Syncing my video files to slights

[Charles Belcher]

Is there a way to shorten an xLights sequence by a few frames or milliseconds.

I made the xLights sequence with a music track before I built the movie.  I shorten the music track a tiny bit on the movie track so now I need to go back and make sure the xLights sequence is exactly the same.

If I just drop a new media file into xLights—what happens time line wise?
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Edit

I just made a test 30 second white noise xLight sequence, saved it, reopened it, went to settings/media folder then dropped a 23 sec 15 frame white noise in place of the 30 second.
and saved it.

Now when I pull up the sequence, I see the audio track is 23 sec 15ff, but the effects are still showing at 30 seconds.

My question is when I save this, will it render at 23sec 15ff or 30 sec?
My guess is that it renders at the time value of the music track if the sequence was built as a musical sequence and any effects dropped after that time will be dropped???


Charles

[keithsw1111]

Changing the media file wont change the sequence length ... but you can do so in the same place. As the audio file controls playing the sequence will stop playing when the audio file is done ... any excessive size will be ignored.

[Charles Belcher]

Changing the media file wont change the sequence length ... but you can do so in the same place. As the audio file controls playing the sequence will stop playing when the audio file is done ... any excessive size will be ignored.

Keith,

But if the sequence and the audio file are both loaded into the scheduler, then do each play until they end?  I have done this the last two years, I am just trying to get more efficient about the process.

A little more detail for you.  I projection map my house and play one single show which is 18.5 minutes long.  In order to program both the video in Power Director and the lights in xLights, I have to divide the show into 6 different "segments". If I don't, I have to fight load render times and lock up/restarts.

After I program them, then I copy and paste from the individual segment files into one "master" file.  Doing that with both a movie file and the xlights file necessitates a very precise compilation of the segments.

So…back to your answer:  You said; "Changing the media file wont change the sequence length ... but you can do so in the same place. As the audio file controls playing the sequence will stop playing when the audio file is done ... any excessive size will be ignored."

To be clear, if I had programmed a one minute musical xlights sequence with 50ms timing and had an effect all the way to the end; then change the musical file to be 59.5 seconds long and don't touch the effects—are you saying the sequence will then only play 59.5 seconds, then stop and the last .5 seconds worth of programmed effects will be ignored?

Or will the sequence run for 60 seconds playing all effects but having dead air for the last .5 second?

Charles

[keithsw1111]

Yes it will only play 59.5 seconds.

[Gilrock]

Yep so the shortest length wins.  Its stops when it hits the defined sequence duration or the end of the media.

[Charles Belcher]

Yep so the shortest length wins.  Its stops when it hits the defined sequence duration or the end of the media.

Gil/Keith,

I get it.  Can I just cut to the chase and change the time value under sequence/settings/sequence duration?

Sure would save a lot of time.

Charles

[keithsw1111]

No.

[Gilrock]

Not sure why Keith said no because that's how I do it.  I type in a shorter time to truncate a few seconds off the end of my sequences and I don't touch the audio file.  Works fine.