DiyLightAnimation
Software => Light Elf Software utilities => Topic started by: frankr on July 26, 2013,
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Hello all,
As many of you know I have been working on my own custom LSP export tool. This tool is intended to export sequences created with LSP 2.5 to xLights and Conductor file formats. In addition it can also be used to combine a set of smaller sequences into one larger sequence. This particular use case can be very handy if you are using very high channel count shows. Some users have reported issues with LSP running out of memory when working with many thousands of channels and video transitions. Some of us work around this by breaking a song up into 20 second segments and then exporting each segment and recombining those segments into one final sequence to display. As you can imagine that was a long and tedious process.
I created the Light Elf to make that particular workflow easier to perform and potentially help anyone that wants to use xLights or the Conductor to run their show.
How to use:
First the Pre reqs:
!!!IMPORTANT!!! Make sure you are consistent with what version of the below libraries you download. Python and wxPython must both be compiled for the same word length, be it 32bit or 64bit.
Install python 2.7: http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7.5/ --Don't use anything later than 2.7.x
Install wxPython: (Direct Download) http://downloads.sourceforge.net/wxpython/wxPython2.8-win32-ansi-2.8.12.1-py27.exe
Install xLights and define your xlights network layout : http://sourceforge.net/projects/xlights/
Extract the file "light elf.zip" (Attached)
EDIT: Have moved to store light elf on git hub. You can always check for the most recent version here:
https://github.com/pharhp/Light-Elf
launch a command line prompt in the directory created by the extraction (shortcut: in windows 7 hold the left shift key and right click on the directory. select "open command window here" from the resulting menu)
issue the command:
C:\python27\python.exe "light elf app.py"
Usage:
under sequences menu chose add sequences.
add the sequences you want to convert (If you plan to combine only add the files you want to combine, make sure they are in alphabetic order)
under options you can pick individual sequence conversion (each file becomes its own file) or combine (all are made into one file)
when all the sequences are converted you can go to file-> export.
You will be prompted to specify which file formats you want to have generated for you.
Under Options->settings you can specify a non default directory for where Xlights holds the information specific to your comupter. You can also specify a directory used for the storing the extracted versions of your LSP sequences. This can make it easier to cleanup the excess files created from extracting the LSP sequences.
If you are in combine mode you should get a pop up to select the media file you want to use.
If you select combine it should be the selected option when you restart the app.
The app will spawn sub processes 1 per cpu core you have in your system. Each process will convert one sequence to use as much processing power as possible.
There you go. I hope that people find this tool useful.
Best Regards,
Frank
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Thanks for doing this frank!
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+1 Have used in the past and saved my bacon last year a couple of times.
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Frank, now that you are working on Nutcracker is there any chance that you'll incorporate Light Elf capabilities into Nutcracker to simplify the overall procedure?
thx!
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At the moment it is not high on my priority list. While the code is pretty straight forward in python doing it in C++ has more than a few hurdles that would need to be tackled. While it is not outside the realm of possibility that it will happen some day, it will in all likelihood not happen for this season.
Frank
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At the moment it is not high on my priority list. While the code is pretty straight forward in python doing it in C++ has more than a few hurdles that would need to be tackled. While it is not outside the realm of possibility that it will happen some day, it will in all likelihood not happen for this season.
Frank
understood. Thanks once again for your efforts on BOTH projects!
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FYI... The version of light elf attached here is no longer the most recent. You can find the most recent at:
https://github.com/pharhp/Light-Elf
Original post updated to reflect this.
Regards,
Frank
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Can anyone tell me if this is designed to work with Windows 7, 8, etc. I am trying to run it on Windows Vista and am having a major issue an cannot get it to run or recognize the exe file or app. Not sure if I am not doing something right or what, but just cannot get it working.
Thanksl
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This should work regardless of windows version. The most common mistake that people make is not downloading the 32 bit version of both python and wxpython. IF you get a mix of bit sizes you will have issues. I have seen some reports of 64 bit python not behaving well but those are far less common.
Post some specifics about what you are seeing and I can probably help you through this.
Frank
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ok how do I tell which version I downloaded. I thought i downlowded the 32 bit for each one. But I will give you some screen shots of what I have and what it does so far.
Thanks so much - be back shortly...
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here are a couple things to show for python 27 it looks like 32 bit and wxpython 32 bit also. But when i try to launch the command window it already has C:\python27> already ready to go and no matter how I type the command i cant get anywhere. any suggestions?
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sorry posted wrong image - here is python properties
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i also get this - the add sequences feature is grayed out and i cannot select anything to upload in order to export or convert...
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Think I might have gotten a step ahead... let me see if does anything..
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ok now i have gotten this far - see screen shot - I just get the error message when trying to convert and it says permission denied - how do i grant permission??
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Ok I went through a bunch of menus and settings and added different programs past the firewall, turned off the User Account Control, multiple things, and now it seems to be working. So I am all now. Got the first one to convert after multiple Error messages and troubleshooting.
Thanks!
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Why to stick in there :)
my guess is that the directory C:\program files\xlights\temp does not exist.
In Light Elf under Options->Settings make sure that your xlights directory and temp directory are set to directories that do exist.
Frank
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My temp file was there but I am on windows vista and it has all the user control issues as default so I had to disable that as it was giving me the permission errors in the command window, so I had to disable the firewall and disable the user control access then reboot and then it worked fine.
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Is there any way to bring xlights effects into lsp. And did anyone test output with lsp 2.8?
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Is there any way to bring xlights effects into lsp. And did anyone test output with lsp 2.8?
You need to post this in Nutcracker thread, but short answer is it is easier just to build your sequence in LSP then export to NC (using Light elf) and then use Xlights\NC to finish your sequence