To the laser show software companies

[Pangolin]

here's a question - why dont pangolin sell cd/dvd's with shows and animations on??

surly pangolin could sell cd's filled with stuff for like £50 and not loose any money at all??

We already include over 100 shows (nine, with royalty-free music, and over 15 which have won international awards), and 300,000 laser frames, including the entire Lightspeed Laser Animation Library. Normally when we make deals with people for the distribution of their shows and frames, we simply include it with our software, and we don't charge anything extra for it.

As far as "and not lose any money at all", the only way we could include the amount and high quality of shows that we do is because of the money we make on the overall software package, not the actual show content itself. As far as I am able to ascertain, the show content on Pangolin install CDs cost us over $250,000.

Nevertheless, we have considered starting a kind of on-line "store" where we can sell the content made by others. We would not make any money on this ourselves -- just use it as a portal where people could view and purchase shows at whatever the author wanted to charge (and ultimately, whatever the market would bear)...

Best regards,

William Benner

[andy_con]

really!!! so how come with my fb3 i only got a handful of shows??? the best animation i got was the dolphin, the rest arent all that to be honest.

i think that would be a good idea, you could get people to upload there home made show and then sell it. but you would need some kind of preview so people know what they are buying.

i like the sound of that

[Jem]

really!!! so how come with my fb3 i only got a handful of shows???...

Andy

The FB3 is a sort of stripped down package that is done at a cheaper price for us hobbyists. You get some decent hardware and software at an extremely good price but sacrifice some of the bells and whistles.

If you want the full monty you have to purchase the LD2000 package (Intro, Basic or PRO)at the going rate. All versions of the LD2000 come with the FULL library of shows and frames.

This was one of the reasons that I decided to bypass the FB3 and save that bit extra for the full LD2000 and QM2000.Net package. I bought the 'Intro' version as it's unlikely that i'll ever be really into making loads of graphic shows. It's well worth saving the extra money in my opinion.

Cheers

Jem

[andy_con]

ah i see that explains alot then.

i just thought usblivepro was usblivepro

[buffo]

LivePro doesn't come with a lot of frames either. It's a live player, not a choreographed show player. It's designed to allow an operator to create effects on-the-fly in time with a band or DJ that is playing.

The version of LivePro (USBLivePro) that accidentally* shipped with some of the early LA FREAK packages has the same features as the version of LivePro that you get when you buy the QM-2000 Pro package. You can buy the program by itself for $695. But it never did come with any shows, because it's not set up to be a show player.

Bottom line: the LA Freak kit is a low-cost way to get into Pangolin hardware. It's 1/3 the cost of an LD-2000 intro board, yet it has a full suite of frame and show creation tools. It's *very* competitive with other software / controller packages on the market. Sure it doesn't come with a lot of shows, but then again, neither does any other software and controller combination in that price range. It's aimed at the hobbyist, who will likely be creating his own shows...

If you want a lot of shows to start with, then save up and buy the LD-2000 Intro package. Then you'll have so many shows (and ILDA files) that you won't know what to do with them all. (Seriously, do you have any idea how long it takes to watch 100 laser shows? Especially when you want to watch them more than once!?!) I still haven't watched every show that came with my LD-2000 Intro board...

Adam

* A few people got lucky (due to a mistake on Pangolin's part) and were shipped the LivePro USB program along with the rest of their LA Freak kits. Normally that would have cost them $695 extra...

[DZ]

Nevertheless, we have considered starting a kind of on-line "store" where we can sell the content made by others. We would not make any money on this ourselves -- just use it as a portal where people could view and purchase shows at whatever the author wanted to charge (and ultimately, whatever the market would bear)...

Wow thats awesome! I look forward to seeing this soon!

[gottaluvlasers]

im a big person on analogies- lemme see if this makes ANY sense what so ever...

Pangolin is BY FAR the leader and head honcho of the laser software market. We're all looking to save a buck these days whether we're professionals OR hobbyists.

an industry standard for simple playback of a show in my honest opinion is a no brainer. think of it like this-(again, this is just how im envisioning this original idea...)

Adobe photoshop is BY FAR the leader in computer graphics and imaging. HOWEVER- if i make some real fancy dancy crazy high tech futuristic image in photoshop with hundreds or even thousands of layers (for those who dont know photoshop, think of layers like separate tracks for audio. 1 layer is the red text, 1 layer is the glow around the text. so on and so forth...), there are only a select few "big wigs" who are *PROS* and who OWN the FULL version of photoshop that could open up my photoshop file and actually edit it, or or perform changes or see EXACTLY how i got from point "A" to point "B".
BUT-
if i just want to send adam or joe or mary the final version of that fancy dancy high tech image that took me months to create with all of those layers and images and expertise it took for ME to create it, i can just save ALL of that as a .jpg and send it to adam or joe or mary and let them *look at it.* they cant break it down, or see the sum of its parts or edit anything, adam just REALLY liked how my design looked and wanted it to look at.

i have the option to save my design as a photoshop file (meaning if i send it to someone who has photoshop they can open it up and do whatever they want with it and edit it and all that jazz...) or, i can just render the whole project as a simple jpg and send it to who ever i want without fear or concern that they can change it or make it their own.

i *THINK* that would be a GREAT idea for a standard with laser shows and softwre. of course if i spend $5,000 on pangolin top of the line software, i dont want some kid who spent $50 to use the show i spent hundreds of hours on and use it and edit it and make it their own. BUT- if i wanted to share my creation...take all of my work and render the whole thing as "Marcs cool laser show" and give it to mary, thay can simply open it up and hit play and have it play on their system. it would be MY choice. i can save that show as a proprietary show just for the big wigs $5,000 pangolin software guru's OR, like here- we're all (for the most part) high end hobbyists and/or even pros. therefore if i really wanted to save my show in the "general" format, so that "BUFFO" could take my show and pop it on, i can save it for him in the general format.

analogy again-
(for you audio people---)
i can save an acid project or pro tools project or reason project as seperate trax (vocals, trk1. kick drum trk 2. synth trk3, etc...etc...). send it to you and have you edit it and completely redo it and make it your own. BUT- you would need that high end software to do those types of things.
BUT-
if you just wanted to hear the final outcome, (i.e.- the song) after its all "meshed" together, i can just send you the file. you dont need all that fancy software. you dont need to spend thousands of dollars. you can just sit back and listen to my great creation.

laser software-
i make a great show for "ford motor company" in pango (or whatever) high end software. i save the show as .ild or .pang or whatever the "proprietary" extension is. well, adam saw that show and just wants me to send him the show (if i so choose) so he can sit back and watch it. ok fine, i save it as "fordshow.gen" (.gen- obviously "general" or whatever the standard "PLAY" extension would be).

BUT-
adam now wants me to send him the show so he can edit and make it his own. well, obviously now there will be some sort of fee involved (sorry adam... ) and now *THAT* file format is COMPLETELY different and can ONLY be read (or opened) and EDITED through that high end (i.e.- pangolin or whatever) software.

is this making ANY sense? GOD i hope so, cuz this is a HELL OF A LOT of typing!!! lol...

i dont see a problem with ANY software comany and/.or hardware company coming up with just a standard "playback only" format. with the OPTION for the user. i can save it as "playback only" or i can save it as the file that can be edited and opened. but obviously, that can only happen if the other person has the same comparable software!

i REALLY hope i was on the right track here of what the point was. lol...

-Marc

[carmangary]

You said it perfectly.

[Zoof]

Makes perfect sense.
So now we add an extra header to the IDLA 4 or 5 format telling the playback software:
- framerate
- scanspeed
Anything else?

we change the extension to PLGP (Photon Lexicon General Playback format).
And voila a new world class file definition

Oh just one comment on Marc's post:
In photoshop all the information on layers and history of file creation increase size quite a bit while the final .jpg / .tiff / .png will be a lot smaller because it does not store this information, it is just the final product without all the 'jazz'
In Lasershow creation, you can for instance use two ILDA frames and rotate, scale and swirl them on the timeline. The lasershow creation software file stores the two frames and some more data on all the transformation which isn't bulky. Now lets say that the show is 1 minute at 20 frames per second there will be 20*60 = 1200 unique frames in the show. Exporting this to ILDA (or the new PLGP) format will result in a very bulky file containing point data for 1200 frames. Which is the exact opposite to what happened in the photoshop analogy with respect to file size.

[mystery123]

Hi,

Marc, your reply seems like to be obvious. Except - laser show companies could not want to allow to play their shows on another hardware, which is understandable, especially when they've spent too much money on creation of their shows. If you like the analogy - I think current war between Blu ray and HD DVD is quite similar.

Basically it is not a problem to make a good open format. You just need to store some basic information like fps, scanrate(for every frame) and every frame picture points. Maybe a good adition could be to allow store show for more lasers.