I offically hate mamba

[stanwax]

cheers for the words of encouragement Adam. As I said and indeed have always said I love the interface of mamba and it is very very intuitive. I, like you found it a doddle to get to grips with and have to tip my hat to Medialas for that.
The original post that started this thread was really just me venting my frustration, and at least you guys will know what Im ranting about rather than me getting blank or puzzled looks from the household members .
Anyway Im going to stick with it and am in a PM dialogue with Oldgrumpy and I have every faith in his commitment - indeed in Medialas commitment - to making this product 'right'. I think its clear that we are already going in the right direction, as in the past each new version seemed to break more than it fixed and this trend now seems to have taken a down turn which can only be a good thing. Maybe Mamba will never attain the power of Pango but its nowhere near the P in price and for the money its bloody brilliant - and flexible to boot.
I think though there are some lessons to be learnt from this. Im certainly being more careful how I go about using the interface and I will be backing up to a separate folder/media more often than I have before.

Rob

[buffo]

I hear you Rob... More than once I've kicked myself in the rear for not saving often enough.

I went through a period back when I had my Alphalite where the software had some stability issues, and it was *really* hard to use. Rick was willing to stick with it though, and eventually he found the bug and squashed it. It sounds like Oldgrumpy from Medialas is every bit as willing to find and solve problems.

As for the price of Pangolin, yeah, it's up there. However, there is an alternative... (I'm speaking about the LA Freak package.) It's not the same as Showtime, but it is very powerful software. I don't know how the interface compares to Mamba (or Showtime for that matter), but based on the screen shots it doesn't look too bad.

Then again, you've already got Mamba Black, and you sound like you're pretty comfortable with it, so unless you run into a wall that you can't get around, I'm guessing that you'll be better off sticking with it.

Adam

[Pangolin]

Just one point about what Buffo wrote. When he says that he has "Pangolin", he is talking about the older LD/QM32 system, which we introduced in 1992 and stopped selling in around 2000. When most other people talk about the "big P", they are talking about LD2000.

While some of the concepts are the same in the LD2000 system compared to LD/QM32, there are a lot of differences too. Maybe Buffo would have learned more quickly with the LD2000 system?

Also, just one point and one question. With the LD2000 system, we include a Tutorial DVD which shows you how to install the software and hardware, and then how to make frames and shows. I can't remember if we included a Tutorial DVD when we gave you the LD/QM32 system, but we probably could have. Buffo, did you get the Tutorial DVD?

Best regards,

William Benner

[buffo]

Hi Bill;

No, I didn't get the tutorial DVD. However, I did download several of the DVD chapters from the Pangolin Website. The most helpful one was Chapter 9, "Using Showtime".

I was having a lot of problems building a show, because I didn't realise that *every* frame (or group of frames) that you add to the timeline also has to have an effect associated with it. I also didn't realize that if you don't select an effect, the software will use the last selected effect when you add the new frame to the timeline. (You can't imagine the trouble this caused!)

After watching the Chapter 9 tutorial video clip, I smacked my forehead in a "eureka!" moment, because I immediately understood why nothing was working the way I wanted it to. Unfortunately, in the last few days I've been really busy with my son's graduation party, and so I haven't been able to experiment further with my new-found knowledge! Hopefully things will quite down here next week and I can get some editing done...

I do have a question for you though, Bill. (Well, two questions actually...) First, is there any way to display the waveform of the selected audio file on the timeline in Showtime? I know that the newer version of Showtime supports this, but I'm not sure if the older QM-32 version does or not. And as a follow up, does the QM-32 version support MP3 playback? My guess is no, since it's not one of the three options presented when you click on the multimedia button, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

Adam

PS: In case you didn't notice, my avitar has changed.... That was one of the first pictures I took of my QM-32 in operation. The actual frame was just something I threw together in Laser Show Designer to show off the different colors. (Analog blanking rules!) Took me all of 10 seconds to set it up, but it looked great so I snapped a picture.

[DZ]

After watching the Chapter 9 tutorial video clip, I smacked my forehead in a "eureka!" moment, because I immediately understood why nothing was working the way I wanted it to. Unfortunately, in the last few days I've been really busy with my son's graduation party, and so I haven't been able to experiment further with my new-found knowledge! Hopefully things will quite down here next week and I can get some editing done...

HeHe! Showtime does take some time to get use to. From time to time I still go in a try to create an effects and pull my hair out trying to figure out why its not doing what I want it to do. Only to find out its just typical operator error... Congradulations on your sons graduation!

I do have a question for you though, Bill. (Well, two questions actually...) First, is there any way to display the waveform of the selected audio file on the timeline in Showtime? I know that the newer version of Showtime supports this, but I'm not sure if the older QM-32 version does or not. And as a follow up, does the QM-32 version support MP3 playback? My guess is no, since it's not one of the three options presented when you click on the multimedia button, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

I think I can answer these, the older software package did not support mp3 file format and didn't show the waveform on the showtime timeline. Those features came out with LD2K. And in LD2k it will only show the waveform on the timeline when the audio being used is a .wav file. It is very easy to convert mp3's to wave though. I like to use Cool Edit Pro as it is also great for easy manipulation of a sound file.

I like the avatar, did you get the issue with the blue fixed??

David

[buffo]

Hi David!

Thanks for the input... I had a feeling that the waveform display was new for LD2000. Well, there's a reason to upgrade I guess!

Thanks for the feedback on the avitar pic. I might revisit it later, but for now it's a lot better than my old one.

As for the blue laser; it's still in the process of being replaced. David Wu said he would send me a replacement, and once I received it I'm supposed to return this one to him. But the replacement hasn't arrived yet. (I'll be sure to take some pictures and perform some tests on it when it does.) I'm expecting it to arrive this coming week sometime.

Adam

[DZ]

Hi David!

Thanks for the input... I had a feeling that the waveform display was new for LD2000. Well, there's a reason to upgrade I guess!

Thanks for the feedback on the avitar pic. I might revisit it later, but for now it's a lot better than my old one.

As for the blue laser; it's still in the process of being replaced. David Wu said he would send me a replacement, and once I received it I'm supposed to return this one to him. But the replacement hasn't arrived yet. (I'll be sure to take some pictures and perform some tests on it when it does.) I'm expecting it to arrive this coming week sometime.

Adam

Cool! Glad to hear you wont be completely without one then since he is sending one to you before you send your current one back. Regarding pangolin, I forgot to mention that even in the QM32 you can set beat marks by listening to the music and tapping the space bar whenever you want to set beat marks. You probably already knew that, but it can be helpful.

David