Timing scenes

[kwelch007]

Hi all,

Here's another dumb question.

So, I'm lighting this Halloween display in a couple days, and there's a sound-track about an hour long that will loop for a few hours. At specific times during the track, there are "lightning strike" sounds, and they want strobes during those "strikes."

Now, obviously I could sit there and manually trigger them using overrides or something, or alternatively listen to the whole track and make a cuelist that would match up, but that would be tons of cues. So, it's not like I can't do it, but it seems like there should be an easier way.

Assuming I know precisely when these cues are (I'd listen with a stopwatch) would there be a way to trigger an override automatically at certain times for a certain duration? Obviously I'd have to coordinate the music with the lights (aka start them at exactly the same time,) but that's do-able. If not, I may just end up using the phone app, but seems like it would be a cool feature...especially for DJ's.

Thanks!
Kendell

[DJDaveSA]

How will you be playing the sound track? if you use Virtual DJ then there is a plugin that can control the lights according to the track.

[Spirit]

hi currently FS has some Time'ing issues..

1Step from 1S is Real-time 1.2S..
so i realy!!! hard to do this with FS.

But you could use a Other Program that can playback track and Midi Sequences..
then you can use the Midi to trigger Seq./Override buttons.

/spirit

[jdmyers]

This is where a DAW (such as Reaper) with MIDI functions can come in handy as a MIDI control (lighting) time-line / media playback combination.

Load your hour long Audio track into the DAW, set it to Loop playback, then set up a MIDI track that you can add MIDI commands to to control the lights. If you listen along to the audio, and "play" your MIDI controller into the DAW MIDI track (set to record your controller), then you can playback the audio and MIDI track together and (if you nailed your lighting performance,) you should be set. If you didn't nail it, you can edit the MIDI notes and controls until you're happy.

[BillsGate]

How will you be playing the sound track? if you use Virtual DJ then there is a plugin that can control the lights according to the track.

That is exactly the way I did it a few weeks ago. I've filled te cue window with all sorts of different cues, some looping. I then hooked up my VirtualDJ with the plugin of SBDJ to Freestyler and added different cue-points in VDJ to trigger the cues in Freestyler.

Using VirtualDJ, you can add video aswell. We created a projection mapping video on a house of a friend of mine using Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere.
This is a compilation video of the result of the projection/lighting: