When to program???

[Roger N]

Ok...I am true novice. I ran 32 channels last year but used someone elses songs and an MP3 director. This year I bought 2 more controllers and was planning on running off a computer so I could use my music and make it more custom. It has been so hot that I have not put up any lights yet. I was wondering how you guys program the songs and channels before you have your lights up. In other words, certain songs have parts that hit specifically where you may want certain lights or features to happen. Do you have to remember which channels do what? Am I making this more difficult? I have not used the software yet out of shear fear of ignorance. Also, how does the shared stuff work? Is it easy to get them to work on different numbers of channels? I had sent an email to LOR over a year ago and they said they were trying to get the rights from TSO to market some of there music with sequences, any one know if that ever happened?

[jimswinder]

Ramjet67 wrote:

I have not used the software yet out of shear fear of ignorance.

In this case, ignorance is NOT bliss...download the software, like YESTERDAY and start playing with it.

There is a HUGE learning curve...and if you want any songs by Christmas, you are already behind that curve.

But it is NEVER to late to start...I just suggest you start NOW!!

[Bob Wingert]

Or even like NOW!!

[friskybri]

Call in sick for the week. That worked form me Cough cough, hack hack. Now I got 7 songs this week. Hay pass me another mountain dew.

[Wess Hoskins]

This is an example of give a man a fish and he can eat "today" but teach him to fish and he can eat for a lifetime, you just need to look at what you have, get your layout done <-------most important it will just kinda click once you get started, besides if you have questions there r plenty of people that r more than willing to help. GET IT ON!!!

[Don]

At least from my perspective, being able to visualize what the lights are going to look like in person, based on the programming (both on the grid and viewing the animator) is one of the things that newbies have the hardest time with. Heck, there are some people who've been doing this for years that still have a hard time with it.

Take a hypothetical example of 16 mini-trees. There's no real need (for me) to try and draw a tree figure. The mini-trees in my display are nothing more than dots on the animation screen.

The first year I did a LOR display I was working on programming my songs as early as March. Took me a long time to do each one, of course. Once the lights were up, I did make changes, but not whole scale, time consuming, changes.

What I'm trying to say is, get started ... now. (Like everyone else has said.) The amount of time it's going to take you to program a song is going to be longer than you think.

[scubado]

Ramjet67 wrote:

Ok...I am true novice. I ran 32 channels last year but used someone elses songs and an MP3 director. This year I bought 2 more controllers and was planning on running off a computer so I could use my music and make it more custom. It has been so hot that I have not put up any lights yet. I was wondering how you guys program the songs and channels before you have your lights up. In other words, certain songs have parts that hit specifically where you may want certain lights or features to happen. Do you have to remember which channels do what? Am I making this more difficult? I have not used the software yet out of shear fear of ignorance. Also, how does the shared stuff work? Is it easy to get them to work on different numbers of channels? I had sent an email to LOR over a year ago and they said they were trying to get the rights from TSO to market some of there music with sequences, any one know if that ever happened?

You're probably going to be stuck using what you did last year. First download the software and play with the tutorials. Setup your sequence editor to what you did last year and setup the animation player to your layout. Add in your new 32 channels, but I would only plan on using only a few of them. If you try to program for all the channels you will be biting off more than you can chew. Once you get started feel free to ask questions or do a search on this site. Once you decide on your plans, DO NOT MAKE CHANGES! This will only fustrate you and create delays. Hope this helps.

[George Simmons]

I agree with Scoobie... I think you should concentrate on doing what you did last year and forget about adding your own stuff. I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but the end of October just isn't the time to BEGIN learning how to sequence, and that's all there is to it. What I see is a recipe for frustration and disaster. If you look around you can find plenty of sequences to download if you want to add to what you had last year. And then as soon as the season is over, sit your butt down and start learning the software from the ground up without a deadline hanging over your neck.

[texascop]

This is my first year with LOR. I bought 3 controllers to put in production and one spare in case something breaks. I guess that is from my IT background and always thinking about redundant systems.

I started in June with some sequences I found here and there. I put together a diagram of what would be in the display, where the controllers would set and which channels would go to which set of display objects.

A few sequences were 48 channel and I just had to move stuff around to fit my display. That helped me understand how it fit together. I then modified and rearranged some bigger sequences, cutting them back to fit my 48 channel design.

In mid-August, I started on a song I liked from scratch. Took me a month to get it to where I liked it. I have done three more songs from scratch since.

Bottom line, it was a progression of events. I have an IT background (40 years), an electronics background, and developed software for 25 of those 40 years so I probably started out with a big advantage. I hope this is of some benefit. It just takes time and time can't be bought or rushed (unless you hire someone to do it I guess).

[PaulXmas]

Echo what everyone else has said, use the stuff from last year.

Download the software and start playing with it.

It has a visulizer so you can get a good idea of what it will look like.

I will start sequencing in Dec for next year.

Ask questions and good luck!

[jjdurrant]

friskybri wrote:

Call in sick for the week. That worked form me Cough cough, hack hack. Now I got 7 songs this week. Hay pass me another mountain dew.

Brilliant!

Or just install LogMeIn and seq from work.. hehe.

[Max-Paul]

PaulXmas wrote:

Echo what everyone else has said, use the stuff from last year.

Download the software and start playing with it.

It has a visulizer so you can get a good idea of what it will look like.

I will start sequencing in Dec for next year.

Ask questions and good luck!

I agree also with the above. Sorry but for this year you are in way over your head to start from scratch. I got the software in Jan of 09 and started seq and learning the software. So by Thanksgiving I had 5 songs. Had my stuff up the week before and was fine tuning so I would be ready to start the show day after Thanksgiving. Even if you took off the next 3 weeks I doubt you would be ready with 2 new songs. I personally can not skull this stuff for more than an hour. Heck driving down the road is when I have gotten some of my better ideas of how I was going to use the lights during a part of a song.

Do not try to seq this year. I agree with the above stating you will become frustrated and angry.