Controlling a lighting system
A lighting script—for use by a lighting controller to control at least one luminaire to render illumination effects, as the video content is outputted in a space illuminated by the at least one luminaire, synchronously with the outputting of the video content—is generated as follows. Frame image data of the video content is processed to determine at least one color palette of the frame image data. A sequence of illumination effects—to be rendered during the outputting of the video content and which is modifiable by a user—is displayed to the user. The displayed sequence conveys at least one illumination color derived from the determined color palette to be rendered in at least one of the illumination effects. The generated lighting script is for rendering the modified sequence of illumination effects.
1. A computer-implemented method of generating a lighting script for a piece of video content, the lighting script for use by a lighting controller to control at least one luminaire to render illumination effects, as the video content is outputted in a space illuminated by the at least one luminaire, synchronously with the outputting of the video content, the method comprising executing a scripting application on a computer to implement the following steps:
processing frame image data of the video content to determine at least one colour palette of the frame image data;
controlling display apparatus of the computer to display to a user of the computer a sequence of illumination effects to be rendered during the outputting of the video content, wherein the displayed sequence conveys at least one illumination colour derived from the determined colour palette to be rendered in at least one of the illumination effects;
receiving from the user via user input apparatus of the computer at least one effect modification instruction, and modifying the displayed sequence of illumination effects according to the received at least one instruction; and
generating a lighting script for use by the lighting controller in controlling the at least one luminaire during the outputting of the video content in the illuminated space to render the modified sequence of illumination effects,
wherein the processing step comprises determining a respective colour palette of each of a plurality of segments of the video content;
wherein the displayed sequence of illumination effects comprises a respective illumination effect for each of the segments of the video content, and conveys to the user, for at least one of the segments, at least one illumination colour derived from its respective colour palette to be rendered in its respective illumination effect.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the steps further comprise:
controlling the display apparatus to display a colour selector derived from the determined colour palette, wherein the at least one illumination colour is selected by the user via the user input apparatus of the computer using the displayed colour selector.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the steps further comprise:
processing the video content to generate a video timeline conveying visual changes in the video content; and
controlling the display apparatus to display the video timeline in association with the sequence of illumination effects.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the processing step comprises automatically determining the segments by comparing to one another respective colour characteristics of frame images of the video content.
5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the processing step comprises determining a plurality of individual colour palettes for the frame images, which are used in said comparison.
6. The method of claim 5 , wherein said comparison comprises:
applying a hierarchical clustering algorithm to the individual colour palettes, and/or
comparing differences between the individual colour palettes with a colour matching threshold,
detecting deviations in the individual colour palettes from a base colour.
7. The method of any of claim 4 wherein the segments are automatically determined according to at least one segmentation instruction received from the user via the user input apparatus.
8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the at least one segmentation instruction from the user sets at least one of the following:
a number of frames images for which each of the individual colour palettes is to be determined,
the colour matching threshold,
a base colour,
a start point for a segment,
an endpoint for a segment,
a segmentation frequency,
a maximum segment duration,
a minimum segment duration.
9. The method of claim 6 , wherein the base colour is determined automatically, by the scripting application, by processing the frame images.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the steps comprise generating at least one colour histogram of the frame image data, which is used to determine the at least one colour palette.
11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the steps further comprise receiving an indication of at least one colour rendering capability of the at least one luminaire, which is used by the scripting application in the processing step to generate the at least one colour palette.