elektraLite CP100xt Manual Part Two - Manual (Page 24)

24
PRESETS & THE HI-LITE FUNCTION
STORING AND RECALLING PRESETS
Before we jump into this one and show how to create and edit presets and feature presets let’s define
exactly what is a preset and feature preset.
Presets.
The original idea behind the concept of presets was what was called ‘preset focuses’. Preset focuses
overcame a real problem when you toured with moving fixtures. The problem was getting the fixtures
into exactly the same position every night. In fact it was (and still is) just about impossible to physical
have your fixtures in identically the same position in two different venues. You can get them close but
not perfect.
In the prehistorical days of the late 80’s and early 90’s, you would start off the tour with a rehearsal
in the same venue for a few days. Here you would program up this unbelievable lighting plot. Come
to the first venue on the tour and you would scroll through your ‘looks’ on stage and the fixtures
would not be going to where you had programmed them to in the rehearsal. Now you’d work
frantically all afternoon and early evening (yep forget about the dinner call!) going through every cue,
chase, and macro touching up the positions for every light. It was a nightmare…….well that’s what I
was told because, of course, I was too young to remember!
The solution to this problem was preset focuses. They were like special cues that you only stored the
position of each fixture. So you would create preset focuses like the following:
Preset 1
All fixtures center stage
Preset 2 All fixtures stage left
Preset 3 All fixtures stage right
Preset 4 All fixtures up stage
Preset 5 All fixtures down stage
Preset6 All fixtures out into the audience
And so on.
Now you would add the preset focus position to the cue and then when you moved from venue to
venue all you would need to do was update your preset focus position. [The important point to
remember here is you add presets to a cue].
The CP-100 allows you to do this, not only for positional information (in other words pan and tilt) but
any of the features of the fixture. In fact, it is an idea that when you record presets that you record
pan, tilt, focus and perhaps (if it’s not in the full open position) iris. Of course that’s if your fixture
has an iris and focus features! It would be kind of hard if it didn’t!
With this is mind let’s record a plain old Preset.
For example, “Preset 1” could be all of your Silverados focused on center stage. The easy way to do
this is to:
1) Press: CLEAR-ALL-ENTER to clear all of the rotaries of your fixtures. This starts you with
a ‘clean’ slate.
2) Press: HILITE-FIXTURE-n-ENTER to hi-lite your fixture number n. This will open your
dimmer, iris, gate, color mixing, etc. but this information will not be recorded that into the
preset. These features will be transparent to the preset you record. You can also use commands