Sequencing Tips, Tricks and Secrets

[djg64]

ok I have a question.. How do I make a chanel that is shimmering also fade?

[Aaron Maue]

ok I have a question.. How do I make a chanel that is shimmering also fade?

Click on the "custom" button on the toolbar (the star). Then, select the custom shimmer button (a couple buttons to the right). Then, a couple more buttons to the right are the custom fade up and custom fade down buttons. You can do the same with a twinkle.

[marklodi]

For those of you who have multiple computers involved in different locations - meaning one at work for "break time" sequencing, one at home for sequencing and one that is the actual show director - you may have a hard time keeping all of the PCs up to date with the latest sequence/music/show files. Now you may have it all on a USB drive, or perhaps on a portable drive, etc. But if all these PCs are connected to the internet, here is a mo' simple method: use a cloud-based storage system like Dropbox.

Just copy the Light-O-Rama folder from My Documents from the PC you have made changes (say your work PC) into your shared folder. Then on your home work PC, with the folders automatically syncing from the internet, copy the same folders and paste into your local drive. You can be as large or as specific with which files to copy as you like.

What would be ideal - and either I haven't found how to do this, or it needs to be added in a future version - is to be able to set in preferences the default folders for saving these files. Then you can point them directly to your synced folders and never have to copy anything, as it will all be shared and updated automatically, even on the Show Director pc.

You can do similar things with Google Drive and other sharing programs; I've just found Dropbox to be the easiest to use, and with it being free for the first 2GB of files, plenty big enough for beginner shows. Not an ad, just an opinion.

Hope that helps some...

Mark

[SoCalJimH]

VAMPIRE SOCKETS-

here an issue I encountered the first year of using them.

ISSUE= erratic/ intermittent bulb behavior when using vampire sockets on SPT wire. (usually with a heavier bulb such as a strobe)

Open the back of a vampire socket and note that one 'tooth' is at approximate center and one 'tooth' is close to the socket side(offset). If you are hanging the SPT wire vertically and the socket is installed with the offset tooth on top then the weight of the strobe tends to pull the offset tooth out of the wire and breaks contact with the copper core.

SOLUTION- installed the vampire socket with the offset tooth on the downside, then the weight of the strobe will push the offset tooth into the wire. The center tooth is secure enough not to be effected.

[drakison]

Few things I have learned to use the snot out of to get the effects I wanted.

1. The fill tool. Makes color changing chases in CCR's awesome. Use this when running multiple color chases through ccrs (using foreground/background) then fill the chases for some wild color changing chases.

2. when fading a cut strip of LED lights, they will tend to flicker on fade. The reason for this is because of the very low voltage required to operate a LED. Solution = make a string with a couple c-9 incandescent sockets and bulbs. Spray paint the bulbs black with engine paint (so it handles the heat). Plug this inline between your lights and your controller, and it will draw that extra current so your LED lights will fade correctly.

3. background/foreground tools...makes fading shimmers or color changes simple. This is especially true in CCR's.

4. When using multiple items with 4 colors each (individual strings) group those colors together in the sequence editor. I have 16 mini trees with 240 LED's of each color (960 total per tree). I group them in 16w, 16r, 16b, 16g and this makes sequencing them 30 times easier. Assign channels to controllers however you want after the fact.

I will add more when I think of them....

[Gman7711]

The beat wizard is an awesome time saver! I like using 4x the detected beat. so is the chase tool and saving multiple clip boards.

[Rita561]

Thank you all so much for the information very useful:)

[evilfish]

I'm new to all this madness as well. I just downloaded the trial version a couple of days ago and I'm working on "something". By something I mean I've got a song in the sequence editor and just finished putting the main beats in. The problem I haven't figured out yet is how to make the beat fade. The song fades out at the end and I want the lights to fade as well. Any suggestions? I know everybody's very busy getting things together for the upcoming holiday, but any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

Depending on the beat and the way you visualize it, you can do it this way. From where the beat is a max volume to the location where the beat has died out, fade the channels in question from 100% (at max vol) to 0% (a beat died out location). This should give you a nice even fade.

 

Then delete any part of the fade where the channel(s) need to be off. You should be left with channels fading along with the fading of the music. This trick cannot be used if you used fade to 0% on every beat.

[spoonjr]

Just my first year, but found putting things into groups is a time saver. I have a group of 6 trees up front, have them in a group and when I need to use them in a sequence, I can move them up to the top of the page so I can see the beat without having to page up and down to see where beats land all the time.

 

One piece of advice I got was to plan out my display first. Lay out my display so I can plan where to put controllers. I wont have controller 1 telling lights in the front of the yard to go off/on, and controller 3 telling lights on the house to go off/on. I was also told to take notes on what I am doing. The notes have helped me a lot in keeping everything organized. Label your extension cords. I label both ends, label the lights, label the controllers. Someone unplugs it all it will take me 5 minutes to plug them all back in and in the right spots. It took a while to label, but it is worth it.

[reedgwcr]

Can anyone help me.  I can only see 1 channel at a time while in sequence editor.  cant seem to get it to expand to see more than 1 row

[Mega Arch]

Can anyone help me.  I can only see 1 channel at a time while in sequence editor.  cant seem to get it to expand to see more than 1 row

Something's not right here.

I don't think you can make it small enough to only see 1 channel, or so large to only see 1.

Are you opening an existing sequence that you purchased?

Or was shared to you?

Or are you trying to start a new one?

[SoccerCoach]

I am trying to put singing faces up for Halloween (just got my LOR system this year), but I can't seem to match up the mouths with the music. I just have LED Strings and made three different mouth shapes. When I run it in the Visualizer it doesn't look that good. Should the mouth close after every word? Do I need more mouth positions?

I slow down the song so I can get the exact timing and it looks great when the song is at half speed, but once I turn it to the normal speed it doesn't match up.

[gorichgo]

4 hours ago, SoccerCoach said:

I am trying to put singing faces up for Halloween (just got my LOR system this year), but I can't seem to match up the mouths with the music. I just have LED Strings and made three different mouth shapes. When I run it in the Visualizer it doesn't look that good. Should the mouth close after every word? Do I need more mouth positions?

I slow down the song so I can get the exact timing and it looks great when the song is at half speed, but once I turn it to the normal speed it doesn't match up.

I use and I think most use 8 channels per face with 5 of the channels for the mouth.  Have you tried looking for singing face sequences in the sequence sharing forum?

[JPat]

On 11/13/2012 at 12:44 PM, drakison said:

 

4. When using multiple items with 4 colors each (individual strings) group those colors together in the sequence editor. I have 16 mini trees with 240 LED's of each color (960 total per tree). I group them in 16w, 16r, 16b, 16g and this makes sequencing them 30 times easier. Assign channels to controllers however you want after the fact.

I will add more when I think of them....

Yep, learned that the hard way last year when I first started.  Original set up of my 6 trees was by tree number:  Tree 1 W, Tree 1 G, Tree 1 Red...and after hours I thought why not group the colors in lieu of the tree numbers!  

[Mr. P]

I really wouldn't consider this a tip as it would come down to personal preference, group trees or group colors. What I would consider a tip in this instance is learn how to use tracks then this tree/clor order wouldn't matter.

[Finnian Brady]

Thanks for sharing these tips! 😀