Messages

1

Show Assets / Re: Matrix Face Images Wanted

« on: August 13, 2015, 07:01:12 PM »

Attached you'll find the trees I used to test using layers for different eye movements in this post.

http://nutcracker123.com/forum/index.php?topic=1402.msg7941#msg7941

The files are .png (to preserve the transparency and allow the eyes to show through) and are 24x52 (the size of my pixel tree)

Ron

2

Enhancement Requests / Re: Enhancement Request - Papagayo Tab - Image Faces

« on: August 08, 2015, 08:25:33 AM »

Good suggestions Ron, I plan on visiting papagayo tab in August .

With all the work that dkulp and Gilrock are currently doing on the Faces interface, do you still plan to work on the existing Papagayo interface or should I direct this enhancement request and a request to be able to import existing Papagayo files to them? Or both 

3

Enhancement Requests / Enhancement Request - Papagayo Tab - Image Faces

« on: July 13, 2015, 02:31:14 PM »

Although I like the auto faces selection to add singing animation to my matrixes and pixel trees I would like to be able to develop a more personalized version using the Image Faces selection. As a result of looking into accomplishing this I've found that some enhancements may be necessary to the Image Faces selection.

I have been having problems adding mouth and eye movements when using the Image Faces selection in the Papagayo Tab. I posted a question on this and Gilrock suggested that layering might be a good way to get around the problem. So I attempted to create a Tree outline, a set of mouth shapes and a set of eye movements, in Photoshop, to see if I could get it to work. I wound up adding the entire tree background to each of the mouth shapes with a transparent band to create a space where the eyes would show through and then generated a sequence. That was successful and I wound up with a singing tree sequence for my pixel tree with a black band where the eyes should be.

No matter what I did, I couldn't generate a corresponding eye movement sequence, with the two eye movement checkboxes at the bottom and the 6 eye movement PNG files defined under Voice 1.

I decided to try it, by creating a second layer on the pixel tree and manually inserting the eye movement pictures just to see if it would work. After I went into the sequence xml file and did a search and replace for the first layer  (T_CHOICE_LayerMethod=Effect 1) to (T_CHOICE_LayerMethod=1 reveals 2), the manually inserted eyes on layer 2 worked beautifully.

https://vimeo.com/133374129
 at 34 sec you can see the gap required for the eyes on the second layer to show through

For this reason I would like to request the following changes to the Papagayo Tab - Image Faces section for each of the Voices.

1) Add the ability to set the layer effect to '1 reveals 2"  in the Face Outline and Mouth fields
2) Add the ability to generate the Face Outline, Mouths and Eyes on different layers.

I would also be happy to try any other suggestions that anyone has to accomplish independent mouth and eye movement on a pixel tree or matrix.

Thanks
Ron

4

The Water Cooler / Re: Is there a way to copy & paste a set of manual timing marks?

« on: July 12, 2015, 10:40:45 AM »

I hadn't played with click tracks before but if you generate a click track and then use the analyze>Bar and Beat Tracker: (vamp plugin) it will automatically generate a label track which can be exported (don't forget to change the label track name). When I tested it the results were pretty close (about 0.031 sec early).
Ron

5

The Water Cooler / Re: Is there a way to copy & paste a set of manual timing marks?

« on: July 11, 2015, 10:11:18 PM »

I have set click tracks in audacity but can't figure out how to save the click track file as a label file so I can export to xlights and see the timing marks.   Audacity keeps saving the click track file as a .wav...   
Any advice?  Thanks in advance AGAIN.

Make sure you rename the Label Track excluding any non-alpha-numeric characters - I always get caught by the colon when I use Analyze and generate a 'Beat and Bar Tracker: ...' label track and then don't rename it.  It's strange that it doesn't generate an error and instead of bringing up the 'Export Labels As:' screen to select a name and directory, it just seems to ignore the click. Once it's renamed(if that was necessary): click  File>Export Labels and make sure you put the file extension .txt in the filename field as the program seems not to add the txt extension unless it is incuded as part of the filename.

6

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Re: Papagayo Tab - Image Faces - Superimposing Mouths & Eyes

« on: July 11, 2015, 01:35:12 PM »

I haven't looked at how Papagayo was implemented.  I'm sure it probably doesn't take advantage of the multi layer capability we have now.  If it did you could just place the different sections on different layers and use the Normal blend mode.

I guess I'll wait to see if Sean intends to add the layering capability to the Papagayo Tab before I go crazy with the multiple models for my pixel tree and matrices. Thanks
Ron 

7

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Papagayo Tab - Image Faces - Superimposing Mouths & Eyes

« on: July 11, 2015, 11:10:04 AM »

I have gotten to the point where I have developed image files of all the phonemes for my 24x52 pixel tree. I had to make each phoneme the complete tree as I could not figure out how to superimpose the mouth over the outline file I was using as the base background.

I'm now trying to add the eyes and I can't see any way of superimposing the eye images on the existing model.  Does anyone have an idea of a simple method to layer the mouths & eyes when using the Papagayo Tab in the Image Faces model? 

I would like to avoid having to create two separate models for the eye and mouth spaces and running the "Create new Sequence"   three times with the different models to overlay them but I will be trying that next if no one has any better ideas.

8

Bugs in xLights/Nutcracker / Re: Problems with Render on Vista.

« on: July 10, 2015, 05:19:48 AM »

The data layer was a holdover from originally moving the sequence over from another setup prior to the implementation of the grid capabilities. I had re-sequenced it all in Nutcracker and failed to delete the layer. I was hoping that deleting the layer would improve the hang up problem, but it didn't.

By the way its all rendering and playing just fine for me but of course I was getting errors about not having the .iseq file for that data layer.

Was this on a Vista box or a later OS?

9

Bugs in xLights/Nutcracker / Re: Problems with Render on Vista.

« on: July 09, 2015, 08:54:45 PM »

I have attached the xml files used by the particular sequence I was referring to in my post. This is a relatively small setup that I am doing for a friend so it has a small number of models and not many effects. 

The render/save time on the I7 box is under 10 seconds and about the same on the rare occasions that it completes on the Vista machine. When it hangs it's after displaying "Done Rendering Main Star" with the Task Manager showing ~26% CPU Utilization and 269,000K memory usage for xLights at that time.
The system has an Intel core 2 Quad CPU with 6GB memory installed. When I'm having the problem, with no other apps running, the total CPU hovers around 27% and memory utilization is at ~3.5 GB, all 4 CPUs show activity.

I am having similar problems with all the sequences on my various setups. Any help would be appreciated
Ron

10

Bugs in xLights/Nutcracker / Problems with Render on Vista.

« on: July 09, 2015, 12:55:44 PM »

I've been having problems with rendering, and saving with the render switch on, for some time now on my PC (Vista OS). It seems to get to the same place and then locks up. I have let it go for up to an hour when it reaches that point but eventually I'm forced to kill the app in the Task Manager. Occasionally it actually completes without error but if I render or save, one or two more times, without any other changes, it locks up again.
I can only go back to v4.1.8 before the grid for this sequence gets screwed up, but I'm sure I've been having this problem prior to that version.
If I move all the files to my I7 Laptop (Win 8.1) everything works fine.
I'm curious if anyone else is having similar problems and it's just time to upgrade my desktop or if this is something that can be remedied. I really don't want to spend the money on a new system at the moment, if I can help it.
Thanks,
Ron
 

11

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Re: Multi Color Text

« on: July 01, 2015, 05:33:12 PM »

When I just tested 4.1.9 (and I'm pretty sure the earlier versions) if you select two colors in the effect color box, the first line is the first color selected, the second is the second color selected, etc. If you want different color order than the preset just double click on the color you want changed and select a new one from the pallete.

12

Enhancement Requests / Re: The ability to import a video file to the Xlights sequencer

« on: June 19, 2015, 06:56:45 PM »

Hi, I have been using NC 4, for the last few weeks and like it, but one feature I would really like would be the ability to import a video as the media file, right now you can only use mp3 files. If this feature has already been added how do I import a video to the sequencer?
Thanks!

I can't tell from your post if you want to actually used the video image somehow in your sequence or just sequence to the video's audio then use the video to project the image. I can't help you with the first, but I use Audacity to create an mp3 audio file (you may need to download an Audacity plug-in) which matches the video, import that into NC and sequence to that audio file. Then I import the mp4 video and sequence into FPP on a Raspberry Pi which sends the audio from the mp4 video to my transmitter, runs the sequence and sends the video to my projector through the HDMI port. Hope this helps.
Ron

13

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Re: Matrix defintion for P10 panels

« on: June 09, 2015, 08:23:30 PM »

-   is that (the LED panel layout view) a view looking at it from the back or looking at it from the front ?

Looking at the front of the panels.
0-1 refers to the JP1 port on the octoscroller (each row is plugged into its own octoscroller port)
0-2 refers to the JP2 port
(in your setup) 0-3 would refer to the JP3 port & 0-4 would refer to the JP4 port (see attachment)
P-1 is the panel directly connected to the Octoscroller port
P-2 connects to the output connector of P-1, P-3 to P-2, etc to a maximum of 8 panels /row

-   to which panel in the config is your connection from the Octoscroller connected to (eg top left , bottom left , top right or bottom right)

Octoscroller Port JP1 is connected to Top Panel 1 (O-1, P-1) which is the top right hand panel when viewed from the front of the panels
Octoscroller Port JP2 is connected to Second from Top Panel 1 (O-2, P-1) which is the next right hand panel down (row 2) when viewed from the front of the panels (this can continue for up to a total of 8 rows)

-   and after that , which way does the connection go  ie in the diagram would it go from 1 to 4 , then 4 to 5 and then to 8 ?

Each column starts with the rightmost being designated P-1 and goes up by 1 moving to the left.
As stated above each row is designated a different Octoscroller Port JP1 - O-1 (Top row rightmost panel), Port JP2 - O-2 next row down etc.

and is this setup explained anywhere ?

gadgetsmith posted the answer to this while I was putting this together

I tried to illustrate what I believe your setup will look like in the attached image.  I'm sure that there are other ways to configure you setup but this worked well for me. Let me know if I can confuse you any more

Ron

14

Do You Need Help? Post it here / Re: Matrix defintion for P10 panels

« on: June 07, 2015, 05:31:07 AM »

I would assume that the way you drive your P10 panels and how you connect everything together will have an effect on the type and arrangement of your matrix definition.  I set up my 8 panels as a 4x2 (WxH) Horizontal Matrix using a BBB and Octoscroller.  After a lot of trial and error these are the xlights and FPP setup screens which finally worked for me. 

When creating the  model, what do I specify for actual number of strings , #of RGB nodes per string and # of strands per string ie should be . Should it be Actual # strings = 64 , # of RGB nodes per string = 64 and # of strands per string = 1 ?

Yes

And Starting at the top left hand corner ?

Yes

15

General hardware / Re: Looking for Sean's Controller Summary page

« on: May 16, 2015, 04:24:26 PM »

Not sure if this is his latest:

RGB Controller Comparison