Westward Ho! Tech Questions for Mike Sullivan

[Mike Sullivan]

Hi Les,
I’m glad you liked the article. For the theater in Wyoming we used a Dave Jones Synchronizer to get the DVD’s to play at the same time. We don’t really do much DVD’s anymore, however. Nowadays we use Alcorn-McBride BinLoop players to play Mpeg-2 files off of flashcards or a centralized server depending on the type of file (SD or Hd, etc.) The lighting cues are written as an Excel spreadsheet. The Creative Director usesthe timecode of the film to decide which lights will be active and for how long. A programmer takes that document and uses Cue Server to trigger each light, its fade ups and downs, as well as its intensity. Does that make sense?

[Les Stuck]

Thanks for the info. Yes, both the Dave Jones unit and the Adam-McBride unit
look like real problem solvers for this type of work.

> The Creative Director uses the timecode of the film to decide which lights will be active and for how
> long. A programmer takes that document and uses Cue Server to trigger each light, its fade ups and
> downs, as well as its intensity. Does that make sense?

Not quite. I’m used to sending MIDI to a lighting board to advance cues.

So what is the master sync? Do you run both the Adam-McBride and the Cue Server
off one NTSC sync generator? Or is there a master SMPTE generator?
Or does the Adam-McBride output SMPTE that the Cue Server slaves to?

Is the Cue Server hardware or software? Does it combine SMPTE and the Cue List (what
format?) to send DMX to the lighting board? I can’t seem to find Cue Server with Google.

Sorry to be so clueless, but I find this technique quite interesting, and I like to understand
the different ways people have resolved these issues.

Thanks for your time!
Les

http://www.stuckfootage.com