One of the most useful tools of the Cobalt System,
is the ability to create a topographical view known as a Channel Layout.
Channel Layouts can be used anywhere you see a channel view, so
if we look at the Live tab, normally we're looking at this high density channel view
where you see a lot of intensity information for a lot of channels,
but another option for looking at this information is more graphical.
So this is a Channel Layout view and the show file we're looking at right now is the demo Theater show file,
which is available in all installations of Cobalt.
It has a lot of examples if you wanna play along or
you can look at these examples later on
when you want to work on learning how to do Channel Layouts.
This is the first Channel Layout in this show file, and this is just an example of a topographical view
of the lighting plan for this particular show
with some batons drawn in and some fixtures shown in icons.
There's additional information here like the house lights, which looks like a little house,
and a special or a fog machine that's on channel 24 that just looks like a block
and then a regular channel box with a capture camera.
The rest of the rig is shown in icons that indicate somewhat what type of light
is being used, whether it's a wash light or an ellipsoidal, whether it's a moving light, wash or spot,
that sort of thing.
You can choose what kind of icon you want to use with your fixtures from the list that's
included in the editor, I'll show you in a moment.
You can also draw batons, like you see here, just as simple lines
or you can draw boxes or circles as well.
This one's a little boring, all the lights are the same color,
the batons aren't very interesting, there's not much text here to show me
too much information,
however, even without all of that I can choose
either by clicking or by tapping to select lights
then bring up intensity information, you can see that that light then shows a bit of a beam,
and an intensity value so that the channel number is shown in the center of the fixture.
If the light has color mixing, you get a color blob
which indicates what the mixing channels are doing at that moment.
In addition to simply touching a single light, I could use a mouse or my finger and drag a box.
You'll notice that when I included channel 11 it got de-selected and everybody else got selected,
so it inverts the selection based on how you drag that box.
Now I have control over just those lights.
If I drag another box on other lights and don't include any of those originals, it adds them in,
so now I have bigger group selected and so on and so forth.
De-select my lights, I can click on a line or a box
and it will select lights that are on that baton,
so now I have just control over that electric.
If you wanna get fancier, you can change your layouts using color.
The way to change formats in live is to simply type the number of the format,
so [2], and hit the [Format] key
and that will change you from one format to the next.
So here's a Channel Layout, which is the exact same layout
except now all of the icons have different outline and fill colors set.
This helps you to get a sense of
which lights are moving lights, which ones are conventionals, perhaps which ones are
conventionals of a certain type,
or to give you a hint about what gel you might have placed in each of those fixtures.
All the rules about selection apply, even when you use colors like this.
Sometimes, you don't necessarily want a topographical view that looks like your light plot.
Sometimes, you want a more magic sheet-like layout
[3] [Format]
So here's an example on that show file of the layout that is more
logically set up rather than actually graphically like your light plot.
And in here you can see some additional objects that are available in a Channel Layout.
So you can still see fixture icons as we had before.
Once you set an icon for a fixture it sticks to that channel, so anytime you use it from that point on,
it's still gonna be the same shape.
Other things you can draw here are boxes, you can see the text that's been applied to a box,
and you can see group selects in some of these boxes, focus palettes, color palettes,
beam palettes and so on.
These are all things you can activate by touching them on a touch screen or clicking them with a mouse.
So let's look at how we actually draw this.
And the way that's done is in the {Browser} under {Channels}
{Settings and Tools}, there's the {Channel Layout List}.
And the Channel Layout List is simply a list of all of the layouts in your show file
and when you want to add a new one, you type a number for it.
I'll type [11] to keep it away from the default ones, or the demo ones here rather,
and hit [Insert].
It's going to ask you whether or not you want to make a completely empty worksheet to start with
or if you want to just automatically include all of the patched channels or
your current selected channels from the show file.
We'll start with empty 'cause I'm gonna show you all of the editing options that you have.
So there's number 11.
You don't have to insert the next available. Right?
I could have chosen number 9. I didn't, I chose number 11,
that's because I can use the numbers of these Channel Layouts
logically in my head in order to apply them quickly to channel views.
We'll give it a name so that we can see that name when we choose it,
helps keep things straight.
And then I'll go back and I'll hit [Modify]
on the number of the Channel Layout, and that will open up a Channel Layout Editor.
(give ourselves a little more room)
You get a grid which indicates the center of the view.
It's good to sort of start at the center and work your way out.
If you start way up here in the corner,
then it's most likely that you're starting in a space that's not generally shown in a tab by default.
You might have to go seeking your data.
So keep in mind that the center of this grid is really the center of the tab
and set your information based on that.
You could make massive Channel Layouts
and then have to pan around them in order to find information
or you can make smaller Channel Layouts, more specific,
like just the set mounts, or just the over stage, or just the front of house.
And then in your Channel Layout List you could choose this auto selectable option,
and as you select channels from the keypad or from group selects
that correspond to a specific Channel Layout,
your Live view would then automatically switch to that layout for you
as you select those channels.
So that's a way to make these Channel Layouts a little bit more manageable is to keep them
reasonably tight to the size of the tabs that you have available.
One of the ways you can insert information here is to simply select channels as you would Live.
So, [11] [CHAN] [14] [THRU], and then hit the [INSERT] key,
and you can see that four tiny little wash lights showed up on my screen.
I'll drag them down to the middle just for demo purposes,
and zoom in a bit so we can see them.
The symbol, in this case, they've taken from the Channel Database.
I could actually change the symbol myself using this drop down menu.
And these are all of the icons that we have available in this system.
And we'll leave them as moving head wash for now.
I have four virtual encoders on the screen.
Stretch Horizontal, Stretch Vertical, Size, and Rotate.
These four encoders can be clicked and dragged with a mouse,
or they correspond to four physical encoders if you're working with console hardware.
Size: makes the icons bigger or smaller.
We'll make them big.
Stretch Horizontal:
Stretches them along an axis, along the line that they're on.
If they were stacked vertically, the Stretch Vertical
encoder would spread them up and down as opposed to left right.
Rotate is a fun one.
So I can rotate them as if they are on a single bar by just using the encoder by itself.
Or if I hold the [ALT] key & use that encoder I can rotate those lights on their own axes
until I'm happy.
So those are all the options you can do to an icon for light.
You can see that we show it as if it's on at Full so that you know the full extent of its size.
So for sizing and placement you get an idea of how big they're possibly going to be
when they're being used.
Another way to Insert lights is to use this drop down menu here.
So I click on that icon and make that box active
and now I can choose what type of information I wish to Insert.
So I can pick Groups, for example.
I can type the number of the first one I want to Insert.
I did number 1, could be number whatever.
And now when I click I'm gonna keep Inserting Group Select boxes groups,
until I run out of which in this show file is Group 9.
And I get a little message that reminds me that that's the last object of that Type in this show file.
I could continue to Insert more of these Group boxes
and they would fill then as I make groups in the future.
You can also use this to draw lines, boxes, and circles.
So I'll draw you a box.
And then I can place icons within this box.
I can give the box itself its own background and fill colors
to make it less in your face, if that's what you're after.
And then I can actually apply text to this box.
So I could use this to group things together.
For example, Front Of House or something, your choice based on your show.
And when I've got my text on there I can change the size of my text using this encoder.
So you can scale it so that it's appropriate to the size of the box you're drawing.
But let's go back to cursor,
and now I'm gonna show you the Align Wizard.
So this is a bit slapdash, the way I've inserted these.
So I'm gonna select four of those boxes and I'm going to {Align} them.
So now I can choose how I want to Align those four lights, those four select boxes,
whatever I want to do.
I can Align their positioning information.
So equal horizontal spacing for example, just to do a little clean up.
But I can also do things like Align the rotation of the icons,
Align their size, Align their colors.
And this is a way just to work with editing within the Magic Sheet as you go along.
Once I hit {OK} I cleaned these guys up nicely.
I can do the same thing again now for the top row.
And it just makes everything a lot more tidy.
And then as an example, now that I've got an array of things
I could spread them out more,
I can spread them out or tighten them up vertically as well using the encoders.
So this works for any of the types of objects,
icons, or select buttons that you might place into a magic sheet.
Another thing you can do with lights, I mentioned colors, so we select these icons.
You can see I have outline and fill options here. I can say
I'd rather these have an orange outline and a
black fill, for example, and now my icons look like that.
Another way to Insert lights.
We'll clean that up and I'll show you another way, is to use the {Wizard}.
And here you can see I can choose to Insert an Array of objects or in a Circular pattern.
So remember that group example.
I could say I want [5] by [5] of {Groups} starting at Group 1, sure, why not?
And hit {Execute}.
And now you can see that it Inserts for me a nice square block of buttons.
And now from this point forward if I continue to record groups in this show file
the text for those groups would simply appear on each of those buttons as that content became available.
This is a way that you can create customized button screens for yourself if you wish.
If you want to have your Groups and your Palettes
arranged in your way as opposed to arranging our way in the Direct Selects,
a Channel Layout would be the way to go.
Another option in that Wizard is Circle.
So I could say I want to insert [4] Channels, for example.
{Channels}, starting at Channel [11].
And then I can choose if it's gonna Insert in this Circle in the
clockwise or counterclockwise direction.
I could use a Channel Selection if I've already got one if I'm doing specific stuff
and hit {Execute}.
And now you can see that my lights instead of being inserted in a straight line
are inserted in a circular pattern
in a specific direction and that's determined by my settings in the Wizard.
I also have {Copy} and {Paste} buttons.
So here I have a selection of lights.
I can say {Copy}, and then {Paste}.
And when I {Paste}, I'm asked for offset information and for mirroring information.
So depending on what your intention is with doing the {Copy} and {Paste} action,
I could say I want the same circle but I want a different grouping of lights, for example.
I could say I want that different grouping of lights
and I want them to be mirrored onto the other side of stage,
and then I could choose which of the axes I want to mirror on.
Make your choices appropriately, hit {OK},
and you can see here I've chosen four completely different types of lights,
but they are in the same relationship to each other
as the first four.
Let's just change those colors to make them a little easier to look at.
And then one last thing I can do inside my Channel Layout Editor is I can actually
change the values of lights.
So if I select this light and I don't want it to be Channel 11, I want it to be Channel 1,
for example, I can type [1] [MODIFY]
and it changes that icon to correspond to that different Channel.
I can also do this for multiple selections.
So I select multiples using shift.
And I say [1] [MODIFY]
and you can see that I get to change those appropriately.
So these are the editing tools within our Channel Layout Editor.
I've used a mouse because, in this case,
it really is helpful to be able to click and drag using a mouse,
so I do recommend that.
And then what it ends up looking like in the end is totally up to you.
I've shown you some of the editing tools
and I think you'll have fun time
developing your own Channel Layouts for your own shows.