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Sequence Editor Intermittently Freezing Up (resolved)


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tfischer wrote:

I also have found that LOR is unresponsive during this time. If you attempt to click the stop button, nothing happens-- the music keeps playing. But when it gets out of the 'freeze zone' the stop finally takes effect.

Something is causing LOR to be unresponsive to GUI events during these hang-times. I wish I could narrow it down further...

-Tim


We are having a problem getting some resource... Does the CPU peg during this time and is it LOR pegging it or is something else pegging it?

In the task manager you can sort processes by cpu utilization.
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LightORama wrote:

tfischer wrote:
I also have found that LOR is unresponsive during this time. If you attempt to click the stop button, nothing happens-- the music keeps playing. But when it gets out of the 'freeze zone' the stop finally takes effect.

Something is causing LOR to be unresponsive to GUI events during these hang-times. I wish I could narrow it down further...

-Tim


We are having a problem getting some resource... Does the CPU peg during this time and is it LOR pegging it or is something else pegging it?

In the task manager you can sort processes by cpu utilization.

I just checked. During the sequence, LOR normally would take anywhere from 20-50% of the CPU. During the "hang time" it would take as much as 75-80%. But "System Idle Task" was still the #2 task with most of the remaining CPU, so it doesn't appear to be a "processor is too slow" issue.

-Tim
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OK, I figured out my issue. And it probably isn't the same as yours, but here goes. And I feel kind of dumb for not realizing this sooner.

"Control Lights" was turned on on my laptop I was using, and I didn't intend it to be. In fact, that machine has another app (PalmPilot Hotsync) that normally has control of the serial port, so LOR must have been trying to grab it (unsuccessfully) and control the lights at various places. In any case, turning off "control lights" let me get back to sequencing.

Obviously, if you actually want to control lights that won't work well! But I suspect that if I disable the Hotsync Manager and actually connect up some LOR boxes my problem would go away.

-Tim

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Tim,

I completly reformatted the drive, reloaded windows XP and LOR. That's all I have on the PC. It's a spare so I don't use it for anything else.

Once I did that, the CPU time dropped down to about 4%. I ran the song, and the CPU jumped back up, but towrds the end of the song, pegged the CPU again.

I tried your trick, tuned off 'control lights', and guess what the cpu usage went down to 1%.

I ran three songs so far, most of the time the cpu is at about 30-40%, with some pegs at 60%.

Out of three songs, so far only one song pegged the CPU just once at 100% for what seemed only about 1 second. Hardley noticable when running the sequence editor.

I can deal with that, but still would like to know why the dang thing still wants to peg at 100%. I know the PC i'm using is a few years old, Pentuim III with 768MB of ram, but I don't think that should be an issue.

Anyhow, maybe there could be a future version of LOR that does not try to use as much as CPU time.

I'm wondering if I should use an updated version of Windows Media Player. When I reloaded the PC, I did not allow it to get the Updates at MS website. Seems when I had it update with all the security crap, that's when the PC was really running slow.

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John Pidliskey wrote:

[...]

I can deal with that, but still would like to know why the dang thing still wants to peg at 100%. I know the PC i'm using is a few years old, Pentuim III with 768MB of ram, but I don't think that should be an issue.

Anyhow, maybe there could be a future version of LOR that does not try to use as much as CPU time.

I'm wondering if I should use an updated version of Windows Media Player. When I reloaded the PC, I did not allow it to get the Updates at MS website. Seems when I had it update with all the security crap, that's when the PC was really running slow.


As I mentioned in the second post of this thread ... this is to be expected in the current version of LOR. ('expected' being what you are seeing now, after control lights is turned off.)

Again, Dan has said that this is corrected in LOR2. If I recall correctly, the sequence editor uses a 1/10th of the CPU time of the current version.
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John Pidliskey wrote:

Don,

The version of LOR I have is: 1.5.0

Is that the latest?

I thought Dan said that LOR uses Windows Media Player, should I get the latest version of WMP?



That is the latest. The sequencer does use the WMP engine. I'm using WMP10 at the house, and 1.5.0 on some AMD 2+ Ghz processor with 2GB ram. I still get glitches now and then.
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Thanks, Don.

One last question...

I can bring up the harware utility to test the LOR boards which works ok.

When I run the sequence editor, the LED's start to flash like they lost communication with LOR and the lights will not work.

I checked under 'edit,preferences,network preferences' and it is setup for Comm 3.

Dasher and X10 are set to None.

What am I missing?

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Ok,

I think I've got things under control.

When I run the sequence editor, I need to turn off Control Lights. That seems to kill the CPU.

I setup a show, and watched the cpu. Average usage is 15% or less...

The sequence editor obviously draws more CPU time and if you turn on Control lights, it is even worse.

SO,

my conclusion is:

When I build me sequences, I turn off control lights. All is good...

Thanks everyone and Dan especially for calling me at home to get this resolved.

:waycool:

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I actually got around to trying this but it didn't help.

Bummer



LightORama wrote:

greenmeanie wrote:
I am running mine on a P4 2.2 GHZ laptop 512MEG RAM. I did 4 songs and on the last song i get slow down.

EX when I start the sequence the song plays fine but the lights on the screen don't match up to the song. Then if you stop the show and just play viewable area it all Syncs up.
I have yet to try the final version with the lor boards hooked up thou.

This type of behaviour is generally due to the MP3 file being used. Use Audacity to re-encode the file to 128mb constant bit rate or convert it to a wav file.
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