Hi John, Your real problem seems a whole lot different from what your original post described! The MP3 playback seems to be used more like a tape deck -- it just starts and goes and goes -- the playback is all or nothing, not bits and pieces. I think the only reason Light-o-rama uses MP3 is to keep the size of the music files within the constraints of an SD memory card.
If you were to incorporate any of the Light-o-rama technology, it would only be the front end of their software. You will have to write your own back end to drive the LED bus. But I suspect you've already done that, based on the demo videos you have. You might want to consider a more general tool for the display design process. The MIDI bus is widely used for lighting control (or at least it was 15 years ago, when I was actively doing theater). MIDI is very good at passing events and settings to multiple devices. I'm sure there are programs out there that will facilitate attaching lists of events to a soundtrack. Even Cakewalk's SONAR (which I currently use for audio recording and editing) has MIDI tools that will do most of what you seem to be looking for, and are easy to synchronize with music, doing all of the measure-at-a-time design you describe. A program designed for stage control would probably be an even better fit. You might even find one that could do the "color organ" effect (making banks of lights respond to individual frequency bands in the music). This would leave you with just the much simpler task of driving your LEDs from a MIDI bus. Or, actually, a collection of MIDI buses, because you may run into a limit on the number of devices controllable on one MIDI bus. But each light would only have to respond to one MIDI bus; it is the controller that would have to deal with one bus per 256 or 1024 lights. It may even be that there are stage control programs that use the CAN bus protocol. Happy Googling! I hope this different perspective is of some help to you. Rainer > Hi Rainer, > > What I'm considering is creating a program that is similar to > www.light-o-rama.com since they haven't responded to a request for > supporting our Controller Area Network (CAN bus) based lights. Makes > sense since they also sell and probably earn the majority of their income > from their lighting controllers. But they run strings of TRIAC based > lights. Our lights are single 36VDC based lights so it's not quite the > same thing. > > I have tried to contact them including passing a link to a video of our > simpler non-music interfaced light sequences but no answer back. I'd > rather use their software as it means I don't have to re-invent the wheel. > I have at most 742 RGBW lights to control and their system states it can > handle 1000 channels. If each channel was only one colour then their > system couldn't do what I want anyway since in effect I have 742 x 4 > channels. (2968 individual addressable Red, Green, Blue and White LEDs). > > Anyway, I'd like to be able to have a user tap the space bar in time to > the music and record those taps. Then be able to play back a bar or two > and organize which lights turn on at what colour and what intensity on > each of those taps. Be able to zoom in and work with two bars or zoom our > and play back 30 seconds etc. > > Here's a link to one of the videos. > > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOdEg58c_CU&feature=related > > > John > > > Automation Artisans Inc. > http://www.autoartisans.com/ELS/ > Ph. 1 250 544 4950 > > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: delphi-boun...@elists.org >> [mailto:delphi-boun...@elists.org] On Behalf Of Rainer von Saleski >> Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 7:15 AM >> To: delphi@elists.org >> Subject: Re: Synchronizing MP3 playback >> >> >> Nothing says that converting the MP3 file to a WAV file has >> to be done >> in advance; it can certainly be done "on the fly" the first >> time an MP3 >> file is encountered. >> >> I am not aware of Windows WAV sounds playing 5 seconds after >> the event >> that triggered them (unless the sound chips are busy doing something >> else). Are we looking for millisecond accuracy, or tenth of a second >> accuracy? >> >> I think the real problem we're having in guessing the correct >> solution >> is not knowing more about the application. Are the MP3 files >> provided >> at run time, or are they known at compile time? Do the segment time >> pointers change at run time? How often are parts of an >> individual MP3 >> file played? Is the bit rate of the MP3 files known in >> advance? Is the >> bitrate constant or variable? Is the program trying to >> splice together >> several pieces of a file and get contiguous playback? et cetera ... >> >> Rainer >> >> _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list -> Delphi@elists.org http://lists.elists.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/delphi
