The LSX tutorials thread!

[colouredmirrorball]

Place animation event with a line with >2 points (something like 100 or 200 points would do the trick, double click the line icon in PicEdit to change minimum distance between points to 0.01 or something).
Place PreMoveY event under the animation event and use the expression wave2(0.5,idx) (multiplied with some scaling factor if the effect is not pronounced enough, I like to use a midi input so I can adjust the sensitivity in real time).

[ghosttrain]

It works! Two small probems though. It is too fast/chaotic. Is there a way to make it less responsive in relation to time? Second issue is I only seem to get it to work with the microphone, not the sounds playing in the audio card...

[dkumpula]

It works! Two small probems though. It is too fast/chaotic. Is there a way to make it less responsive in relation to time?

Yes, just define a number of steps. For example, 100 steps will only read the volume value 100 times over the length of the defined event

Second issue is I only seem to get it to work with the microphone, not the sounds playing in the audio card...

There are separate functions that you can use in expressions for referencing the analyzed wave-form values. Those are Wave and Spec(a) as opposed to Wave2(a,b) and Spec2(a,b) which come from the default sound card mixer.

If you want to actually use the sound card values in real time, then I believe you have to use drivers to map "what you hear" to the input. I know Lulighttec had some experience doing this, but it relied on features that may or may not exist for modern sound cards. CMB may know more.

-David

[ghosttrain]

Not sure I understand.
I also tried setting the discrete steps to a number different than 0 but I dont notice a difference.

BTW, after I upgrade to Basic, can I assign playback of specific animations to midi keys? I think LSX advertised that animations can be controlled by touchscreen but I cant find this info.

[colouredmirrorball]

You can use damping as well.

linePoints = 95;
setdamp(1,4,idx*linePoints+10);
result=damp(wave2(0.5,idx), idx*linePoints+10)+0.5

LSX always uses the default audio input. Right-click the audio icon in the task bar, select input devices, select the input that is the combination of all sounds played on your computer (the actual name is dependent on your sound card, on mine it's called Stereo-mix, play some audio to identify) and set it as default device. Then restart LSX. That's how you do it on Windows 7, not sure how it goes for other versions.

Edit: in my live show tutorial I explain how to play a part of the timeline according to a midi key input. If you want more than one effect to play at the same time, first save your effect in an SFX file: select all events, right-click, convert selected events to SFX loop (skip if the effect is already inside a loop event of course), open the loop event, click File >> save as. Then click on a note in the on-screen midi keyboard or send a midi note to LSX over the MIDI input device or hit a key on the keyboard or click a cue in the Masterbeam window (if the show is already running you need to double click). Then in the dialog that pops up click Load SFX cue and select your effect.

That's the "default" way, but my current live show setup works with a bunch of if events that activate parts of the timeline based on OSC input, as I wanted to use midi keys for another purpose.

[ghosttrain]

I set the Recording device to "Stereo Mix" instead of the Microphones and it seems to have solved it. is that what you meant?

Now, a bit more difficult question. Can I use the sounds from the DJ's PC instead? Or is that not simple anymore? My notebook has a separate connector for microphone and I thought maybe plugging an ordinary male-male headphone cable from the headphone port of one notebook to the microphone port of the other would work but apparently its not right.

BTW, your code didnt do anything for me. Do you input it where you input an Expression or somewhere else?

[colouredmirrorball]

I set the Recording device to "Stereo Mix" instead of the Microphones and it seems to have solved it. is that what you meant?

Yes that's what I meant.

Now, a bit more difficult question. Can I use the sounds from the DJ's PC instead? Or is that not simple anymore? My notebook has a separate connector for microphone and I thought maybe plugging an ordinary male-male headphone cable from the headphone port of one notebook to the microphone port of the other would work but apparently its not right.

It should work! But the audio input jack should be the same as the Microphone input device so you'll have to change the audio inpu device back...

BTW, your code didnt do anything for me. Do you input it where you input an Expression or somewhere else?

Yes you would paste that expression in the PreMoveY event, instead of the other expression (wave2(0.5,idx)). Make sure you change linePoints = 95 to the actual number of points in your line frame. You might need to multiply the wave2() expression with a number if it's too quiet...

[ghosttrain]

The wave is smoother now, thank you.

I'll try connecting the notebooks to send sounds again later.

As for the MIDI, thank you for the video tutorial. But few things are still confusing for me. Can you use anything except piano keys on a midi controller to select a region in the timeline?
Do the timeine regions have to be the same length?
And can you disable looping of a region in a timeline selected by a midi key so it will play once then stop until you press another midi key?
Otherwise the video tutorial was very complete. thanks.


A different question, is there a way to hide or at least change the color of the white middle dot in the preview window to black? I have found a way to send a region of my Desktop to a video projector to use the video projector as a fake laser. It looks good but because the preview window has that white dot the priojector always has a thin white beam in the middle.

[colouredmirrorball]

I recently wrote a large chunk about MIDI in the living manual, please request access to drlava...

The wave is smoother now, thank you.

I'll try connecting the notebooks to send sounds again later.

As for the MIDI, thank you for the video tutorial. But few things are still confusing for me. Can you use anything except piano keys on a midi controller to select a region in the timeline?

Yes and no. You need to send a midi key signal to LSX. This can be done with any of the following ways:

* send a midi key signal via the midi input device (you can remap controls to keys)
* click a note on the on-screen midi keyboard
* hit a keyboard key (the alphanumeric keyboard), but this is buggy as some keys are wrongly mapped to notes and I requested this feature to be removed as it interferes with the keyboard() expression (if you really like this feature please send a message to drlava to have an option to enable it or put it in the bugs and suggestions list: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing )
* click or touch a cue in the Masterbeam window

All of these have the same effect of activating a timeline part, if set up correctly. All of these also have the effect of changing the key variable in expressions.

Do the timeine regions have to be the same length?

No, but the button that sets all keys automatically just makes them the same length. You can vary individual keys but there's no easy way to shift the start and end position of later keys so either stick with the default one second segment or create segments yourself. If you need an effect to go slower use the SetTimeSpeed event...

And can you disable looping of a region in a timeline selected by a midi key so it will play once then stop until you press another midi key?

This is a hard one. You can either pause it as soon as you activate the key or have it run until the end and stop there... I couldn't find a way to pause when the effect is done playing (or even when the key is released).

To pause it when it's activated open up the Edit MIDI key number dialog and check Pause.
To have it stop when the effect is done playing uncheck Loop.

But because this is LSX we can think of a workaround. Since you're in a live show you're probably using a SetTimeSpeed event. You could use an expression like if( above(etime, 0.95), 0, 1) to stop playback when the time cursor is over 95 % of the event. I don't know if 0.95 is a good value, because it's a tradeoff between making the effect last long enough and "catching" the cursor being in the last 5 % of the event so it doesn't loop over.

A different question, is there a way to hide or at least change the color of the white middle dot in the preview window to black? I have found a way to send a region of my Desktop to a video projector to use the video projector as a fake laser. It looks good but because the preview window has that white dot the priojector always has a thin white beam in the middle.

Uncheck the beamshow preview buttons of timelines you're not using.

[ghosttrain]

okay, a little confused by what you said

Yes and no. You need to send a midi key signal to LSX. This can be done with any of the following ways:

* send a midi key signal via the midi input device (you can remap controls to keys)
* click a note on the on-screen midi keyboard
* hit a keyboard key...
* click or touch a cue in the Masterbeam window

All of these have the same effect of activating a timeline part, if set up correctly. All of these also have the effect of changing the key variable in expressions.

Im confused. Why then do you say yes and no? If I can remap controls to keys, doesn't it mean I can also use a key (button) on my midi controller which isn't one of the keyboard keys? I think you mean I can do this, I just can't have that button clickable in LSX itself. Is that what you mean?

This is a hard one. You can either pause it as soon as you activate the key or have it run until the end and stop there... I couldn't find a way to pause when the effect is done playing (or even when the key is released).

To pause it when it's activated open up the Edit MIDI key number dialog and check Pause.
To have it stop when the effect is done playing uncheck Loop.

But because this is LSX we can think of a workaround. Since you're in a live show you're probably using a SetTimeSpeed event. You could use an expression like if( above(etime, 0.95), 0, 1) to stop playback when the time cursor is over 95 % of the event. I don't know if 0.95 is a good value, because it's a tradeoff between making the effect last long enough and "catching" the cursor being in the last 5 % of the event so it doesn't loop over.

Im confused here too. I completely understand your workaround with using Expression, but you said before that that I can uncheck "Loop" to prevent it from looping. So, won't that be sufficient? If not, what does unchecking "Loop" do by itself?

Uncheck the beamshow preview buttons of timelines you're not using.

I had tried that but it didnt go away. But when I moved the mouse cursor to the preview window, it disappeared. Might be a bug, but not a big one.