LOR and E1.31 from the show PC to the display

[eldoradoboy]

MADRIX is expensive yes.. but for someone like me who the last year I did a light show in 2009 with I think 256 channels spent close to 24 hours of sequencing for each 1 minute of show-time.. I just plain didnt have that kind of time any more...

what MADRIX does is allow you to create effects and overlay them onto your lights without sequencing the effect itself...

example.. mega tree "spin".. takes about 10 seconds to create in MADRIX.. then you use S3 to simply call up the effect for as long as you want it. then you turn it off and call another effect... a real-time equalizer for use with Multi-channel poles, arches, or even a mega tree takes about 20 seconds.. and since it uses sound recognition you can re-use it as many times as you like on different songs. (manually sequencing an "EQ" is a real pain).

random "Sparkling" from your CCR's or CCB's.. is another 30 second operation...

MADRIX allows you to copy effects so you create something cool.. copy it and modify it and you have a whole new effect..

it also has its own programming Language so really anything you can dream up you can make happen on your lights...

got a Big Grid? want to play video? 10 seconds... display a pic? 10 seconds.. scroll text? 10 seconds..

the only sequencing you do is telling S3 (by set intensity on a DMX channel) which effect to use. using DMX remote control of MADRIX allows you to cut to the next effect quickly.. or fade the effect in and out, or cross-fade between 2 effects..

as for Pricing, MADRIX Start version allows you 1 DMX universe of control which in a pure LOR PC, DC or 1602 controller config is over 500 channels.. and that cost is reasonable for all that it can do (less than $400).

its REAL power is for users that are using MANY RGB lights.. im just getting back into animation.. but I have 1700 RGB Pixel lights.. which would be a nightmare in LOR...

I plan to double that next year...

for users not using many RGB lights madrix wont gain you as much but can still be leveraged nicely...

Theoretically you could create a Random cue list in Madrix, create a pool of effects that are all Sound activated and have a completely automatic light show... (not going to be as nice as one with effects created for each song) but it does work..

-Christopher

[Tim Fischer]

The problem that I've seen is the majority of the madrix displays I've seen are only very loosely synchronized to the music. It's kind of like a slide-show of effects, sometimes roughly timed to the phrases of the music.

But if you wanted, say, a spinning mega-tree (out of your pixel tree) where on the downbeat of every measure, the tree is at the 12:00 position and spins around once every measure - it's my understanding that becomes fairly difficult to do in Madrix.

To me it's these tight timings that make or break a display.

[eldoradoboy]

I agree that absolute total perfect sequencing is tough in MADRIX.. but the more lights, the more pixels you put in, the less meaningful absolute precision becomes.. I learned this from doing Techno dance club lighting in the 90s.. the more lights you hung up on the ceiling, the easier it became to create stunning effects that went to the music.. no each and every light wasnt going to blink in perfect timing with a measure or such.. but as a whole the complete Motion and choreography of the system became incredible.. with 16 channels of LOR if you miss just slightly its greatly noticed by the average viewer.. with 256 channels Much less noticed.. and more the system as a whole is what brings the power and not each element perfectly on a downbeat... now lets add a few thousand RGB pixels... in MOTION to the MOTION of the music.. not necessarily a change ever ybeat or every 1/2 beat or 1/4 or 1/8 or 1/16.. a Mega tree Flowing with color, ebb, and tide reasonably close to the beat in Waves looks STUNNING...

whereas a 32 channel megatree done that same way looks like someone blew the sequencing totally.. alas why I mentioned above the real pwoer of Madrix is with lots of RGB lights... Madrix does beat detection Very well, plus you can tap out an effect and then multiply or divde or BPM as you like to make it just right...

Madrix DOES have a learning curve like any software.. and if all someone does is plug it in. set up all musically timed effects and play a song.. sure its going to look much looser than a person who thought out their effects and used LOR S3 to call them up..

its NOT for everyone or perhaps even MOST.. but for someone like me and many others that doesnt have 24 hrs physical time to sequence per minute of Music.. and has a display largely of RGB lights.. it Surely can make building the display fun and create MUCH enjoyment for the viewers that watch it.. which 90% of average display viewers wont notice a defect or two in a sequence.. whereas anyone who has sequenced will notice every single timing flaw... kind of a curse in a way...

-Christopher

[bob_moody]

Christopher,

Thank you for the discussion. Unlike Tim, I've never seen a MADRIX display so I cant comment on the good, bad or ugly ..

I was looking at the MERRY CHRISTMAS sign on my roof. Each letter is a 5x7 dot matrix letter. Each letter controlled by LOR. Right night MERRY is green C9 incandecents and CHRISTMAS is red C9 incandecents. Sandra and I talked about trading out the incans for retro C9 LED's in the same green and red .. however .. there are 216 bulbs in the sign. Green LED C9 are about 89 cents each and the reds are buck and some change.... Enter Ray Wu.... RGB pixels with clear C9 faceted covers come out to about 65 cents each...

Hmmmmm..now what could I do with that? I could make it look like the magic finger is writing on the sign, change colors, sweeping color fades .. WOW .. the possibilities are endless (you can see the sign and videos on our website.. )

But then .. OMG .. how am I going to program THAT !!!

Hence.. the questions about MADRIX ..

Bob

[jeffl]

I won't be switching anytime soon because I too like spot on control and don't have any RGB stuff "yet" but I'm interested in seeing a LOR/Madrix display. If you have a link please post it.

[bob_moody]

I won't be switching anytime soon because I too like spot on control and don't have any RGB stuff "yet" but I'm interested in seeing a LOR/Madrix display. If you have a link please post it.

Ditto ... what he said .. LOL

[nmiller0113]

I'm sure Eddy could elaborate but I believe he mentioned something earlier this year that LSP was the best of both worlds as it can do both Grid and Cue based Sequencing. Maybe I misunderstood, but this sounds like the way to go if that is the case and for a much, much, lower price

[jim st john]

A couple of comments. The LOR twinkle/shimmer effects can be handled fairly well in DMX but the limitation is that with DMX you can only update 40 times per second, while the LOR controllers implement those effects by updating 120 times per second.

My suggestion re running LOR and Ethernet networks is to keep them on separate cables and color code them so that you know which is which. It's unfortunate that they both use RJ45s, but that's the way it is. I fried the power injector in a USB485B by plugging it into an ethernet jack. The pair that LOR uses for power is either Tx or Rx with ethernet, so basically sees a dead short when plugged into an ethernet mag-jack.

The comments re madrix have been pretty much right on target. You can generate some incredible visual affects in, literally, seconds with Madrix, but it can't sync to an audio track. LightFactory can do both I believe, but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

For a large pixel mass, standard sequencing can be crazy time consuming. When it gets to be about this time of year, and you realize that you are going to be pulling some very long days sequencing those brand new pixels, Madrix starts to look like a pretty good deal.

[jeffl]

I'm curious what happens when you say:

"I fried the power injector in a USB485B by plugging it into an ethernet jack."

There is a person having some weird issues with a USB485B adapter and this made me curios if the adapter works after this?

[Tim Fischer]

I'm sure Eddy could elaborate but I believe he mentioned something earlier this year that LSP was the best of both worlds as it can do both Grid and Cue based Sequencing. Maybe I misunderstood, but this sounds like the way to go if that is the case and for a much, much, lower price

LSP doesn't exactly have a reputation for stability. Plus (at least last time I looked) it lacks many basic features of S3 that I would not want to lose - e.g. multiple timing grids.

I trust that LOR will keep adding better support for huge numbers of channels. I'm realllly pushing it with the approx 4800 I have this year- files take forever to load even on my pretty darned fast Core i7, sequence editor is pokey, etc.

And Superstar evidently has a 3xxx-channel limit of some sort so I didn't even consider it.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Tim Fischer

[Tim Fischer]

For a large pixel mass, standard sequencing can be crazy time consuming. When it gets to be about this time of year, and you realize that you are going to be pulling some very long days sequencing those brand new pixels, Madrix starts to look like a pretty good deal.

Channel groups are your friend to make this manageable. Here's how I managed my mega-tree - 1536 pixels/4608 channels:

1) The whole mega-tree is a group. That means if I'm not currently sequencing the tree, I can collapse the group and it only takes up one row.

2) There are 24 'drops' from the top of the tree which I call 'strands'. Each strand is 64 pixels. And within the Mega-tree group, there are 24 subgroups, called "Strand 1", Strand 2", etc. If I want the entire strand to be green, I just keep the group collapsed and color it green. This makes standard "spinning mega-tree" effects trivially simple.

3) Within each strand is the 64 RGB channels. When would I use these directly? Lets say I wanted to make the entire tree do a vertical sweep from bottom to top. Here's how:

a ) Open up Strand 1. Color a bit of the bottommost pixel. Use chase tool to make it chase all the way to the topmost pixel. Then use the fill tool to keep it on while the rest of the chase happens.

b ) Close the group (Strand 1) and copy it.

c ) Select Strand 2

d ) Paste Multiple. Select vertical copy "To end of group 'Mega Tree'" (which is what I call the group from #1 above)

I now have a nice looking vertical bottom-to-top sweep on the entire tree. We just programmed 4608 channels in a few seconds.

OK, so that works for basic effects. But what about fancy-schmancy ones? That's where Sean Meighan's "Nutcracker" utility comes in handy. With it you can generate spirals, barber poles, snowstorms, meteors, and lots of other effects. You can even place pictures and text on your prop if it looks good (I didn't like how it looked on my tree so I didn't use those). You enter a bunch of parameters, and it generates an animated GIF preview. Then if you like it you tell it to generate an .lcc (LOR clipboard) file. Then you simply load the clipboard into LOR, and paste it where you want it (using the "paste by time" mode). Works great.

So that's how I managed to sequence 4608 channels of mega-tree without shooting myself lol.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Tim Fischer

[bob_moody]

LSP doesn't exactly have a reputation for stability. Plus (at least last time I looked) it lacks many basic features of S3 that I would not want to lose - e.g. multiple timing grids.

I trust that LOR will keep adding better support for huge numbers of channels. I'm realllly pushing it with the approx 4800 I have this year- files take forever to load even on my pretty darned fast Core i7, sequence editor is pokey, etc.

And Superstar evidently has a 3xxx-channel limit of some sort so I didn't even consider it.

I have to say that I concur with Tim about LSP.

Of course the issues that I had may be resolved by now

But when I reported my well documented issues, I was told it couldnt be reproduced and to basically go away...

So ... I did ..

Bob

[nmiller0113]

I have to say that I concur with Tim about LSP.

Of course the issues that I had may be resolved by now

But when I reported my well documented issues, I was told it couldnt be reproduced and to basically go away...

So ... I did ..

Bob

That isn't encouraging

[bob_moody]

Well keep in mind this was last year or earlier, I'm not sure the same people are even running the show and as I said, the issues I had may have been resolved. But it left a bad enough taste in my mouth...well .... I'll leave it at that..

I've been a LOR user since V1 (before it was called V1 or V2 or S3 etc) ... with the enhancments, support and tools that are available .. I can do what I want to do

Keep in mind, My take or feelings about LSP or any other product is strictly MY opinion... and opinions are like .. well you know the rest of analogy.

give them all a try and use what works for you..

[nmiller0113]

For sure! Thanks for the input!

[Greg Young]

I'll try to grab some video of this year's display and focus on some of the Madrix effects that I (quickly) setup to follow the music. These were done over a couple days, as I did not have the time to sit down and fully learn the software, since I was still building the display element (pixel tree) a few days before Thanksgiving! (My pixels were on a really slow boat from China....).

I think you might be surprised at how certain effects can be used to closely follow the music..

[bob_moody]

Greg,

I watched a video from a company (snow...something i think..?) and saw the basic setup and trigger functions to LOR.

Looked simple enough and I could see how, with a little attention to detail, the triggers could be sync'd

I'm currently working with Nutcracker (just playing with it really .. i have no way to physically view the results) but if the physical display looks anything like the "visualized" version.. its very cool ...

I'm anxious to see your work Greg...

Merry Christmas ..

Bob