My top two feature requests for LOR S3 version 3.next

[Tim Fischer]

Well, another season is upon us. The yard is all blinky-blink, and I managed to get another display going once again - my 10th season with Light-O-Rama.

As always, after spending hours in front of a screen with the beloved sequence editor, I have a lot of requests. But there are two that I am particularly passionate about:

1) I've literally been asking for this since LOR 1.0. But it's even more important today:

"We need a better way to handle changes in channel configuration".

Back when I had <200 channels, it was a PITA to have to go through 10 or 20 sequence just because I decided it would be more convenient to plug something into one controller instead of another. Now that I have about 4800 channels, it's not just inconvenient, it pushes me to the verge of suicide! Loading such a file, even on my pretty modern 8-core intel i7, takes most of a minute. Then loading the correct channel config takes 2-4 minutes. Then saving the file takes another couple of minutes. Take that times 20 sequences, you do the math. Take it times 40-50 sequences like some folks here have... Uhm, n o.

What we need, at a minimum, is a version of "import channel config" that allows you to select multiple files and let them crank away while I'm off setting up or going to the crapper or something. Even better would be to have the channel configs be dynamic - that the sequence would not contain this info, but instead look it up in the channel config file - so that if we changed that file, all the other sequences would "just work".

2) This one I really want now that I have so many RGB channels:

"We need a background/foreground effects, as well as paste from foreground, to honor RGB channels"

Consider the following scenerio: I have a green chase across my RGB prop. Now I want to add a red backdrop for the green to chase across.

No problem - I just select "background effects" and add a red background, right?

Wrong, because now your chase changes from green to yellow. That's because the SE considers RGB channels as 3 separate channels. Since the Red doesn't conflict with the Green, they're both allowed.

What we REALLY want is to only put the red where there's no red, green or blue. I would think this would be a very easy change in the code, and it would save me hours/allow me to do a lot of things I can't do now without a lot of very tedious work (e.g. fade up my new mega-tree in red while a slice is spinning in green)

If you do only two things in the coming year, please add these! Thanks!

Edited November 30, 2012 by Tim Fischer

[ClydeL]

I agree. I have 2 channels that I must move because of bad triacs.... In order for me to update ALL the channel configurations, I must open every single sequence, import the new channel configuration, and save it.

The Channel Config file should be utilized BY the S3 software to select the CURRENT configuration in the specified Channel Confg file. 30 song... I've already spent all day updating the files Now I gotta do it all again.

[kevin]

or even a change color function in the foreground of RGB. Would be nice to change all Red to an orange or change a blue to white. without having to change each cell individually.

[dougd]

Your number 1 has also driven me crazy. I do 50 + sequences, I too have about 5000 channels and a few days before I go live have to open up every single sequence, wait, import my new config, wait again, save the sequence, wait even longer. DO this 60 to 70 times. Seems like there has to be a better way.

[taybrynn]

#1 is also my #1 wish list item

[Wingrider]

I am in the process of upgrading sw and am surprised #1 hasn't been implemented.

[plasmadrive]

+1 on both!

Perhaps an XL file for the channel config that can be imported as the config dejur.

Just a thought

[jeffl]

Even better would be to have the channel configs be dynamic - that the sequence would not contain this info, but instead look it up in the channel config file - so that if we changed that file, all the other sequences would "just work".

Being a database administrator I can appreciate this feature. If the sequence just had a dumb channel ID for each channel and then have the channel ID, name and assignments in a channel configuration file this would make this much more flexible.

[mark obermiller]

Hey LOR administrators,  has the channel configuration problem even been considered?  I'm tired of spending hour after hour updating channel configurations.  This is a MAJOR problem with this software.  Are you going to fix it?

[dougd]

ItsMeBobO has come to our rescue just in time for the upcoming season. The problem we have been complaining about for a while now has a solution.

 

 

 

http://forums.lightorama.com/index.php?/topic/28127-beta-software-to-import-config-unattended-in-batch-mode/