Undelete a preview in S6

[James Shelby]

 

 

Edited March 27 by James Shelby

[Aubrey]

If you have any sequence that was using that deleted preview, open it. The preview will import as "Imported from {Sequence Name} on {Date}." You can modify the preview name, and be back to the version it was the last time that sequence was open.

[James Shelby]

Thanks got it. I've been working 6 months on the migration from s4 to s6 and its been ruff. I have four sequences finished so far and hope it goes faster from here on out, this week I've been averaging one sequence in 8 hours. Thanks for your help.

[PhilMassey]

Remember, you can also export a Preview to a .lorprev file using the export button at the top of the Preview bar.

[James Shelby]

My only focus right now is moving 18 years of sequences to S6. I've got it down to 4 or 5 hours per sequence. Then I can figure out how to make S6 work.

[Jimehc]

If your S6 Preview is setup correctly then it should only take 4 or 5 Minutes to convert your S4 Sequences to S6

[k6ccc]

I was going to say the same thing.  If the Preview is setup right, it is very fast and easy.

What are you having to do to convert - or what kind of errors are you getting?

 

[James Shelby]

The way S6 sorts is the whole problem. Lets say I have 16 arches in four locations I know what those arches are by their location in the sequence but S6 will take 16 number ones and line them up and do the same for all 15 channels. Going into Excel I created a naming scheme that S6 liked and I have found work arounds for most everything it just takes me 3 to 4 hours to get S6 to accept them. In the beginning the errors were many S6 said my tracks where duplicate channels and would archive them. I thought that was just in the tracks but a few people out there told me it was across the main track too so in S4 I started moving all channels in the tracks to track one and deleted the tracks and S6 liked that change with no more errors. To get all this done I'm using two PC's one with S4 and one with S6 using a flash drive to move files around.

I'm trying to get across to everyone this process makes me nervous, it has taken me 18 years to get these sequences to this point and I'm needing to move hundreds of channels around, rename all the channels, delete tracks and delete unassigned channels just to get S6 to maybe work with my sequences. This massive reorganization of the S4 sequences looks like it will make it very difficult to edit the sequences in the future in S6. Not knowing anything about S6 it is such a radical change from the previous versions of the editor. I have spent months on this and need to have it working by October, I just need to make sure it was not wasted time.

Edited April 12 by James Shelby

[k6ccc]

Are you trying to let each sequence create a new preview or are you assigning an existing preview in the first step of opening an S4 sequence in S6?  From your description it sounds as if you are creating a new preview for each sequence - which will cause some oddities.  However if you assign a correctly built preview as the first step of opening an S4 sequence in S6, it should line everything up.

 

[James Shelby]

Its the same preview for everything. I have worked on this for years from the beta days of S5 everything I tried S6 would not accept the S4 sequences without tons of errors, no matter what I did or who looked at it. It hit me a few months ago everyone says S6 template has to be perfect to work so I created a perfect S6 template with the help of Excel and a new animation window and went backwards rewriting all my S4 sequences to match the new S6 template and that works. It is the only way I have found to make it work without all the errors. I'm just bummed out there wasn't an automated way to change software versions like the previous versions and now I'm worried after all this work it won't work in the yard.

[Jeremiah Ackermann]

25 minutes ago, James Shelby said:

It hit me a few months ago everyone says S6 template has to be perfect to work so I created a perfect S6 template with the help of Excel

I don't understand the use of "Template" here. I assume you mean Preview as S5 and S6 is all driven by a Preview. The Preview is that master definition of all the AC and RGB props you have that can be composed of a single channel or multiple channels. Another way to explain a preview is its the combination of an S4 visualization and the older channel config you could export from a sequence. This means in S5 and S6, the sequence references the Preview to know what channels are available, etc whereas in S4 each sequence redefined those possible channels. And so when people mention assigning a different preview for an S5/S6, that means you are just referencing a different preview than before.

I am not sure how you are using Excel to help with this other than just a way to figure out how you might want to organize things before making the preview and track what channels you have to which prop. So in the case of your arches, you could know this arch is using this unit id and this range of channels.

As said on Facebook, I hope to be available for a deeper hands via Zoom on next Tuesday night as I am booked till then. With the questions you have, partnering up with someone is likely going to be your best bet. You may also want to consider getting training at Christmas Expo with the LOR intensive classes.

Edited April 12 by Jeremiah Ackermann

[James Shelby]

Ok it's a preview but in my mind it's a template, it does the same thing. I had to use excel because S6 would reorganize 100s of channels, yes excel helped to fix that problem. Everything everyone is telling me I have worked through and none of it worked until I made a new s6 "preview" and am working backwards rewriting all my S4 sequences. I guess I'm looking for reassurances that all this work will work. S6 threatens to achieve channels leaving them in the preview window but not controlling lights. I haven't seen that in a little bit but it makes not trust S6.

[Jeremiah Ackermann]

5 minutes ago, James Shelby said:

Ok it's a preview but in my mind it's a template

That's fair, but when trying to communicate back and forth, it helps to use the terminology used by the software so everyone can be on the same page and speaking the same language.

You don't need to name all the props in your S6 preview a certain way to get your desired sort order. That will be an uphill battle.  However, S6 does have ways to organize your props (or channels if many props are a single channel) with full autonomy. Instead of using the "Show All Items" grid, you can create customized grids that let you focus in on just one area of your display. So for example, you can create one that has all of your arches (or two if you wanted one for a left/right order and another for right/left order). Because these are custom grids, you also have full control on how they are ordered whereas you can get mixed results with the default Show All Items grid. These grids are saved per sequence that you need to export and import if you want all sequences to have the same. Here is a video that discusses them.
 

 

[James Shelby]

I understand and have watched the videos, thanks. S6 would not, in my case, sort by prop, it sorted a-z, 1-9 and mixtures of the two line by line. It would sort a space then number differently than a 01 or 1 space or no space. Trust me I've been working on this for months every combination you can think of. I would try to load an S4 sequence and S6 would flag an error, I would write it down go back to S4 and correct it but that took forever. So I wrote an S6 "preview" that was palatable, line by line. I went back to S4 using the S6 "preview" and line by line remote an S4 "template". Now with the new S4 "template" I am coping and pasting all my old sequences into the new template and S6 is accepting it with no errors but I can't tell if it will control the lights or run a show. It is a very time consuming process taking 3 to 4 hours per sequence.