Did you know you can control devices using the master encoders?
On Cobalt 20 and Cobalt 10
we use the top row of masters in a special way: with Device Mode.
When I hit the [DEVICE] Mode key in the center of the console,
the encoders change their backlight color to tell you which mode they are in.
Instead of being master playbacks right now,
there are an addition 20, or 10, physical encoders for using with moving lights.
At this moment on this Cobalt 20 I actually have 25 encoders that I can use for moving light functions.
In the demo show file I am using, the lights are reasonably simple
so they will all fit within that 20 encoder space if I want,
which means I can have physical controls without any paging at all.
What you are seeing right now is encoders with gold outlines on their labels
indicate that this current selection of Mac 500s at the moment has those parameters.
Those fixtures don't have red, green, blue, amber, and white so you are seeing dashes in those positions.
If I had other fixtures in my rig that did use those parameters when I select those lights,
those parameters would then get this gold outline and you would start to see values instead of dashes.
It is a little bit of feedback to tell you what the lights are capable of doing.
I am just going to turn these lights on.
You can see both in the encoder label here the pan 50, tilt 38.
You can see that these values are throughout the system
because there is no difference, in this case, between using this type of an encoder to move the lights
versus using this type of an encoder to move the lights.
One of the advantages of using these small encoders
is that the big encoders have a certain amount of inertia to them
and they also have a certain amount of math on them
that says that when they jiggle – for example if a truck drives by – they won't move the lights.
We ignore a little bit of activity on these big encoders.
These little guys do not jiggle, and in fact they also have a little detent in them
so when you spin them – and I don't know if you can hear this, but I can feel it –
there is a little tick so I know when it is one step that moves.
You can see in my visualization that every time I move this wheel one tick
the lights are moving a very, very, very small amount.
Big, heavy moving lights with inertia with these nice big heavy wheels move great.
But when you want to move just a tiny little bit, what you find is you touch the encoder; the light doesn't move.
You touch the encoder; the light doesn't move.
You touch the encoder one more time and now the light goes swinging off stage
because it has piled up those ticks into an actual movement command.
These little guys do not exhibit that problem, so I can move very, very finely
or I can move very quickly and get a very large move out of the encoder.
The other thing I can do is I can type a number first
and push down on the encoder to jump to a specific level – in this case a tilt of 50.
I could type another number and send the lights specifically to that position if I know the number.
They are very, very flexible.
Another thing I can do here is – for example with Gobo wheels;
Gobo wheels are typically not split,
the Gobos are too far apart for it to look good.
Because those are usually snap functions,
one tick of this little encoder moves me one full Gobo at a time.
If I need to go back three I just count "one, two, three"
and I am back in that specific position very quickly.
If I hit [1] and that button, it goes back to open white.
Similar thing with color wheels;
depending on the fixture you might get split colors or not.
This one seems to be one that has a reasonable split color function.
That is great. These are far apart from each other at the moment because this is the default setting.
If I want to move these parameters around or if I want additional parameters
based on the rig in my system, I have some empty encoders I can use.
I can get rid of functions that I am never going to use;
for example, in this show file I do not have red, green, and blue.
I just don't have any LEDs in this rig.
I can hold [CLEAR] and empty those five encoders
and I could use them, now, for something else –
– like the second color wheel, for example, on these particular lights.
I found the second color wheel on my main encoders because I need this wheel key.
I hold that wheel key and hit an encoder that I want to put color on.
Now I have the second color wheel for these lights on a knob along with the first color wheel.
You can rearrange these parameters and customize them as much as you want.
It's very simple to move things around and change things up as you need them to be changed.
That is Device Mode on Cobalt.