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5.3.x Show Delays Between Songs. Fixed in 5.3.14, Maybe?


PhilMassey

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It is just possible that 5.3.14 MAY be working. Running a test show as we speak.

You have to FORCE compress the entire show in Sequence Compressor first, but it is 4 or 5  times faster that the Show Player method. Might not be so fast if going from scratch. That's a test for another day.

Might be jumping the gun here, but the first dozen  songs have zero delays. Looking at the LCS files, they are a shadow of their former selves, major diet. 2 or more orders of magnitude smaller.

Around a megabyte or two,  they were more like 200 MB in previous versions of 5.3.x.

They are EXACTLY the same size as my 5.2.4 LCS files to the byte.

They MAY have fixed it.Going to continue the test show all day.

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Update.

Show has been running since 5pm EST. No issues with any of my 52 songs. That's about 3 complete loops.

 

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I saw very reduced load times last night and this was using load when requested as opposed to loading all in memory first. I still saw more complex sequences taking up to 15 seconds to load and all lights going out between loads even though some of the lights should still be on. No, that box to check to turn off lights between sequences is "not" checked. Generally speaking, it was much faster but not up to par with the older versions from 5.24 and earlier. I'm thinking they've still got some work to do. Software-wise, the more things they code into the software, the slower it'll run. Its a serious trade-off as such with capabilities vs performance. For the moment, its certainly better than it was!

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Did you rebuild your compressed sequence files using Sequence Compressor. It makes MUCH smaller files now. It says it also refreshes the playback files. I recompressed my entire show, it only took half an hour.

Not using "load all" because I use Miip. Never found it helpful anyway.

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Phil and Dgrant

Just curious what you think is the cause of the load problems you are having. I understand your files are huge and are now being compressed to the range they used to be. Do you think the cause is do to:

1) Number of songs I see Phil you have 52.

2) Number of RGB nodes and the speed /quantity of effects.

3) Using superstar perhaps?

4) Something else

I am curious as my display increases each. It might help me in future planning.

 

Thanks

Steve

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You have to FORCE compress the entire show in Sequence Compressor first, but it is 4 or 5  times faster that the Show Player method. 

 

I dont see a Sequence Compressor in this version.

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It seems to be just file size of the compressed files to me. I dont use SS, and use motion effects sparingly. Compared to many, I have relatively few pixels, only about 3000 or so. I do a lot of quick complex events and a lot of chases over many pixels.

The larger files, either due to complexity or sheer length were slower to load in 5.3. The compressed files in 5.2 worked fine, and now in 5.3.14 they are the same size, and they work too.

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20 hours ago, stevehoyt said:

Phil and Dgrant

Just curious what you think is the cause of the load problems you are having. I understand your files are huge and are now being compressed to the range they used to be. Do you think the cause is do to:

1) Number of songs I see Phil you have 52.

2) Number of RGB nodes and the speed /quantity of effects.

3) Using superstar perhaps?

4) Something else

I am curious as my display increases each. It might help me in future planning.

 

Thanks

Steve

Hi Steve, Sorry for the delay. I have 40 songs and all of them have pixel trees(2) in them therefore the file sizes are large. This morning, I'll run that compression routine and see what happens. Yes, I use lots of Superstar sequences embedded into the main files. I'm using a seriously fast computer that had no problems in the older versions that worked just fine. This problem happened up through 5.3.12. Now with 5.3.14, it did change. I'm sure LOR is still looking at this but the more things "we" request to get added into the software, the slower its going to run. Also, LOR is having to do the trade-offs in the coding for machines going back to WindowsXP so they have limitations. Anyway, I'll run the compression as suggested then run a test show and will report back what I see.

David

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I did run the compress show and I selected to force compression on all sequences in my show. File sizes were dramatically smaller. I started the formal show using show on demand then went outside to watch. The lag between sequences was nearly gone. I did note that  all lights still blink off even though some are programmed to remain on. Now I didn’t run the entire show as I would have been standing out there for nearly two hours but there’s a very obvious improvement in the S5 software, 3.5.14. 

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So the show ran last night normally with the slight exception of all lights still shutting off between sequences even though they should not have. Thank You to LOR for fixing the main issue. I'm going to run the show tonight(Sunday) then terminate for the season.

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Update:

I ran my entire show thru 3 total cycles last night using 5.3.14, also ran sequence compressor on entire show as well, much smaller files were created, and now I have "ZERO Delays" on all of my sequences.

Thank You LOR for fixing this issue with the newest release !!!

Now onto next year.

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Well this is good news. It's not the one click "Create Playback Files" in Sequencer, but it will do the job. Any thing is better than waiting for Show Player to do all the processing while you are trying to start a show.  I didn't have the issue of lag between songs, just was not happy with waiting for Show Player to process playback files,or moving all the files to the show pc, when we used to be able to process playback files at our convenience. It nice to have that feature back. Thanks LOR for adressing this.

On 12/26/2019 at 10:48 AM, PhilMassey said:

You have to FORCE compress the entire show in Sequence Compressor first, but it is 4 or 5  times faster that the Show Player method. Might not be so fast if going from scratch. That's a test for another day.

Phil,

In the release notes for 5.3.12 it says

Quote

The Sequence Compressor tool now handles shows that contain S5 sequences (LOREDIT files). You can also select an LOREDIT file when compressing a single sequence. This can be used to prepare an entire show for playback before its scheduled start time.

When playing a sequence in a show, performance was improved for channel effects on DMX networks. For sequences with many channel effects on DMX networks, you will want to regenerate the playback files. Use the Sequence Compressor with the "Force Compression" option enabled to do this.

 

I can't remember if you mentioned that you had a lot of DMX channels (other than moving head lights). Do you have a lot of DMX channels, or just a few DMX channels? Either way it sounds like now the files are being compressed manually, where as before with the show player method they weren't?

Alan...

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On the day before my last show, I made a change to my preview to check something for next year before I took the lights down. I forgot that would cause an update of all the playback files. When the show started it had to recreate all the playback files. This was causing up to a 15 second delay, for the first pass through the show. This was nowhere near as bad as in the previous versions.There were very few visitors that night anyway so I just let it go..

I ran one last test the next day with a show on demand to recreate ALL the playback files from scratch and it took about 20 minutes for my 58 sequences compared to nearly 3 hours in the previous versions.

I think it is fair to say that the show delay issue is fixed, at least as regards the LCS file load times.

Still don't like the file system though:rolleyes:

Alan, I have nearly 7000 dmx over e1.31 channels. I noticed the comment in the what's new section and thought the same.

I said earlier that the LCS files created by 5.2.4 and 5.3.14 were exactly the same size, to the Byte.

 

Hopefully we can concentrate on sequence creation this year.

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