SpectraStrobe - Basic and Advanced MWS Tracks Together

[neuroasis]

Thanks Claud,
That means a lot. I know you are very experienced with MWS. It's great to hear that people on different levels of expertise with MWS are getting benefit. It is also a big encouragement to continue.

Thanks so very much.
Scott

[neuroasis]

New tutorial: SpectraStrobe Templates and Organization

Finishing our preliminary method and tips by creating reusable templates and then importing them into the original 'lightning' session to separate out the color channels for an ideal balance. Also tips on organization. This prepares us to expand into more refined and advanced SpectraStrobe lightning effects.

[stormchas3r]

Thank you again Scott! Great tutorial.

[Mind-Shop]

Yes, Scott - again a great video with some very smart hints and tricks. You are really thinking around the corner, Scott! ;-)

All the best

Claud

[johrho]

Amazing! So easy and intuitive once you've seen it done. I can't fully express my appreciation for your ability to pass along these techniques in such a consise manner. The entire mind machine community is going to benefit greatly from your knowledge as we all wrap our collective heads around programming SS. The SS format is sure to be a clear winner as more of us gain the abilities to put our ideas into the Kasina once we grapple with the steep, but necessary, learning curve that has been presented to us. The quality of content that will be produced with the collection of software tools available to us and the fantastic hardware that Mindplace has produced plus the experience of veteran session developers sharing your knowledge, techniques, and workflows; quite simply, boggles the mind. Thank you so much.

[neuroasis]

Thank you to the ends of the Earth everybody!

John, you are very correct that it is my hope that these videos will empower people to begin to utilize the power of Mind Workstation to create their own sessions. We live in a great age where the sharing of knowledge is so much easier. Video tutorials make difficult concepts easy to convey. I can't imagine what it take to try to write all this out otherwise.

Your comments are very encouraging and motivating. It is so nice when a producer can see people get value from their work. More to come.

Best,
Scott

[Robert Austin]

Thanks so much for this series of video tutorials, Scott. Much needed, and path-breakingly helpful to all of us. Mind Workstation has long been the most powerful piece of AVS content creation software on the market (followed by NP3), and you have very neatly encapsulated the knowledge and experience you have gained during your relationship with MindPlace within this series. These are definitely required viewing for anyone who wants to explore the full range of capabilities that the Kasina possesses, in the context of session creation.

Stormchas3r, thank you so much for sharing your positive Kasina experiences with us. Each confirmation that we are having a sometimes profoundly positive influence on the lives of our users is what keeps us striving to constantly improve our technologies and customer service.

The Kasina, though a significant break with our earlier products in some respects, represents the third evolutionary step in a series which began with the Proteus: AVS systems which included both a robust set of factory presets, and the capability for extensive user manipulation and modification. To date, the Proteus has undergone six hardware revisions and over a dozen firmware updates, reflecting and incorporating suggestions from our users. The Procyon was the next step, incorporating a complex and very flexible visual stimulation engine, and an increased emphasis on the 'mind art' category, which reflects my personal interest in the potential aesthetics embodied in complex strobe stimulation. I wanted to extend the traditional 'mind machine' category from its old 'entrainment' roots towards a more complex and subtle paradigm which extended the 'consciousness altering' possibilities while retaining the capacity to boost the amplitudes of specific frequency ranges.

We have had numerous requests over the past decade to include an MP3 player within our products. For a long time I did not support this, since Apple (for example) did a far better job than we could with their iPod series, and I knew that it would cost us, as a niche boutique manufacturer, a lot more to include that capability than it does Apple, with their multi-million unit production runs. As we started the design process for the Kasina, I decided that it was time to do so anyway, despite the relatively high cost of adding these features. I also made the decision to recruit two of our uber-users to create sessions for the Kasina, after careful consideration: Craig Tice, and Scott Hendrickson. As it turns out, both have created so much more, and Scott in particular has delved very deeply with me into the realm of possibilities which the Kasina, and related technologies, now present to us.

Thank you all for sharing this journey with us!

-Robert

[johrho]

Got a question for you Scott. I've been experimenting a lot with open eye viewing, (I'll post more about that this weekend). Although balancing RGB with closed eyes seems to be more challenging, and individual perceptions of color and personal preference will come into play as well; do you by any chance have any recommendations on color balance for open eye? I have been tweaking a sample session that I am working on, and have found that without scaling RGB at all that it seemed to be a little harsh, not to mention that the pallet wasn't exactly what I was anticipating. So far I have found that if I leave green at the scale that you suggest and swap the scaling values for red & blue it gets REAL close to what I would expect although not quite there. I realize that the color profile of say, a MacBook Pro with a tuned color profile is not going to display color the same as the ganzeframes. So I guess what I am looking for is to more closely match the two using a set of color mixing ratios like the ones you suggested for closed eye sessions.

Also of note, for individual preferences, the RGB balance of left & right eyes can be tweaked on the Kasina itself under Settings>Visuals>Color Balance. Values from 0 to 100, which I am assuming is a percentage value. Thanks to Mindplace for including this feature, presumably to account for slight output tolerances of the LEDs in the ganzeframes themselves.

Sorry, didn't mean to write a book...

Thanks in advance

[neuroasis]

Eye open is a bit more challenging at this point as we do not yet have a common 'platform' to support it. Internally at MP, we are getting there, with more and more refined prototypes. This makes it harder to adopt a method for it as the transmission of different materials and densities have notable effects on the output. What are you using for eye open?

However, I do find that it is almost opposite of the closed eye experience as you mention. Blue is the predominant color... and boy is it beautiful! Red appears less prominent. So, it is reasonable that the balance settings as you suggest would be reversed.

One thing that you will want to do in your particular setup is in MWS to turn down the Flash Intensity on each color track so that you get a field of solid color with minimal flashing. You can then use the color picker to set your color balance along with the master/slave tracks. Start with yellow, then do orange, then magenta, then cyan. The great part of open eye is that you can immediately test it to gauge the result. Once you have set these in between colors, playing back the session should give you a revolving color wheel effect as the nodes ramp to one another. Then you can dial in your adjustment and make decisions on ratios.

I have done this with our prototypes but again as we are probably not using the same materials, then it is harder to set a standard. That is, until we get the eye open frames out to the public.

Best,
Scott

[johrho]

Thanks for the quick reply Scott. I started by using a white bond paper insert as suggested earlier. In my quest for knowledge I have read tons of pages dating back to early Mind machines that used ping pong balls. I fashioned a small jig that allow me to accurately cut the ends off ping pong balls, experimenting along the way with different thicknesses until I found, what I considered to be the optimal for diffusion of of the LEDs to produce a well blended mix of color without "hot spots." I then glued the ping pong ball caps to the LED diffuser on all four corners using smalls dots of low temp hot glue. The nice thing is, that my stock ganzframes as supplied with the Kasina are now suitable for use both with open eye and closed eye sessions just by adjusting the brightness on the Kasina console itself. And boy, are you right, the colors are vivid and beautiful. Particularly color tones that contain blue! The low temp glue makes it real easy to remove as well.

I used to process my own color prints, and it makes PERFECT sense to use CMYK colors to adjust to get the proper RBG values. After all, color printing uses adjustment of Cyan, Magenta & Yellow to produce the proper balance of Red, Green and Blue tones. Should have thought of that.

I will give this a try this weekend and post my results as well as my process of modifying the stock ganzframes.

Thanks again