Hi,
After some time of testing I decided to put Cuelux to work on a concert yesterday. Here are a couple of issues I had that made me fall back to our Lightcommander 12/2 after the first band:
1. One of our dimmer channels failed during the show so I had to change the target of my cue for the red background lights to another channel. After that, the cue did not work anymore (the corresponding fader in the overview and DMX-Monitor both do not indicate any output on the new channel). I had to completely remove the cue and set it up from the beginning.
2. I have put two fader-start cues for two theater-spots in a stack and assigned the stack on another fader to be able to control both lights at once. I also enabled fader-start for that stack. When I move the fader for the stack, the stacked cues start but their faders do not move. I then just made a new cue or group that directly controls both lights, but using stacks is so much easier ;-)
3. The MIDI-feedback is still not quite there. On my Ohm64 with my custom mapping when switching through the fader pages some buttons underneath the faders light up when switching on pages 7 and 8. Usually, these buttons are programmed to only light up when pressed (channel flash). This is the code I use in my mapping:
<action>
<trigger type="Unsigned" specifier="Change">Playback Fader 01 ButtonPri</trigger>
<tasks>
<task type="Midi" function="Control">
<argument type="Midi Address">Channel 1 - Message 9 - Index 65</argument>
</task>
</tasks>
</action>
The top row of the Ohm64 button matrix is set up as playback buttons and to light up, when a cue is running. When switching to fader pages 7 or 8 the leds indicating running cues turn off!
4. This is most serious: As I need manual fader control of the many PARs in our venue I have distributed all our lights over the fader pages, where some of them are already functionally combined DMX-channel-wise. E.g. on page 1 there are all background PARs with their different colors and on page 8 are all front spots. This is were the missing MIDI soft-take over produces lots of trouble: Lets say page 1/fader controls red backlight, software and hardware faders are both at 100%. The artist requests some less light from the front spot. The spot is on page 8/fader 1 (so it's the same physical fader on my Ohm64) and is set to let's say about 60% in software. While on page 8 touching the hardware fader 1 to adjust the intensity to e.g. 20% results in a short jump to 100% (because the hardware fader is at 100%), the artist is "roasted", you feel incredibly embarassed and the audience will have their own thoughts about you ;-)
I am well aware that many folks here use a BCF-2000 and do not have this problem. But there are many great controllers without motorized faders like the Ohm or the Midicon. With these units controlling lights over several fader pages can be a pure nightmare as the above example may have illustrated. And that's why I am such a strong evangelist for MIDI-Soft-takeover support in Cuelux. I feel awfully sorry and bad about it as I really love using Cuelux, but without soft-takeover (or some equivalent) I have to stop using it for our live concert situations for now. So I hope that is report helps to push soft-takeover a bit up on your todo-list ;-)
Best,
Ben