Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 I'm setting up a sequence for the 4th of July, and am not able to adequately preview it in the animation screen. I'm trying to view 20 transitions per second for 1.8 seconds. My graphic card is an NVIDIA GeForce 5500 with 256MB of RAM. I do turn off the on access virus scan while it's running. Is there something else I can do to improve the animation display ?Thanks for your comments.D.T. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 Make sure everything in the drop down menu of the "Play" button is unchecked. No moving grids mainly. That helps out some.Hope that helps,Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 Thanks Tom. I tried that and it did help a little bit, but nowhere near showing all of the transitions. I'll just have to go with my gut, and see what it looks like in lights the week of July 4th.Thanks again for the tip.D.T. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 DT,Sorry I couldn't be of more help.I'm sure it'll be great. :]Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 Any other programs running in the task manager?I'm sure you probably checked that too but I thought I would give it a whirl.Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 Nothing running that I wouldn't be expecting. I do notice that when I run that section of the sequence, CPU usage builds and hits about 98-100%, so I guess it's getting time to ask santa for a faster PC. :?Thanks again.D.T. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 Downtown,Play it a little time slice at a time, (play visible window) if it looks alright there it will look alright when it plays in real live.are you running the latest version of LOR, it seems to run a bit better then the old version. I think the new version is 1.6.? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 blearning wrote: Downtown,Play it a little time slice at a time, (play visible window) if it looks alright there it will look alright when it plays in real live.are you running the latest version of LOR, it seems to run a bit better then the old version. I think the new version is 1.6.?B -I am just playing the visable screen, and I am (now) using 1.6.3 (which introduces problems of it's own.) Thanks for the ideas though. Seems that things are never easy.D.T. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 I just shrink the animation window. That usually makes it run faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 DT, I'd go ahead and hook up some lights to see them in person. 20 transitions per second is going to be FAST....Just a suggestion .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 9, 2007 Share Posted June 9, 2007 Don... thanks for the suggestion. I have a controller and a few strings of lights hooked up to my server, and can move the sequence over to that machine for a view of it. I'll do that when I have the sequence done. It's just easier to sequence if I can see it in the editor real time. Thanks again for your suggestion.D.T. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 10, 2007 Share Posted June 10, 2007 DownTown wrote: I'm setting up a sequence for the 4th of July, and am not able to adequately preview it in the animation screen. I'm trying to view 20 transitions per second for 1.8 seconds. My graphic card is an NVIDIA GeForce 5500 with 256MB of RAM. I do turn off the on access virus scan while it's running. Is there something else I can do to improve the animation display ?Thanks for your comments.D.T.This is a generalized trick. Try cutting your color resolution from 32 bit to 16 bit color. It reduces the amount of video data needing to be processed in 1/2 without cutting what you see on screen. The only difference between 16 bit and 32 bit is a second invisible grey scale layer only useful to video producers because this grey scale overlay is intended as data for transparency when cromakeying one picture over another (in otherwords useless for 99% of us). Half the video overhead means processing it occurs twice as fast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 10, 2007 Share Posted June 10, 2007 Don wrote: DT, I'd go ahead and hook up some lights to see them in person. 20 transitions per second is going to be FAST....Just a suggestion ....I've used 20 frames a second rates and never had any problems with computer representing it, although I do not use any visualisers or animators on any of my display softwares and I do use AL's software primarily but I have 2 each stand alone sections on my display using old Dasher and Light O Rama on a second and third 1 gigahertz computers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 10, 2007 Share Posted June 10, 2007 Anyone have any idea if adding more RAM might help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 11, 2007 Share Posted June 11, 2007 Joel wrote: Anyone have any idea if adding more RAM might help?Probably only if you are grossly low on ram. If it seems you get into long belts of hard drive activity when its not warrented, then its probably the Hard drive ram emulator kicking in big. I use 2 gig of ram and love it, its shut down my windows swap file and substantially improves caching of things. If you are already 512 Megs ram, probably isnt going to be very satisfying or noticable except under extreme multitasking to have more memory then that. If you have 256 Megs or less of ram...then YES, more memory will help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 12, 2007 Share Posted June 12, 2007 Not to be a pXXp:), but in my LOR experience, at some point the very fast transitions you seek will not be effective at its most critical point; the viewer's eyes.Computer processing time, communication through the controller, down the extension cord and the time required for 100% illumination of each of your incandescent bulbs or light strings make very fast switching just a dim blur. Also, you have to remember the old "Persistence of Vision" snag. People's eyes can only react so fast. I would consider using the LOR defaults and determining a practical minimum timing using long extension cords (to provide resistance as if it were a big string of lights), an adult viewer (old eyes), and in a dark room. Very fast, bright lights cause lots of blurring, sometimes dizziness and other unfortunate problems. I think you will find the timing minimum is relatively long. Just my .02.....Hope this helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 17, 2007 Share Posted June 17, 2007 Mark - I have used 1/20 second events effectively in the past, and will in the future. My problem is in seeing the events in the viewer. The actual rendering of the events in light has not been a problem.Does anyone know if there is a display speed advantage in using an LCD display over a typical CRT ?Thanks.D.T. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 18, 2007 Share Posted June 18, 2007 I’ve seen reviews both ways of LCD vrs CRT in reference to Games. LCD’s are often touted as not quite having the response of CRT’s however I find that my LCD does fine, I would imagine that really its sixes, its not your monitor or your video card that’s the issue, Some things i might try:go to start hit run, type MSCONFIG, hit ok Check to see that only things you want in start up are in start upGo with the suggestion of cutting down color depth, for this application 256 colors would even be enough (8bit)Try reducing the resolution of the monitor at least while trying to view the animationditch vista and go back to xp Ram can be very effective in increasing cpu performance to a point, as mentioned above if your hard drive is going nuts you may need more ram, but if there is not excessive thrashing when trying to view your animation then its not likely to be the culprit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 18, 2007 Share Posted June 18, 2007 What Antivirus Program are you using? If you are using Norton Antivirus. Kick that Pig and put AVG on or simply disable your Norton Antivirus while you are testing. As long as you are behind a Firewall it's ok to shut your Antivirus off for a moment.-Evan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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