The Sequencer's New Musical Sequence dialog is used to create a new musical sequence (a sequence with an associated audio or video file). The New Animation dialog can be reached several ways:
•Selecting File > New > Musical Sequence from the main menu
•Clicking the "New Musical Sequence" link on the Start Page
•Right-clicking on a preview in the Previews window and selecting "New Musical Sequence" from the pop-up menu
•Using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-N
After doing one of these things, but before the New Musical Sequence dialog opens, you will be prompted to select the audio or video file that will be used to build the new sequence. After you select the file, then the New Musical Sequence dialog will open.
Behind the scenes, the Sequencer will open the media file to determine its length. When the new sequence is created, its length will match that of the media file.
For detailed help, please refer to the following sections:
•Number Of Motion Effect Rows For Pixel Props
•Save These Choices As Defaults
The New Musical Sequence dialog
Sequence Author
If you wish, you can put your name here. It will be saved with the sequence, and will be displayed on the Sequence Information screen. Once set, even if set to a blank value, it cannot be changed.
Preview
A preview is a representation of your light display. It specifies all of the props that you can apply effects to in your sequence. It also specifies all of the channels your sequence will be able to control.
Normally, you will select a preview that you have already created on the "Existing Previews" tab. However, you can use the Quick Preview feature to create a new preview on the fly.
After assigning a preview here, you may continue to update the preview and those updates will be automatically reflected in the sequence (for example, adding a new prop). You can also later assign a different preview to the sequence; although if you do that, the new preview should be substantially similar to the originally assigned preview.
If you wish, you can put the name of the artist, song, and album of the associated song here. It will be saved with the sequence, and will be displayed in the Sequence Information dialog.
Some media files have already been tagged with this information. If you utilize such a media file, the Sequencer will automatically discover those tags and populate the fields in this section (though you can still change or delete it if you wish).
You can change this information later in the Sequence Information dialog.
Initial Timing Grids
This allows you to tell the Sequencer to automatically insert timings into the new sequence. Timings are the spots in time where you can easily place lighting effects - for example, turn a string of lights on, or have it twinkle, or have it fade down.
In addition to placing timings a certain length of time apart (a tenth of a second, a half second, a second, or "Custom Interval"), add adding no timings at all ("Don't add any timings"), you can instruct the Sequencer to use various wizards to insert timings based upon the song itself:
•The MIDI File Wizard can insert timings and effects based upon the beat of a MIDI song, as well as based on the individual notes played by different instruments in the song.
•The Tapper Wizard allows you to tap the keyboard or mouse while the song plays, and will record the times at which you tap.
•The Beat Wizard attempts to determine the tempo of the song, and insert timings and effects based upon it.
•The VU Wizard looks for peaks in the song, much like a VU meter, and inserts timings and effects based upon them.
Not all of these wizards are available for every type of media file; for example, the MIDI File Wizard can only be used with MIDI files. Any wizards that cannot be used with the type of media file being used will be greyed out.
If you select "Custom Interval", you can enter any length you want, rather than one of the defaults. For details on the format used to specify various lengths of time, please see Time Format.
If you choose to have equally spaced timings, then you will be given the option to use a fixed timing grid or a freeform timing grid, by checking or unchecking the "Use a fixed timing grid" box. Otherwise, a freeform timing grid will be used.
Note that you can always insert, delete or move timings later, in a variety of ways.
Number Of Motion Effect Rows For Pixel Props
If you have a Pro level license, then you can use motion effects to sequence your props that utilize RGB pixels. You can also have multiple motion effects playing on a prop at the same time. This setting specifies how many motion effect rows should be created for every pixel-based prop. Typically 1 or 2 is a good choice to start. And then you can add more rows to specific props as your sequencing needs dictate.
Audio Information
If your license level is below Pro, then "Waveform Only" will be your only choice here. With any media file except MIDI, you will see a waveform displayed when the sequence is opened.
If you have a Pro license, you can also choose to see the audio as a spectrogram (see the Audio Settings topic for examples). The spectrogram takes some extra time to calculate, so sequences will take a little longer to load (the amount of time depends on the speed of your computer and the length of the media file). For a 3 minute song on a fast computer, it should only add a few seconds to the load time.
This setting also impacts the Audio motion effect. If you choose "Waveform Only", then many of the options in the Audio effect will not work.
You can change this setting later using the Sequence Information dialog.
Save These Choices As Defaults
If you turn this checkbox on, your answers to most of the questions in this dialog will be saved so that whenever you create a new musical sequence in the future, those answers will automatically show up in this dialog as the default answers.
The artist name, album name, and song name will not be saved as defaults (though if you use an MP3 tagged with this information, it will automatically be placed into that section).