Import a Patch to Your Showfile | consoletrainer grandMA2 tutorial 2020

Hey programmers! You know how sometimes you've got a situation where you need to bring in information from multiple show files into one show file? Well there's a lot of ways to do it and the method that you choose depends on what you want to bring in. Today I want to talk about just bringing in fixture and patch information. I'm Cat West, if you're new here, welcome to my channel consoletrainer where I try to make some programming tasks a little easier to understand. If you want updates on when new videos come out just click Subscribe One of the simplest ways to combine information is to use import/export. It's used so often there's even an import/export menu in the settings window that allows you to combine things like macros and effects, but it doesn't include everything. Things like the patch have to be brought in through the command line. But don't worry- it's super quick and easy. There's really only one thing that could trip you up, but I'll show you how to get around that. The import that we're gonna do is going to bring in fixture and channel IDs, patch information, their placement in 3d... basically all the stuff that you see in the patch window. So when would you use this import/export method? Well you might use it if you need to combine patch information from two show files but you don't want to go through the whole PSR process. Keep in mind import/export will bring in almost everything about the fixtures from the patch window but not anything related to programming like presets or cue lists. If you want all of that, then PSR, which stands for partial show read, is the way to go. I love love love PSR, but I know that it can be a little intimidating so I've got another video coming up where we're gonna walk through it. Another reason that you'd use import/export is if you're using the ma2 Vectorworks plug-in to bring the Vectorworks plot into your show file or maybe you just have xml information about the rig from another visualizer or any other program. If your layers are coming from another MA2 show file- load it up and take a look at the patch window. Select all of the layers that you want to export and then hit "export layers" from the pop-up. I'm gonna pick my thumb drive and I'm gonna give it a name for this group of layers -something easy to remember like Festival, and we only need the XML file for what we're doing. So real quick what does this export look like? Well if you open up your thumb drive, look for the grandma 2 folder and inside find a folder called fixtures underscore layers. Inside there you can find your file: it's just an XML. By the way if you're bringing in information from another program (like maybe you're using the vector works plugin and you chose the "all in single layer" option) this is the folder that you want to drop it into so that your console can read it. Ok we're ready to import so we need to load the show file that we're importing the fixtures to. If you're adding these layers to a show file that already has other fixtures in it then first double check that you're not gonna have any fixture ID or patch overlaps. if you don't do this beforehand you can still import but I always recommend cleaning this stuff up beforehand. Today though I am gonna break my own protocol and actually leave some known conflicts in just so you can see what it looks like There's no button in the patch window that allows you to import the layers so we have to do it from the command line. First I'm gonna tell the console where to look for this information - which is our thumb drive. You can do that from the command line but I find it's quicker just to open up the backup window and select your thumb drive. Next I want to expand my command line so that I can see what I'm typing. What we need to do is we need to get into the layer directory to import this, so to change directory we're gonna type CD for change directory and then "edit setup." OK so I know it's change destination but my brain has just always thought of this as change directory and apparently I can't stop. I mean it's written brain in front of me and I will say it wrong every time. Now after you type that your command-line changes to the words "edit setup" so our first deep dive into this has been successful. Next I want to type CD layers. Ok and now we're into the layers directory. Before I import this I'm gonna type list so that I can see what layers I already have in my show file, and I can see that there's 5 so when I import I want my layers to start at 6 so that I'm not recording over what I already have. So now I'm go to type "import" and then in quotations the name of my file which is "Festival" "at" "six" "please" and I could see there was four objects imported that's a good sign. Now I need to dump out of the layers directory so to do that just type CD slash. Okay so I want to take a look at the fixtures that I've imported in my patch window. I can already see the new layers but if we take a look at the festival JDC's, the patch information is in red text. Now I told you there'd be a couple of things that are gonna trip you up and this is one of them. That red text is a very specific collision. Right now there's 14 channels in between each address and for a JDC1 in compressed mode that would be okay, but if you take a look at a fixture type column the console thinks this is a VL6000 which needs a lot more than 14 channels, thus the problem. Here's the deal the grandma 2 organizes the fixture types in your show file using a number system and these numbers are assigned chronologically based on when you add the profiles to your show file. Because of that no two show files fixture type numberings are ever gonna line up. In my festival show, fixture type number 3 was a JDC1 compressed. In the show I'm imported to, fixture 3 is a VL 6k so we just have to fix this. While we're here I want to mention that if you choose to bring in the patch via PSR you're not gonna run into this problem. Partial Show Read goes a lot more in-depth. what we're doing here is basically just reading an XML file. Also if you're using the VWX plug-in there's actually a place where you'll assign these fixture type numbers before you export ,so you also won't run into this problem. And I guess if you really want to go the long way you could edit the XML file and update all your fixture types there, but yeah- I don't want to do that. Ok I mentioned earlier that I was gonna leave a couple of patch and ID number conflicts so that you could see what happens. Well let's take a look at our strip lights. I'm missing all of the fixture IDs and a lot of the patch that's because these were the numbers that conflicted with something else that was already in my show file. Now I can fix this now it's not the end of the world, but I really recommend cleaning this stuff up before you do the import. Now that we've got everything imported and cleaned up if I take a look at my stage view I can see all my new festival fixtures. So that's it, that's our import export. In the next couple of weeks I want to talk about partial show read and even cloning in more detail. I hope you'll join me and I hope that you're finding these videos helpful. See you soon

Channel: Consoletrainer - Cat West

Views: 2,720

Keywords: cat west, concert lighting setup, console trainer, console training, consoletrainer, grandma programming, joe cabrera, lighting console, lighting design, lighting programmer, lighting programming, ma lighting, ma tips, ma tips training, grandma 2, grandma2, grandma2 onpc tutorial, grandma2 tutorial video, concert stage lighting setup, ma lighting tutorial

Id: MBDF0cH5MHE

Length: 7min 11sec (431 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2020