The bottom half of this gives you controls to play the chaser (for any of the shoot modes) or pause it. There are also
three buttons that changes the speed. You can half the speed, double it or reset it to what the encoder below is set
to.
Remember that I said that all the cue timings are ignored? This means that as a default the cue fade times is 0 and
the result is that the chaser snaps between the different steps. If we would like it to do a more nicely fade from one
step to the next, we can do this using the second from the right encoder. This is currently called "Fade" and is a
percent number. This can be used to set how much of the available time should be used, to fade from one step to
the next. The more you turn this up, the more of the time is used to fade.
Next to the Fade encoder is the Speed encoder. Here you can set a more detailed speed. But if you are trying to
match the beat of some music, then you can press and hold the Speed key while you tap one the keys associated
with the chaser. This will dynamically change the chaser speed to the speed of your presses.
The MA dot2 is handling speed as BPM (Beats Per Minute). This is used for chasers and effects.
Running chasers from cues
One of the limits with chasers is that they are not easy integrated with cue playback.
The only way to do this is to add commands in your cue list. Try to press Cue to open the main cue list. Now scroll
all the way to the right and locate the "CMD" column.
In the command cell for cue 4 we want to add a command that runs the chaser. First make sure the chaser fader is
down and then note the executor page and executor number. It should be on page 3, executor number 1.
In the command cell type: fader 3.1 at 100 fade 2
And to turn it off again in cue 5 I write: fader 3.1 at 0 fade 5
Now you can try the cue list and when you run cue 4 then the chaser begins and with cue 5 it stops. Notice how
nice it fade in. The fade out isn't really that nice. That's because the X4's still got dimmer values from the main
executor. So after the 5 second fade then the colors snap to green. To fix this you'll need to make a cue 5.5 and
then add the X4 dimmers at 0% in cue 5 only. And then give cue 5.5 a follow as the trigger. I suggest you make this
:-)
Now this is almost all you need to know about chasers. The cues can have any kind of content, there can be as
many cues as you like. It's just a question of your imagination. Next chapter we are going to look at some effects.
2.21. Getting Started Guide - Effects
In this chapter we are going to look at the effects engine in the MA dot2.
Let's start from fresh. Turn everything off and reset all special masters.
Dimmer effects and effect theory
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