Converting V2 to V3...SO CLOSE

3

350jeepcj5

New member
Hello all, Im hoping i have what is a simple problem. I am borrowing a sequence from member jpettit. I am trying to copy his wizards in winter sequence, i have opened the sequence, found the mp3, found the profile and mapped his 16 channels to my 16 channels. Now whether or not i did that correctly im not sure. i couldn't find a good how to on that i was basically just following the prompts. when the sequence shows up, it has all of my 16 channels and what looks like the music markers, but they are transparent. i can click play and the music will play but nothing happens in my preview pane. am i doing something wrong? i am very green to all of this. i have always been fascinated by christmas light displays and now that i am older and have kids of my own id like to get this working.

I am going old school here with an arduino and ssr's. no pixels, no fading, just simple on and off with music.
I feel like i am really close and am hoping someone can help to get me over the hump.
 
350jeepcj5 said:
I set up the picture of my house and drew the lights to the separate channels, the preview is there but nothing happens.
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And did you set up the link between the elements you drew and the pixel elements? Details matter when we are looking for an answer to odd issues like this
 
Can you take a look at some of the effects that were generated to see if they have color and intensity and that the color matches exactly the color you assigned to the channel on the setup screen. Did you set the colors and matched them in the import?
 
350jeepcj5,
If you would like to try them I have a few V3 32-channel sequences that I had adapted to V3 from V2 a few years ago. Got them from the landolights.com website (anyone know what happened to that site??). I just exported them and added the file to my google drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qNcDMA1_6cyYXzwU2VmdhIiu9KrsRmE7/view?usp=sharing

Here are the videos for how the setup looks sequencing these:
Miracle on 34th Street Overture -
https://youtu.be/YaLa4HoJsrI
Christmas Fanfare -
https://youtu.be/igD-tTkEP9c

Not the prettiest looking setup, but we had just moved into this property and I just pretty much threw stuff out there and connected it to the sequencers in a couple of afternoons (including running power out to the area from the garage) so I was surprised it worked at all. Hopefully it will turn out looking a little better this year... we'll see. Anyway, give these a try, you will have to map chosen channels to your setup. You might have to give it a couple of tries to get it looking somewhat acceptable but it's still easier than doing the sequences from scratch. :)
 
MartinMueller2003 said:
It almost sounds like you got the colors wrong in the mapping from V2 to V3 and everything came through os "off"
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THIS! this was the problem, i converted all of the colors to match what colors i had my channels set to(all white) now everything shows up on my preview pane and plays as it should on the pc.
now i just need to link to my arduino and make sure it works for sure.

another question, is there any way to line up the beginning of the song to the beginning beats? the lights are off sync just a little bit from the audio track im using and i believe its because there is a longer pause on my audio track before the music starts playing.
 
Just for completeness in this thread, there is a way to shift bulk effects forward or backward by time. Under Tools -> Bulk Effects Move in the sequence editor. You can pick a range of time and the amount of time to shift the effects either forward or backward. It will move them all for you. This was designed for users who make custom mixes and may edit the music to adjust the mix and then need to shift the effects around to line up.
 
jeffu231 said:
Just for completeness in this thread, there is a way to shift bulk effects forward or backward by time. Under Tools -> Bulk Effects Move in the sequence editor. You can pick a range of time and the amount of time to shift the effects either forward or backward. It will move them all for you. This was designed for users who make custom mixes and may edit the music to adjust the mix and then need to shift the effects around to line up.
Click to expand...

i found this but was not sure how to use it, so if i waned to shift the whole song i would put the start time im assuming 0, and the end time?
 
That depends. If you are just putting up a pattern then it takes a few minutes. If you are syncing to music and want to have each channel do something at specific times then you spend multiple hours effort per a few seconds of music. I start by listening to the song on a loop for five or ten iterations and then setting it aside for a day. For that day I just let my mind dream about what I would like to have happen in my display for that song. After that, for me the most time consuming part is getting the timing marks set up. I end up slowing the music way down, loop on 2 seconds of music and add the timing marks I want then move to the next few seconds. Then I start adding effects on the elements and align them to the marks.
 
MartinMueller2003 said:
That depends. If you are just putting up a pattern then it takes a few minutes. If you are syncing to music and want to have each channel do something at specific times then you spend multiple hours effort per a few seconds of music. I start by listening to the song on a loop for five or ten iterations and then setting it aside for a day. For that day I just let my mind dream about what I would like to have happen in my display for that song. After that, for me the most time consuming part is getting the timing marks set up. I end up slowing the music way down, loop on 2 seconds of music and add the timing marks I want then move to the next few seconds. Then I start adding effects on the elements and align them to the marks.
Click to expand...

Wow. I can really appreciate what you guys go through for these shows now. I’m working two full time jobs and have two kids and I just don’t know where I would find the time to sit down and do that. Haha.
 
350jeepcj5 said:
about how long on average does it take someone to sequence 16 channels?
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It's not the number of channels that affects how long it takes but rather the level of detail you're going for. As Martin pointed out, creatively matching effect patterns to musical patterns tends to take the most time. But the reward is also the greatest. Even when your show grows to thousands of channels, you're still probably going to find yourself sequencing roughly the same level of detail. You'll just be sequencing on groups rather than individual props.
I average about 3 hours per minute of finished sequence. 10 hours for a song is pretty typical for me.
 
usually what i do when that happens is i will highlight the whole channel and use "cut" and then "undo" and it will put the correct color to your markers and they should work
 
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