Saw DigiSynth first-hand last night... |8~O

[Laserchuck]

Hey guys, I thought I'd get back with a few responses here...

I'm frankly shocked that no one has asked for sample. OK, Chuck, how about some sample frames exported to ILDA or Pango formats? I'd keep them simple to avoid melting the Chinese galvos, etc. Upload them to the FTP server, and listen to the pin drop.

Time to shift paradigms, DigiSynth doesn't output "frames" at this time because it would require the busting up of the ultra-clean imagery with time-slicing or other interruptions. This is one of the reasons some other platforms are incapable of outputting smooth abstracts. I'll take a frame and output it through DigiSynth before I'd do the opposite.

Now, that said, I had already convinced Matt this is a feature worth having, and it is on the to-do list. It makes us cringe just thinking about it, but some people will want to generate images that they can run as refreshed animations or similar, so we may as well make it happen.

Hmm... If I was Chuck and I knew that a sample was an option, it would have been the first thing I threw at the naysayers. That's why I assumed no sample would be forthcoming, so I didn't ask.

Actually I hadn't even thought of it. I'm so accustomed to using a real-time engine to create and playback imagery that I didn't even think about it in terms of baked-down frames, perhaps there is some other creative solution here, I'll have to get back to you. It would be very excellent to have even a hard-coded preview or trial option to show how smooth the imagery is. Meanwhile, there are some videos out there from last year.

Here's hoping they can do something like that, too, (akin to 'QS' vs LD2K) but AFAIK, right now, the hardware / software combo is not so 'dissolvable' into 'simpler-versions', etc - I mean, consider that this product *is* relatively-new... Let's give it 2-3 years to 'evolve', yeah?

Interesting point, and I've heard people's suggestions for a dumbed down version that would have restrictions or limitations. From our perspective (without checking the actual numbers), there has easily been $200k or more worth of time that has gone into DS over the past 4-5 years. It is unlikely that we are going to race to put out a lesser version on top of the work that has been put into this.

You guys are correct, it hasn't been released specifically for the garage guys. I can't speak to the future of such things, but it's hardly a bad-on-me situation for making a professional product.

For now, if you have to drool over the cool new toy that you wish you had, you are in the same position I was when I started out as an enthusiast back in 1989 with a HeNe and rotating mirrors, hearing about LaserMax or Pangolin. That stuff seemed like the best invention since the ruby rod. but it would be 5 years till I got to see it up close, and another 3 til I got my hands on it in production at AVI.

People always manage to find the money or time for the things that are important to them. Right now DigiSynth is easily accessible to those who can afford it, and perhaps better understood by those same people, excited about reclaiming the classic look of lasershows or adding whole new classes of imagery to their shows.

But hey, you don't see me running around buying the latest OPSL toys just because they are there. You'd be surprised to know what I've pulled off over the years using a HeNe and a full-color preview window. Again, I apologize if I'm coming off as a snob, I'm really not. I come from very humble beginnings, and honestly I don't think I've strayed too far off that path. I've had some great successes, but I'm really lucky to have DigiSynth to use. I guess the only thing wrong with something being elite, is if you aren't one of the elite!

Chuck, have you tried smacking around any "Eastern made" galvos with DigiSynth?

No, I have only seen a few and wasn't all that impressed, for the price and as a personal projector, they probably aren't bad. Matt and I use DS far more often on 6800's and 6215's. Embarrassingly, we tried to ask at the ILDA ATW what scanners people used and it was like you could hear a pin drop, likely no one wanted to admit to using the cheap nasty scanners, but I'm just guessing here.

point me in the direction of one of those inexpensive RGB projectors, I might have to pick one up... you know, after the next DS sale, LOL.

There is another issue that we hope to look into soon, maybe someone else with some time and the right test equipment would like to confirm this, but we have some theories about the quality of the output from another product compared to the output of the transcoder. Apparently some people have experienced scanner heating with a name brand output device, while we have driven scanners hard with DS and a transcoder, and they haven't heated up. I think this is an issue with the DACs, where we output with Delta Sigma slewing and others are bursting out tons of high frequency jumps that probably quicky get converted to heat. This is probably something for another thread.

I seem to be engaging in too much of this back n forth stuff, for those of you who want to tinker with code and make a beam wiggle you are welcome to do so, I've found no greater joy at 3 am than making a laser track with mouse movement on a wall, but I'm happy to be done playing around with that and actually have a tool that works.

PL seems to be far more full of people wanting to tinker than people serious about making great shows. I'm rather dissapointed about the lack of threads about the art of laser and really making great content. I've gotten great PMs from people excited about the product that don't want to engage in the banter, and that is inspiring too. I'll have to learn from their wise ways.

I get on a roll and these things end up being far longer than expected and saying less than half of the quarter of my 2 cents worth.

-chuck

[dsli_jon]

I don't know what happened to my post, I guess it got bounced...

...and here, even google agrees

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php...ord2=digisynth

Cute, but I think yer results were 'skewed' by having "laser" a separate-word, ie: http://www.googlefight.com/index.php...daystar+lasers
...yeah, right! ...if you re-do it with just the 'proper names', the results are different... Then-again, in that search, Google is probably 'thinking' of the animal, lol...

...But the T-shirt Ad chick was hot...

I see your point, which is that generally speaking name-brand stuff is more reliable than the cheaper options.. and you would be right in most cases..

It's all a matter of each Co. and the quality of the werk they do, period - 'Brand' really has nothing to do with it... Neither does the 'country'... It all comes-down to the 'proof in the pudding', and DS is some pretty yummy pudding, pricetag withstanding... (imo...

In all of my recent research into this stuff I've found out that there are LOTS of people using Chinese galvos. Many more are using Chinese stuff than American or European.

Doesn't mean that 'going-clone' is - for paying-shows - the smart-route to go... Lots of people doing one thing, doesn't mean it's the best-route, just because of the 'sheer-numbers'... ie: LPF... OHHHHHNo, whathaveIdone...

Nowhere have I found a single reason to believe that most of the Chinese options are anything but reliable and very good value for their cost.

Try this: Buy a pair of DT40-Pros - and take them completely apart (yes, that will 'ruin' them...but hey, they're cheap, right? - I will send you a 'dead' pair of 6800s, to do the same... and compare... You'll quickly discover 'the reason'...

...and 'Value' depends on how much $$ is 'riding' on your bet they won't fail on your gig...

peas...

...Most of us don't really have that kind of customer base and therefore the app would be less useful for the most of us.

Yet if you bought the package and started producing shows / experiences that no one else in your *country* could-deliver (...and, if here in the US, weren't charging bloody-$500. a nite for it! ) it likely would not be long before you had that "kind of customer-base"... Food for thought...

cheers..
j

[Stoney3K]

Hey guys, I thought I'd get back with a few responses here...

Time to shift paradigms, DigiSynth doesn't output "frames" at this time because it would require the busting up of the ultra-clean imagery with time-slicing or other interruptions. This is one of the reasons some other platforms are incapable of outputting smooth abstracts. I'll take a frame and output it through DigiSynth before I'd do the opposite.

I guess you will need to do some degree of sampling and output it to a DAC at some point. (Unless it runs on an analog computer, which I doubt! ) Sampling implies time slicing and quantization by nature, so DigiSynth does output 'frames' in the strictest sense of the word. However, if 'frames' mean a snapshot of images in a certain time period (e.g. 1/50 of a second), I guess there is a big difference there and that's one of the reasons the motion is so fluid. When the sample rate and bit depth of the DACs are sufficient enough, the output won't be any different from a 'true' analog source.

PL seems to be far more full of people wanting to tinker than people serious about making great shows. I'm rather dissapointed about the lack of threads about the art of laser and really making great content. I've gotten great PMs from people excited about the product that don't want to engage in the banter, and that is inspiring too. I'll have to learn from their wise ways.

On the front of creative laser show design, the whole concept hasn't changed much over the past 20 years. We're still using a basic idea of a single beam source bouncing off two mirrors connected to over-engineered ammeters which are in turn bolted to a piece of aluminum board. We may be looking at the creative limitations of this idea right now, since the only major change you can do is run new content on the same platform, just as you would load up a new CD, put new video into an existing projector or flash the lights in a different order. That CD player is not spontaneously going to change into a grand piano.

The only major change that happened in the early 90s is that we swapped quality for quantity: The industry went from power hungry, water gulping mixed gas ion lasers with excellent beam quality and magnificent beam table setups featuring CT scanners to pieces of silicon emitting a fat beam and bounced off inferior Chinese galvanometers. Why? Mostly in favor of logistics: A dozen DPSS projectors will still fit in the back of your sedan where you needed a trailer to haul all of the infrastructure you need to run that amazing twin Ar-Kr show.

If you ask me, there may be a time here to get some input to think out of the box and search for crazy new ideas. What they're going to be, I don't know, but a projector with X-Y galvanometers does have its creative limitations, no matter how many shapes and frames you manage to cram into it.

[Lased]

idk.. I'm still leaving this thread feeling less than impressed by what I'm seeing given the price point.. but of course other people's perspectives will differ.

Here, I'll do Chuck a favor and post a few of his vids that he didn't feel interested in posting links to so we can all see what's being discussed. Maybe that'll help by answering a few questions about just what we're seeing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA6eL3xOAOg&feature=fvsr

http://www.youtube.com/user/DigiSynt.../1/pjNuhgjwYYQ

http://www.youtube.com/user/DigiSynt.../3/rNAh30bLlx8

Here's my thoughts:

These are some of the best looking abstracts I've seen without doubt, but I'm not an expert. When I take into account that once I've spent $4000 on digisynth I still need to buy a few more pieces of not so inexpensive hardware to run it, it becomes even less of a value to me. I suppose if expense is not a concern to you then this is simply awesome.. but in today's economy it seems to me that the pricing makes the market self-limiting.

That's just an opinion based on what little information I can find about this.. and actually that's a big part of what's been bugging me about this whole thing. That's the reason I've been so interested.. something just seems odd to me about this whole exchange so far. Not enough information, and the person who knows isn't very willing to provide more.. but so far the expectation is that because Digisynth will be in a trade show booth costing 200k we should accept everything stated as fact. I don't know about the rest of the folks here but to do that goes against what my momma taught me.

Anyway, these are just my feelings.. not that they matter in the slightest. Like I said before, the videos show the cleanest abstracts i've ever seen.. which is pretty cool. $4000 plus a bunch of equipment cool? That's a tough one, and everyone will likely feel differently..

[Laserchuck]

Here, I'll do Chuck a favor and post a few of his vids that he didn't feel interested in posting links to so we can all see what's being discussed. Maybe that'll help by answering a few questions about just what we're seeing

Thanks, you're a real humanitarian. It's not that I don't care enough, someone had posted a vid already and I was on the way out the door. The vids are on the website too. www.digisynth.com in case you missed that.

These are some of the best looking abstracts I've seen without doubt, but I'm not an expert. When I take into account that once I've spent $4000 on digisynth I still need to buy a few more pieces of not so inexpensive hardware to run it, it becomes even less of a value to me...

Like what? a real laser projector? Am I now responsible for outfitting everyone with OPSL? Surely you don't mean the transcoder, which is optional, and we leave the lightpipe device up to you as a choice of what you want to buy, maybe $200-$500 there, and a BCF2000 for $200, if that is expensive, please find another industry to work in. The most expensive accessory you will buy is maybe a real computer, so at most, what? Maybe get something really beefy like $1800 for a PC with a core i7 processor?

That's just an opinion based on what little information I can find about this.. and actually that's a big part of what's been bugging me about this whole thing. That's the reason I've been so interested.. something just seems odd to me about this whole exchange so far. Not enough information, and the person who knows isn't very willing to provide more..

I must have missed something somewhere here, was there a question that you had in a previous post that I didn't respond to? I've been so busy responding to comments that border on libel that I must have missed it. I've also taken the time over the past couple days to answer PMs and emails where people have had some valid questions, so I apologize if I've overlooked something. I don't see why the hostility needs to be there. If you really have some legit questions I will be happy to add them to the FAQ on the website. http://www.digisynth.com/faq.html

but so far the expectation is that because Digisynth will be in a trade show booth costing 200k we should accept everything stated as fact. I don't know about the rest of the folks here but to do that goes against what my momma taught me.

Nope, I see where this was a point of confusion...Matt and I will be at Lightfair in Philly in a couple weeks. We've been asked byone of our vendor partners to showcase our lighting product at their booth, in a 20,000 attendee conference, see www.chromacove.com for that product. We feel it has a much greater chance of success than DigiSynth, yet we still manage to find the time to further both. Oh, and my mom happens to be very proud of me.

Anyway, these are just my feelings.. not that they matter in the slightest. Like I said before, the videos show the cleanest abstracts i've ever seen.. which is pretty cool.

Thank you, this is about the only real point that I hope to get out there. They are incredibly clean, smooth and performable images. I appreciate that you can see this from those videos, which really aren't great quality themselves.

-chuck

[sugeek]

PL seems to be far more full of people wanting to tinker than people serious about making great shows. I'm rather dissapointed about the lack of threads about the art of laser and really making great content. I've gotten great PMs from people excited about the product that don't want to engage in the banter, and that is inspiring too. I'll have to learn from their wise ways.

I get on a roll and these things end up being far longer than expected and saying less than half of the quarter of my 2 cents worth.

-chuck

I am sorry about your experience here in this thread. There is a lot of artistic work going on in the background, but a lot of us don't post it in threads. There has been an incredible amount of neat lumia work, and an effort to get back to 'real' laser shows. Jon has been a big help there too getting to see the full Laserium set-up at SoCaLEM was exciting. There was also some really neat software shown off that really was impressive. In addition a few people here are working on an abstract generator and open source DAC... I dislike the hotheads who are happy with "Fisher-Price: My First Lasershow", I get tired of seeing a running puppy animation or a girl's bouncing... Keep up the good work ignore the sore-heads in here. People here need to experience a real old school laser show!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/raytrac...57626001062454 -> A Laserium desk, missing the other racks full of equipment that took 2 day to set up for SoCaLEM... If anything goes wrong in there the 'Magic' may be lost forever, the solution here is an answer. There may be other answers, I say go play, post results in a separate thread.



-Adam

[allthatwhichis]

PL seems to be far more full of people wanting to tinker than people serious about making great shows. I'm rather dissapointed about the lack of threads about the art of laser and really making great content. I've gotten great PMs from people excited about the product that don't want to engage in the banter, and that is inspiring too. I'll have to learn from their wise ways.

Check out the PL FTP; several of us have some shows on there for various platforms.

[flecom]

In all of my recent research into this stuff I've found out that there are LOTS of people using Chinese galvos. Many more are using Chinese stuff than American or European. Nowhere have I found a single reason to believe that most of the Chinese options are anything but reliable and very good value for their cost. Honestly I cannot remember hearing/reading about even one set of Chinese galvos failing.

if you ask I am willing to bet you will get a lot of responses... I personally have killed a ScanPro 40 galvo

Time to shift paradigms, DigiSynth doesn't output "frames" at this time because it would require the busting up of the ultra-clean imagery with time-slicing or other interruptions. This is one of the reasons some other platforms are incapable of outputting smooth abstracts. I'll take a frame and output it through DigiSynth before I'd do the opposite.

Now, that said, I had already convinced Matt this is a feature worth having, and it is on the to-do list. It makes us cringe just thinking about it, but some people will want to generate images that they can run as refreshed animations or similar, so we may as well make it happen.

I can't see any way you can really output true abstract frames like you are creating into ILDA frames without the output sucking... I dunno, maybe with some REAL bit-magic, but I think its going to mess up the "magic" of what DS does/advertises and might hurt you more than help you

Actually I hadn't even thought of it. I'm so accustomed to using a real-time engine to create and playback imagery that I didn't even think about it in terms of baked-down frames, perhaps there is some other creative solution here, I'll have to get back to you. It would be very excellent to have even a hard-coded preview or trial option to show how smooth the imagery is. Meanwhile, there are some videos out there from last year.

I have an even simpler option, you are running this app through a lightpipe interface right? send it into an Alesis HD24, send the following tracks

1 X
2 Y
3 R
4 G
5 B
6 unused (I use it for timecode personally)
7 left audio
8 right audio

then record a DS show on the HD24, remove the hard drive, put it in a computer and use this program

http://www.40watt.co.uk/hd24/readme.html

to pull the audio off the ADAT hard drive

upload it to the FTP and anyone with a modified sound card dac can watch a DS show in its original 100% glory

Interesting point, and I've heard people's suggestions for a dumbed down version that would have restrictions or limitations. From our perspective (without checking the actual numbers), there has easily been $200k or more worth of time that has gone into DS over the past 4-5 years. It is unlikely that we are going to race to put out a lesser version on top of the work that has been put into this.

ya but sell 10 at $4000 for the pro version.. thats $40k... sell 100 of the $500 versions, thats $50k

AND you show people how powerful your stuff is, so people will eventually aspire to buy the $4k version (yes even us lowly PL hobbyists)... but a lot of people are not going to risk the $4k blindly.... thats IMHO of course

You guys are correct, it hasn't been released specifically for the garage guys. I can't speak to the future of such things, but it's hardly a bad-on-me situation for making a professional product.

I don't think anyone is saying its a bad-on-you, quite the contrary, I think there are just a few of us that really DO want something like this, but it being so astronomically expensive is just frustrating...

and yes, for people that can make this up in one night of shows, its cheap, but I guarantee you 99% of the people here are NOT those people...

For now, if you have to drool over the cool new toy that you wish you had, you are in the same position I was when I started out as an enthusiast back in 1989 with a HeNe and rotating mirrors, hearing about LaserMax or Pangolin. That stuff seemed like the best invention since the ruby rod. but it would be 5 years till I got to see it up close, and another 3 til I got my hands on it in production at AVI.

People always manage to find the money or time for the things that are important to them. Right now DigiSynth is easily accessible to those who can afford it, and perhaps better understood by those same people, excited about reclaiming the classic look of lasershows or adding whole new classes of imagery to their shows.

of course its easily accessible to those who can afford it, no offense but thats a pretty ridiculous statement... anyway, I think the problem is people DO understand what it is, and DO love the classic "proper" live laser show full of giant consoles with hundreds of buttons, knobs, and amazing effects that you really wish you could remember how to recreate etc

But hey, you don't see me running around buying the latest OPSL toys just because they are there. You'd be surprised to know what I've pulled off over the years using a HeNe and a full-color preview window. Again, I apologize if I'm coming off as a snob, I'm really not. I come from very humble beginnings, and honestly I don't think I've strayed too far off that path. I've had some great successes, but I'm really lucky to have DigiSynth to use. I guess the only thing wrong with something being elite, is if you aren't one of the elite!

you were doing great with the whole not coming off as a snob thing until that last sentence

No, I have only seen a few and wasn't all that impressed, for the price and as a personal projector, they probably aren't bad. Matt and I use DS far more often on 6800's and 6215's. Embarrassingly, we tried to ask at the ILDA ATW what scanners people used and it was like you could hear a pin drop, likely no one wanted to admit to using the cheap nasty scanners, but I'm just guessing here.

in my opinion the cambridge scanners are more expensive and not as good as the eyemagic scanners (italian)... I have run my eyemagics HARD and at huge angles and they don't even get hot, I swear they really do have some magic in there lol

There is another issue that we hope to look into soon, maybe someone else with some time and the right test equipment would like to confirm this, but we have some theories about the quality of the output from another product compared to the output of the transcoder. Apparently some people have experienced scanner heating with a name brand output device, while we have driven scanners hard with DS and a transcoder, and they haven't heated up. I think this is an issue with the DACs, where we output with Delta Sigma slewing and others are bursting out tons of high frequency jumps that probably quicky get converted to heat. This is probably something for another thread.

I have a soundcard dac and probably the "other product" I would be happy to compare them for you

PL seems to be far more full of people wanting to tinker than people serious about making great shows. I'm rather dissapointed about the lack of threads about the art of laser and really making great content.

theres a whole section dedicated to shows and art... I personally have made several 45 minute laser shows that sell out consistently at the Miami museum of science planetarium laser shows (250 people @ $8/head) so I think my shows are pretty great [/QUOTE]

I'll do Chuck a favor and post a few of his vids that he didn't feel interested in posting links to so we can all see what's being discussed.

come on dude, dont troll

When I take into account that once I've spent $4000 on digisynth I still need to buy a few more pieces of not so inexpensive hardware to run it, it becomes even less of a value to me. I suppose if expense is not a concern to you then this is simply awesome.. but in today's economy it seems to me that the pricing makes the market self-limiting.

while I DO agree that DS is priced above what *I* think it should cost, there is no reason DS can't run on a modified sound card DAC... you just need an 8 channel audio interface.. they are doing it pro via light pipe (which also makes sense since a LOT of planetariums still run ADAT machines) but I can't see any reason why a $80 laserboy dac cant do it

That's just an opinion based on what little information I can find about this.. and actually that's a big part of what's been bugging me about this whole thing. That's the reason I've been so interested.. something just seems odd to me about this whole exchange so far. Not enough information, and the person who knows isn't very willing to provide more.. but so far the expectation is that because Digisynth will be in a trade show booth costing 200k we should accept everything stated as fact. I don't know about the rest of the folks here but to do that goes against what my momma taught me.

ok I am actually confused about this whole thing here... are you suggesting it does not exist or is some kind of scam?

[Laserchuck]

Check out the PL FTP; several of us have some shows on there for various platforms.

Will do...Oh, man, you're gonna make me put this pango board back in a PC? LOL I'll have to do that and check out some things when I can come up for air.

I have an even simpler option, you are running this app through a lightpipe interface right? send it into an Alesis HD24, send the following tracks...

...upload it to the FTP and anyone with a modified sound card dac can watch a DS show in its original 100% glory

Awesome, I have an even simpler option too... let me cut a few steps out of that. DS can bake out 48khz 16 bit wav files directly, so if you have something that reliably outputs multi-track data and faithfully reproduces it with your glowing photon boxes, then I'm sure we can get something together to try!


-chuck

[sugeek]

Will do...Oh, man, you're gonna make me put this pango board back in a PC? LOL I'll have to do that and check out some things when I can come up for air.

I have a RIYA micro I can loan you, I won't be using it for a bit due to cheap cloned galvos.

-Adam