Omitting Macro channels at Export

[craigh]

Is it possible to omit the macro channels when exporting a superstar sequence to LOR?

It would save me a lot of time in deleting those channels in LOR, I don't use them so it would be nice to have the

option of omitting them when exporting a SS Sequence to LOR.

Craig

[BrianBruderer]

There is no option to not export the macro channels.

 

When you open up the exported file in the Sequence Editor there should be one line for each CCR. If you select and copy all the lines it automatically copies the normal channels and the macro channels. Note that if you are not using the macro channels you do not need to delete them. Copying and pasting them will just copy empty macro channels and paste empty macros channels.

[WayneKremer]

Brian, if I have RGB pixels and don't want to export the macro channels, how do I configure SSS to omit the macro channels?  I'm also using Nutcracker to paste in effects (which omits macro channels).  Otherwise, I would need to create macro channels in my sequence that would have no use what-so-ever.  Thx!

 

Wayne

[BrianBruderer]

There is no configuration setting in SuperStar to omit the macro channels. If you are in CCR mode and export to the sequence editor it will always put in the macro channels. To be honest I am not sure how people are doing it. One thing to try is to expand the CCR and just select the pixels and try to copy/paste that.

The other approach is to create a visualization of your RGB pixels. When you do that you will have to make each RGB pixel be a separate fixture.

Import the visualization into SuperStar and when you export it, it will only have the RGB channels because it is not a CCR.

[WayneKremer]

Brian,

 

I would do that, but I have more pixels than the visualization will support.  Would be nice to look into adding pixel support to SSS.  It is really nothing more than a CCR, but without the macro channels.

 

Wayne

[BrianBruderer]

The current release actually has support for DMX RGB pixels but there are some bugs in it. The next release has the bugs fixed, and the next release should be coming out soon, I can't say when, but it should be soon. This is how it works:

There is a new keyword that you can put in the comment line of a Prop that tells superstar that the prop is to be treated as DMX lights. Note that the keyword only works in a prop, it will not work in a fixture. To use this new feature do the following:

1) Launch the Visualizer

2) Click on the "CCR Draw Wizard" tool, this is the one that has a multi-colored circle with a 2 segment line on top of it. (do NOT use the "Draw Cosmic Color Ribbon" tool)

3) Do a click and drag to draw a single line, double click to terminate the line.

4) A dialog box titled "Number of Pixels" will appear, Type in a name for the "Prop (CCR) Name" and then change the number to the total number of pixels in your DMX string. This number can be any number from 2 to 500. In other words, don't worry about having it be more than the number of pixels in a CCR which is 50. In most of my testing I used 60 as the number of pixels in a string.

5) After clicking on OK, a dialog box will appear titled "New/Existing fixture". Use the default which is "Create as many new Fixtures as required (Recommended)"

6) After clicking on OK, the visualizer will create a string that will have one or more CCRs in it, enough to create as many pixels as you specified. Don't worry about defining the Unit IDs for the CCRs, you can leave them undefined because SuperStar will ignore them.

7) On the right side of the visualizer are two buttons labeled "Fixtures" and "Props". Click on the "Props" button and then double click on the prop that you just created.

8) In the comment line of the prop, add the text "superstar dmx=<universe>,<channel>" (do not enter the double quotes into the comment line, just the text inside the double quotes)

<universe> is the universe to use for the first pixel of the prop and <channel> is the channel to use for the first pixel of the prop.

For example, if you had 6 strings with 60 pixels each, you would add 6 props and you could add the following in the comment line of the props:

superstar dmx=1,1

superstar dmx=1,181

superstar dmx=1,361

superstar dmx=2,31

superstar dmx=2,231

superstar dmx=2,410

In the above example, the third string starts with universe=1 and channel=361. SuperStar will automatically bump up to the next universe when it runs out of channels for the current universe. So the last 10 pixels in the third string will use universe 2.

Also, as noted earlier, when SuperStar sees the keywords "superstar dmx=" then it ignores the unit id settings in the CCRs that are in the prop and uses the universe, channel settings that you specify.

I did my testing using vertical strings. It turns out there is a bug that the lights don't get mapped properly if the string is laid out horizontally. I have it fixed on my computer, if you need it to work for horizontal strings let me know and I can give you instructions on how to get an SSEdit.exe with the fix in it.

Note that because SuperStar is using the comment line to supporting dmx, you cannot play the exported sequence back to the visualization because the Visualizer doesn't recognize the dmx settings that you placed in the comment line.

Also, the only way I had to test this was to export some sequences and then play them to a visualization that I created using each dmx pixel as a separate fixture. I do not have any DMX lights so I have not tested this on actual DMX lights. I would love to have someone with DMX lights test this and confirm that it works on actual DMX lights.

The current release is v3.10.12, and in that release there are two bugs:

1) The pixels don't get laid out correctly if they are horizontal

2) There are other cases where the CCRs that make up the string of DMX lights don't get laid out properly

[MazdaFan]

Brian,

 

  If the bug is the fact that the props/strands end up "backwards" in the horizontal layout, the issue is not just with the DMX= keyword and the CCR props.  It occurs in all props that I've created so far.  I created a series of individual pixels (fixtures) and then grouped them into two props.  The second prop ends up on the horizontal line before the first thereby putting the middle of the props (where the two props meet) at the ends of the horizontal display, and the beginnings of the props in the middle of the display.  eg:

 

Lights

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

 

turn it into props

(1 2 3 4 5 6)  (7 8 9 10 11 12)

 

It ends up displaying in SSEdit as

(7 8 9 10 11 12)  (1 2 3 4 5 6)

 

Is this what the fix addresses?

 

Jamie

[BrianBruderer]

Yes, the next version should fix that.