Request: Make DMX sequencing easier!

[Ponddude]

For those of you that follow the PC forums and for that matter the section devoted to the Light Show Pro software will see that today they introduced a feature that allows you create moving head or moving yoke patterns with ease. Now, I will say this outright: I do not want LOR to copy their ideas, however this addition would save me (and I am sure a lot of other people) hours of sequencing time!! Basically you draw the pattern you want shown on a picture of your house/wall/stomach (haha). You set the limits for both pan and tilt and the sequence editor automatically sets the DMX values (or fades) that will create that pattern. Frankly a brillent idea. I will never be using LSP...LOR is where it's at for me, but this is a great addition to any piece of software. I know with all the brillent ideas you people come out with, you certainly can come out with a much better/easier tool then this!

Now, get to work...LOL:P

[Davidt]

This sounds like it could save a lot of time and hope that something similar is going to be available in LOR's Sequence Editor...

I'm trying to hold off sequencing my DMX pan / tilt lights as long as possible in the hope that some new pan/tilt programming features will become available.

Cheers,

davidt, Australia

[zman]

Greg I am there with you. I have not checked out the LSP feature yet, but have often thought that something like this, and an RGB color mixer would make sequencing easier.

David, not to be negative (we can always hold out hope!) you may want to start your sequencing now. There may not be too many new features between now and the season.

[Davidt]

zman wrote:

David, not to be negative (we can always hold out hope!) you may want to start your sequencing now. There may not be too many new features between now and the season.

No negativity taken Mark

I started sequencing for this year's show in January and have about 2/3 of my sequences to the 80% - 90% completed stage where I just need to add the pan/tilt. Currently I've done around 200hours sequencing for this year. You can see the status at www.dazzlinglights.com/2009-music.htm

Cheers,

davidt, Australia

[zman]

David, great lineup. I wish I had more time to sequence. I modify the previous years to add the channels I need, and then toss in a few new songs. Appalachian Snow fall has been on my list to do for a few years.

I like the interactive idea. How are you doing that with some sort of button? I got all kinds of ideas rolling around my head between that and video. More ideas than time for sure.

[Denny]

Ponddude wrote:

For those of you that follow the PC forums and for that matter the section devoted to the Light Show Pro software will see that today they introduced a feature that allows you create moving head or moving yoke patterns with ease. Now, I will say this outright: I do not want LOR to copy their ideas, however this addition would save me (and I am sure a lot of other people) hours of sequencing time!! Basically you draw the pattern you want shown on a picture of your house/wall/stomach (haha). You set the limits for both pan and tilt and the sequence editor automatically sets the DMX values (or fades) that will create that pattern. Frankly a brillent idea. I will never be using LSP...LOR is where it's at for me, but this is a great addition to any piece of software. I know with all the brillent ideas you people come out with, you certainly can come out with a much better/easier tool then this!

Now, get to work...LOL:P

I haven't checked out the website, so this may already be addressed there, but seems to me you would need someway to input the distance to your head, the height of the head above ground level, and the angles - especially if your moving head is not perpendicular to the surface. Then, if your ground slopes away from the house, you might have additional problems. I think it might be good to use once you are actually set up though, just can't see how it would work otherwise. Now, I love that color picker thing though!

[michael.farney]

I agree with this.

RGB Control:
Let's get our RGB units on one logical channel, and LOR can then output the correct values to the 3 DMX channels. It is so much easier when we can see the approximate color in the sequencer instead of trying to guess what the color is. The animations can be hard to interpret when you have to draw all 3 RGB channels into the picture. Then you translate as the show is playing and know that when you see blue and red it really means purple. Arh!

DMX Console:
All DMX programming would be so much easier if we could control a DMX console while the sequencer was open. It's very frustrating to have to close out of my sequence and open the hardware utility to get the positioning right or to try out a gobo or color. It's not always as simple as reading the manual and knowing the exact DMX value you need, especially when it's a range of DMX values like color wheel spin slow to fast DMX 45-->115. The programming has been reduced to trial and error or opening and closing the hardware utility and your sequence every 30 seconds. My sequence is 20 minutes long and it's just brutal.

DMX Cell Notes:
Finally, let us attach notes to a cell. With DMX programming, we can do a view on the cell and see what the value is. But that doesn't tell us what it's doing. With regular LOR programming, you can look at it and know exactly what your lights are doing. When you look at DMX programming you did last month, you can not tell at all what that DMX is doing unless you specifically remember. So let us use some sort of notation process or let us assign a name to that dmx value for that channel. Then the name such as color: red or gobo: santa claus will appear as text on the sequence right where the intensity starts. Or right click the cell to view text?

Pan/Tilt Wizard:
To address a pan/tilt wizard, I don't think it will work, mostly because the fixture won't respond like you are intending. (Note: the below is my opinion. I have no idea how well the pan/tilt wizard works in LSP.) DMX fixtures with pan and tilt travel at certain speeds depending on how far away the current fixture position is from the DMX value it just received. So, just because you're using fades with the correct values doesn't necessarily mean the light fixture will arrive at that location, unless you provide it ample time. The light will move at whatever speed it deems as reasonable to get to that point based on how far away it is, not based on when your fade ends. Also, because of this, the pan/tilt motion has a warm up time. That is, the fixture will start slow because the fade beginning fade is literally starting at the current position. Then, as the unit starts to fall behind the fade values, it kicks up the speed a notch. If it's still falling behind, it will do so again and again until it's no longer falling behind. So a smooth fade can actually turn into a 3 speed jerk across the house. (This can occur during longer fades.) For the opposite, if you have many fast fades in a row, the light will undershoot its target and you'll only get about half the range of motion. Again, this is due to the fixture lagging behind the DMX values, and the next fade starting when the DMX fixture has only made it halfway to it's target. (This occurs during shorter fades.)

Here's an example to put it into perspective: from left of the house to middle, the fade value is 55% to 50%. It takes the light 1.46 seconds to move that distance when dropping intensity from 55 to 50% to do the move. But if I do an intensity of 100 and drop it to 0, the light spins by that same 55 to 50 place in just 0.12 seconds. The light decides the speed based on the distance it needs to cover.

The bottom line is, fades work fine in some situations, but in other situations fades will never generate the effect you want. A wizard would give you a great starting point, but there are certainly places you'll have to make major corrections to get the intended effect.

[LightORamaDan]

Yes... we have all this and more on our to do list. We will be getting new stuff to you quicker now that we have finally gotten the licensed version released.

Dan

[DownTown]

michael.farney wrote:

Here's an example to put it into perspective: from left of the house to middle, the fade value is 55% to 50%. It takes the light 1.46 seconds to move that distance when dropping intensity from 55 to 50% to do the move. But if I do an intensity of 100 and drop it to 0, the light spins by that same 55 to 50 place in just 0.12 seconds. The light decides the speed based on the distance it needs to cover.

Michael - I encountered the same issue that you explain above. I found that instead of using a fade down from 55% to 50% over that .12 second time span, I just change the intensity from 55% in one cell to 50% in the next, and that eliminates all those little steps the fixture would try to make if you had faded that channel. This works best on short "fades". Also, some fixtures allow you to control the speed of the slew, such as the Martin fixtures that I use. Check your manual.

I don't expect this to solve all your problems, but is it another tool in the toolbox.

D.T.

[michael.farney]

DownTown wrote:

michael.farney wrote:

Here's an example to put it into perspective: from left of the house to middle, the fade value is 55% to 50%. It takes the light 1.46 seconds to move that distance when dropping intensity from 55 to 50% to do the move. But if I do an intensity of 100 and drop it to 0, the light spins by that same 55 to 50 place in just 0.12 seconds. The light decides the speed based on the distance it needs to cover.

Michael - I encountered the same issue that you explain above. I found that instead of using a fade down from 55% to 50% over that .12 second time span, I just change the intensity from 55% in one cell to 50% in the next, and that eliminates all those little steps the fixture would try to make if you had faded that channel. This works best on short "fades". Also, some fixtures allow you to control the speed of the slew, such as the Martin fixtures that I use. Check your manual.

I don't expect this to solve all your problems, but is it another tool in the toolbox.

D.T.

Yes, I am using similiar solutions. But if you read my post, the 1.42 seconds is actually using intensity like you suggested. For some reason, my qspot 575 refuses to travel with any speed unless it has a large distance to cover. The work arounds are pretty simple:

1. Speed of Slew: Yes, as you mentioned. In some cases I had to program positions to far overshoot the target and used the speed channel to get the desired pan/tilt across the house. Even though the end points are technically wrong, I just use the shutter to light up my intended effect and darken anything extraneous. If using speed channel to prevent the "3 speed jerk" as I put it, this also works wonderfully.

2. Positioning fakeouts: The other simple way I defeated this problem was to fake out the qspot on its next position. If I needed to move from 55 to 50, I would start with intensity 55, drop to intensity 0 for just a hair (the fakeout), and then put in my actual 50 intensity. This causes the fixture to start a rapid spin due to the fakeout. Then just set your actual intensity before the fixture passes your point, and you can get to that position in a couple tenths of a second. It takes a little bit of playing with to make sure you don't overshoot your target, but it's the fastest way I've found to change your pan/tilt when you literally have half a second to get to your next queue.

[DownTown]

michael.farney wrote:

2. Positioning fakeouts: The other simple way I defeated this problem was to fake out the qspot on its next position. If I needed to move from 55 to 50, I would start with intensity 55, drop to intensity 0 for just a hair (the fakeout), and then put in my actual 50 intensity. This causes the fixture to start a rapid spin due to the fakeout. Then just set your actual intensity before the fixture passes your point, and you can get to that position in a couple tenths of a second. It takes a little bit of playing with to make sure you don't overshoot your target, but it's the fastest way I've found to change your pan/tilt when you literally have half a second to get to your next queue.

Clever solution, Michael... Keep sharing tips like that.

D.T.

[ItsMeBobO]

LightORamaDan wrote:

Yes... we have all this and more on our to do list. We will be getting new stuff to you quicker now that we have finally gotten the licensed version released.
Dan

Wholly devoted to you Dan ! Somehow I missed this thread. My CCRs are set to arrive in two days and I so hope the RGB tools will be ready soon!

[GaryMartin]

zman wrote:

Greg I am there with you. I have not checked out the LSP feature yet, but have often thought that something like this, and an RGB color mixer would make sequencing easier.

THIS +1!!!

I would kill to have virtual RGB channels now, ones that we get to choose the three channels that comprise it. (not everyone's RGBs are consecutive channels on the same controllers!)

[Paul Roberson]

GaryMartin wrote:

zman wrote:

Greg I am there with you. I have not checked out the LSP feature yet, but have often thought that something like this, and an RGB color mixer would make sequencing easier.

THIS +1!!!

I would kill to have virtual RGB channels now, ones that we get to choose the three channels that comprise it. (not everyone's RGBs are consecutive channels on the same controllers!)

I have checked out LSP and the RGB controller works very well. I am still waiting on the feature to make it to LOR.