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Awesome christmas lights

Posted: 2005-11-22 05:07am
by Faram
Video with sound, amazing stuff

I really want to know what equpment they used for this.

Posted: 2005-11-22 07:25am
by Soontir C'boath
That is the coolest Christmas Decoration, EVER!

Edit(forgot light boards can preprogram stuff in): Heck, depending on how many channels he had, I wonder how many light boards and what kind he used.

And it's a damn good tune to go with too.

Posted: 2005-11-22 08:22am
by Majin Gojira
Ho-Lee-crap. That was complex!

Posted: 2005-11-22 08:53am
by The Guid
He must have fainted when he was the electricity bill though.

Posted: 2005-11-22 09:03am
by Soontir C'boath
With detail such as this, he would have to know how much power he's using as to not overload the circuit breakers or whatever possible system he added to it(a work such as this should have its own dimmer box with its own set of breakers anyway). With that, he could calculate how much he's using and thus the price can be found already before lighting it up.

Posted: 2005-11-22 09:12am
by Mrs Kendall
That was amazing!! I passed the video along to my family members, this certainly gives us lazy people no excuse not to decorate ;) :lol:

Posted: 2005-11-22 03:34pm
by Fleet Admiral JD
Soontir C'boath wrote:That is the coolest Christmas Decoration, EVER!

Edit(forgot light boards can preprogram stuff in): Heck, depending on how many channels he had, I wonder how many light boards and what kind he used.

And it's a damn good tune to go with too.
You wouldn't need many...The ones I've worked with should have been able to do that.

Posted: 2005-11-22 04:29pm
by Soontir C'boath
Fleet Admiral JD wrote:You wouldn't need many...The ones I've worked with should have been able to do that.
Well, I was thinking an amount of two light boards at the most. Eyeballing this guy's work, he definitely has at least 50 channels going there.

I definitely want(but most likely can't) to do something like this for my dorm's exterior. There is just this one long section which faces the parking lot that is begging to be lit up.

Posted: 2005-11-22 04:58pm
by Fleet Admiral JD
Soontir C'boath wrote:
Fleet Admiral JD wrote:You wouldn't need many...The ones I've worked with should have been able to do that.
Well, I was thinking an amount of two light boards at the most. Eyeballing this guy's work, he definitely has at least 50 channels going there.

I definitely want(but most likely can't) to do something like this for my dorm's exterior. There is just this one long section which faces the parking lot that is begging to be lit up.
I'm an AV nerd, operating lights/sound at my high school, local community college as well. Where would one get a light board?

Posted: 2005-11-22 05:10pm
by Soontir C'boath
As far as I know at the moment since I never contemplated into looking into light boards before, this 48/96 channel lightboard plus some features I never got to look at (since I graduated) that my high school theatre director bought cost him around 5K, he had a consultant come in for it though so I don't know exactly which company it came from. There are some that I see such as from music123.com but they simply don't hold as much channels as one would need for this type of stuff(I think I saw at max a 32/64 channel system there for a couple hundred).

Of course 32 channels is still a lot as that's what my high school used to work with since one scene section was broken, heh. Still did the job.

Posted: 2005-11-23 06:16am
by Gandalf
That's downright bitchin.

It seems there is truly a new benchmark in home decorating. :D

Posted: 2005-11-23 06:51am
by Morilore
Mother of God.

Did the decorator actually play that music while all that shit was going on?

Posted: 2005-11-24 01:44am
by Dennis Toy
reminds me of "close encounters of the third kind"

Posted: 2005-11-24 11:56pm
by The Jazz Intern
How do you suppose they did that?
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to tape my jaw back up.

Posted: 2005-11-25 12:49am
by Sriad
Morilore wrote:Mother of God.

Did the decorator actually play that music while all that shit was going on?
I'd say 99.999995% certain that it was. The odds that a Christmas-y rockin' song synchs up THAT well with a random lights display over a 3:30 period is like Heart of Gold improbable.

Posted: 2005-11-25 01:09am
by Ketira
YE GODS!

That reminds me of something I saw on the news last year: someone in Orlando had a short-range radio broadcast station going and had programmed his lights to go along with the music --with a sign outside telling passers-by just where on the FM dial one should tune to.

Now there's something I know I can't do; a programmer, I ain't. *sighs*

Posted: 2005-11-25 02:31pm
by Braedley
In all likeliness, he used a fully computerized light and sound board (or even just a light board with a good sound input). I unfortunatley have never used a light board like the one that he most likely is using, (I'm a sound guy, not a light tech), but one was used for my high school musical when I was running the sound boards. There are a number of ways to set this up, but the easiest way, which also happens to be the most tedious and time consuming, is to wait for a single trigger from the sound source, and then have each slide independantly timed to the music. This reduces false positives from the music cues to the light board, and guarentees that the lights will follow the music, as long as the lightboard gets the cue. To make it even more extravagant, you could set it up so that it only takes syncing cues at key points in the music to make sure it stays in sync.

Posted: 2005-11-26 06:06am
by Einhander Sn0m4n
What song was that playing? Fucking righteous tune to go with that christmas-light wankage!

Posted: 2005-11-26 09:07pm
by Fleet Admiral JD
Soontir C'boath wrote:As far as I know at the moment since I never contemplated into looking into light boards before, this 48/96 channel lightboard plus some features I never got to look at (since I graduated) that my high school theatre director bought cost him around 5K, he had a consultant come in for it though so I don't know exactly which company it came from. There are some that I see such as from music123.com but they simply don't hold as much channels as one would need for this type of stuff(I think I saw at max a 32/64 channel system there for a couple hundred).

Of course 32 channels is still a lot as that's what my high school used to work with since one scene section was broken, heh. Still did the job.
Our 48/96 Colortran "Innovator" can hold up to 144, IIRC. We only have 76 lights, a few of which don't work. It's enough to get the job done, but I wish we had more.

Posted: 2005-11-26 09:46pm
by Beowulf
Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:What song was that playing? Fucking righteous tune to go with that christmas-light wankage!
Wizards in Winter - Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Posted: 2005-11-26 10:03pm
by Einhander Sn0m4n
Beowulf wrote:
Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:What song was that playing? Fucking righteous tune to go with that christmas-light wankage!
Wizards in Winter - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Got it, just couldn't be arsed to post so. Thanks :kiss:

Posted: 2005-11-27 12:52am
by Braedley
Fleet Admiral JD wrote:
Soontir C'boath wrote:<snip>
Our 48/96 Colortran "Innovator" can hold up to 144, IIRC. We only have 76 lights, a few of which don't work. It's enough to get the job done, but I wish we had more.
5 bucks says it's either 128, 192, or 256, only because most of the boards on the market today are all digital inside.

Posted: 2005-11-27 02:45pm
by Singular Quartet
That has soooo got to piss of the neighbors.

Posted: 2005-11-27 05:29pm
by Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi
Was I the only one that was cracked up by that? I can't put my finger on it, but there's something about the lights flashing to the music that I found wierd.

Posted: 2005-11-27 05:40pm
by Soontir C'boath
Beowulf wrote:
Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:What song was that playing? Fucking righteous tune to go with that christmas-light wankage!
Wizards in Winter - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
I should've know it was them. I definitely have to get their cds.