-
Welcome to the WDWMAGIC.COM Forums!
Please take a look around, and feel free to sign up and join the community.
A bit of a whoops with Wishes tonight
- Thread starter MrNonacho
- Start date
djronnieb
New Member
Boo "Fires Wishes". I'm not sure what his job title is, I do know he has worked with the nighttime shows for many years and knows everything about them. And I always enjoy reading his posts, because he is full of knowelge.
So when it comes to night time shows, he is the guy to forword your questions to.
So when it comes to night time shows, he is the guy to forword your questions to.
JMagicFink
Member
Boo is awesome!
Boo, you are awesome! Thanks for providing so much information!
by the way.... we all want your job!
:animwink: :lol:
Boo, you are awesome! Thanks for providing so much information!
by the way.... we all want your job!
:animwink: :lol:
MagliteL13
Active Member
Thanks a ton for the info Boo.
diddy_mouse
Well-Known Member
*applauds Boo for the vast fireworks knowledge* :sohappy:
i have no clue what goes into making such a wonderful show...i just "ooh" and "ahh" at the pretty lights and music :lookaroun :lol:
i have no clue what goes into making such a wonderful show...i just "ooh" and "ahh" at the pretty lights and music :lookaroun :lol:
askmike1
Member
Too bad this happened. Kind of the opposite of what happened to RoE when I was there. For one show, the earth globe floated out but failed to show the movie until almost the very end (and you could see a little computer mouse pointer when it eventually turned on). For another show, the globe's movie was about 1 beat off from the music. Otherwise, the show was great (and the music alone held the guests interests).
If this was FitS, the music really wouldn't have mattered as much, but Wishes seems much more music oriented (like RoE). Hopefully whatever caused this will be fixed (or prevented from happening again).
-Michael
If this was FitS, the music really wouldn't have mattered as much, but Wishes seems much more music oriented (like RoE). Hopefully whatever caused this will be fixed (or prevented from happening again).
-Michael
ComputerChris
New Member
More commentary
Hi folks,
Glad to see some good, nuts-and-bolts technical discussion here on wdwmagic. I just got back from a trip to Disneyland helping with some technical upgrades of their Remember fireworks show, so I'll throw the following comments into the mix.
Addressing the ETC vs. High End issue regarding lighting consoles, it really all comes down to the extensive use of automated fixtures in a rig such as this. Many of ETC's consoles can chase to SMPTE (and do it rather well), and in fact an Obsession II is one of the lighting consoles used on DL's Fantasmic show. The problem is although some ETC consoles have built in controls for automated lights, they are not built as automated lighting consoles. ETC is primarily a theatrical lighting company, and thus their current consoles do a very good job of controlling theatrical lighting systems. They are designed with such features as single cuelist playback and lots of submasters for you to play with. High End/FPS, on the other hand, builds consoles designed for automated lighting with features such as pallets, many simultaneous cuelist playback, and multi-parameter fixtures. You really wouldn't put an Expression on a summer concert tour; likewise getting a Broadway production running solely off of a Hog III would be a really hard sell.
As was suggested and confirmed by boo52, this sort of problem would fall into the “audio server failure” category, most likely a hard drive crash. Most hard drive based audio playback boxes out there cash the music into RAM 1-2 seconds beforehand it’s needed, and the actual audio sample is then read out of RAM. The “skipping” you heard probably occurred because the hard drive stopped returning new samples (i.e. it “crashed”), and since nothing had been written into RAM to replace the old samples after the cashe had looped through once, they were read out again. Given this scenario, it could be hard to detect that something has gone wrong, as the box could have keep on generating timecode (this depends on how the systems is designed, sometimes people use a built-in timecode output, sometimes it’s recorded as a separate track; there are pros and cons to both setups).
I’m guessing that all the boxes that listen to timecode, such as the Hog, the FireOne system, and the AMX/show control system, probably are set to freewheel timecode if they’ve lost it, but systems were stopped manually after the situation was looked at. It would make sense to manually release everything on the Hog, as the lighting cues by themselves wouldn’t be very interesting without music, but keep the pyro going as fireworks sort of dazzle by themselves.
Somebody brought up the use of media servers for a show such as this. As MagliteL13 mentioned, buying a Catalyst server to playback audio is like buying a 747 for the peanuts. Although Catalyst can do audio, it is really designed to playback and manipulate video. There are a large number of products on the market that will do audio playback really well, and typically operate over Midi show control rather than DMX. However, catalyst is a very powerful tool, so I wouldn’t rule it out for some enhancements at some point down the road…
Disney does make extensive use of the Hog III rack mount unit, serving as both a stand-alone playback box and as a backup system. One thing to keep in mind is that these productions are constantly evolving, so I bet you’d be surprised how often things are changed/deleted/added.
BTW basically all the non-automated lighting at Disney is controlled by ETC sensor racks on the back end.
If you are interested in this kind of discussion/technical info, I would suggest checking out the LightNetwork at http://www.lightnetwork.com/ . It's full of lots of good people who, if they don't know the answer to a question, usually know somebody who does.
Cheers everybody!
-Chris
Hi folks,
Glad to see some good, nuts-and-bolts technical discussion here on wdwmagic. I just got back from a trip to Disneyland helping with some technical upgrades of their Remember fireworks show, so I'll throw the following comments into the mix.
Addressing the ETC vs. High End issue regarding lighting consoles, it really all comes down to the extensive use of automated fixtures in a rig such as this. Many of ETC's consoles can chase to SMPTE (and do it rather well), and in fact an Obsession II is one of the lighting consoles used on DL's Fantasmic show. The problem is although some ETC consoles have built in controls for automated lights, they are not built as automated lighting consoles. ETC is primarily a theatrical lighting company, and thus their current consoles do a very good job of controlling theatrical lighting systems. They are designed with such features as single cuelist playback and lots of submasters for you to play with. High End/FPS, on the other hand, builds consoles designed for automated lighting with features such as pallets, many simultaneous cuelist playback, and multi-parameter fixtures. You really wouldn't put an Expression on a summer concert tour; likewise getting a Broadway production running solely off of a Hog III would be a really hard sell.
As was suggested and confirmed by boo52, this sort of problem would fall into the “audio server failure” category, most likely a hard drive crash. Most hard drive based audio playback boxes out there cash the music into RAM 1-2 seconds beforehand it’s needed, and the actual audio sample is then read out of RAM. The “skipping” you heard probably occurred because the hard drive stopped returning new samples (i.e. it “crashed”), and since nothing had been written into RAM to replace the old samples after the cashe had looped through once, they were read out again. Given this scenario, it could be hard to detect that something has gone wrong, as the box could have keep on generating timecode (this depends on how the systems is designed, sometimes people use a built-in timecode output, sometimes it’s recorded as a separate track; there are pros and cons to both setups).
I’m guessing that all the boxes that listen to timecode, such as the Hog, the FireOne system, and the AMX/show control system, probably are set to freewheel timecode if they’ve lost it, but systems were stopped manually after the situation was looked at. It would make sense to manually release everything on the Hog, as the lighting cues by themselves wouldn’t be very interesting without music, but keep the pyro going as fireworks sort of dazzle by themselves.
Somebody brought up the use of media servers for a show such as this. As MagliteL13 mentioned, buying a Catalyst server to playback audio is like buying a 747 for the peanuts. Although Catalyst can do audio, it is really designed to playback and manipulate video. There are a large number of products on the market that will do audio playback really well, and typically operate over Midi show control rather than DMX. However, catalyst is a very powerful tool, so I wouldn’t rule it out for some enhancements at some point down the road…
Disney does make extensive use of the Hog III rack mount unit, serving as both a stand-alone playback box and as a backup system. One thing to keep in mind is that these productions are constantly evolving, so I bet you’d be surprised how often things are changed/deleted/added.
BTW basically all the non-automated lighting at Disney is controlled by ETC sensor racks on the back end.
If you are interested in this kind of discussion/technical info, I would suggest checking out the LightNetwork at http://www.lightnetwork.com/ . It's full of lots of good people who, if they don't know the answer to a question, usually know somebody who does.
Cheers everybody!
-Chris
MagliteL13
Active Member
Some stuff in betweenComputerChris said:
ComputerChris said:
Wow! Very well thought out. Welcome, BTW. I haven't been over to lightnetwork for a long time now. More of an audio guy myself (who gets roped into video a lot).
WDWScottieBoy
Well-Known Member
Wishes was amazing that night! Couldn't have gone off any better....I mean....DOH!
It had a beautiful start with Tinkerbell and all, but then all we heard was "Your freedom.....your freedom.....your freedom" and then they cut it. I thought they would have restarted it or done something about it. There was a couple standing next to me that were seeing it for the first time, as well as a Disney photographer that was seeing it for the first time that night as well.
Like the couple said to me, "At least pictures don't have sounds." I waited 3 hours to be right at the flagpole on MSUSA to get a great spot, and then it got ruined.
It had a beautiful start with Tinkerbell and all, but then all we heard was "Your freedom.....your freedom.....your freedom" and then they cut it. I thought they would have restarted it or done something about it. There was a couple standing next to me that were seeing it for the first time, as well as a Disney photographer that was seeing it for the first time that night as well.
Like the couple said to me, "At least pictures don't have sounds." I waited 3 hours to be right at the flagpole on MSUSA to get a great spot, and then it got ruined.
askmike1
Member
I was there in early July and was usually able to get their 10 minutes early and get a great spot right by the Sharing the Magic statue (Roy and Minnie)WDWScottieBoy said:I waited 3 hours to be right at the flagpole on MSUSA to get a great spot, and then it got ruined.
-Michael
WDWScottieBoy
Well-Known Member
askmike1 said:
That's where I was standing, right against the railing facing them. Of course, right before Spectro started, a HUGE Brazialian tour group came and decided to watch the show there as well and stand all over the bench and statue to look over everyone. :hammer:
Actually the castle is run off a "Hog PC." It's basically the Hog 2, only PC based.
Disney does own a GrandMa (Mannequins at Pleasure Island) as well as a Hog3 and all sorts of ETC stuff. Sorain's lighting runs off an ETC. Mickey’s Philermagic off a Hog3. Guess which one crashs more often....
As far as "fire-one" goes, disable the local timecode backup next time.
Disney does own a GrandMa (Mannequins at Pleasure Island) as well as a Hog3 and all sorts of ETC stuff. Sorain's lighting runs off an ETC. Mickey’s Philermagic off a Hog3. Guess which one crashs more often....
As far as "fire-one" goes, disable the local timecode backup next time.
WDWScottieBoy
Well-Known Member
djronnieb said:
I saw an average of 6-10 groups per day, with most groups having 50+ people. And rude....that's a compliment to them. I got so sick of them this past trip as I'd never seen so many of them.
[/off soap box]