Hey programmers! One of the great concert
lighting designers once said to me that partial show read scared the heck out of
him, and I think he was speaking for a lot of people when he said that. PSR
can be intimidating but I think that if you understand it - and more importantly
if you know how to prep your shows right beforehand, it can be an insanely
powerful tool. I'm Cat West and I love partial show read. I think you're gonna
like it too. If you want more videos about other things that I love, please
subscribe to my channel consoletrainer. Okay so what does PSR do? Partial show
Read brings information from one show file into another show file. You can
bring in patch, 3d information, groups, presets, sequences, effects - the list is
pretty impressive. When we do you use PSR? Well you might be using PSR to combine
two show files from two different programmers. For example, last year I used
PSR to combine information from the media server programmers' show file into
my show file, which was originally just controlling lighting, so that we could
put all of our triggers together. You could also use PSR when you need to bring in a
new plot of fixtures into an existing show file. For example when you're on
tour and you need to bring in a festival rig to clone your programming to. Now if
you only want to bring in some information to your show file (maybe just
patch or a couple of macros or effects) there are alternatives to PSR. You could
use import/export (and I have a video on how to do that) but it has a lot of
limitations. PSR is a lot more powerful. The most important thing you need to
know is that you have to prep both of your show files before you even begin
PSR. it's a step you can't skip unless you're comfortable with possibly losing
some of your show data. See if PSR sees things in the same place on both show
files it can very possibly overwrite information, so we need to prep both show
files.... and all along in the process you're gonna hear me reminding you to
make backups all the time, because: worst case scenario, if you mess it up, just
reload! To start you've got two shows. One is going to be the show that you're PSRing from, and the other is going to be the show you're PSRing to. There's no right
or wrong when deciding which is gonna be which... but I would say
that a good rule of thumb is that whichever show file has more information
in it- that's the one you should PSR to. Today I want to use the example of when
you're on the road and you need to bring in a festival rig into your touring show
file. So for our example, our touring show file is going to be our TO show file
and the festival show file will be our FROM. Both show files need to be in
the same software version. If one of them is a little older, load it up in a newer
version and re-save it. And while we're on the topic of saving, let's take a
moment to back up both of our show files and update the names. Next we need to
compare the fixture numbers and patch of both of our shows. If you leave the
fixture numbers the same between the two show files and bring in the festival
patch, then PSR is going to replace your fixtures from the tour with the festival
fixtures. It'll try its best to translate the programming, but it's probably not
going to be what you want.... so you can either change the fixture numbers of
your touring rig or your festival rig. I personally like to renumber the festival
fixtures and add a thousand number to them. So for example their fixture 401 is
now going to become 9401 and so on. For our example here today I'm actually
gonna leave a couple of conflicts in the fixture numbers so that you can see what
it looks like. Ideally we don't want to have overlapping patch information
either, so now is the time to figure out how you want to deal with that. If you
know that you're gonna be cloning your entire tour rig to the festival rig, then
maybe you just might take your touring universes and move them up to a higher
number out of the way. It's easy to do this in the universe pool. And of course you can always just
unpatch them if you prefer . Ohh hey and if you're doing that maybe afterwards you
just back up again. :) Okay back in the festival show file: you
want to decide if you want to bring in any of their groups, presets, effects,
layouts, whatever. There's just a couple of groups and positions in this show
file but I want to bring them in. Now even though these groups start at number
one, the overlap with my touring show file groups that start at number one is
not going to be the problem that the fixture number overlap is. When we get
into PSR, we'll actually be prompted when we bring in things like groups and
presets to put them in a new location. So if you want to leave them there you can.
If you want to move them you can do that too. In fact I do want to move them. See,
in my touring show file I already have a view that I've made specifically for the
groups that I bring in from festival shows, so since I know where I want those to
land, I'm gonna go ahead and move these now to that location. But remember you don't have to do this.
And if you already know in your touring show file where you want the festival's
presets, effects, layouts, whatever.. to land, then feel free in your festival show
file to move those items to those locations. Again you don't
have to do this but if you want to just keep yourself ultra safe it's something
you could try. I'm actually just gonna leave the presets exactly where they are
so I can show you how to move things around when we get into the PSR. After
you've done all of the cleanup in both of your show files make one more backup.
All right we're finally ready to do this thing. Load up your updated touring show
file. We want to be logged into the show that we're PSRing in to and if you're in
a session you'll need to leave it. Next, in the backup window, pick "partial show
read initialize" and from this window we want to select the festival show file.
This is the first menu where we choose which instruments and 3d environments we
want to have in our show file. There's two lists here. On the left is our
touring show file the information from the show file we're PSRing to. On the right
that's our festival show file (the show that we're PSRing from) Green fixtures
are the fixtures that you keep. Grey fixtures are going away. First we want to
check for fixture overlap and here's that collision that I promised. I don't
really need these fixtures so I'm not gonna select them. I want to make sure
that my fixtures 101 through 105 in my touring rig stay in the show file, so I
need to make sure that they stay green. If you want to quickly check for all of
your collisions, click on the filter button and then click "matched". That'll
show you all your collisions right next to each other. Because I moved the
festival fixtures to the 9000 range they're way down at the bottom. Now you
can select them manually or you can use the wizard and click "merge other". That
will select both your touring fixtures and the festival fixtures. I always like
to double check as well before I move on. At the bottom, check out the "use my
stage" and "use other stage" buttons. This is where you decide if you want the 3d
environment from the festival show or if you want to retain your tour environment.
This is an either/or. In our case the festival didn't really provide much in
the way of a 3d environment, so I'm just gonna leave this on use my stage.
Remember these two options are just for environment stuff from MA 3D. Your
fixtures are still gonna come in with all of their XYZ positions in space. If
you're not using MA 3D or maybe if you're using another visualizer, then it
doesn't matter which one you pick. If you are using MA3D and you find that you
really do have to have both environments, then in the MA3D
program you can export and import environments and merge them into one.
Okay so when you're happy here (and with your life choices) go ahead and click
"prepare." Before we go on now is a good time to back up this show file with an
amended name. Next step of PSR is the "partial show
read" button also in the backup menu. Now we can pick which groups, presets, effects,
whatever we want to bring in. I'm gonna start with groups. Okay you've got two
lists here. The list on the left are the groups from your show file and the list
on the right is going to be the groups from the festival show file. Now I know
that I already moved those groups way into the two thousand range so I'm gonna
scroll down until I find them, and once I find them I'm gonna select them so they
turn green and click "Add selected items." After they're added you can see them on
the left side in your touring show file. I skipped over presets to start with
groups, so let's go back and add in the presets that I want. Now the console's
already seen that there were some possible collisions in numbering and
it's tried to move them to the empty spaces as best as it can, and that's fine.
You can leave them there if you want but I actually have a really specific place
that I want to put these presets so that in my festival preset view they're
already right where I need them. So I'm gonna select this preset here, and I'm
gonna click "move at", I'm going to scroll all the way down to my 2000s range
(because that's where my view puts them) and then touch where I want it to go and
it's in! And then just repeat that process for any and all preset,
effects, layouts, anything that you want to bring in. By the way if you're gonna
be bringing in sequences PSR your presets and your effects first. If you do
the sequences first then the console is gonna look at whatever presets and
effects are used in that sequence and it's gonna bring them in anyway, but it
might not be in a place that you want them. The good news is the console is
smart enough to know that if you've already PSR'd a preset used in a
sequence and you've moved that preset to a new number,
then when you PSR in that sequence, it's gonna automatically reference the new
number that you've moved it to. Once you've added in everything that you want
from this menu, make another backup. After that if you want, you can launch your
session again. Okay let's take a look at what we've got. I can see the fixtures in
the patch and their fixture type and address information is all there. I've got
their groups in my group pool and there's that one preset that I wanted to
bring in, and I've got their festival layout... but most importantly I still have
all of my touring information intact. Taking a look at my stage view I can see
that I have two rigs sitting right on top of each other so I'm gonna grab the
festival fixtures ,and I'm just gonna slide them over. After I've got them out
of the way, I'm gonna want to make a couple of new camera views for them and
the easiest way to do that is just to copy an existing camera and then edit it
with some new information. So here I'm gonna change that x value to -50, which I think is gonna get me roughly in range but if not- easy to
update. Okay we're close, I'm just gonna move them over, maybe zoom them in ... you know do whatever you need to do to get this right.
So, not so scary: most of the work is just in the prep. That's the PSR side of
things: you've now combined 2 show files. If you were on the road with a tour and
you had just brought in a festival rig, the next logical step would be to start
cloning... and that's the next video that I'm making, so I'll see you next week!
Thanks for watching and back that showfile up!
