The Light-O-Rama Sequence Editor's Tools menu contains items enabling you to choose which lighting effects will be applied when you edit sequences (via the mouse or the keyboard), settings for those effects, and several wizards that can be used to change sequences in various ways.
The following options are available on the Tools menu:
•On
•Off
•Fill
•Load Intensities and Fades from Current Sequence
The Tools Menu
Effect Tools
The first group of items on the Tools menu enables you to choose the tool that will be used whenever you select a cell or cells using the mouse, or hit the enter key on the keyboard. The selected tool will generally apply a lighting effect to the selected cell or cells (an exception to this is the Fill tool, which applies a fill to the cell that you click on, and any cell that you then drag to, rather than to the selected cell or cells).
Only one of these tools can be enabled at any given time; enabling one will automatically disable the others.
You can also choose the current effect tool using the Tools toolbar.
The following effect tools can be enabled:
•On
•Off
•Fill
Select
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid will simply select those cells. No lighting effect will be applied, nor will any be applied by hitting the enter key.
Toggle
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid, or hitting the enter key, will turn individual parts of the selection on or off. Each portion of the selection that had been on will be turned off, and every other portion will be turned on. Note that the latter includes not just portions of the selection that had been off, but also those that had been twinkles, fades, shimmers, and intensities.
Twinkle
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid, or hitting the enter key, will apply the twinkle effect to the selected cells, making the selected channels blink on and off randomly during the selected time.
Shimmer
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid, or hitting the enter key, will apply the shimmer effect to the selected cells, making the selected channels rapidly blink on and off in unison during the selected time.
On
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid, or hitting the enter key, will apply the on effect to the selected cells, making the selected channels turn on at full brightness during the selected time.
Off
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid, or hitting the enter key, will apply the offeffect to the selected cells, making the selected channels turn completely off during the selected time.
Set Intensity
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid, or hitting the enter key, will apply the set intensity effect to the selected cells, making the selected channels turn on at a specified percentage of their full brightness during the selected time.
The exact percentage of brightness used can be chosen via the Intensity Tool Settings dialog.
Fade Up
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid, or hitting the enter key, will apply the fade up effect to the selected cells, making the selected channels gradually increase in brightness during the selected time.
The exact levels of brightness that the fade will start and end at can be chosen via the Fade Tool Settings dialog.
Fade Down
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid, or hitting the enter key, will apply the fade down effect to the selected cells, making the selected channels gradually decrease in brightness during the selected time.
The exact levels of brightness that the fade will start and end at can be chosen via the Fade Tool Settings dialog.
Intelligent Fade
The Intelligent Fade tool is similar to the Fade Up and Fade Down tools, but it can create either a fade up effect or a fade down effect, as well as applying a fill. It will create a fade up when you use it by clicking and dragging left-to-right, or a fade down when clicking or dragging right-to-left (or, if you are using the keyboard, fade up or fade down depends upon whether you expanded the selection left-to-right or right-to-left).
If you click without dragging, it will apply a fill. That is, if you click on an empty area of the grid, it will change that area to be a fade from the preceding intensity to the following intensity. For example, if a fade up from 10% to 40% is followed by the lights being off, which is followed by a fade up from 20% to 80%, then clicking on the area where the lights are off will make it into a fade down from 40% to 20%.
Fill
The Fill tool can be used to create smooth fades from one effect to another. For example, if a fade up from 10% to 40% is followed by the lights being off, which is followed by a fade up from 20% to 80%, then applying the Fill tool on the area where the lights are off will make it into a fade down from 40% to 20%:
Before a fill... ... and after a fill
It can also be used in a similar manner on RGB channels to smoothly fade from one color to another.
Before a fill... ... and after a fill
The Fill tool does not do anything when used on cells that are not completely off.
When used with the mouse, the Fill tool works slightly differently than other effect tools. With most tools, clicking a cell will change the selected area of the sequence grid to be that cell, and dragging (with the mouse still clicked) will expand the selection. Only after the mouse button is let up will the tool be applied to the selection.
The Fill tool, on the other hand, is applied to the effect that you click on, immediately when you click down, and to any effect that you subsequently drag to (with the mouse still clicked down). It does not change the selected area of the sequence grid in any way. This fact, plus the fact that the Fill tool does not affect effects other than off effects, hopefully makes it easy to apply a wide range of fills quickly, simply by clicking and dragging to the appropriate spots.
The Intelligent Fade tool and the Color Fade tool can also be used to apply fills in certain situations.
Chase
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"
Color Fade
The Color Fade tool can be used to apply colors to RGB channels. Selecting the Color Fade tool opens the Color Fade tool window, which enables you to specify the colors to be used (note, however, that the colors as displayed on your screen will not necessarily match those shown by your actual lights; you may have to experiment to determine colors that wind up looking the way you want, and different RGB devices may show different colors when sent the same intensities):
The Color Fade tool window
With the Color Fade tool selected, clicking and dragging an area of an RGB channel or multiple RGB channels will cause that area to become those colors:
Applying a color fade to an RGB channel
If you drag backwards, however, the colors will be applied in reverse order (this also happens if you are using the keyboard, and expand the selection from right to left instead of left to right):
Applying a color fade to an RGB channel by dragging backwards
Clicking (as opposed to clicking-and-dragging) on an empty area will cause the Color Fade tool to perform a fill, smoothly fading from the preceding color to the following color:
Before clicking the empty area... ... and after clicking the empty area
The Color Fade tool window gives several ways to select the colors to be used:
•The "Choose" buttons on either side will open a color picker dialog to specify the color for that side
•The "Copy" button on either side will copy the color from the opposite side
•The "Swap" button will move the two colors to their opposite sides
•The "Random" buttons on either side will choose a random color for that side
•The "Random button in the middle will choose random colors for both sides
The Color Fade tool window also enables you to choose what kind of effect should be applied. For example, here is a twinkling color fade:
A twinkling color fade
A note regarding DMX color effects: The Color Fade tool allows you to specify that DMX effects should be used. However, as of the time of this writing, LOR hardware does not support DMX effects which change intensity (for example, a fade up), and so unless the underlying DMX effects caused by using the Color Fade tool stay at a constant intensity, they will be automatically converted to regular fades when they are sent to the controllers. That is, for example, a DMX fade from 0 to 255 will be converted to a regular fade from 0% to 100%. So, the Color Fade tool will not give as fine-grained control over DMX as you may think.
However, if you make your sequence using DMX fades now, and in the future LOR hardware is updated to support them, then your sequence will take already be set up to advantage of this.
Paint Sequence
The Paint Sequence tool can be used to paint some or all of the effects from another sequence into the current sequence, in a variety of ways.
When this tool is selected, the Paint Sequence dialog will open:
The Paint Sequence dialog
To select a sequence to paint from, first click on the "Add New Sequence" button. This will open up a file browser, allowing you to select the sequence in question. After you do so, it will be added to the "Sequence" dropdown list. Many sequences can be added to the dropdown list, and after a sequence is in the list, you can choose to paint from it simply by selecting it in the list (rather than by clicking "Add New Sequence" every time).
If the Paint Sequence tool is applied to a time range in a sequence, it will paste effects from the first track of the sequence selected via the Paint Sequence dialog into that time range of the other sequence. All channels in the Paint Sequence dialog's sequence's first track are used, regardless of how many channels are selected in the sequence which is being painted into.
The exact way that the effects are painted depends upon the selected "Mode", and whether or not the "From Foreground" option is selected. These are handled much like the similar modes and options for pasting from clipboards. For example, if the "Repeat" option is selected, the effects will be painted by repeating them over and over again until the entire selected time range has been filled (or, if the selected time range is shorter than the sequence being painted from, however much of the effects fit in that time range will be used).
Note that the pasted effects truly become a part of the sequence that they are painted into; they are not linked back to the original sequence that they were painted from. That is, if you ever change the effects in the sequence that they were painted from, this change will not automatically be reflected in the sequence that you painted into.
Also, once a sequence has been added to the dropdown list via the "Add New Sequence" button, painting from that sequence will use the effects as they were at the time the sequence was added. That is, if you change the effects that are in a sequence in the dropdown list, and save that sequence, painting from that sequence will still use the old effects. If you want to use the new effects, then select that sequence in the dropdown list, and then click the "Reload Sequence" button.
As an example, consider the following sequences, the first selected in the Paint Sequence dialog, and the second to be painted into:
The sequence being painted from
The sequence being painted into, before painting
If the area from 1.00 second to 6.00 seconds on channel "Unit 01.3" is selected in the sequence being painted into, and the selected Mode is "Repeat", with "From Foreground" turned off, the results will be the following:
The sequence being painted into, after painting
Note that all eight channels from the first sequence were painted into the second sequence, despite the fact that only one channel was selected - the channel selection merely indicates the location to start pasting channels into.
Also note that because the selected time range was five seconds long, while the length of the sequence being painted from was only four seconds, the entire four seconds were painted (to time 1.00 through 5.00), followed by another copy of the first second (from time 5.00 to time 6.00). This is because the "Repeat" mode was selected; other modes will behave differently, as described in the similar clipboard modes.
DMX Intensity
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid, or hitting the enter key, will apply the DMX intensity effect to the selected cells, allowing for 256 possible intensities (between 0 and 255), rather than 101 (between 0 and 100).
This tool is only available if DMX editing has been enabled.
Custom
If this effect tool is enabled on the Tools menu, then clicking on a cell or cells in a sequence's grid, or hitting the enter key, will apply the current custom tool effect to the selected cells, for example making the selected channels twinkle while gradually decreasing in brightness during the selected time.
Effect Tool Settings
The Tools menu contains several settings that affect the behavior of the currently selected effect tool:
•Load Intensities and Fades from Current Sequence
Custom Settings
This submenu of the Tools menu allows you to select the behavior of the current custom tool. For example, to make the current custom tool into a twinkling fading down tool, check "Twinkle" and "Fade Down" from this submenu.
Background Effects
Enabling this item on the Tools menu will turn on background effects mode, which causes the current effect tool to apply only to those portions of the selection which are currently off.
Background effects mode can also be turned on via the Tools toolbar, or by hitting Shift-A on the keyboard.
At most one of background effects mode and foreground effects mode can be enabled at the same time. Enabling one will automatically disable the other. However, using the keyboard, you can temporarily turn on either of them (and also regular effects mode) for the next keystroke only, using the A, O, and E keys, respectively.
Foreground Effects
Enabling this item on the Tools menu will turn on foreground effects mode, which causes the current effect tool to apply only to those portions of the selection which are not currently off.
Foreground effects mode can also be turned on via the Tools toolbar, or by hitting Shift-O on the keyboard.
At most one of background effects mode and foreground effects mode can be enabled at the same time. Enabling one will automatically disable the other. However, using the keyboard, you can temporarily turn on either of them (and also regular effects mode) for the next keystroke only, using the A, O, and E keys, respectively.
Intensity Tool Settings
This item on the Tools menu opens or closes the Intensity Tool Settings dialog, which allows you to choose what percentage of full brightness will be used when you apply the set intensity tool to cells in a sequence.
The dialog has ten preset values that you can select from. If you want to use a value that is not among these ten, use the Intensity Tool Options dialog to change the available preset values (by choosing it from the Tools menu, or by pressing the "Edit" button on the Intensity Tool Settings dialog). The values of the presets can also be set using Load Intensities and Fades from Current Sequence on the Tools menu.
The Intensity Tool Settings dialog, with 70% intensity selected
Intensity Tool Options
This item on the Tools menu opens the Intensity Tool Options dialog, which allows you to set the values of the available presets on the Intensity Tool Settings dialog.
The Intensity Tool Options dialog can also be opened by clicking the "Edit" button on the Intensity Tool Settings dialog.
The Intensity Tool Options dialog
Fade Tool Settings
This item on the Tools menu opens or closes the Fade Tool Settings dialog, which allows you to choose what percentages of full brightness will be used when you apply the fade up tool or fade down tool to cells in a sequence.
The dialog has ten preset values that you can select from, and the values for fade up and fade down can be selected independently. If you want to use a value that is not among these ten, use the Fade Tool Options dialog to change the available preset values (by choosing it from the Tools menu, or by pressing the "Edit" button on the Fade Tool Settings dialog). The values of the presets can also be set using Load Intensities and Fades from Current Sequence on the Tools menu.
The Fade Tool Settings dialog, with fade up 50%-75% and fade down 100%-0% selected
Fade Tool Options
This item on the Tools menu opens the Fade Tool Options dialog, which allows you to set the values of the available presets on the Fade Tool Settings dialog.
The Fade Tool Options dialog can also be opened by clicking the "Edit" button on the Fade Tool Settings dialog.
The Fade Tool Options dialog
Load Intensities and Fades from Current Sequence
This item on the Tools menu can be used to automatically set the preset values available in the Intensity Tool Settings dialog and the Fade Tool Settings dialog, based upon the most commonly used values in the current sequence.
Channel Configuration
This item on the Tools menu opens the Channel Configuration screen, which enables you to modify the settings of all of the channels in the current sequence (such as their names, colors, unit IDs, and circuit IDs).
The Channel Configuration screen
Note that only channels, and not RGB channels, are displayed in the Channel Configuration screen. However, the three constituent channels of an RGB channel (that is, the red, green, and blue channels of that RGB channel) are displayed in the Channel Configuration screen.
The Tools menu can be used to launch several wizards that enable you to make changes to sequences in various ways:
This item on the Tools menu opens the Beat Wizard, which can be used to try to determine the tempo of a song, and insert timings and effects based upon it into the current sequence.
The Beat Wizard is only available for musical sequences, and not all types of media files are supported. MIDI files are not supported.
The Beat Wizard
MIDI File Wizard
This item on the Tools menu opens the MIDI File Wizard, which can be used to insert timings and effects into a sequence based upon the tempo of a MIDI file, or upon the individual notes played by instruments in that MIDI file.
The MIDI File Wizard is only supported for musical sequences based upon MIDI files.
The MIDI File Wizard
Tapper Wizard
This item on the Tools menu opens the Tapper Wizard, which can play the sequence's song and record you as you tap along with it, and insert timings and effects based upon your taps into the current sequence.
The Tapper Wizard is only supported for musical sequences.
The Tapper Wizard
VU Wizard
This item on the Tools menu opens the VU Wizard, which can be used to insert timings and effects based upon it into the current sequence based upon audio peaks in the song, much like a VU meter.
The VU Wizard is only available for musical sequences, and not all types of media files are supported. MIDI files are not supported.
The VU Wizard