New format for laser shows - time to upgrade the show production

[swamidog]

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The question is, why don't you advocate for wave files? What's wrong with pallet cycling? It's good for all kinds of neat effects. But, to do it, your software must be able to properly manage palettes.


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'cause wave files are dumb. while they work moderately well if you need a playback only format and have the specialized hardware to play them through a projector, they're useless for content editing and interoperability

[james]

There are some unexpected places to look for the cutting edge.

If you are looking for truly new art, you don't look at the "industry".

You look for artists who are doing things outside of the industry.

I was just part of the Vector Hack Festival 2022 again this year.

In their call for entry, they stated that any laser show material submitted to be shown in the venue had to be in WAVE format.

Perhaps some of us need to expand our idea of what a wave is and what can be done with it.

It can be used in and out of applications (visual modular languages) like Pure Data, Processing and Max Jitter for all kinds of live streaming.

And as for palette cycling, any frame that has more than one color is a kind of palette.

A palette is a one dimensional ordered list of rgb colors.

A frame is a one dimensional ordered list of (color) vertices.

If you repeatedly shift the colors from one vertex to the next in a beam fan to create motion through the colors, guess what?

That's palette cycling.


// some vhf

About the first 4 minutes are dead air because this was a recorded live stream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FztYsk_zVjs&t=10998s

The panel discussion at the end in interesting.

[james]

'cause wave files are dumb. while they work moderately well if you need a playback only format and have the specialized hardware to play them through a projector, they're useless for content editing and interoperability

Useless to you because you don't use them.

Lots of other artists are using wav clips as streaming data objects and doing real time processing on them.

Guess how they make their waves.

[swamidog]

i've used wave files for non-editable show playback and as an intermediary format to convert output of one system into ILDA files for playback and editing by another system.

wave files would never be my first choice for anything. or even second, or third choice as they are useless for real time editing.

i do professional interactive laser installations and the added complexity and custom technology needed to work with wave files coupled with the reduction of functionality makes them not just a bad choice, but the worst choice of all formats to work with.

if you want to watch old laser shows in your living room or drive lasers from your modulars, great... if you want to do real world projects, not a chance.

does laserboy have real time laser output when creating and manipulating wave files?

Useless to you because you don't use them.

Lots of other artists are using wav clips as streaming data objects and doing real time processing on them.

Guess how they make their waves.

[james]

I'll say it again.

Your machine does a terrible job washing my clothes!

That because it's a bicycle.

If you think of a wav file as a consecutive series of color vertices (not worrying so much about the sample rate) they are the same data you would find in any ilda file.

But they have the added bonus of being directly displayable by any multichannel audio device in any OS.

Plus they can have synchronized audio.

What can you store in an ild file that you can't store in a wav?

Better question. What can you store in a wav that you can't store in an ild file?

[swamidog]

What can you store in an ild file that you can't store in a wav?

data that doesn't have to be converted to another format before it can be used in laser show software....

[james]

data that doesn't have to be converted to another format before it can be used in laser show software....

I hope you realize how ridiculous that is.

Yes, there are lots of artists using wav in their regular work flow.

The software that YOU choose to use doesn't recognize wav.

Or maybe it does and you choose to ignore it.

[swamidog]

no... the software i use *does* recognize wav and then it converts them to a much more sane and usable format (ilda).

this isn't the 1980's and the idea of using a baked file format like wave for laser show creation and editing only makes sense if you're trying to punish yourself for eating babies in a past life.

I hope you realize how ridiculous that is.

Yes, there are lots of artists using wav in their regular work flow.

The software that YOU choose to use doesn't recognize wav.

Or maybe it does and you choose to ignore it.

[james]

no... the software i use *does* recognize wav and then it converts them to a much more sane and usable format (ilda).

this isn't the 1980's and the idea of using a baked file format like wave for laser show creation and editing only makes sense if you're trying to punish yourself for eating babies in a past life.

Have you considered my questions?

What can you store in an ild file that you can't store in a wav?

What can you store in an wav file that you can't store in an ild?

[swamidog]

your question is irrelevant.

Have you considered my questions?

What can you store in an ild file that you can't store in a wav?

What can you store in an wav file that you can't store in an ild?