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Light-O-Rama Compressed Sequence File Format

The Light-O-Rama Compressed Sequence file format (".lcs") is a compressed version of the XML based Light-O-Rama sequence file format (".lms" and ".las"). The Light-O-Rama Compressed Sequence file format uses a custom compression scheme and file structure, with the majority undocumented.

See the "Compressed Sequences" Light-O-Rama help guide page for more information.

Header

The file format is identified by a decorative 415 byte ASCII header starting at index 0. Besides this header, there are no other magic bytes to identify the file format.

***************************************************
*                                                 *
* This file is a compressed sequence for use with *
*        the Light-O-Rama software suite.         *
*                                                 *
*           http://www.lightorama.com/            *
*                                                 *
***************************************************

The header will be followed by one 0x0A NL character (for a total of 416 bytes).

A 0x02 STX character marks the start of a series of seemingly always NUL bytes, with a variable length. An additional 0x01 SOH character marks the start of the file's metadata fields. As such, it's recommended software implementions simply seek to the first occurance of 0x01 to begin reading.

Metadata Fields

Following the header, the metadata fields structure is used to store authorship and timestamp information. The metadata fields are not keyed, and instead a fixed encoding order is used in order to interpret the value of each metadata field. Unfortunately this means the purpose of each field is static, and new metadata fields may not be easily added. More importantly, metadata fields may not be omitted entirely.

Each metadata field starts with a uint32 value indicating its character length (not byte length) and then the encoded metadata field value as a uint16[]. A metadata field may be "omitted" by encoding a character length value of 0 and including no additional data. This means each empty metadata field will use 4 bytes.

Even though each metadata field seems to be used as a string, the values do not seem to be null terminated and instead continue instantly to the next metadata field structure (if any).

Field Data Type Notes
Character Length uint32 May be 0
Data uint16[] Typically a non-null terminated (7-bit) ASCII string

Encoding Example

The following encodes a value of "HELLO" in 14 bytes.

0x05 0x00 0x00 0x00 // uint32 character length value (5)
0x72 0x00 // "H"
0x69 0x00 // "E"
0x76 0x00 // "L"
0x76 0x00 // "L"
0x79 0x00 // "O"

Encoding Order

  1. File path of the media file, if any
  2. File author
  3. File creation timestamp
  4. Last file update author
  5. Song album
  6. Song artist
  7. Song title
  8. Unknown, always empty, likely reserved for future use

Empty metadata field values must still be written, otherwise the official Light-O-Rama software will misinterpret the values and potentially attempt to read sequence data as metadata fields.

Sequence Data

The index following the last metadata field begins the compressed sequence data. The sequence data appears to be aligned in 40 byte blocks (this may be a result of my configuration).

Block

Field Data Type Notes
Sequence Duration uint32 Centiseconds (0.01 seconds) duration of sequence. This value seems to be used only a few times, with a 0 value "appending" to the current block.
Start uint32 Centiseconds start time of the given effect
Stop uint32 Centiseconds stop time of the given effect
Effect See #Effects
uint32 Unknown purpose, always 0x01
uint32 Unknown purpose, always 0x00
Unit uint32
Channel uint32

Effects

Intensity

Intensity controls the "brightness" of a given channel using a start and end value. The hardware controller will step between the two values over the duration of the effect. The sequence compression utility seems to use this single effect for fading, constant on, and constant off behaviors by manipulating the start and end intensity values.

Field Data Type Value
Id uint32 0x00
Start Intensity uint32 Any value between [0, 100]
End Intensity uint32 Any value between [0, 100]

Shimmer

Field Data Type Value
Id uint32 0x01
Start Intensity uint32 Any value between [0, 100]
End Intensity uint32 Any value between [0, 100]