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Thread: Pangolin FB3 - LAStudio : a few (very) annoying things

  1. #1
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    Lightbulb Pangolin FB3 - LAStudio : a few (very) annoying things

    I have some things (bug or defaults) to report about the LAStudio suite (Showrider especially). Maybe there's some solutions / workaround ??


    1. LOOP PLAYING bug : in Showrider Designer, when I play a show with the "play loop" mode checked, the show just don't run in loop!!! I discovered that at a private party last week-end... I was doomed to go to my computer to click on the "stop" and "start" button every 2 minutes, all the night
    The same thing happend when I try to loop a certain portion of the show, while programming. When the current position cursor pass the end marker, the position cursor keep going further, with some sort of display bug following all the long of the cursor position.

    2. Color mixing setup : is there any place on the software where I can find this famous "color mixer", which the help file talk about? It would be very useful to tune the laser analog modulation.
    Or is it just the software suite which comes with the FB3 eval kit which has some sort of serious restrictions?

    3. Projection zones : I tried to play a little with different projection zones settings, and the configuration seems to work well. I can configure different parameters (size, position of the projection, etc) for all of my projection zones.
    But now, how to configure a specific frame or show parts to run it within a specific projection zone??
    For example, in Showrider Designer, I have a show which display some aerial effects (into the zone 1). And into that show, I'd like to hit some bounce mirrors, but they are outside of this zone 1... So I have to configure a second zone (zone 2) and create some frames to project on the bounce mirrors (in Draw 3D). But I can't find the way to assign these new frames to the zone 2!
    => this simply means, it is just useless to configure multiple zones if we can only use one at the time?!


    Any help is welcome!
    Thanks
    Sebastien

  2. #2
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    I had the same problem with the player stopping playback. Fortunately, I didn't need the audio, so I redid the playlist without the audio files attached and it ran without problems.

    That definitely seems like a bug to me..

  3. #3
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    Cool

    I suggest you report this directly to Bill Benner at Pangolin using the contact form they have on their website. I'm pretty sure that the original programmers of the LA Studio software suite are still working for Pangolin, so they should be able to look into this bug.

    I know Bill doesn't have the time to check in here as often as he'd like to, but he *does* answer all the messages that come through the contact form.

    Adam

  4. #4
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    Thumbs up

    Ditto what Adam said Sebastien. I can't think of many companies that offer the support that Pangolin does... Well, now that I think of the times I have had the President of a company providing me support, I can't really think of any, except Pangolin.
    Love, peace, and grease,

    allthat... aka: aaron@pangolin

  5. #5
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    Thanks for the tips guys. I just sent an email to Bill.

    But really, no one of the tons of FB3 user here has ever needed these functions?

  6. #6
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    Hi Sebastien,

    I have looked into this and found the following:

    Quote Originally Posted by sbk View Post
    1. LOOP PLAYING bug
    Apparently there is a problem with looping. And apparently this only shows up if you are using an audio file. Basically what I can say is that this is a known bug. I am not sure how well-known it is, but when I mentioned it to Alexey, he knew about it and confirmed it is a bug. I don't know a way around it off the top of my head.


    Quote Originally Posted by sbk View Post
    2. Color mixing setup
    The color mixer that is mentioned in the help file was abandoned back in 2002. Lets say it looked good on paper, but really didn't offer the quality that Pangolin is known for.

    The FB3 version of LAStudio has a very simple color scheme. I wouldn't say it has "severe limitations", but rather I would say that it is simple in nature.

    If you have problems with the colors, I would investigate what can be done with your lasers to improve the colors. Even if you used the QM2000, you would get best results if your lasers themselves offered "best results". If you can tell me the nature of the problems you are having, perhaps I could offer some advice. It could be that a very simple "gain and offset" circuit, or "color shift" circuit from our web site will do the trick.


    Quote Originally Posted by sbk View Post
    3. Projection zones
    This one is tricky. The first impression is that it does not work. But you (unfortunately) have to dig a bit deeper.

    There is a hidden dialog box called "Track Properties". In the timeline portion of SR, on the right side of the window, there is a "Tracks" listbox. This listbox has a context menu. You right click on it, and you will find "properties" menu item. On the first page groupbox, you will see "Track owned by" - there you should select "This track does not belong to any group (F)". In this case, the PZ setting of image will have an action. Otherwise SR will collect tracks into one single buffer and basically ignore some Image properties.

    Let me know if you have any other questions or comments.

    Bill

  7. #7
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    Hi Bill, thanks for the fast answer!

    Loop playing bug

    Apparently the bug appears even without using a music file, since I don't use a music file in that show...

    Color mixer

    Yes that's look sexy on the paper... But effectively I heard it was tricky to use on some forums...
    My basic problem is that the analog modulation of my lasers aren't working in the same range (ex. 0.5-4V for red, 1-4.5V for blue, and 2.5-4V for green), so my color balance isn't linear until I "cheat" with the colors on software (the selected color isn't the same as the laser output color).

    A simple idea in that case would be to add a start offset for each laser in the software, in addition with the end offset...


    Projection zones

    Thanks, I'll try this solution soon!

    Sebastien

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