Syncing Quickshow (and others) to camera shutter

[maxcady]

My current setup is:

PC w/ Quickshow
FB3
1W RGB ILDA system
modular synth w/ ADAT interface
a pair of DZ boxes that do ADAT/ILDA conversion both ways


I am filming my lasershows with a Red Epic Dragon. However no matter what shutter speed i use, the lasershows never really come out very well at all on the Red, I have better results filming using my iPhone 6.

I have a custom cable made to send a pulse every time the camera shutter fires on the Red, I can use this cable to clock my modular synth from the Red, and for doing all-analog laser shows this works quite well, although usually I dont even use the cable and just "tune it by eye" while looking at the camera screen until the laser animations start to really "pop" and sync up with the camera shutter.

When doing PC shows it seems like the software clock is at a fixed rate, regardless of what pattern I'm projecting, and its not very syncable to my camera shutter.

I'm very new to Quickshow (and all ILDA software), I'm hoping this is a super easy thing to adjust in the preferences somewhere. I can do it by eye, or I could do it more precisely, using the camera shutter speed information, or using the camera pulse output. I imagine maybe the pulse output could work with more advanced software like LSX but not for Quickshow.

I think eventually I'll move onto a more advanced software and ditch the synthesizer, but for now I'm getting really nice results just using quickshow to project a still image, and then i apply further processing using the synthesizer. I know the synth a lot better than the software, so for now its a nice cushion to use it combined with the software, until i get a better understanding of LSX.

any help would be great!

[masterpj]

I actually found the flicker to be minimal with phone cameras... although it's much better using a camera with global shutter (although usually those cameras are expensive).
There is no sync or an option to get a sync for your camera with quickshow but there is for LD2000.
I believe most cameras nowdays do not have the connections for this though.

[maxcady]

that is fantastic information, thank you. i'll look into the qm2000 and ld2000..

I see in the quickshow preferences theres sliders that let you adjust "minimum number of points" and other things, would any of these help me "eyeball it" and adjust things back and forth until it looks a bit better on camera. i'd love perfect sync, but perhaps i wont be able to do that with pangolin quickshow, however maybe i could get close, so it could at least be recognizable, like when i film with my iphone.

it seemed like a definite fixed rate that the FB3 was sending into the laser, it had the same flicker rate no matter what i did with the camera shutter, the camera shutter would just change the size of the black gaps between moments of the laser emerging, but the rate that the black gaps flickered was always the same, so if that can be adjusted I'll be in business.

Ultimately I'll be using LSX or something more advanced, do those offer professional video sync options for certain types of art? I know that not all things can be specified as a frame, but for certain kinds of art, or words etc, it would be great to have perfect video sync available somehow. Maybe I will need some kind of box that converts the red camera shutter pulse into a video sync signal, maybe this already exists, or maybe i can just clock the LSX patch using my camera shutter pulse?

[masterpj]

They don't but nobody uses the video sync.. not even in LD2000.. Analog output is needed which most cameras dont even have anymore.. I have never tried it but I doubt it's very practical.
Just get software that works for you and save for a camera with a global shutter I guess
The flicker can be minimized or be removed by adjusting the shutter timing and if you are conservative with points you can get flicker free or hardly any flicker recordings.

[maxcady]

Global shutter is not an option because this effect is being used in film scenes that are shot at a shutter speed of 48th/second.

I can't seem to get words in particular typed out in quickshow that don't flicker on camera. Is it possible to make a few words that don't flicker on camera, or are words usually tricky to do on camera? if this is all small potatoes then i'm probably doing something wrong. or is there a better way to optimize text, or perhaps use different software

[masterpj]

you can control the point density to a degree in LD2000.
I can't remember if that's the case in quickshow.

it's just everything that is tricky when shooting because there is a variable framerate really.

[swamidog]

can't find the video off the top of my head, but i'm pretty sure the laser production for the mtv music awards promo used the video sync to intentionally bring the camera slightly out of phase with the lasers so there were slow moving scan gaps in vertical red beams. it was a very beautiful effect.

They don't but nobody uses the video sync.. not even in LD2000.. Analog output is needed which most cameras dont even have anymore.. I have never tried it but I doubt it's very practical.
Just get software that works for you and save for a camera with a global shutter I guess
The flicker can be minimized or be removed by adjusting the shutter timing and if you are conservative with points you can get flicker free or hardly any flicker recordings.

[maxcady]

Can someone help me I have a noob question. I'm about to purchase windows 7 to use with LSX etc, which version of it do i need to buy? theres about 7 different versions.

[Ferrous256]

can't find the video off the top of my head, but i'm pretty sure the laser production for the mtv music awards promo used the video sync to intentionally bring the camera slightly out of phase with the lasers so there were slow moving scan gaps in vertical red beams. it was a very beautiful effect.

Is this the video you're thinking of? I'd love to be able to replicate this effect someday. It gets back to the main point- how do you control laser scan speed and shutter speed of a camera so perfectly?

[White-Light]

That's one expensive camera. Goes without saying if you're pointing the laser in it's direction, make sure it's correctly BAM'ed otherwise that's a burnt $14K sensor.

This thread might be of some interest:

http://www.photonlexicon.com/forums/...187#post332187

A scanner tuned up like that might not in itself solve the issue. However, if you have a perfectly constant scan interval, I'd imagine it would make the job easier. Try talking to Pangolin as they may be able to help or know someone in the industry that specialises in videoing laser.