Sequencing questions

[dharker]

Hello, another post- thank you for any assistance.

How do you modify shared sequences. If I want to swap channel 3 and 6 or take a section of 3 and swap it with 6 I do the following:

Create a blank line under channel 3- Copy the channel 3 section to blank- Copy the channel 6 section to 3 then copy the channel blank to 6. This way I basically swapped the content of 3 and 6. It's pain staking but of course easier than doing it from scratch ! Is there an easier way I am missing ?

Also I am continuing to work on songs for the future and have a few sequences that are so large and complicated (192+ channels) I can't seem to easily adapt to my 32 channes. Does anyone have a more simplified 32, 64 etc. channel they would share.

Jewel - O holy night

Jingle bell Rock- the one I have is 38 special but willing to look at any artist for this song

Last one- on some site I saw a Mickey, Pluto etc singing Santa Clause is Coming to Town. Does anyone have a sequence and the name of the song so I can purchase it ?

Thanks again for all the help this forum is great !

[-klb-]

One way that is easier, but may need more caution, would be to just swap the channel configs on those two channels. But this is also contrary to the idea of having an identical channel config in all your sequences, so that you can more easily grow into more controllers, and still be able to import your updated channel configs and animation windows.

[Guest guest]

Dharker, that's about the only way to do it without reconfiguring your channel set up. I tried doing what klb said and then when I imported an animation to see how it would all work out, I had a mess on my hands. So there isn't any real easy way to do it. I've been playing around with moving channels and lighting effects around.



What I just ended up doing was adding two additional channels (if I didn't have a "blank" channel left over) and using one for my beat track for the music and one that is strictly for use as a "copy/cut and move" track. And I named them "beat track" and "copy/cut"

It's the only way I could easily move things around from others sequences that I was playing around with and modifying to see how well and if I could do it. And to see if there might have been an easier way than creating a couple of additional blank tracks.

I would think the more tracks you have to work with to move around, the more difficult this would become as well.

Currently I'm only at 16 tracks, but plan on being at 32 soon. I thought 16 would do me, but I'm finding out the more I sequence and the more I look at my house and decorations, I'm falling a bit short on the channel count for everything.

So looks like I'm going to be adding at least another 16 channels to get to 32 to cover what I currently have and want to do.



Can't help you with the music or sequences, still working on those myself. So far I've gotten several done and still working on a few others for Christmas 2010.

Best of luck on finding the other stuff you're seeking.

[jim6918]

I might not have read this close enough, so if I missed the point please forgive an old man. My sure fire way of not screwing up when I first started was to create a brand new musical sequence going through all the steps in the Sequence Editor for a new sequence. I just used some short audio for the first step. Then on the far left Time Scale I right clicked and selected Add Multiple Channels Above, and changed the value to my planned channel configuration. Then I configured each channel in order to what I had planned, including colors for the visualizer. Once I knew I had the configuration down perfect, then and only then, did I Export the configuration, which became my master. Unless you make changes to the channel configuration, you should not have to do this again.

Then I would close the newly created sequence and open up the shared sequence. Import the audio file. The very first thing I would do is to do a SAVE AS to a different file name, i.e.: Wizards-Work Copy.lms, so I would always have the original shared sequence to fall back on if I messed things up too bad. Only then would I start making changes. I would carefully review the original sequence on the visualizer to see which of the original animations I would want to place where in my lighting scheme. Sometimes I would play the sequence 20 or 30 times to get the timings and beat down in my head, taking careful notes as I reviewed; what I liked and what I didn’t. Then I right clicked on the FIRST channel in the existing time scale, added how many channels ABOVE that I needed. Then I imported my channel configuration. That way my master configuration is the top however many channels, and the original channels are below. Then using my notes from the beginning I would simply cut and paste from the original up into my channels as suited me. Once I knew I had cut and paste everything I wanted out of the bottom or original channels, I would delete those channels. Then Save. Eventually when I was completely satisfied with the sequence, I would Save As again; this time to a file name like, Wizards-Final.lms. That way I never confused sequences I was working on with finished. I even go so far as to put the final sequences in a different folder.

I found that most of the time modifying a shared sequence cut hours out of the process. If the shared sequence had fewer channels than I would be using I would use it to get the main tempo or beat of the song, and use and expand on as many of the animations as I could. If the shared had more than I needed, I would go through and pick out the best and use them.

Occasionally, I found that the original shared sequence was such a mess (so poorly done) before editing that it was useless and would require way more hours to edit that was worth it. I would just give up and move the file over to a Junk folder and try again, either with a different shared or do it myself.

One other thing I did do was to buy several commercially prepared sequences from WOW Lights (wowlights.com). Their 64 channel versions were a snap to convert to my 80 channel set-up. In fact it was so easy, I almost felt like I was cheating.

This is probably more than you wanted to hear, but I was bored this morning.