Welcome The Light Elf LSP 2.5 export tool

[frankr]

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 sequece 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.

I do not have a conductor yet myself (probably arrive on Monday) but at least one user with access has tested the conductor file format to great success.

When you export a file per the instructions below the tool will generate your .xseq file.  If you have configured your xlights networks to be 16384 channels then it will also generate the conductor file (.seq).  It is important to note that if you change your network configuration in any way that increases the total channel counts you will need to reconvert your sequences to make sure xLights is looking in the right place for channel Data.

How to use:
 
First the Pre reqs:
Install python 2.7: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
Install wxPython: (Direct Download) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
Install xLights and define your xlights network layout : You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login
Extract the file "light elf.zip" (Attached)
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.

Under Options->settings you can specify a none 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

[sean815]

let me be the first to say I appreciate your hard work. I plan on using this for sure. Thanks

[jeffcoast]

I haven't been making music sequences, but just animation, is there an easy way to use your tool, like just changing the suffix or do I need to remake them as music sequences?

[Steve Gase]

open your animation. create a new music sequence using the channel config used by the animation.
copy the animation into your clipboard.
paste into the music sequence.

i've doine this a couple times.

[jeffcoast]

open your animation. create a new music sequence using the channel config used by the animation.
copy the animation into your clipboard.
paste into the music sequence.

i've doine this a couple times.

Yeah, that is what I ended up doing to test it out. Just wanted an easier option for all of them. Now I guess I need to just make a mp3 with no music in it for them. Most of my stuff is just solid patterns that change every minute or 2. So it was easier to just do the animation than having to get a sound file the right size.

[frankr]

Hmm... HAve you tried just changing the file type?  I have not experimented with that.  My guess is that it would be the same file format just sans the audio file.  I can look at a couple and see if I can make that work with just a few modes.

[jeffcoast]

I did try it, and it throws up an error that it can't find the media file and won't export anything.

[jeffcoast]

Played with it some more just now and found that it doesn't like .wma files. I had some old sequences that I had used one to make and it throws up an error when you load.

So just had to convert it and change it in LSP to point to the new file.

Great job though, just wish LSP's scheduler was as good as xLights.

[jeffcoast]

I've come across something that is confusing me and not sure how to proceed to fix it. I have 2 lynx usb dongles running Pixelnet. In LSP, the channels on the second dongle are set to zone 2, but when I used the tool I noticed none of those pixels were working. I initially thought I was having a hardware problem, as one of the flex strips is one that I have had issues before not working. This morning I decided to try and figure out what is wrong with it. I remembered when I played with xLights before I had issues with the zones, so just changed the zones all to 1 in LSP and then converted with the tool. The second hubs pixels all came on, but they were off a channel. I went back and looked in LSP and saw that I had started with channel 4098 instead of 4097. I tried changing it in LSP, but then when I ran the sequence in LSP they were off 1 channel. Is there a way to verify what actual channel a controller is set to? And why would it do this if it works in LSP, shouldn't it work with Xlights without having to change the numbers?

[frankr]

Hi Jeff,

I wish it were that simple .  Zones make it a bit complicated to sort out. This is especially true on the boundary cases. 

The switch to 4097 in LSP should get things to work properly I am not sure why that would be off when played back through LSP though I am kind of surprised that LSP would still output those channels through the second pixelnet dongle when all channels are now programmed to be in Zone 1...

Does the converted sequence after that change play back properly?

Another thing to look at is the log file my tool creates with the name of the original sequence follwed by .log.  That will give us pointers to any possible oddities the conversion process ran into.

Frank

[jeffcoast]

When I make both zones 1, it outputs everything to the first dongle and the second plays nothing. I must have something somewhere setup wrong in LSP. I changed all of the channels to start at 4097 and changed to zone 1 and everything looked good in Xlights. So there must not be anything wrong with your app, but no clue what I did wrong in LSP in the first place.

[frankr]

Hi Jeff,

In LSP to use a second pixelnet dongle you need to have things setup as zones 1 and 2.  However; when you do that then I am not sure how LSP treats the channel numbers as there are only 4096 channels in a pixelnet universe but on your zone 2 you start your numbering at 4097 so I am not sure if that should work or not.

My translation tool maps things pretty straight forward so your channel numbering works great there...

Frank

[jeffcoast]

^yeah, I don't remember what I did last year when I set all this up. But for some reason when I set zone 2 to 4097 in LSP it is off 1 channel. 4098 is the red of pixel 1, 4099 is the green and 4100 is the blue. But in Xlights, 4097 is red, 4098 is the green and 4099 is the blue, as it should be. The SSC is supposed to be start channel 1, I though, and the universe on the hub is 2. I probably just need to start over and reprogram all of the SSCs. Just not easy to get to all of them on the roof, and I don't have alot of time.

[rdebolt]

If you are using a pixelnet dongle and not an etd the the channel numbers will be 1-4996 universe 2, Etd would stay on universe 1 4097-8192. Just need to make sure that you controller outputs are set to the correct pixelnet dongle

[jeffcoast]

I figured out a workaround for getting my pixels to work the same in xLights and LSP. I just added a single channel DMX controller between my 2 Pixelnet dongles on the setup of xLights so now it just shifts everything up 1 channel for me.