Looking for tips on how efficiently deal with 16 BIT LED tape

Hello!
for a project I am going to use LED tape, 16 BIT, RGBW.
I am doing the classic LED mapping using TOPs ramps and images, SOPs for the LED tape points and position, then sopto - topto etc…

Since the LED tape I am using is RGBW 16BIT I am looking for a efficient and scalable way to deal with the 16 BIT part.

The LED tape is expecting 8 values for each pixel:
Red
Red fine
Green
Green fine
Blue
Blue fine
White
White fine

I have experience using 16BIT fixtures (like 16 BIT pan and tilt for moving heads etc…) but this is the first time I need to calculate 16BIT for each pixel.

My workaround at the moment is after the top to chop, I trim (using a trim CHOP) the entire length of the pixel tape in single pixels (trim0 start 0 end 0, trim1, start 1 end 1, etc…) then I calculate the RGBW 16BIT value for each pixel, and then “repack” everything using a merge and then a shuffle CHOP.

It works but it seems like a long and slightly convoluted way to deal with this.
Any tips or suggestions?

PS: for the white pixel I calculate the white value using a math and grabbing the RGB values but I am open to suggestions if there’s a better way of doing this

Make sure your TOP chain is in 32-bit float all the way through and then set up a network like this:

If you want to, you can use the alpha channel as the “white” channel, just make sure that you turn off any “Premultiply RGB by Alpha” toggles in any of your TOPs (for noise TOP, set alpha to be “noise” in output tab)

Otherwise, usually for LEDs the best way to calculate true “white” would be to get the minimum of RGB - so you can just use a math TOP at the end of your regular RGB chain, set like this:
image

If you want to get REALLY accurate, there might be some way to use like OpenColorIO to make a 3D LUT to calculate the white based off the color abilities of your specific LEDs, but good luck with that!

Thank you so much @Peeet !! Thanks for taking the time to explain and for the clear screenshot.

this worked like a charm! my CPU just gave me a hug :smile: