Changing brightness of your show?

[ace_master]

FYI first:
I am using all CDI's ProGrade lights (50% brighter than standard) in an RGB setup, so there's 3 bulbs clustered every 4"... bringing my brightness to 150% brighter than standard light strings (if each color of a string is on at once for 'white' color).
[line]I put together a few shows with my time off last week. In the animator; everything looked great... but tonight when I put a show on outside, my intensity settings were barely noticeable.

I tried to turn down the max brightness in the Hardware utility (Hardware/Configure/Intensity Range/maximum...) But the lowest it would let me go was 86%. And its just not enough to bring out the effects the animator showed. I REALLY don't want to have to go through my entire show and manually bring each 50% cell down to 25% and 25% cells down to 10%.


I would actually be happier if I could just control the max brightness of specific channels in a controller. Is there a way to select a channel in a sequence and tune the intensity down accordingly for each cell from its original position).



Thanks in advance.

[Dennis Cherry]

After using LED's for 3 years now, I have noticed that going over maximum brightness of 75% will not change the LED brightness to your eyes.

So last year I converted one sequence to 75% maximum and any other intensities to steps between 5-75%.

It made a huge difference in fades, ramps, shimmers, and other intensities.

This is just the nature of how LED's work.

[ace_master]

Dennis Cherry wrote:

...last year I converted one sequence to 75% maximum and any other intensities to steps between 5-75%.

Did you have to do this all manually? Or is there a simple, easier way to make the change to your sequence?

I don't get why there's a limit to the max brightness in the Hardware Utility.

[Dennis Cherry]

ace_master wrote:

Dennis Cherry wrote:

...last year I converted one sequence to 75% maximum and any other intensities to steps between 5-75%.

Did you have to do this all manually? Or is there a simple, easier way to make the change to your sequence?

I don't get why there's a limit to the max brightness in the Hardware Utility.

Yes there is:

Download Notepad++ from this website. http://notepad-plus-plus.org/download

This is a great program to make massive changes to XML files.

1. Open the LMS file (it is a XML type file)

2. Once open you the file you want to change there are 3 settings that need to be changed. Do not try to make the text strings shorter.

2a. Click on SEARCH>REPLACE and copy and paste the following text string into the FIND box. intensity="100"/>

2b. Now copy the same thing into the REPLACE WITH box but change the 100 to 75. Make sure the text string formats look identical except the number.

2c. Now click on REPLACE ALL button.

3. Do step 2 again but use: startIntensity="100" and change the 100 to 75.

4. Do step 2 again but use: endIntensity="100"/> and change the 100 to 75.

5. Now save the changed file to another name so the original remains the same until you know the modified sequence is working.

6. Open the new LMS file into S2 (there should be no errors if you did everything correctly) and you should see all maximum intensities are now 75%.

Take you time and you will be surprise what this program can do for you in changing things in your files.

Hope this helps.

[Jim Hans]

Dennis... where was this post 4 days ago!!! I just finished spending HOURS reworking my sequences because I noticed the same thing with my LEDS. Great info, I am printing this out to keep for the future.

[rwertz]

Don't forget to make a backup copy of your sequence before you edit it outside of LOR. If you accidentally muke up the XML structure, LOR will never open the file again

[ace_master]

Dennis, You've just made my day!!!

I think this info will come in handy, (as I'm sure you discovered)... this will cut many hours of programming time for many people.

[ace_master]

I used the program to edit a song, saved it as a new file, but when I try to open the sequence in LOR, I get this error message:
"Unexpected save file information found"
...and the sequence doesnt open. (I didn't change anything but what you suggested)

Edit:
I Just tried another one and same thing?!

[rwertz]

Did you use the entire information in the search and replace that Dennis listed e.g.: startIntensity="100"

If you just did a search and replace for the value 100, you would be replacing other values that are not intensity settings.

Glad you made a copy

[ace_master]

rwertz wrote:

Did you use the entire information in the search and replace that Dennis listed e.g.: startIntensity="100"

If you just did a search and replace for the value 100, you would be replacing other values that are not intensity settings.

Glad you made a copy

Yes Sir, I did. Used the exact text he used.


And Yes sir, I did

[rwertz]

I should work. I've done something similar several times. Any chance Notepad++ indicated an error in the data after you did the replace? (I haven't used Notepad++, I use XML Notepad which is similar)

One more thought. The text characters around these values are critical to the XML "syntax". If you accidentally include a qoute or a greater than / less than sign in one area and not the other (the find and replace areas), you may be adding or removing systax when you do the replace.

[ace_master]

I don't know why the first one failed... and the second one actually... but I tried a third, but only did the first 2 steps. That one loaded in LOR and worked fine...
So I'll take it one step at a time with the other ones and see if I can figure out what the heck I did wrong with them, haha.

Thanks again

[ace_master]

I found what seems to be the problem... when I change the following, that's when LOR gives me errors...

Seached for: intensity="50"/>
Changed to: intensity="10"/>

The change is very straight forward, so I dont understand the reason for the error?

Have you ever had this issue for no apparent reason?

[rwertz]

That seems like a perfectly valid change.

The only thing I can come up with is that maybe you have a CCR in the sequence and the change is being applied to a macro channel and creating an invalid setting.

Even if that was the case, LOR would have to be verifying those settings for valid values during the load process in order for it to fail.

[ace_master]

I dont know what you mean by CCR... I have 32 channels set up with basic LED strings (most clustered into RGB strings).
(I also have floods, but they aren't even in my channels yet... I'm waiting for Rainbow Brain replacement parts, so I cant even test it right now).


There are 1144 x 50% intensity occurrences in this sequence...:shock: I really don't like the idea of going through them one at a time looking for irregularities, lol. But I guess it would be better than manually changing them all in the sequencer (as long as i actually find something:))

[rwertz]

D'oh! I can't believe I just spent 30 minutes looking at this sequence trying to figure out why the replace wouldn't work. (I've gotten burned by this before.)


If you look at the various occurrences of the word intensity you will see there is a difference in capitalization:
intensity=
startIntensity=
endIntensity=

That difference in capitalization is critical. In the search and Replace you will need to deal with this. In Notepad there is a checkbox for "Match case". I don't know what that would look like in Notepad++.

[Dennis Cherry]

Check your "Save As: file type it should be "Normal Text Type"

The pull down menu has many formats in the Save As.

I just tried it on one of my sequences and it worked fine.

Remember to use the copy and paste function, do not type the information as it would be easy to make a mistake.

[ace_master]

rwertz wrote:

D'oh! I can't believe I just spent 30 minutes looking at this sequence trying to figure out why the replace wouldn't work. (I've gotten burned by this before.)


If you look at the various occurrences of the word intensity you will see there is a difference in capitalization:
intensity=
startIntensity=
endIntensity=

I use the copy and paste method Dennis just encouraged me to do. And I just checked to make sure they are being changed as case sensitive, and they are. The problem only seems to occur when I modify the 50% intensities. Were you able to get the file to load in LOR after changing the 50%'s to 10%'s on your computer?

[Dennis Cherry]

I just modified a sequence and got the same error.

Here is the new search parameters:

" intensity="100"/>
" intensity="75"/>

" startIntensity="100"
" startIntensity="75"

" endIntensity="100"/>
" endIntensity="75"/>

Notice now all start with a quote mark. this should correct the error problem.

Remember use the COPY/PASTE function per the first post.

Sorry for the error.

[Dennis Cherry]

Dennis Cherry wrote:

I just modified a sequence and got the same error.

Here is the new search parameters:

" intensity="100"/>
" intensity="75"/>

" startIntensity="100"
" startIntensity="75"

" endIntensity="100"/>
" endIntensity="75"/>

Notice now all start with a quote mark and a space, this should correct the error problem.

Remember use the COPY/PASTE function per the first post.

Sorry for the error.