If you have a lot of RGB channels in your sequence that you want to remove, clicking on them one by one could take a very long time. There is an easier way to delete multiple RGB channels at once.

Applies to: S3, S4

Open the sequence in the LOR Sequence Editor. Right Click on the first RGB Channel you want to remove and click “Convert to Group” option. You now are given the chance to select the first and last channel in the group. Go ahead and select all of the RGB channels you want to remove. The click “Create Group.”

Next right click on the Group that has appeared in your channel listing and select “Delete channel group list.” You are asked if you want to remove the group list, and you would click “Yes” to do so.

This method will allow you to quickly delete multiple RGB channels or regular channels at one time. You don’t have to remove them one by one, just use the channel group function to group the channels together and remove them.

Important: You really should be using Tracks in S3 and S4. Read this post to learn more about tracks.

With the release of S3 comes the new Visualizer program. It also introduces an area of confusion when trying to troubleshoot issues one may be having with the animation view.

Notice how I seemingly used the two phrases “Visualizer” and “animation view” as if they are the same thing? Welcome to the confusion.

Let us look at the two programs.

Animation View

The Animation View is used within the Sequence Editor, only. It is not a stand-alone product. The Animation view is limited in features. For example, you can only have one color assigned per pixel.

LOR Visualizer

The LOR Visualizer is a stand-alone product that has many new features, including the ability to assign more than one channel to a prop/fixture. (Even the phrases “prop” and “fixture” are new to the visualizer.)

If you have a question about either product, please be sure to use the right terminology when asking the question. The products are very different, and as such an answer for one will not help you out in the other.

The Tracks feature within the Light-O-Rama sequence editor is often confusing to people. This article will try and explain it for you.

When you are working within a sequence there are two people who control what is going on. You and the computer. As we all know computers like to store things in their language. However, the LOR programmers gave us a method to store things in our language. (Or as I call it, human readable form.)

Internally, LOR will store the channel information with a tag called “SavedIndex”. This index never changes, regardless of what you do to the channel. This means if you reassigned a channel from “Controller 1/Channel 1/Red Bush” to “Controller 3/Channel 8/Santa” the “SavedIndex” does not change.

Furthermore if you were to delete “Controller 1/Channel 1/Red Bush” and then add in “Controller 1/Channel 1/Green Tree” the “SavedIndex” would be different.

This can cause issues when you go to update sequences from year to year.

Let’s go over an example of how you might set up Tracks, to get the most out of them.

In this example you have 32 channels, or 2 16 channel controllers.

1) Create an animation sequence. (We don’t need music here, we’re just working on our template)
2) You will have 32 channels for this sequence. They will have default names. *Do not move any channels.*
3) If you already know your layout, you can go ahead and re-name the channels in this track. *Do not move any channels.*
4) Edit -> Duplicate Track. Name it “Working Track”
5) Change to the working track.
6) Now, click/drag channels into the order you want. *Do not simply rename channels*, but click/drag to re-arrange. [That’s important.]
7) “Edit -> Export/Import Configuration -> Export” and save to a file.

When you create a second track, you are visually making a second copy, but internally the events are only stored once. This is why when you import the sequences from last year, everything is in the right place. With the steps above you don’t change the internal associations.

Note that you will want to work within the “Working Track” from here on out. Do not make changes to your “Default” track. (Which you can rename by clicking the “Track” button in the toolbar. It’s near the “Timings” button.)

Now when you import into another sequence from last year you will “Import” the LCC file created in step 7 above. Your events should now be associated with the correct channels.

Why? The LOR software keeps track of the channels internally, via a method not shown to you on the front-end of the software. When you rename a channel, the actual internal association does not change.

Now, let’s say you want to add a 3rd controller to your display:

1. Create a new animation sequence, and import your Channel Configuration File.
2. In the “DEFAULT” track, add 16 channels to the *BOTTOM*
3. Now, the fun part, (at least as of 2.9.4) you will have to Right-Click -> Copy to Other Track each of those 16 channels that you just added. It’s tedious, but it’s important to do.

You can now change to the “working” track, move the channels around as needed. Remember, *do not simply rename channels*, but click/drag to re-arrange. [That’s important!]

Putting it all together

Let’s say in the above example you have 4 bushes the first year (32 channel configuration) and each bush had two colors. Now for your upgraded display (48 channels) you have 4 bushes with 4 colors. When you created your working track, you moved the two new colors to be near the 2 old colors. You now want to import the new channel configuration to a sequence from last year.

You simply need to open a sequence from last year, and import your new LCC (Light-O-Rama Channel Configuration) file. Since the internal “SavedIndex” is now the same, the events from last year will remain associated with their current channel. The new channels, for example the new colors on the bushes, will be empty, as they were not in the sequence last year.

With the above method you can make changes to your channel configuration, and not have it adversely affect your current sequences. It does require planning and initial setup, but it does work.

The Chase tool can be used to take a pattern and “chase” it through several channels over a time range.  For example:

Before a chase…

… and after a chase

Exactly what is chased, and where it is chased to, depends upon how you click-and-drag (or, if using the keyboard, how you expanded the selection).  The lighting effects in the corner that you started dragging from will be chased to the corner that you finished dragging to so that, for example, you could chase effects “up” or “down” through channels.

The effects that are chased will include everything up to and including the last non-off lighting effect in the channel that you start dragging from (or, if dragging backwards, everything from the first non-off lighting effect).

The Chase tool can also be used on RGB channels:

Before an RGB chase…

… and after an RGB chase

The Chase tool pays attention to the Paste from Foreground clipboard option, so that you can chase a pattern without overwriting existing effects with “off” effects.  For example, consider the following sequence, and imagine that you want to chase the second fade up in the first channel:

Before chasing the second fade

If you did not have “Paste from Foreground” turned on, the chase would overwrite the ends of the existing fades in some of the other channels:

After chasing the second fade, without “Paste from Foreground”

But with “Paste from Foreground” turned on, the existing effects would be kept in place:

After chasing the second fade, with “Paste from Foreground”

When using the Light-O-Rama software, it is possible to import sequences from other users into your program. However, despite copying the sequence and audio file into the correct directories, you are getting a “Can not locate media file” type error.

This is due to the way that Light-O-Rama encodes the audio sequence in the LMS file. If the directories are not exactly the same, then LOR simply can not locate the media.

To resolve this click on “Edit -> Media File” to select the media file again. This will record the media file location in your sequence and should make it playable on your computer.

Want to save your channels in a template so you can use them again and again? You can with a Light-O-Rama channel template.

Applies to: S4 and all previous versions.

Create a new sequence, or use an existing one to define your channels.

1. 1. Click “Edit -> Export/Import Channel Configuration -> Export Channel Configuration.”
   2. When prompted, enter a filename for your template. It is now saved to your computer.

To use the LCC file, you can do so one of two ways.

Method One:
Click “File -> New” and create a new musical (or animation) sequence.
Look for the section called “Use a saved channel configuration template” and use the “…” button to chose the template you created in steps 1 and 2.
Once you click okay, your new sequence is ready to go with your information already filled in for you.

Method Two:
Open your existing sequence.
Click “Edit -> Export/Import Channel Configuration -> Import Channel Configuration.”
Chose the template you created in steps 1 and 2.

When a sequence is created with a version of Light-O-Rama that is not licensed (running in demo mode only) LOR will encrypt that sequence to that computer.

If you later purchase the software, please note the sequence is STILL encrypted. If you wish to copy/paste from or to it on another computer, you will need to do the following:

• Create a new sequence on the same computer with which you created these sequences.
• Do the copy/paste from there. Copy the old sequence to the new one.
• SAVE the new sequence!

Once you have done these steps you will have created a sequence that is not encrypted to that computer. This is, of course, assuming that the computer you are doing this on has a licensed copy of Light-O-Rama.

Say you download a free sequence from the Internet and load it into your Sequence Editor (SE). However, when you hit ‘play’ the SE tells you that it can’t find the media file, or some other error. What do you go?

Click on “Edit -> Media” and choose the audio file that goes with the sequence.

What’s going on? When the person who created the sequence save it, the SE saved the location of the audio file as well. However, if your audio file isn’t in the same place, the SE will generate an error. Selecting the ‘new’ audio file (well, new on your computer anyway) will fix the problem.

Sometimes when you create a new Musical Sequence, you can an error message that says, in part, “Audio Analysis Error.” If you encounter this error message there is an easy fix.

See this PDF from LOR. You will need to run your audio file through Audacity. This will create a Constant Bit Rate MP3 file.

You can change what keys are assigned to what events.

Edit-> Preferences -> Keyboard will let you change hotkeys. So, oldtimers, you have your “F” key back!