can you easily reduce the intesity of pixels

[TexasLights 3]

The show is finally up and running more or less complete (never really complete) and as noted in previous posts, I added a LOR pixel tree with the Pixie 8 this year.  

It works great except for that it is quite a bit brighter than the rest of the lights which takes away from them.   I would like to reduce them a bit across all of the sequences but not sure that is possible? 

 

 

 

Edited November 29 by TexasLights

[k6ccc 880]

The ideal way to do what you want is in the pixel controller.  That way, you change it once and it affects all sequences.  I ended up doing that with my pixel tree last year when I increased it from 600 to 2400 pixels.  Unfortunately, I don't believe that the Pixie series of controllers have that capability.  Someone more familiar with the Pixie series of controllers would have to answer that one.

You really don't want to have to change every sequence!

 

[TexasLights 3]

1 hour ago, k6ccc said:

You really don't want to have to change every sequence!

definitely, I have 33 that span over an hour.   I checked the doc for the pixie8 and it didn't seem to have it.  I found a doc reference for the pixie16 that talked about setting max intensity.  That would be useful.  

I rearranged things a bit and it isn't as bad -- also, it may have just been my view too, since its the new obvious thing, it grabbed my attention but I watched some of the people driving by and they didn't seem to focus on it as much as I did. 

[BobW 0]

Although the documentation is really lacking in this area (the single sentence), you could try setting the dimming curve in the Prop Definition. If it works as described, it would limit the brightness for all uses of the particular prop. There's probably far fewer props than sequences.

 

Bob W

[TexasLights 3]

On 11/29/2019 at 7:25 AM, BobW said:

Although the documentation is really lacking in this area (the single sentence), you could try setting the dimming curve in the Prop Definition. If it works as described, it would limit the brightness for all uses of the particular prop. There's probably far fewer props than sequences.

 

Bob W

thanks, I gave it a try and it did seem to help.   Now, just have to decide which I like better.  

[TexasLights 3]

Another observation for anyone new that happens to see this and having similar issues.  One of the thing I struggled with initially was getting any pictures to show up well, they were always so bright.   I found I had use darker colors just to make it look good on the tree, compared to playing in the preview window.   After I dimmed the pixel tree to 80% which is still bright, the colors actually come out a lot closer to what I see on the PC.  

[Sully 4]

Just a note on pixels and brightness, the brighter the pixels the more power draw. I run all my pixels at 20%, it's not overpowering and allows more pixels to be used in longer runs without power injection. You should never need them at 100%. Color doesn't suffer at lower intensity either, color is the same from 100% to 10% just not as bright.

I believe you can create a pixel dimming curve to use with just the pixels also if you can't adjust the setting via the controller. I don't run any LOR pixel controllers so no clue.

Edited Monday at 09:44 PM by Sully

[Vince4xmas 63]

I have the Pixel Curve setting at 30% for my pixel tree and images look great.

 

[Euro92 5]

So how do you set the pixel curve for pixel tree to lower? I might have to try this out.

[TexasLights 3]

It depends, some controllers support it or you can do it from the preview editor for the pixel tree as noted about by adjusting the dimming curve (not both).  

[PJD 1]

Thanks everyone for this thread! I hadn't even thought about dimming the pxels on my tree to make it easier to see (a little counter-intuitive) but after reading this decided to give it a try.  I changed the pixel trees in my Preview to the 70% dimming curve and it massively improved them.  When I get a chance, I'll probably experiment with other settings, but I am thrilled with how much better they are already.

Also - would just like to say that one of the great things about S5 is that I made that one change to my preview, ran a Show on Demand to force the play files to be created, and then all sequences in my show had the change.  I've had a few other tweaks I've had to make and it is fantastic just making the change to the Preview and that is it.  (Although I ALWAYS export out a backup of my Preview before making any changes.  I suspect it could be a nightmare if I managed to corrupt the Preview in some way since that would effect all my sequences as well.)

[PhilMassey 202]

Better yet, in addition make a copy of \commondata\previews.xml. There are favorite's files in the sane folder too.