Video in the Preview?

[spaulgal]

Hi, I'm designing a light show to a video and I'm wondering if there is a way to put the video (as reference) in the Preview?

I do not think this is possible, but I'm wondering how others who sequence to a video do it.

Thanks!

 

[Indigogyre]

You need to put the video onto a prop. The best thing would be to put in a matrix and drop the video onto that so you can see it in the preview. And work with it.

 

[merryoncherry]

Does the video have the audio with it? If it does, you set it as the media track for the sequence. Then it is possible to see it in the "Video Preview" window, or put it on a matrix.

If not, why not just add a matrix for it and set the video to that matrix... you can just not map that to a controller or get rid of it later.

 

[spaulgal]

Thanks. I tried putting the video on a matrix first and that worked, but I wonder if constant re renders may be needed as I change the lighting effects. It wasn't terrible, but that seemed to be the case during initial testing.
Yes, the video is on the media file. I compressed the video down to 320 px across and 10 fps for easier(?) playback.
I then tried video preview, but each time I ticked on the video preview option, xlights crashed.
Any suggestions?
I'm on the latest v of xlights. The video is 12 mins long, mp4, 15mb file (320x150)

 

[merryoncherry]

The xlights video handling is a common problem. It often shows details in the log. Some combination of whether you are using hardware decoding or not, what codec the video has, what is installed, etc., is always implicated in some way, but I don't know the exact details.

 

[Cranzy]

I have 2 matrices and sometimes i would put the video on one of them.
You can lock the video effect on the matrix which will then put that into render cache (as by default locked effects are cached).
This would help with rendering times.