Starting to be a little disheartened with Pangolin Quick Show

[JohnYayas]

A wave file is not suitable. How do you add metadata such as name of the author, copyright info, frame rate? How do you allow the user to adjust color balance or add zones to it? How do you account for multiple projectors? How do you account for mirror beams that must be adjusted based on physical location? You can't do any of that in wave file without extra processing before sending the DAC/projector. And, if you are doing that then you lose the value of what you are thinking about.

[swamidog]

well yes... points are points, but why are we still using them?

why not use a descriptive language like postscript that is device independent and degrades gracefully based on the characteristics and capabilities of your laser projector?

I think the ILDA format is perfectly fine for what it is intended for. It is still entirely adequate for sharing laser frames. Points are points. Of course, even I have my own native drawing format that is more efficient and lossless than ILDA but since no one else uses my format it is pretty worthless as far as sharing frames goes. But in order to send those frames to a DAC they MUST be converted to points. And since they can be converted to points for a DAC then then there is absolutely no reason that they can't be exported to an ILDA file with the exact same quality. And, I do support that. There is absolutely no reason, other than greed, that any laser show software shouldn't export frames to ILDA. They all import them just fine but don't export them. Where do they expect these ILDA files to come from anyway and why are they suitable for reading but not writing.

Now, all that said, one of the reasons I started my crusade is because there is no standard "show" format. Years later, I have a little more understanding of it all but there certainly is no reason why there couldn't be such a format. It only needs to be an ILDA file plus music file plus frame rate at the minimum (and possibly some DMX or extra info). I'd probably want to optimize/extend it to make it more efficient and to have additional metadata like in an MP3 file but otherwise it would be easy. Any laser show software company/person is welcome to contact me to create such a format.

[White-Light]

well yes... points are points, but why are we still using them?

why not use a descriptive language like postscript that is device independent and degrades gracefully based on the characteristics and capabilities of your laser projector?

I don't think Pangolin are using points which is one of the reasons why they went with their own format. It seems in the editor you see points but according to Bill the programme no longer uses points so I'm guessing they've done something like exactly what you're describing.

[tsteele93]

I don't think Pangolin are using points which is one of the reasons why they went with their own format. It seems in the editor you see points but according to Bill the programme no longer uses points so I'm guessing they've done something like exactly what you're describing.

Maybe that would explain why I get glitches and errors when importing a frame into QS. I spent a good deal of time editing a file in Trace-It and then imported it into QS and it had some strange traces that should have been blanked (and were blanked when I showed the output from Trace-It) and color glitches that were not there in Trace-It.

Tom

[JohnYayas]

All DACs use points. Sound cards, FB3, EasyLase, etc. So regardless of what Pangolin does in software at the user interface level, at some point the images are converted to optimized points.

That's not to say that a show format should be a series of optimized points ala ILDA but it is certainly the easiest way to go because ALL laser show software converts their images to points at some point in the pipeline. Even Digisynth, I would assume.

But anyway, I know that it isn't going to happen so there is no point in discussing it at a detailed level.

[james]

A wave file is not suitable. How do you add metadata such as name of the author, copyright info, frame rate? How do you allow the user to adjust color balance or add zones to it? How do you account for multiple projectors? How do you account for mirror beams that must be adjusted based on physical location? You can't do any of that in wave file without extra processing before sending the DAC/projector. And, if you are doing that then you lose the value of what you are thinking about.

Quite a bit of that can be stored in the header of the wave file. The wave file format is made of chunks with offset counts. It was specifically designed to be extensible without breaking. LaserBoy stores all kinds of neat stuff in the header of the wave file!

Maybe you should do some research as to just exactly what is already being done.

James.

[JohnYayas]

Sure, and I can store a cassette tape in a used condom if I want to. But, I don't want to because it doesn't make any sense.

[james]

If you don't know what you're talking about, it's best not to chime in; especially with such an inane comment.

The extensions I've added to the wave file format are so simple and intuitive, you could write the code to read LaserBoy encoded waves in a day.

It's exactly like you said. All computer generated laser signals come from DACs. DACs stream points or samples. A wave is an exact record of that stream of samples. There is plenty of room in there for all kinds of meta data.

[Stuka]

Whoa, flashbacks to 2008 / 2009...

[james]

You can grow many things in the garden of your mind.

Sometimes the best ideas come from using what is already available in a new and creative way.

James.