newbie with a question for simple sequence

[copotay]

I am just starting out with LOR and have been viewing the videos and playing with the demo software before I order. I am starting small with a single 16 channel and only led lights nothing else. I have laid out all my 16 channel lights with the visualizer and imported them into Superstar. It looks like it works well and have tried several variations of the roll dice in the instant sequence until I found one that is very close to what I want the lights to do. My question is since it is in demo mode I cannot export it to the LOR sequence editor to do some minor adjustments like having all the lights come on when, in the song, a main event happens like all the intruments hit hard, Superstar is not picking it up to make all the lights come on. Can I assume the Superstar sequence can be edited by me once it is imported into the LOR sequence editor since I cannot do it in demo? 

 

Another question about purchasing Superstar is I plan on buying the Basic Plus LOR and the 2 CCR Superstar for my needs.Will both of these work together or do I need to buy the Advanced to get the Superstar. Since I am only using led lights at this point is the 2 CCR all I need?

[BrianBruderer]

After exporting a sequence you can open the exported sequence in the sequence editor and edit it the same as any ofhter sequence.

 

Also, after creating an instant sequence in SuperStar, you can edit the effects that it created, or you can add to the effects or delete some of the effects it created. Myself this is what I would do and then the SuperStar file is your "source" file and will always match the exported file.

 

As for the which versions to buy, you can buy the Basic Plus version and it will work fine with the 2 CCR SuperStar.

[copotay]

Tks for the information Brian and tks for creating the software to help us newbies with sequencing. I have done a few songs in sequence editor manually and your software is a great addition even if I only have standard lights. I am awaiting the spring or summer sale to buy the starter package along with the Superstar addon, but boy it's tough with the demo limitations to wait to get it into the visualizer to see it in action with the background pic of my house. Tks again

[copotay]

Brian I watched your video Instant Sequence on a Visualization and saw how you changed settings under TCM 1, I changed them around and it picked up on the main events. Unlike in your video I only have one row, yours had four, so I only had to deal with one TCM.
 

[BrianBruderer]

Good, glad you got it to work better for you!

 

As you say, sometimes what our ear hears as a main event is hard for the computer to pick up. What the computer looks for is changes in the intensity at certain freuencies, but sometime there are background instruments that tend to be stronger than the foreground instruments that our ear is focusing on.

 

But nevertheless, by playing around with different settings Instant Sequence should be able to pick up most of the changes in the music.

[copotay]

Just a little added information for people with only regular lights that I discovered. I found out that when I reduce the detection lines in the import prompt box to only one line, it picks up better on the sequence especially the heavy main event in the music. Now this works for my visuaization and 16 channels. If I left the default of 16 it detected automatically and gave me three detection lines and it did not work as well, the main events basically lit only one channel at best. This only gave me one TCM in the instant sequence box and mine turned out to be TCM 3. From there I played around under TCM 3 settings and picked:

 

Theme - Water off of a bowl

Color - RGBW by group

Color by time - Not by Time

Movement - None

Intensity - 100

 

Exactly what each mean and how it effects the sequence I am unsure or even if it really effects the sequence, but this looks like it worked pretty close for me. I did not change the other settings under the other TCMs because it was only showing one dot under TCM 3. Under the Timing Map I tried changing from volume to frequency, that did not do well. I left all other default settings under the timing map.

 

Brian, I know your main emphasis of the software was for CCR, but I would be willing to bet there are alot of regular light users that are thrilled to have something that helps in sequencing especially for newbies like me, and just think of the people that are not aware of it although it is now included in the LOR software package as an add on. Some people may shy away from it in its default settings while trying it when it does not behave the way the want and give up without adjusting the different parameters thinking that the software is to much for them to comprehend. They might not think it would be worth the added expense for the add on, but from what I have seen, after making adjustments, it works pretty well, then once I get the full license for everything, I can import it and tweak it the way I want in the LOR sequence editor. Just thinking out the box, but maybe a small tutorial for regular lights might be justified to show similar settings or even a setting in the software for regular lights that defaults to getting close to what someone might want for the sequence. I do not fully understand nor do I pretend to understand the specifics of the software so I do not know if this would be possible, just a thought from a newbie, so forgive me if I have overstepped my opinion.  

 

I have been looking at purchasing LOR over the last five years, lurking in the forums, and finally this year decided to upgrade from Mr Christmas and I would not expect to just import a song into Superstar and let your software sequence the whole song for my regular lights, but it does help me cut down on the time spent trying to sequence a whole song manually, especially for me being a newbie.

 

Tks again for your time and efforts

[BrianBruderer]

Thanks for the post, they are good suggestions.

 

I have it as a high priority to improve Instant Sequence, especially for low numbers of regular channels. And comments from folks such as yourself help me know the most important things to improve. Its going to take me a while to do it, but I expect to have some improvements and enhancements by summer.

[copotay]

Great, that should be just about in time for the summer sale so I can make my purchase, and I am sure with your talents it will only improve from here.

[TonyD]

Thanks for the post, they are good suggestions.

 

I have it as a high priority to improve Instant Sequence, especially for low numbers of regular channels. And comments from folks such as yourself help me know the most important things to improve. Its going to take me a while to do it, but I expect to have some improvements and enhancements by summer.

 

Assign channels by frequency or is that already in there?

[roverdish]

I have had some success in creating some interesting sequences by creating instant visualizations to a song for 8, 16, or 32 channels. I then export them to a specified "work in progress" folder in LOR and save as 8,16 or 32 for a particular song. Sometimes I may change the settings and create multiple 8, 16 or 32 instants.

I am sequencing for 80 channels next year and by creating one starter sequence with one TCM setting using my 80 channel visuaization and export it into the same folder.

 Then I have a platform to copy and paste the 8, 16 or 32 channel visualizations onto to affect a fixture of the same count differently than the others.

This way I can have a computer generated sequence with different TCM settings affecting different fixtures in different ways at the same time within the same sequence.

Been working on "Christmas Crush" and it is pretty stunning.

This method has worked pretty well with songs I like that I cannot find ready made sequences for.

Don't know if I explained it properly but it is working well for me. I could never sit down and create sequences one second at a time.

 

Any questions don't hesitate to ask.

 

Chip

[BrianBruderer]

Currently you cannot assign a particular channel to a particular frequency. But you can assign each sequencing row to any set of frequencies that you want, this is done in the Timing Map dialog box.

 

So if you put a channel in a row by itself, you can then assign that row to any set of frequencies.

 

The way to get a channel to a different row is to move it to a different location on your visualization. When you import the visualization the code looks for rows of lights and assigns them to different sequencing rows. The green lines on top of the imported visualization is where the code found a row of lights.