SYDNEY – From 1936 to 1970, the Trocadero, or "Troc," for short, was Sydney's main big band orchestra venue. Gone for four decades, the venue returned for a four-day period at Sydney Town Hall. The festival offered visitors a huge dance floor and swing music performed by Sydney's all-girl Sirens Big Band. LD Matthew Marshall and programmer Peter Rubie used a Jands Vista T4 running Byron beta software to control a rig that included close to 50 moving lights plus LED and conventional gear. "After beta testing Vista Byron in its early stages, I was impressed by its feature set and vast improvements on Vista 1," said Rubie. "A lot of the things that were missing or not quite there yet in V1 have been added in Byron – Jands have really listened to the user feedback."
The lighting rig needed a blend of plotted cues and on-the-fly operating, and Rubie reported that the Byron Beta was well-suited to the task. He also made use of an improved effects engine.
"I was a little nervous using the beta software, but did some extensive testing and trials before moving in to the venue, which went successfully," said Rubie. "Once the plotting stage came around, we experienced a few bugs, but these were met with great support from Jands. who were able to solve the show critical ones very swiftly. We were also running a secondary Vista with a backup of the show, which I would always recommend when using any newly released software / consoles."
Rubie noted that the Vista Byron Beta retains many V1 features and that the patch system has been made even faster with an instant search function for fixture profiles.
"The timeline, which is one of the main areas where Vista differs from other consoles, has received various improvements too," Rubie added. "The speed at which I can look at multiple cues at once and clearly see tracked values and all parameter info supercedes other consoles, where I find myself having to retrace my steps and think harder about what I am editing and how it will affect other cues in a tracking environment. All the cue timing properties are much improved in Byron – they now much more closely follow the same structure expected in theatre consoles, such as split up and down timing and follows."
Rubie also noted the flexibility of having separate live timing for each different parameter, and the speed in which this can now be changed on the fly.
"That is one of the many improved busking features," he said. "The major overhaul of the look and appearance of the GUI has resulted in a much more professional-looking console and is very user-customizable, including personalized user color themes. The visual representation of everything down to a mimic of gobo and color wheels with gobos that actually animate is fantastic. I particularly like the button that reverses the direction a gobo is rotating whilst retaining the speed.
Rubie concluded that the Trocadero shows went off well, and he was glad to get the chance to test Byron Beta in a show environment.
For more information, please visit www.jandsvista.com.
