TWiRT Ep. 387 – Studio & Show Lighting with Brett Gilbert

More of us radio engineers are being called upon to provide adequate lighting for new venues.  Many stations are building live performance studios. Others are putting cameras in the control rooms.  Whether it’s for a live audience or a video camera, talent needs good lighting to be seen – in a good light.  Brett Gilbert with iHeartMedia in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been lighting up stages since high school. He shares a couple decades of hands-on knowledge with Chris Tobin and Kirk Harnack.

(Extensive) Show Notes – Courtesy of Brett Gilbert:

Elation is ‘pro/touring' grade:  www.elationlighting.com

American DJ is the ‘pro-sumer/DJ' grade:  www.adj.com

www.chauvetprofessional.com (pro/touring grade)

www.chauvetdj.com (pro-sumer/DJ grade)

Blizzard Lighting – more of a pro-sumer/DJ grade:  www.blizzardlighting.com

High-End Systems which was recently purchased by ETC Lighting:   www.highend.com

Control Software suggestions:

iPad control software:  http://www.synthe-fx.com/

Used with Enttec OpenDMXEthernet:  https://www.enttec.com/us/products/controls/dmx-over-ethernet/ode-poe-mk2-open-dmx-with-power-over-ethernet/

M-PC (formerly Martin, now Elation new website coming soon):  Software is free for up to 4 Universes of DMX:

https://www.martin.com/en-us/product-details/m-pc

You can buy add-on software from Ricard Dias who wrote software to allow USB MIDI devices to control the software: http://ricardo-dias.com/mpctools/

MA Lighting has their MA Dot2 PC which allows one free universe of DMX

These software packages work with fixture libraries and profiles so the software communicates in real world controls like red, green, blue, etc.  Some of the real cheap DMX controllers that just have faders and a DMX output will just work like controlling an AoIP system with the raw streams, they don't organize the channels into meaningful groups.  If you just had 4 channels of light bulbs on a dimmers with four faders it would make sense, but with a DMX fixture where you might have 20 channels controlling one fixture on individual faders it can be like a needle in a haystack.

Some various lighting groups:

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