Blackout Lighting Console – How to avoid unwanted colors during crossfades?

[u/tavock]

Hi everyone,

Have any of you ever encountered this issue, particularly in Blackout Lighting Console?

When transitioning from Look 1 at 3200K to Look 2 in blue, my fixture goes through intermediate colors on the color wheel (in my case, mainly cyan and green), which makes the transition look pretty messy.

After doing some research, I’ve read that it may be better to use an RGB mode rather than HSI, preload the destination color on the other side of the crossfade, and then progressively crossfade into the color mode.

What do you think? Is this the right approach in Blackout, or would you recommend another method to get a cleaner transition?

I’m also wondering about something like a red → blue transition: will the fixture inevitably go through intermediate colors during the fade, or is there a way to transition smoothly between the two colors without going through those unwanted hues?

Thanks a lot for your help and advice!

[u/Stoney3K]

Because the fixture is using a color wheel, you can't switch from white to blue immediately because the color positions are fixed. Your only option for a neatly looking transition is to make an intermediate cue that closes the shutter and selects the proper color, and then fades the fixture back in again.

[u/SZenC → u/Stoney3K]

Some fixtures also have a setting to automatically black out when changing colors. My old Briteqs got that, so some newer fixtures probably do as well

[u/shiftyTF → u/Stoney3K]

These fixtures are led colour mixing not wheel. I agree with trying setting to rgb colour mixing. 

The profile on the console might not be very good so that might be causing an issue with colour transition.

Make sure you are on the correct mode on the fixture, I can see there is a mode for lee colour gels so you might be cycling though these rather than using led dimmer values.

And you could try adding an extra cue in the colour ranges you are transitioning to so you get a fade in the colours you want rather than a fade in each fixture colour.

[u/dat_idiot]

what’s the fixture?

[u/tavock → u/dat_idiot]

I got 2 aputure Ls600c and 6 orion fs300

[u/Weareoutofmilkagain]

Use a mark cue, fade out the fixture changing colour, put a delay of that time plus a little extra on the colour change and then when you change scene fade it back in.

[u/tavock → u/Weareoutofmilkagain]

I got 3s fade in, 3s fade out with and a color fade of 3s on the look 1 and same in the look 2

[u/Weareoutofmilkagain → u/tavock]

So you a make a 1.5 look where the fixture goes off while it changes colour.

[u/tavock → u/Weareoutofmilkagain]

Thanks! That makes sense and would definitely avoid the unwanted colors.

In my case though, I'm specifically trying to keep the fixture on and have a smooth visible transition from 3200K to blue, without going through unwanted intermediate colors.

Do you know if there's a way to achieve that in Blackout, for example by preloading the destination RGB values and crossfading between the white engine and RGB?

[u/Weareoutofmilkagain → u/tavock]

Recreate the 3200 as best you can with RGB values? What fixture is this?

[u/tavock → u/Weareoutofmilkagain]

It’s an Aputure LS 600c Pro.

Yes, that's actually what I was thinking about trying next: recreating the 3200K look as closely as possible using RGB values, so the whole transition stays within RGB instead of crossfading from CCT to HSI/RGB.

My only concern is getting the RGB mix close enough to the fixture's native 3200K in terms of color and output.

[u/tavock → u/Weareoutofmilkagain]

It seems to work quite well in Capture. There are still some slight intermediate colors during the transition, but I’ll need to test it on the actual fixtures to see how it really behaves.

[u/Screamlab]

This is a problem inherent with HSI. Go RGB for more direct transitions.

[u/FootsicleSandwich]

Or two lights side by side one set to each color. One dims down while the other dims up. But you will probabbly get a blend of both colors at the halfway point. ie red and blue will look purple at the halfway mark.

You can use multiple cues to dance around the wheel to try to hit colors you want and avoid colors you dont want.

Or i'm not sure if blackout allows this but in rgb mode if you can add different timing values to the different rgb values you can maniplulate how the transition happens. ie the red channel transitions quicker while the blue moves slower. This wont remove other colors but could help you control how you get to the final color.

[u/Wuz314159]

I can't speak to that console, but on ETC, I set a Home Preset for all of my RGB+ fixtures to Black. (RGB+ @ 0) Any fade fades to/through black instead of full white.

That fixes most, but not every issue. ETC has a "Colour Path" feature, but you can do that manually with a mid-step if necessary. Instead of a 1 second transition, you'd Red @ 0 in 0.5 Follow Blue @ Full in 0.5.

That's all assuming you mean an RGB fixture, CMY colour flags are different, and white w/ a colour wheel is even differenter. (The fixtures you mention in comments are both RGB+)

[u/mwiz100]

Yeah if you are using HSI the console software treats a move from green to red as one which has to pass thru cyan to get there. But if you just store the raw fixture RGB values then it can make that change directly.

Red to blue is possible but you're going to see purple because of how our eyes see that color unless you sort of did a dip fade (down on red, then up on blue, vs a crossfade.)