need imput on light show pro

[mpurser]

if any of you gals or fellows use light show pro id love to hear how it works is it more user friendly than superstar i have been trying to figure out how to use superstar and its taken me a week just to scratch the surface .the directions are not written to be user friendly i feel.ive sunk my money in it and i do not like it and id like to get my feet wet in rgb and pixels if i can do the sequencing with my budget i can t afford canned sequences. i have read the forums and under stand lor is suppose to do E1.31 sometime but no firm time frame yet.so if you got time lets hear the pros and cons thanks in advance

[Al in Raleigh]

That is a good question Mike. I am wondering the same thing for myself. I think Light Show Pro is more advanced in several areas but with advancement comes complexity. I want to put this issue to bed early in the year so sequencing will have adequate time to occur.
Al

[mpurser]

ok al i hope you meant "put it to bed " as in get answers your self as well or drop this now?im a little slow on the up take

[SWood]

Mike I know you want to learn superstar and I would like to too, but once you figure out how to do it RGB with LOR it's really simple. If your doing arches it basically sequences the same way as a standard home made 8 channel arch.

[kidcole]

I have struggled with this very question for a while now. And as Al said, LSP is known to be more mature and more widely compatible with a range of controllers and interfaces. From a pure technical point of view LSP most likely has the lead on LOR. But I do like the notion that LOR will have a large support group, and I would add that LOR made quantum leap this year with Version 3.

But I came to a realization that most of our members here are going to be using LOR, and the group will always need experts who can help spawn more experts. If we get widely divided on software, it does not benefit the growth of our club(s). Thus I plan to stay with LOR, yet try to branch out and use multiple interfaces such as DMX and Ethernet.

One of the things that LSP is doing is letting you define your entire show as a single grid. This means you could apply pictures or videos to your entire display and if enough density .. you would actually recognize things. In the future, some of you may end up making your entire show of RGBs .. and then you'd have an effective TV Screen (albeit at a very low resolution). Or maybe just a RGB mega-tree with enough density to see images .. ? I'd love to see a cartoon of santa landing his sleigh around a megatree (sychronized of course) ..

On the flip side .. I am screamin frustrated with the LOR3 Visualizer. I hope LOR will make a bunch of pre-programmed device templates for it. I wanted to model my 4 sided Bethlehem star and could only come up with crap. I am not liking the visualizer right now but I will remain optimistic about it. My opinion is - - it's not friendly to humans yet .. But if I could pick from a library and just modify my channels, it would be very useful .. even if it does not look precisely the same as my live one.

[mpurser]

denny i can understand where you re coming from in regards to remaining with lor i have and still have holiday light designer it works is quirky i feel the visualizer works better yes i love to be able to show video this all would be great but i think i heard it right here i gotta crawl before i can run thats what im trying to do.i have no need to be an expert i just want to do better than i have.who knows i may not be smart enuff to use light show pro just trying to find out what outher folks think thanks for the response.

[kidcole]

I'll throw in one more bump that LSP has been able to read LOR files in the past. I have not looked this year, so not sure about LSP being able read LOR3. I would think they would be motivated to remain compatible with LOR... So if LSP comes through with something really spectacular, we could always consider making a transition without losing any of our LOR work.

[thedementedelf]

LSP does read LOR3 files. The only knock I see against LSP after playing with it, is the learning curve. LOR to me seems more intuitive. But how much of this is because I am familiar with LOR. Many of the features in LOR3 were in LSP from the beginning.

[mpurser]

thanks kevin

[Fasteddy]

LSP is definetly more complex than LOR S3 as you can achieve a lot more with LSP. There are many features to LSP that can help you create effects that would otherwise be difficult or impossible with LOR S3 with more new features to come in 2012. As far as E1.31 support in LOR S3, i do wonder what limitations there may be as remember LOR is in the busness of making controllers and by offering E1.31 with no strings attached would be counter productive for their buisness model. We will have to wait and see when and how E1.31 will be implemented.
If you were going to make a jump to LSP V2 then the sooner you do this the better as their is definetly a learning curve and the last thing you need is to learn a new program in the last part of the year.
If your staying with LOR gear 100% then there may be no real need to jump to LSP as LOR software is designed primarily to run LOR hardware and this may be the best option.

[Al in Raleigh]

Mike, when I meant put it to bed was to determine if I would switch to LSP. As was mentioned above, LOR will not advance beyond their product offering as LOR is a business and selling stuff pays their bills. So advanced features will be slow to be offered or to be offered at all. LSP and S3 needs to be tested by me side by side. A learning curve can be frustrating but may lead to ease later. If I switch it will be before the end of March.

[mpurser]

Mike, when I meant put it to bed was to determine if I would switch to LSP. As was mentioned above, LOR will not advance beyond their product offering as LOR is a business and selling stuff pays their bills. So advanced features will be slow to be offered or to be offered at all. LSP and S3 needs to be tested by me side by side. A learning curve can be frustrating but may lead to ease later. If I switch it will be before the end of March.

duh ok

[mschell]

I haven't chimed in here because I'm biased. I've used LSP for the last 4 years. It has it's quirks, just like everything else. It took some workarounds to make it all play last year (2010), but it did work 95% of the time. THis year I didn't put on a full show, but it worked all the time for the stuff I had running. And I discovered a cool way to take internet streaming music and have it play when my show wasn't running, including periodic voiceovers.

LSP does require a slightly different way of thinking, especially if you are looking to do RGB or want your whole house to be able to have an effect "flow" across the whole canvas.

Many folks have used Vixen to do similar things, but with perhaps more work to get it sequenced. LOR is coming along, and with things like the SuperStar or whatever it's called to help sequence CCRs, etc, you might be able to pull off some things. If you want to use special effects with pixels or other intelligent items, then you need something more, like Madrix along with LOR to do those kinds of things. And that starts getting pricey quick!

Vixen v3 is coming down the road, but it will take a while longer to see how much they get done and when.

So there's lots of choices...just start early!

[mpurser]

thanks mark your imput means a lot as do all of you. well ive got my visualizer complete thanks to mike one of the developers at lor it includes my arches and post ccrs. almost got the first song done.well allmost gonna have to add the g 35 rgbs later.but not to much later.

[Al in Raleigh]

Double post deleted