Why does White become Pink when exported to the Sequence Editor?

[BrianBruderer]

This issue comes up frequently. The short answer is that to get the colors on the CCRs to best match the colors that you created in SuperStar the colors have to be "balanced." The result is that the colors will look wrong in the Sequence Editor but will look good on the actual CCRs.

 

Below is a more detailed explanation:

The reason superstar exports the way it does is because the Red, Green and Blue elements in the LEDs in Cosmic Color Ribbons are not "balanced". For example, if you turn Red and Green to 100% on the LED in a Cosmic Color Ribbon you would expect to get yellow, but you will get a greenish-yellow because the Green element is stronger than the Red element in the LED. If you turn on Red, Green and Blue to 100% you expect to get white, but it will actually be a Bluish-white because the Blue element is too strong. For this reason, SuperStar pulls back the Green and Blue elements. The end result is that in the Sequence Editor what should be white will look pinkish, but when played to your CCRs it will be a true white.

 

In addition, the "dimming curve" for LEDs is not smooth. Sending a value of 100 to Red will be 100% Red, but sending a value of 50 to Red will not be 50% red. To get 50% Red intensity you have to send a value of about 25. So for this reason, all the values that are less than 100 will be pulled back more than you expect when you your exported sequence in the Sequence Editor. This is so the color on the LED will more closely match what you saw on the computer screen in SuperStar.

 

The bottom line is that in order to get the LEDs on the CCRs to best match the colors on your computer screen the colors have to be adjusted and the end result is that the CCRs look good but the colors in the sequence editor will look wrong.

 

But I have customers who don't like to see the colors be wrong in the sequence editor so I put the "Export Raw Values" option in there. When you choose that option the colors in the exported sequence will look good but the colors on the actual CCRs will not look as good.

 

Using the example of a white snowman, the white will look pinkish in the sequence editor but on the actual ribbons it will look a true white. If you use the "Export Raw Values" option then the snowman will look white in the sequence editor but will be a bit bluish on the CCRs.

 

Also, if you use "Export Raw Values" option and you have places in your sequence that use dim colors, those colors will look correct in the sequence editor but on the CCRs they won't look as dim as they should be. For example, in my "Silent Night" sequence at the end I have a night scene with a dark blue sky. The dark blue uses the 10% blue setting in SuperStar. But when exported the value becomes 1 or 2 because that is what is needed to get the CCRs down to 10% brightness. If you use "Export Raw Values" then it will export 10 for the blue value. 10 will look like 10% blue in the sequence editor, but on the CCRs it will be about 32% brightness because that is just how LEDs behave. The end result is that the night time sky will be brighter than it should be if you use "Export Raw Values"