or create it as a new
step. Lets add it as a new step. Find the new step button,
see a second step appear in the steps window.

and now we will

Now we can either keep the Blue circle or delete it and add the Green rectangle.
Lets delete the blue circle by clicking the Red X in the tools section of the
editor.

Now we delete the blue circle and add the Green rectangle. Click on the green
preset color from the color picker window.

(Continued on next page)

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Now click on the rectangle button and bring the mouse over to the Rect and
create our rectangle.

We can now change the colors and add even more rectangles in this step.

Lets now use the paint bucket to fill in all the black pixels with the color
Magenta.

Now lets create a third step and press the delete button in the thirds step.

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Now we have a blank rect step as shown on the picture on the previous page.
Lets use the line tool and the pencil tool to create a new design on this step.

Now we have three steps that we want to loop. Lets click on the,
the hold and wait times.

to adjust

This is the same window to adjust times as in the Easy Step tutorial. So lets
adjust all three steps to hold for one second and fade for three seconds.

Once we have done that click OK and now notice in the step window the times
have been affected.

(Shown on next page)

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Now that we have our steps set up and ready to playback we can click the OK
button to generate this effect. Like usual once we have our sequence set the
way we like it, click the save button and close the button editor window.

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Creating a Cycle: A Cycle is a type of button that instead of playing back a

single scene or switch function a cycle can hold or remember a set list of scenes
and switches to playback in a certain order within a certain amount of time or
can also be set to be triggered on a per scene or step basis by a operator. To
create a cycle we must first open the cycle window. We can do this by going to
the Controller tab and clicking the cycle button in the External windows section.

Now we can create a cycle button by first selecting on which page we would like
to create the cycle button. In this example we will create a cycle on the Design
Spot 1200C page. Click the INIT button for the DS1200C page and then click new
cycle in the button tab.

Now we have a new button appear on the Design Spot 1200c page called Cycle.

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Now we can record our cycle by clicking the record button in the cycle window.

And then clicking on the scenes in the order we want to play them back in.

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Once we are done clicking scenes and switches we can click the record button
once again to stop recording our cycle.
We can now go in and edit our cycle by adjusting how long each scene and
switch plays for. There are two views to the cycle window. There is a timeline
view like we see in the pictures above. Or there is a List view.

As you can see the times listed in the Time section are the times at which
point that button is played or triggered. Changing these times is easy. Simply
double click on the time and a window will appear.

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We can set the scene to On or Off, and edit the time in which the sequence
starts at. Lets change this too an even 10 seconds.

(Shown on next page)

Now we can set the cycle to pause when this scene starts in the cycle and that
will stop the cycle from advancing to the next step until the play button or play
next step button is selected.

Also the buttons that are squared by green in the picture above represent the
ability to jump to the next button that is set up to pause cycle or have the
Just pause cycle, button will execute on play

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We can also modify the dimmer, speed, phasing, and size by clicking on the
button dials tab and checking the box to enable that dial and adjusting the dial
position.

Going to the Fade tab allows us to set a fade time for the button or to add a
fade time to the button.

Notice the Use fade settings check box. That will allow us to simply use the
fade time that may already be in place for the button. The Fade check box will
allow us to override any fade time previously set up for this button or set up a
fade time here from this window. You can also choose to start playing a
sequence while the scene is fading in. This will allow the sequence that was
either made in easy step or easy time to begin to play as the button is fading in.
check the box Start playing sequence during the fade to enable this function.
Lets cover all of the button in the cycle window.
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(More pictures on next page)

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Now that we have our cycle set up the way we like lets play it back. Double
click the INIT scene on the DS1200C page and then click the cycle button. Our
cycle will play back now. We can stop the cycle at any time and edit it.

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External Control & Triggering:

Keyboard:

Buttons can be triggered from the computer keyboard. To assign a keyboard trigger,

shift+right click a button and select "Link to Keyboard".

Hit the key you wish to use as a trigger. Click here(1) to set the trigger as a
"Flash Trigger". When you press the key, the button will be activated and when
you release the key, the button will be deactivated.

Date & Time

You can trigger a button by date and time. Select a button and open up the
button settings. Select the Time tab(1). There are 3 calendar views to choose
from(2).

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Double click to set up a time trigger.

Scenes can be triggered at sunrise and sunset. A custom location can be

assigned by clicking here (1) and the time of sunrise and sunset will be
automatically calculated. A trigger time relative to the sunrise or sunset time
can be assigned here(2). For example a scene could be deactivated 4 hours after
sunrise.

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Recurring events can be triggered daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. We can set
up a recurrence range between two dates. For example, you may want to
trigger a button at sunset every Saturday over the summer.

A trigger can be set to activate the button, deactivate the button, or toggle the
button on and off every time the trigger is called.

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Console (MIDI, DMX, EasyRemote)

Almost everything in CompuShow can be controlled by almost any MIDI or DMX
controller. You can use the console editor to create an image of your own
controller. See the console editor topic for more information.

If you are using MIDI, the software first needs to be told which MIDI port to
read from. This can be set within the Software Preferences.

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Mapping MIDI controls to the MIDI console

Right click here(1) to create a new console preset, then right click here (2)to
load your controller. If your controller is not listed, you will need to build your
own console with the console editor, or map your controls to a similar console.

Many of the pre-built consoles are mapped, however in some circumstances you will need
to map each button/dial/fader on your controller to the console in the software.
1. Right click the button you want to link to your controller
2. Select the Setup tab
3. Either enter the parameters in yourself or if you are using a MIDI controller, select
"Auto Setup MIDI" and move the corresponding fader/dial/button on your MIDI
controller

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Each command and the corresponding fader can be viewed by clicking

here(1). When all links are in view, the console can look confusing. Select
solo(2) to view the selected control only.

Assigning a MIDI command to a button

To assign a console command to a button:
1. Shift+Right click the desired scene
2. Select "Link to Console"
3. Select the desired action (activate the button, change the dimmer of the button etc..)
4. Select "Click on the Console Window" and select the relevant button inside the console window. If
you have a MIDI controller connected, move the relevant fader/button on your controller.

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One command on the controller can be used to activate a variety of different

commands within the software. For example, you could assign a dial to
automatically control the speed of several movement buttons.
Commands can be edited by right clicking on the relevant button on the
console. Here we can set a minimum and maximum value to trigger the
command. In the example below, when the input value reaches 47, the
sequence will be at maximum speed.

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MIDI Time Code (MTC)

MIDI Time Code (MTC) is a type of MIDI message created for synchronization
purposes. You can use Midi Time Code to synchronize a Cycle with an external
device such as a CD player, 3rd party video and sound software, or a SMPTE
generator.
To use MIDI time code, you first need to make sure you have a MIDI interface
connected to your computer.
Go to the general settings and select the MIDI setup tab. Select the device you
wish to receive the Time Code from or send the Time Code to.

Once you have your MIDI Time Code device connected, select the IN button
to begin receiving the Time Code signal. To send Time Code to another device
whilst the Cycle is playing, select the OUT button.

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DMX
Almost everything in CompuShow can be controlled by almost any DMX controller. You can use the
console editor to create an image of your own DMX controller. See the console editor topic for more
information. The controller can then be viewed within the console window.
Make sure you have a DMX input set up within the Software Preferences, see the Multiple Universes
topic for more information.
Once you have created your console, each control must be mapped to a control on the console. To do
this, right click on a console control, then select the DMX input universe and channel.

Once the DMX controller is mapped to the Console, you can map the controller faders, dials and
buttons to almost any software feature. See the Console topic for more information.
Direct DMX Input Patch
A DMX input channel can also be directly assigned to a fixture channel within the button editor. Click
here(1) to open the DMX input panel, then drag the desired DMX input channel over to the fixture
channel.

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Audio
EasyTime and EasyStep sequences can be triggered by audio.
1. Click here to enable audio in an EasyStep sequence
2. Click here to enable audio in an EasyTime sequence
Notice that the timeline values change to music notes. These can be dragged to
change where the playhead will jump on each beat.

Audio Analysis
The audio analysis is a tool which sends a pulse to any audio enabled EasyStep or EasyTime sequence.
The audio analysis works in 4 different modes:
Manual: Choose a manual BPM from the combo box
Tap: Tap out a BPM by pressing the tap button
Audio Analysis: Calculates a BPM from an incoming audio signal. By default, the threshold is set
automatically, check "Manual" to set the threshold yourself appropriate to the style of music
BPM by Midi Clock: Detects a midi clock signal sent from high end DJ software and DJ mixers. Note
that you will need to select a midi device from the Software Preferences first
BPM by Midi clock is usually the most accurate form of BPM detection because DJ software will
anylise the BPM from the audio file before it is played.
Note: if you cannot see an audio input when using the audio analysis, make sure the correct recording
input is selected on the "Audio settings" tab. Also check that the correct input is set up in the
windows control panel->sound. Adjust the Gain dial to increase the input signal.
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Easy Show
Easy Show allows you to synchronize your CompuShow buttons with audio and
video. Programming is performed using timelines, like many popular audio and
video editing software packages. Easy Show is quick and simple. Adding lighting
scenes is as easy as dragging and dropping from CompuShow, and dropping into
Easy Show.

Getting Started
Easy Show can be opened by clicking here. Check the status of the Easy Show
communication in the bottom left corner of the window.

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To add a button to Easy Show, simply ctrl+right click and drag the button from
the CompuShow window to the clip bin inside the Easy Show window.

A new track is automatically set up for the page. The scene can now be dragged
onto the new track.
Notice that the track is split into two sections. The top section is for SCENES and
CYCLES and the bottom section is for SWITCHES. If you need to have more than
one Switch activated at a time, click here(1) to create a new Switch timeline.

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To automatically create a track for each page of your show and to fill the bins
with all your lighting buttons, click here.

Creating Timelines Manually

To create a timeline manually, you first need to create a bin. The bin is where
you store your lighting scenes, videos or audio files. Each bin corresponds to a
track. You can have as many bins as you like for your multimedia files, but you
can only have one bin for each page of fixtures. To create a bin, click here(1). To
import multimedia files to your new bin, or to import a button to a new page
bin, click import(2).

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You can import multimedia files or lighting effects from CompuShow into a bin.

Triggering
In addition to the playback controls in the Easy Show Monitor window, sequences can also be
triggered from buttons in CompuShow. Create a new scene or switch and go to the button settings.
Select Easy Show.
Clicking here(1) will start Easy Show when the button is selected.
Open a new show here(2).
Shows can be played here(3).
Other commands include stopping the show and jumping between markers.

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Synchronization Options
Easy Show has several synchronization options. A synchronization device can be
chosen here:
- Audio: The timeline will always be synchronized with the audio time. If the
audio were to skip (for example, if a higher priority process took place), the
timeline would also skip ensuring your lighting is always perfectly timed to the
audio
- MIDI Time Code: Timelines can be synchronized with MIDI Time Code (MTC).
Ensure that a MIDI interface has been connected to your computer before
opening Easy Show. An offset can be set if delays are experienced
Other MIDI Time Code devices can be synchronized from Easy Show. Select
Enable MIDI output and select the desired MIDI output device.

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