We need to come up with a solution for all of the elusive fixture profiles that are costing us countless hours of hunting down DMX charts and building our own hacked-together libraries. In the last few months, I have received several emails, text and even Facebook messages asking if I had a fixture profile for everything from a two channel smoke machine to a 48-channel beam wash hybrid fixture. These cries for help are coming from newbies as well as top-level programmers who are scrambling to find the correct profile for the current fixture that needs to be patched immediately so that they can get to programming.
A Growing Problem
I remember when you could list the all of the moving lights in the world on one hand and easily identify each of them. Each fixture had one mode, and that was the mode that you used. They had simple names like VL2, VL4 and Cyberlight. Most manufacturers had a spot and a wash that complemented each other in ability and intensity.
Nowadays, there are more fixtures in the catalogues than there are stagehands to push them from truck to dock. Countless names of name brand and knockoff fixtures with enough three-letter acronyms (TLAs) to make NASA envious are being invented daily. Keeping track of their profiles can be tedious. Some manufacturers are very good about sending out their DMX charts to console companies and making them available to the end users. Others release the lights to the public before the infrastructure to control them has been fully implemented. Like the iPhone, they release the fixture to the public and then fix any complaints by updating the software and sending out numerous new versions to be uploaded on-site or in the warehouse. This leads to further complications when a production has two of the exact same fixtures on a show with different software, firmware versions and even different DMX channel counts.
Benny Kirkham of Overnight Production was nice enough to tell me a story about this exact problem. “For New Years Eve, ten or so years ago, I contacted a fixture manufacturer to get a channel map for their newest fixture which had just been released,” he begins. “They told me that no way would they release their DMX map (which is a standard part of any other fixture’s manual). It was their corporate opinion that inexperienced programmers who built profiles from DMX maps they found in manuals gave the lights a bad name by creating bad profiles and then running the fixtures in ways that made them look subpar. I would just have to wait until their approved profile was released (three days after my show). I got nowhere with these people. I had to click DMX channels one at a time over the course of hours to piece together what this light, which I was beginning to hate with a passion, did. Once I had created the profile from scratch, I posted my results everywhere on the Internet that I could think of, with some choice words about my thoughts on their policy. I only recently started using anything made by that company again.”
Envisioning the Solution
I propose a fantastical solution. A single database of all fixture profiles that can be found at a central website. Something like: AllOfTheProfilesYouNeed.com, WhereIsThatProfileForThatOneFixtureThatThatOneGuyUsed OnThatOneShowLastSummer.com or simply FixtureLibrary.com. (That URL is available, if anyone is reading this and wants to take the time.)
The top of the website will have dropdown menus for every console. Inside the dropdown will be every lighting manufacturer. Once you are inside the manufacturer window you will be able to search for the correct fixture in a single window. Preferably, there would be a simple search bar for each manufacturer. These profiles will be easily accessible on a server that is available 24/7. Once located, they would be downloadable to USB with a single click.
It will be the responsibility of the lighting manufacturers to coordinate with the console programmers to update the wiki style website and label each profile according to manufacturer, model, mode and channel numbers. Then, much like an up-and-coming DJ, we will simply be able to download all of the tools that we need to make the show great.
This website also needs to include user manuals, brochures, power usage and DMX Charts for each fixture. If manufacturers would like to go above and beyond, they could even include AutoCAD symbols, Vectorworks symbols and 3D files. This will help us to finally toss out that huge three ring binder of old fixture manuals, Excel sheets and maybe even the heritage lighting stencil with the Par 56 Batten and seven different versions of the Altman ellipsoidal that takes up so much space in my desk.
Once we are able to acquire a default profile for our console, we need the ability to manipulate the fixture library to suit our needs. We need to be able to edit the profiles locally on the console. Some consoles have already implemented this feature, some haven’t. I like to move attributes around, so that they make sense to me. I put similar attributes together so that they require fewer attribute groupings. For instance, I always put the MagicBlade chases into my gobo attributes. I put all of the sizing channels of media servers into focus or zoom.
Eric Marchwinski of Earlybird Visual weighed in on the topic for me. He said, “Fixture profiles are a personal preference, and many people program according to what they’re used to. I always load my modified personalities, as do many other programmers I know. MA-share works well, but even inside of the MA universe, there are multiples and variations due to everyone’s taste, and changing technology,” he says. “The ability to adapt whatever rolls across their plate into a functioning personality, that they leave better than then found it, and share with others is key. I am often approached by programmers asking about these types of issues they have, and am always happy and willing to help or explain what experiences I have had with the same fixtures.”
Media Servers, Too
The time that is most crucial is when it comes to media servers. Studying a DMX chart for most major servers can be more difficult than finding a genuine Sharpy in South America. Media server DMX charts are constantly changing from each software update to the next. Just because you have a profile for version 3.8.00.1124 does not mean that 3.8.00.1124-2 will work for you. We don’t have time to go hunting through manufacturer websites that lead us to vendor websites that lead us to a dead Dropbox file in order to confirm that the mask layer was moved to DMX channel 18, even though it was on channel 24 for the last eight software versions.
In a perfect world, once we have the fixture library problem sorted, we will be able to work faster than a drummer looking for a cash advance on a Friday afternoon. We will be able to assemble shows easier than a groupie can get backstage at a Mötley Crüe show. We will be able to patch quicker than a fourteen-year-old girl getting tossed out of a mosh pit at a
Disturbed concert.
