LFP - Aussiephil Video 4 - Layout View and Matrices

AussiePhil

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Disclaimer: I am a newbie to Light Factory and to Cue based sequencing so anything i show you may be incorrect or a better way may exist.

Although i may have to remove the disclaimer shortly, it's starting to make real sense

Video Four:
In this video i'm looking at:

Layout View - one way to see what your lights are doing
Matrix setups and effects - further looking at some great effects that are easy to do.
Untitled on Vimeo

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Looking at the terminology below a channel on a AC or DC controller board used for strings of lights would be considered a Conventional Fixture


A RGB String or RGB Pixel would be considered and intelligent fixture as you will set three DMX channels to get the required light.


Light Factory Personal comes with the basic RGB and dimmer fixtures enabled and this will cover a majority of any show.


Some Terminology direct from the User Guide:

Channels (Logical/desk channels or Fixtures)
A channel is a controller on a lighting console (eg, LightFactory) that is used for controlling dimmers.
In the case of a simple light with one dimmer, a single channel would control one dimmer. More sophisticated lighting fixtures, which utilise multiple dimmers to control various properties or attributes of the fixture (such as intensity, position, colour, etc), are controlled by a single channel, i.e., multiple dimmers are controlled by one channel.


Dimmers
In the simplest terms, a dimmer is a physical apparatus used for controlling the intensity of a basic light.
A dimmer can be fully on, fully off, or somewhere in-between. The setting of a dimmer is referred to as the DMX value. DMX values
range from zero to 255. A value of zero means the light is off, and 255 means the light is fully on.


Conventional fixtures
Conventional fixtures are those that have only one property that can be controlled from the lighting desk, hence requiring a single dimmer to control it.


Intelligent Fixtures
Intelligent fixtures, in contrast to conventional fixtures, have multiple attributes that can be controlled from the lighting desk.


Cheers
Phil
 

msearancke

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Apr 16, 2012
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Another excellent video.


Notes:
1. You can put as many effects into a cue as you want. So you can build separate effects for each element in your show and then choose what effects you want in each cue.


2. There is a zoom option in the layout view to make the boxes bigger.


3. The library effects are a subset of the profile effect system. This is a very powerful engine that might be the subject for my next video.


Martin
 

neilric99

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Irvine, the OC, CA
In a partictular song that you are createing cues for, you would typically have phrases in a song that would get repeated in the song, i.e intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, key change, chorus, verse, ending etc.
so you would have a master cue for your show that would pull in the songs, which have audio tracks, the cue for for that song would be made up of a cuelist that contained sub cues, which could contain other media clips as well as matrix effects etc.
Can you program a cue against a beat track so that you can accuratly follow the beat to set the next cue.
Can Cues fire off simaltaneos cues at the same subsecond on the audio timeline? can timecode be generated from the audio track bpm etc.?
 

msearancke

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Beat tracks. You can run your timecode off any track you want so you could have what we would call a click track and that be used as your master timecode source.
We also have what we call audio triggers and you can set up one of these to trigger on a particular frequency range. This could then fire a cue on every beat.


If want to next cue lists you can fire off other cue list instantaneously (reality is that instantaneous is < 20ms in LF as that the refresh rate of DMX).
So as you have described you might have a master cue list that just has cues for Verse, chorus, verse, chorus etc.
Then you would have cue lists that might be...
Verse 1
Verse 2
Verse 3
Chorus
The master cue list would then simply fire the other cue lists at the right time.


That said the way we broke up the show I worked on in CT last year is that we created cue lists for each element in the show. So for example the star was its own cue list and just sat idle until the appropriate timecode was reached.


Hope this helps.


Martin
 

msearancke

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Something else for you to play with...
Select a number of RGB fixtures and then click on the "fan" button. I think you will like what this can do.


Martin
 

AussiePhil

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msearancke said:
Beat tracks. You can run your timecode off any track you want so you could have what we would call a click track and that be used as your master timecode source.
We also have what we call audio triggers and you can set up one of these to trigger on a particular frequency range. This could then fire a cue on every beat.


If want to next cue lists you can fire off other cue list instantaneously (reality is that instantaneous is < 20ms in LF as that the refresh rate of DMX).
So as you have described you might have a master cue list that just has cues for Verse, chorus, verse, chorus etc.
Then you would have cue lists that might be...
Verse 1
Verse 2
Verse 3
Chorus
The master cue list would then simply fire the other cue lists at the right time.


That said the way we broke up the show I worked on in CT last year is that we created cue lists for each element in the show. So for example the star was its own cue list and just sat idle until the appropriate timecode was reached.


Hope this helps.


Martin


Martin,


:) ok got the concept, now i just don't quite get the mechanics... couple more queues and by jove i think i'll have it.


btw, do AVI files have to be a certain type/codec/bitrate/size... haven't been able to load any AVI files but can load WMV files without issue.


Cheers and Thanks
Phil
 

AussiePhil

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Messages
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Canberra, ACT, Australia
msearancke said:
Something else for you to play with...
Select a number of RGB fixtures and then click on the "fan" button. I think you will like what this can do.


Martin


Now this i do like, trick.


Cheers
Phil
 

msearancke

New elf
Joined
Apr 16, 2012
Messages
23
AussiePhil said:
btw, do AVI files have to be a certain type/codec/bitrate/size... haven't been able to load any AVI files but can load WMV files without issue.
[SIZE=small]The system uses DirectShow and so any codec that works with this will work in LF. I recommend installing the windows7 codec pack (google) or the FFMpeg codec.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=small][/SIZE]
[SIZE=small]Martin[/SIZE]
 

neilric99

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Joined
May 20, 2010
Messages
295
Location
Irvine, the OC, CA
Thanks for looking at this Martin, I now am starting to understand the concepts of creating a show using cuelists that drive cues and controlled via the timeline or audio beat tracks.
The audio triggers on a frequency look like something that we will be investigating.
msearancke said:
Beat tracks. You can run your timecode off any track you want so you could have what we would call a click track and that be used as your master timecode source.
We also have what we call audio triggers and you can set up one of these to trigger on a particular frequency range. This could then fire a cue on every beat.


If want to next cue lists you can fire off other cue list instantaneously (reality is that instantaneous is < 20ms in LF as that the refresh rate of DMX).
So as you have described you might have a master cue list that just has cues for Verse, chorus, verse, chorus etc.
Then you would have cue lists that might be...
Verse 1
Verse 2
Verse 3
Chorus
The master cue list would then simply fire the other cue lists at the right time.


That said the way we broke up the show I worked on in CT last year is that we created cue lists for each element in the show. So for example the star was its own cue list and just sat idle until the appropriate timecode was reached.


Hope this helps.


Martin
 
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