S4 to S5 non traditional displays

[MattBrown]

Well you have conquered the hardest part. Congratulations!

5 hours ago, MSB said:

Now my question is how can I assign a particular stage to a grid view to be able to program that stage and not worry about the remaining stages while keeping all the remaining props in the Master Grid active?

Here are the steps for creating your grid views:

1. Open the Grid View menu: http://www1.lightorama.com/help/grid_view_menu.htm
2. Select "Add New View"
3. In the dialog, name the view "Stage xxx" and only add the group for "Stage xxx". http://www1.lightorama.com/help/insert_props_and_groups_dialog.htm
4. Click OK to close the dialog and add the grid view.

This should work well, because if you add or remove props from a stage in the preview, as long as you keep the preview group (e.g. Stage xxx) updated, the grid view group will stay in sync.

Matt

[MattBrown]

Also note that grid views are specific to a sequence. However, you can copy the grid views in one sequence to another sequence using the Grid Configuration > Import/Export commands.

The Grid Configuration sub-menu is available on both the Grid View menu and the Sequence menu.

http://www1.lightorama.com/help/grid_view_menu.htm

Matt

[MSB]

Thanks, I basically had the grid views  defined as they came over with my tracks (which I used to use). Adding the grid views are much easier this way. I did add one stage (Stage 05 Festive Trees) as a grid view, but the preview window on top still shows the 2020 Master preview and not the preview that was created for the Stage 05 Festive Trees.  Still a little confused.

Greg

[MattBrown]

Grid views just control which subset of preview props and preview groups get displayed in the sequence grid. The preview is associated with the sequence and will always be the Master Preview in your example, regardless of which grid view is selected. Does that help?

Matt

[MSB]

It helps me understand  S5 but does not help me with sequencing. I don't know if you took a look at that YouTube link I posted  showing our Master Preview 2020 for one of our converted sequences. It works, and is very cool to see all the stages working at the same time but extremely distracting when trying to sequence one stage.  It would be so much better to choose the preview to work with while sequencing a grid view just like I used to do with opening up the visualizer file that corresponded to the track I was editing in S4. We invest tens of thousands of dollars into LOR products each year and not being able to do this to me is going backwards. 

If I don't use the Master Preview when I import an old sequence then everything gets messed up with archived props, etc. I really don't want to lose all that old work. Otherwise, I've never been this far ahead with the musical  sequencing between seasons. Updating the channel configuration for seasonal changes has always been a pain and the previews most definitely helps keep that more organized and when channels are added or names changed I no longer have to manually update the visualizer file accordingly. 

I've always programmed our MegaMega Tree using Superstar and then exporting them and importing them into our main sequence. I have not tried doing that yet.

I have a lot to do with the animation loop since I have very few visualizer files for those and will need to create most of those previews from scratch. Thank you for all of your help!

Greg

[MattBrown]

The Youtube video is marked private - so I can't view it. Sorry.

Would an option to only show the props/groups in the currently selected grid view during preview playback help?

Matt

[MattBrown]

Or maybe we just save the playback window zoom settings with the grid view? So if you switch grid views, it remembers where you were last zoomed to with that grid view.

Matt

[MSB]

I just made the video unlisted, not private. My mistake. Please Take a look at what I'm talking about. I really had to scrunch some stages not to have them overlap so they don't look quite right especially with the CF Floods. The individual previews are accurately scaled but are scrunched to fit into the master preview.

Greg

 

Edited September 9, 2020 by MSB

[PhilMassey]

The original link still doesn't work. You probably need to post it again.

[MSB]

Wierd, I clicked on it and it opened. Here's the raw link: https://youtu.be/zLJS29aGRPI

[MattBrown]

You've done an amazing job creating the preview.

You have created grid views. You can zoom in on the preview during playback, just like you can during design. I'm trying to understand what features you need in order to move forward with your sequencing. I'm not trying to defend the software, I'm trying to figure out what more we can do feature-wise to help you -- realizing that there are probably short-term and long-term answers to that question. Right now, I am most focused on the short-term.

Matt

[MSB]

Sorry for the delay; I've been working on the animation portion of the show and I do not have all the props defined yet but getting closer. It's still messy like all of the stages we have for the musical side. Yes, saving a zoom for a grid view would be helpful and I see that has been included in 5.5.4. This still does not help with the scaling problems we have in the master preview where the stages are accurately scaled in the individual stage previews. Here are a few other things I've run into:

1. I create a preview of a stage and then a group and save as and S5 PROP for the 2019 version. I then open the master preview and import the group. and it comes in fine. I click on the group and resize is using the handles around the group.  I import last year's sequence and everything lines up perfectly and save the sequence to a 2020 version.  I then I change a stage for the 2020 version create a new group and export it. Open the sequence of the converted 2020 version, go to the group I imported first and delete it. The individual channels remain. Then when I import the new version of the group the channels double. Why when I delete a group it doesn't delete all the channels?
2. We have 3 different computers (people) that do the sequencing for the show. So far, I've been doing all the programming from my office PC. We store all of our files on a shared google drive and then make a junction to that shared folder so everyone has a C:\LOR folder locally where we actually save the files and the junction maps these locations to the google drive.  We also tell LOR to use C:\LOR as the data directory so the audio files, etc. all are mapped to the same location. The command we use ONCE before installing LOR is  mklink /J C:\LOR "C:\Users\[username]\Google Drive\LOR". That has been working fine and that is what I've been using on my PC. However, when I installed LOR on a different PC and opened the sequence editor, none of the previews showed up in the previews panel. Yes, the importexport folder is also being synced. and when I went to import a preview to SE from the different PC it was found in C:\LOR\ImportExport. Why does a user have to manually import the previews in SE on different PC's? Right now I have 40 previews between the different stages and animation props with more to come.
3. When Opening a sequence after having a different preview selected from a previous sequence a window pops up stating "The preview for this sequence has changed since the sequence was last saved. I can click "revert to previous " The new channels don't get added but the preview assigned to the sequence was the last one used and NOT the one that was saved with the sequence. It also removes the channels from the wrong preview and saves it!!! This is a big problem when switching between animation preview and musical preview!!! It also is a problem since I have a Master Preview with a  52 channel mega tree in one Master Preview not including the 52 channel mega tree and use superstar to edit and then import into the sequence. I realize this may change with the S5 workflow but I have 9 finished seqences with the mega tree built in.  Please give the option to the user with something like: Previous Preview used  saved with sequence: "Preview x" or use new preview: With a dialogue box to choose the preview and then do the matching if needed! This is awful!!!

This is just a few things that are causing us problems.

Greg

[PhilMassey]

Are you aware that the previews are stored in Previews.xml\commondata. That will need syncing as well.

[Aubrey]

1 hour ago, MSB said:

1. I create a preview of a stage and then a group and save as and S5 PROP for the 2019 version. I then open the master preview and import the group. and it comes in fine. I click on the group and resize is using the handles around the group.  I import last year's sequence and everything lines up perfectly and save the sequence to a 2020 version.  I then I change a stage for the 2020 version create a new group and export it. Open the sequence of the converted 2020 version, go to the group I imported first and delete it. The individual channels remain. Then when I import the new version of the group the channels double. Why when I delete a group it doesn't delete all the channels?

You wouldn't want the individual channels to get deleted with the group - a group is the organization of the channels in a specific way, aka channels can be in multiple groups. If all of the attached channels got deleted every time you deleted a group, that would be a nightmare.

[MSB]

2 hours ago, Aubrey said:

You wouldn't want the individual channels to get deleted with the group - a group is the organization of the channels in a specific way, aka channels can be in multiple groups. If all of the attached channels got deleted every time you deleted a group, that would be a nightmare.

It would be if one wasn't going to replace an "old" group with a "new group" of the same channels.  For example I have a  preview called Stage 08 Elf Choir 2019 with a group of all the props called Stage 08 Elf Choir 2019. For 2020 this stage has some changes so I created a new preview Stage 08 Elf Choir 2020, made the changes, and then made a new group Stage 08 Elf Choir 2020. I opened the master preview and wanted to delete the Stage 08 Elf Choir 2019 and replace it with Stage 08 Elf Choir 2020. I can delete the group, but I also have to be sure to delete all the channels before importing the new group Stage 08 Elf Choir 2020. 

The problem I've been working on "fixing" is the naming convention of the prop channels. Before in S4 they would appear in order in the sequencing grid based on how they were added. Now, they are ordered alphabetically so when I delete a group of channels I have to pick through the entire list to find all of them before adding the new (modified) group. I've since changed the naming convention of the prop channels to include a prop name "prefix" so at least I can find all of them before deleting them.

I understand in most cases you don't want to delete a group and channels normally! Changing the naming conventions seems to be the only way to accomplish this without the program asking if I want to delete all the channels associated with this group Yes or No

Greg

Edited September 17, 2020 by MSB
Clarification

[MSB]

2 hours ago, PhilMassey said:

Are you aware that the previews are stored in Previews.xml\commondata. That will need syncing as well.

Everything in the C:\LOR data directory is syncing to the google drive with the junction.  I found it

 

 

Edited September 17, 2020 by MSB

[PhilMassey]

If you used the default install.

C:\Users\Username\Doccuments\LightO Rama\Commondata. All the previews are stored in LORPreviews.XML ( I misnamed it first time)

if you changed the install path to C:\LOR. (which it sounds like you may have done) then it would be in C:\LOR\Commondata.

If C:\LOR is just YOUR location for the sequences, then Commondata (and a lot of other folders) are probably in the first path above and are not getting synced.

You need to have the same folder structure in all the installations.

Changing the default user path can be done in Sequencer/Tools/Change User Directory, which invokes LorPost.exe which is the same program that runs at first install.

[MSB]

That was why I couldn't find it. The program is syncing the folder to the google drive. I will need to check it out when I'm at the other computer tonight and will report back. Thank you!

[Aubrey]

48 minutes ago, MSB said:

It would be if one wasn't going to replace an "old" group with a "new group" of the same channels.  For example I have a  preview called Stage 08 Elf Choir 2019 with a group of all the props called Stage 08 Elf Choir 2019. For 2020 this stage has some changes so I created a new preview Stage 08 Elf Choir 2020, made the changes, and then made a new group Stage 08 Elf Choir 2020. I opened the master preview and wanted to delete the Stage 08 Elf Choir 2019 and replace it with Stage 08 Elf Choir 2020. I can delete the group, but I also have to be sure to delete all the channels before importing the new group Stage 08 Elf Choir 2020. 

The problem I've been working on "fixing" is the naming convention of the prop channels. Before in S4 they would appear in order in the sequencing grid based on how they were added. Now, they are ordered alphabetically so when I delete a group of channels I have to pick through the entire list to find all of them before adding the new (modified) group. I've since changed the naming convention of the prop channels to include a prop name "prefix" so at least I can find all of them before deleting them.

I understand in most cases you don't want to delete a group and channels normally! Changing the naming conventions seems to be the only way to accomplish this without the program asking if I want to delete all the channels associated with this group Yes or No

Greg

I think since your situation is so unique, having a prefix naming convention is probably the best way to go. You can replace text in bulk, but not add it to the beginning in bulk. If the channels are all on different unit IDs per Stage, you can use the filter/search function in the Channel Conflicts & Bulk Changes tab to A. delete props if you don't want them, and B. Be clever about changing the names if you have similar props. Like if you have 8 props that start with the word "Bush," you can tell the software to "Find" "Bush" and "Replace with" "Stage 08 Elf Choir Bush" and you'll end up adding words to the start of the prop name. Not as fast as renaming in bulk (which isn't an option), but certainly much faster than individually clicking prop definition windows!

[MSB]

19 hours ago, MSB said:

That was why I couldn't find it. The program is syncing the folder to the google drive. I will need to check it out when I'm at the other computer tonight and will report back. Thank you!

Yes, this works with the junction and the entire C:\LOR folder is syncing the previews are showing up as they should across multiple pc's.