MANOLATOR’S SOFTWARE FIRST AID

Intro: Two basic screens to Program and Play.

Manolator’s Software has two basics screens: the MainDesk that is used to program Chasers and Submasters, and the PlayDesk that is used to execute the programmed on the MainDesk.

When you open the program, PlayDesk is shown and MainDesk is also open but minimized. If you want to program any chaser or Submaster, open it with the MainDesk button at the Playdesk.

At MainDesk you can also make some settings, and load and save your shows.

First Step: Go to MainDesk and Start to Program

At the MainDesk you can program Chasers and Submasters.

Submasters are like static scenes that you can control its intensity with his corresponding slider at the PlayDesk. There ar 12 Submasters and a Master for all of them.

To Program a Submaster first select the submaster number (from 1 to 12) at the box with <+> and <–> buttons, then simply put the 64 sliders of the MainDesk at the desired position and then press the <Submaster> button, now you have record a Submaster at the selected position (note that the color of the box changes to tell you that current submaster is not free, but used).

Press the <Clear> button to reset the MainDesk and then go to the PlayDesk…You will see also that the number box of the just recorded Submaster has changed, try also to move the slider and you will see at the green little boxes at the bottom that the intensity changes corresponding with the channels recorded at this Submaster.

To delete a submaster, you must simply record an empty mixer (64 values to zero) to the Submaster you want to erase, at it will become a free submaster again (the color changes again, to tell you that it is an free one).

Chasers are a set of steps, and every step is like a snapshoot of the sliders of the MainDesk.

First you must select the Chaser Bank from 1 to 4 and then the Chaser number from 1 to 16 with the <+> and <-> buttons. Then put the desired values at the sliders, and press <Prog>. Now you have recorded the step one (note that the chaser number box change to tell you that it is not an empty chaser).

You can make chasers of only one step to make static scenes too, but usually you will like to add more steps by pressing the <Add> button. Press the <Add> button and you will have a second step at your chaser but still empty…move the sliders to the desired position for the step 2 and press the <Prog> button.

Congratulations: You have your first Chaser of 2 steps. Now you can Add & Program more steps until 64 steps.

To test your Chaser try the <Play&Pause> and <Stop> buttons, you will see the blue bars to tell you what is on each step. To navigate thru the steps, press <Step> or <+> & <-> buttons of the step number box.

Also you can pause the chaser at desired step with <Play&Pause>. If you press <Stop> twice the chaser level slider goes to cero…and will go up again by pressing the <Play> button.

You can delete the shown step by pressing <Del>. Also you can <Insert> a step before the shown step (this step will be an empty step until you program it).

You can modify the Speed of the current Chaser by moving the Speed slider and press <Prog> to store this value with the chaser.

Note: You can record a chaser of only 1 step but this one must be at least with one slider at non zero value. Chasers with only empty steps will be ignored when you will save your show file, but not when you are executing the program to give you the chance of go back and add a non zero step to this empty chaser.

Operating the MainDesk: Other buttons on the MainDesk to play with.

<CALL SUBM>: It is useful to recall a recorded submaster in order to modify or overwrite it. Also you can change the recalled slider values into a step of a chaser or to another submaster.

<CALL STEP>: It does the same as above but with the steps of the chasers, you can recall a step, then modify it and then overwrite it (or record it to a different step position or to a submaster)

<SWAP> & <MIX> : Those are options for the Recalling procedures. If Mix is checked, the recalled values will be mixed with the actual values of the sliders (higher take presence). If Swap is checked, actual values of the sliders will be replaced by the recalled values.

<ON> & <OFF>: Those are to disable or enable the Mixer (the blue bars will disappear telling you that now the mixer does not take effect on the output DMX values.

<Monitor Enabled> & <Monitor Disabled>: It is not the same as above... the mixer take effect on the outputs but you can not see the blue bars (monitors) of the channels. This option is to save computer resources, as when you are not programming you don't need this feature on the screen. The PlayDesk has little green boxes at the bottom that will serves you as monitors of the outputs.

<Prog. OffLine>: It gives you the option of program Chaser Steps or Submasters when you are executing a Show or when you don't want people to see that you are programming. The Chaser Steps or Submasters will be recorded but without effect on the outputs (it puts the mixer on and off directly).

Save your work: Go to the file menu and save your show.

PlayDesk: Executing your programs.

Before going to the PlayDesk, disable the monitor at the MainDesk (blue button at the top), the blue bars of the sliders will then disappear. It will save resources (you only need it when you are programming).

If any blue Bar is displayed, but all the sliders of the MinDesk are down, the slider of the current Chase must be up (one chaser’s step is shown and present at the outputs). Please click twice on <Stop> button or put the chaser’s slider off…

Go to the PlayDesk, now you can see that the buttons of the programmed Chasers are displayed in different colors, also used Submasters number boxes are displayed in red.

Press the chasers buttons turn on your chasers or press the <Off> button to stop the desired group of Chasers. Also you can modify the programmed speed of the chasers with the speed buttons. Also give names to the chasers and store them…

You can also try to move the sliders of the PlayDesk to modify the intensity of the Submasters. Try also the Master Slider that affect all of the sliders.

If you like the current combination on the PlayDesk, you can store it into a <Preset>, that can include what you want: from nothing at all, to only one Chaser or different levels of Submaster Sliders. To store a Preset, press the "<Copy to preset...>" button and then the target Preset. You can also make an “auto chase” between the non empty presets, with the <AUTO On-Off> button (with the desired speed).

For easy access to your chasers and presets, you can also use the keyboard to activate-deactivate Chasers and Presets, press <1> to <8> and <q> to <i> for Bank 1, <a> to <k> and <z> to <;> for Bank 2, same but with shift key for Banks 3 and 4 and first 16 Presets are <control> key with <q> to <i> and <a> to <k>.

WinAmp addon:

Press the <Run> button if WinAmp it is not running, load your song’s file list for your show and then press play. At this moment the program will connect with WinAmp if everything its ok but you can also connect by pressing the <Connect> button. The difference is that you will not affect the song that is playing, by playing it from the beginning if <Connect> is pressed.

When WinAmp is playing and the connection is ok, you can <Capture> desired points of the song to synchronize the events of the PlayDesk with the music (or video). First you must select the event that you want to execute form the list on the left, and then press the <Capture> button. A new event will appear in the right list (events list box), and the info of the event and time is shown in the black text box. One click on the events list box (when WinAmp is paused or stopped) will show you the event info (song, type of events, time etc) in the info box.

To select the desired event from the left list press the <Capture> button at the desired point. If you want the captured event to be executed when capturing you must press the <Do it at Capture> button to turn it on before the capture.

You can change an event fron another by selecting it from the right list and pressing <Change>, the stored event will be changed for the selected from the left list. Also a selected event from the right list can be deleted by pressing the <Delete> button.

Try double clicking on the right list to make WinAmp go and play this point of the song and also to execute the events from this point position…

To correct timing errors, press the <Time from list> button: this is a way to change the point of music of the event (at WimAmp stopped or paused) . First select the event that you want to make an accurate time change from the right list, then press the <TIME from list> button, the “fine time box” now shows the time of the selected event.

Change this shown time to -5 or +5 by pressing the “<<” and “>>” buttons (or try +50 or -50 by double clicking at those buttons), when the time is ok, press the <Apply this Time> and the selected time point event will be modified. Also you can select another point before and then press the <Apply this Time> to modify another events time, but using another as a reference….Also you can press the <ADD this like New> and you will add a new event to the list with the selected time but with the left list selected event…(Try it and it will be easy to understand).

If you are not sure what events to add to your music but you know the points…capture those points, save them to a file and modify them after when you have programmed your Chasers or Submasters. Also you can extract the points of a stored Show and use the same points and music with another program to get different results.

Save your work: Go to the file menu and save your show.

To include the WinAmp events in your Show file, save again your show by going to the File menu of the MainDesk (to store a WinAmp file list of songs with the same name of the Show, will help you to put them together when the show is used…).

Important notes and limitations:

The program does not recognize titles of the list but only positions, if you change it the show will go with the same number of song of the play list (that could be a different song if you have change the list order).

You can extract only the WinAmp events of a show to try another light show but with the same points recorded for the music.

Also you can save and load the events of winamp to Load a Show and then load the WinAmp events over the recorded events of the loaded Show (to use those Chaser, Submaster and Preset but with the events point of another events file or a different Show).

Due to the way that Windows does alphabetical ordering, you can only use up to 9 songs in the playlist of WinAmp because for Windows 1000000098 is less than 10030. (I hope to solve this, sorry)

Try also video files:

Try opening a video file (like avi or mpeg) it also works well...