Help with a new direction, please!

[James Shelby]

When I started with LOR in 2006 I reached out to you folks and it's been a ride. Our display has grown beyond our wildest dreams thanks to your help. I now need help again. Our display is moving into pixels starting with a 30' mega tree this season then an 80' tunnel next season. At well over 1000 ac channels programed over 18 seasons S5 shreds the S4 sequences and I have been told by many people the only way they went to S5 was to rewrite their entire show. I'm being realistic here I understand the work involved to make this transition to pixels but I'm a bit overwhelmed by where to start. I know I won't be able to do all 30 sequences this season but I can cut that way back to get started. I've gone into excel and renamed every channel so it should sort correctly in S5 but haven't tried that. My biggest worry is from what little I've seen with S5 the muscle memory developed over the years accumulated all into S4 doesn't work in S5. So S5 now S6 will be a complete rethink. I only have 6 months to get this done and need your advice on the best path forward. Thanks

[Don]

Short answer: It won't be as bad as you think.

When you convert a <S4 sequence to >S5 it will convert it to a Preview. If all of your sequences are using the same LCC, then you shouldn't have an issue with the process. When you convert a sequence you would (at some point, I forget where) select the newly created Preview from your first conversion.

[James Shelby]

The problem comes up with page after page of errors. I've been working on the problem for a few years now from the beta days of S5. I've reached out to numerous people in this community and their general consensus is to rewrite all my S4 sequences in a way that S5 will understand or to rewrite everything now in S6. The sort will trash the sequence because of the way I organized the channels over the years, it makes sense to me but S5 hated it. My show must work flawlessly every time and with the issues just getting started with S5 I don't trust it to work. But now I'm being asked to make it work, the pixel tree will be ordered in April and must be working by October 1st. I will need to run two computers one with S4 and one with S6 to make sure I have a backup plan with 64 led strands in case I need to remove the pixels but I need to make S6 to work somehow. The second problem is I know nothing about pixels, controllers, connections or programming. I know I have a steep climb but every one here including you have helped over the years. I just need a starting point.

[Don]

Then your second plan would be to:

1. Create a new Preview.
2. Convert sequences to S5/S6. You will not care what it does with the preview at this point.
3. Create a NEW version of each song, using the new Preview.
4. Copy/Paste commands from old sequence to new sequence. (With both open at the same time.)

[k6ccc]

Moving from S4 to S5 or S6 should not be a major problem.  Zero reason to go to S5 BTW - go straight to S6.  Create an accurate preview of your existing show in S6.  If you are using Visualizer in S4, it SHOULD import into the Preview Editor, but you will want to make sure it got it right before proceeding.  Once the Preview is correct, then it should just be a matter of opening each sequence in S6, and let it do the import.  If the Preview matches the channel assignments that existed in S4, it should be painless.  After importing the first sequence, you may want at that time to create one or more grid view and arrange them as desired.  S6 will by default create a view called "Show All" which has the props listed in alphabetical order - likely not what you want.  Grid views that you create can have the props in order that makes sense to you.  Once you are happy with the grid view or views, export that so you can import the grid views into your other sequences after open each one in S6.

Note that your S4 sequence files are not altered in any way when you open in S6.  S6 creates new files and leaves the S4 files un-altered.

 

[ebrown1972]

I agree with Jim. Go straight to S6!

[James Shelby]

On the show computer I've moved to S6. I'm finished in excel with the new channel names for S4. Do I need to remove tracks in S4? Do I need to remove none assigned channels from the sequences in S4? Can I create a new preview for each song in S6?

[Box on Rails]

If I understand correctly you are adding a 30' mega tree to the existing display and upgrading to S6, Right? If that's the case, here's what I would do. I would first Look for a sequence specifically for your size mega tree that has one of the songs in your existing S4/S5 sequence. When you load the mega tree sequence into S6 it will ask to create a preview. Just click on Ok to create the preview. Then you can use that preview to Create a new preview. Open the new preview in the preview editor. This is where you can add a background picture of your house first. Then you can move the mega tree prop to the location you want it in you show. Next you will want to get your existing props from he S4/S5 sequences to the new preview. Of course you will need to export all your existing props from the S4/S5 visualizer to the LOR import /export file. or create them new in the preview. and start setting up your new preview. That part is easy. the time consuming part is all the coping and pasting of the data of the old sequences to the new ones you create. Don't get discouraged. Once the Preview is created the rest will be easy. It ill take a little time. Have fun with it. 

Kenny

[Box on Rails]

18 minutes ago, James Shelby said:

 Can I create a new preview for each song in S6?

You should only need one preview that will be loaded into every sequence. 

[k6ccc]

1 hour ago, James Shelby said:

Do I need to remove tracks in S4? Do I need to remove none assigned channels from the sequences in S4?

No to all three questions.

 

[PhilMassey]

If you're lucky, your tracks will turn into grid views when you import using an S4 Visualizer. Mine did but that was a long time ago. I still use a lot of them.

[James Shelby]

Yes I have a display taking up the corner of a 110 acre display. They gave me around 7 acres of which I'm using 3 acres. I'm running around 300,000 leds and over 1200 ac channels but they are letting me move to pixels over the next few years and wanting me to add more prop's. I have put this off for years and now here I am, 6 months to get it done. 

 

[gsmith37064]

Damn... It's so pretty!

[Steven]

In case it wasn't clear from the previous comments:

The S6 Sequencer is just the S5 Sequencer with bug fixes and added features. There is no learning curve between the S5 Sequencer and the S6 Sequencer. At this point, there is no reason to use S5, just go directly to S6.

As you probably noticed, the S6 show player will still play S4 *.lms files. This means you can convert the sequences one at a time.
However, since you can't (easily) have S4 and S6 installed on the same computer, if you need to edit your S4 sequences, you need to have S4 installed on a separate system (or VM) if you need to make a minor change without converting the sequence to S6.

It has been a while since most of us did the S4 -> S5 (or S6) conversion. I don't remember the problems I had, but I do remember that I needed to make a good Preview before things worked the way they should. This was mostly because I never made a Visualizer in S4.

Most everyone who has moved from S4 to S6 has no regrets, even people like me who still are mostly AC with non-enhanced networks. (I also have a pixel tree.) One nice feature I used last year was when a triac failed, I just moved the prop to a spare channel and changed it in the preview. The show player automatically updated all of my 2 dozen sequences.

If you have thought of configuring an AC prop with red, blue, and green lights as an RGB channel, don't. I did that, and it was a bunch of trouble, involving multiple previews and copy/paste to fix it.

[James Shelby]

I have set up two pc's with monitors one running s4 and one running s6. I've spent weeks rewriting one s4 sequence to have s6 archive most of the channels. I have figured out how to write a preview in s6 but I can't get it to work with the s4 sequence I've cleaned up. I'm at a loss as to what to do. I have over 1000 ac channels and this year the introduction of a pixel mega tree. From the very beginning of s5 I've had problems with the conversion from s4 to s5. I've had others in this forum look at a few sequences and were told I would need to rewrite all my old s4 sequence to new sequences in s5/s6. I've spent time trying to figure out how to copy and paste from the old s4 sequences but thats not working. The converted s4 preview is almost unviewable. I purchased a s6 sequence from LOR thinking it would give me an insight as to how to make things work but that hasn't helped. I have worked on this off and on for years now and have 6 months to get it finished and I'm getting concerned I will need to introduce the mega tree in 2025. Any help would be appreciated, I know I'm missing that one thing that will make it all come together.

[tlogan]

It shouldn't be that hard. Granted, I don't have near as many channels as you have. As noted by others, once I had the preview right, converting the rest was a breeze.  I would suggest that, if you haven't already, you create a new preview from scratch. Use a picture of the space you are decorating and create and place each prop where they go. For my space, I had to edit three views of may house to get the two sides and front into one picture. Concentrate on one prop at a time. You should have noticed that as part of the prop creation you assign the controller/channels to the prop. Once you do that, that preview assignment will carry over to EVERY sequence once you assign it to that preview. Any future changes to the preview will be reflected in every sequence it is assigned to. So create the Preview FIRST. This will probably force you to lay out all the props, controllers and channels, in a diagram or a spreadsheet. Then use that when creating the props in the Preview.

Once you have the Preview, pick one sequence to work on.  Import it into S6 using the default settings and open it. Assign the preview to it. Anything that was archived can be brought back in to the sequence. As I remember, you have the chance to match up old channels to the new ones in the Preview (hence, the suggestion of a spreadsheet you can refer to). And don't forget to create a grid view. You CAN create multiple grid views to work on a smaller subset of the props. Again, once you work your way through this one sequence, and have all the controller/channels assigned, importing the rest should easy.

I've been 4 years now with S5/S6 and have made Preview changes and added props every year. I always start with a new Preview and then open a sequence and assign the new preview and run it to check for any issues. I've updated 14 sequences, once the preview and that sequences is correct, in 20 minutes or less.

I hope some this helps you out. It can be daunting at first if you try to do everything for every sequence all at once. Start with one and the rest should come along.