The single most important thing I did to help me be a better sequencer...

[Michael B]

What can an LOR user do we they are not very good at sequencing?

After owning a controller for two years and struggling to sequence, I finally got over a major hump. How did I do it? In December of 08' after setting up my display, I took my laptop outside. My sequences didn't fit my new layout. I tried fixing them using the animation, but I was having a hard time and didn't enjoy the process very much.

So, I waited until my show was over one night and resequenced 5 songs with the lights on. For me, programing with the actually lights on made many things clear for me. I was amazed how much fun it was. I sat outside from 9 pm to 1 am programming. The only thing that made me quit was work. I had to be up at 5:30 am.

Sequencing seems so much easier for me now. Most of you are still better then me, but I have fun and feel like I can do it right for once. I hope this may help a few beginners.

[Michael B]

So, what advice can you give a newbie?

[-klb-]

Learn the keyboard shortcuts!!!

[Dennis Cherry]

-klb- wrote:

Learn the keyboard shortcuts!!!

I second, third, and forth that.

[George Simmons]

And I'll step forth to fifth that. What a time saver... even if all you learn is f=off and n=on.

[lightzilla]

Michael B wrote:

What can an LOR user do we they are not very good at sequencing?

After owning a controller for two years and struggling to sequence, I finally got over a major hump. How did I do it? In December of 08' after setting up my display, I took my laptop outside. My sequences didn't fit my new layout. I tried fixing them using the animation, but I was having a hard time and didn't enjoy the process very much.

So, I waited until my show was over one night and resequenced 5 songs with the lights on. For me, programing with the actually lights on made many things clear for me. I was amazed how much fun it was. I sat outside from 9 pm to 1 am programming. The only thing that made me quit was work. I had to be up at 5:30 am.

Sequencing seems so much easier for me now. Most of you are still better then me, but I have fun and feel like I can do it right for once. I hope this may help a few beginners.

Yeb I have been there and done that.....it works. Last Christmas was my 1st year using controllers (AL controllers)..........now I am a LOR user.....nevertheless starting in the 3rd week in August (I had to wait until then for the sun to start to go down at 8:30pm)......I tried it then.....but 1 hour before the show began and about 1 hour after the show ended I did touch ups to the 16 sequences I had done for my 48 channels......8 of those 16 sequence were actual remarkably good.

It was the other eight I had to add lets say 'more activity" to some bushes that sat dormit to long.

Thankfuly I had 14 stock shows and reworked 20 shared sequences.......those saved my show when I had a "malfunction at the junction" just 5 days before Christmas....lost my stock shows, the sequences I done......and because I reworked (not carbon copied only) sequences to fit my display....my show was saved....but I had no show for two days...December 22nd & 23rd....I got the show up running again on Christmas eve .......Thank you Lord.


My advise....save your LOR files on SkyDive, or buy a exterenal hard drive, CD (that also helped me out), flash drive.

Do not feel ashamed to use some shared sequences....people put them out there for others to use, and there is a very good chance you will need to rework them to fit your display anyways. A good learning tool as well.

Also even if you do not want the grid from the shared sequence, you could always delect the grit but keep the timing marks.....this will save you time.

I like Monique Danielle's "Carol Of The Bells" and there may be what a few hundred sequences out there of that song.....so why add 1 more?

Instead I do my own sequences that I know few do or have never done.

I like BonyM and I have not found any shared sequences for their songs or I may have over looked them, or Frank Mills version of Music Box Dancer or Peter Piper. There is a song called "Wise Men Still Seek Him" and I did that song last year and I did not see a shared sequence for that song either.

I even did (this is my beseting sin) "Irene Cara's "Flash Dance What A feeling"...no other shared sequences that I know of. I wanted to be different. Lord forgive me.

People liked it actually.

This has nothing to do with sequencing BUT buy 1 extra controller as a spare in case 1 of the controllers go beserk .....it happened to me last Christmas.....but not this Christmas.

[Michael B]

-klb- wrote:

Learn the keyboard shortcuts!!!

Thanks, I need to do that. :cool:

[sjmiller]

Great advice - what are the keyboard shortcuts you find helpful - or where is a document that references them?

[-klb-]

It is in the help file. You should be able to search for shortcuts, or keyboard shortcuts. The most common ones that you need to know, and in the approximate order that I personally use them are:

^v Paste
u Up
d Down
f Off
n On
i Intensity
^c Copy
^z Undo
s Shimmer
t Twinkle

Increasingly I've been using the following, and I don't yet know where it fits in the list:

c Custom - Personally, it kind of a drag to have to reconfigure this one so often, as it winds up carrying all the up/down/intensity of shimmer and twinkle..

There are other shortcuts for other functions like foreground and background effects, as well as toggle, but I don't use them that often... There may be some shortcuts that would save me some time, but I keep forgetting to check if they exist.. For example:

Delete selected timings
Subdivide timings
Changing between past by time and paste by cell

[sjmiller]

klb,

The ^x, ^c, ^v I'm familiar with - these are holdovers going back to Wordstar. I have an off beat question - what is the difference between shimmer and twinkle? I've never run lights from my controllers.

Steve

[-klb-]

There are a couple of reasons I listed those versions for copy and paste... First, to show where they rank in my rough order of use, and because there is a second set of common short cuts for these, that are shift-insert, control-insert, shift-delete, and alt-backspace. I've met a few users that primarily use those shortcuts instead when working in other applications, and it throws them for a loop that they don't work for the cell programming.

As for shimmer, it is a fast, approximately 20Hz cycling of the lights.. I never have really tried to figure out if all channels on a controller are in phase or not, and I'm not sure most people could tell. With LEDs, it creates an almost strobe like effect.

Twinkle on the other hand is slower, and pseudo random. The channels are not in sync with each other, and different channels cycle on and off at different rates. I would estimate that the average cycle time is around 3/4th of a second..

[sjmiller]

Thanks klb,

I'm in my first year with LOR - and want to tap into as much experience every one has as possible!

Steve

[Dennis Cherry]

sjmiller wrote:

Thanks klb,

I'm in my first year with LOR - and want to tap into as much experience every one has as possible!

Steve

I would also recommend taking a controller and connect a string of lights to each channel, then make a test sequence with some of the functions explained in the thread. You will get a better idea of the look and help you integrate them into your display.

[Randy]

To expand on the copy / paste convenience, I also find it very valuable to use the keyboard commands when copying the programming for entire rows or channels around.

If you put your cursor on the first "cell" or square of a channel (at the beginning of a song) and you want to select the entire row, press and .

Then you can perform your keyboard shortcut for that row (N="on", "F" = "off", ="copy", etc. Once you've done that operation, then using and will get you back to the beginning of the row...

Then you can move up or down with the arrow key, , , etc. to get to the new row you want to copy to, and paste the clipboard contents using and the previous row's programming will copy right over.

That saves a lot of time....

Randy

[Randy]

Oh, and one more thing....I think it was Jeff who turned me on to this....

Let's say you want to use your mouse to select 100 cells in a row. These 100 cells might be spread across more than what you can view on one screen. There's an easy way to select them...

First, select the cell on the left side (the earliest cell on the timing scale) with one mouse click. Then use the slider on the bottom to move the time scale all the way over to where you want the last selected cell to be.

Hold down the shift key and move your mouse cursor in that general area (the end where you want the selected cells to stop).

See what happens? LOR selects all those cells in between in real-time as long as you hold down the shift key.....Pretty cool....

[lightzilla]

Well that keyboard info is good info. I have been learning stuff on my own but this topic can be of great value.

I well see how much further this thread well go before I print off the ideas.

[sjmiller]

I sure wish I had known about these shortcuts - like six songs ago! I have been doing the right click on selected cells to set them up.

Good tip!

Steve

[George Simmons]

It's amazing how much one can find and learn in LOR's help files. (Such as keyboard shortcuts) For those who haven't done it yet, my advice is to read through the help files and the manuals that LOR provides with the software and on the site. They're really quite thorough and an end-to-end reading will save you a lot of time and aggravation as well as shortening the learning curve considerably.

[sjmiller]

It is definately worth the time for any newbie to read the help files, I wish I had done so when starting out - it would have saved me a lot of time. I addition to learning basics - you find out about advanced features that you may not use for quite awhile - but you know they are there.

The tutorials were great when I first started, but they don't (and can't) contain all of the info in the help files.

Stee