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Unwanted compressed sequences created


ItsMeBobO

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This thread inspired a related question.    Thanks Bob for your assistance.

 

My sequencing computer is intentionally set to not use compressed sequences.   My show computer is set to use them.   The problem is my two computers are not on the same version of SE.   Well really two problems.   I dont bother to copy the compressed sequences to the show computer as it detects they are from a different version and recreates them.     So  I dont want to create them on the sequencing computer as they are not being used there.  The 'use compressed' setting does cause them to be created for some reason.   The show computer plays fine but is very slow to open a sequence in SE so I don't want to do it.   Show player auto detects the out of date or missing compressed sequence and builds it on the fly... while the show waits..  which is undesirable behavior.   I cant fix a sequence and copy to show computer without causing a long pause.

 

 

Why does unchecked 'use compressed' still create them when saving SE?

Is there a way to create a compressed other then open and save in SE or at moment of first play.    

What would happen if the two computers on different versions were sharing a folder and each wanted their own version of a compressed sequence?

 

 

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The problem is my two computers are not on the same version of SE.

 

We always strongly recommend that if you use multiple computers, you use the same version of software on both.

 

Why does unchecked 'use compressed' still create them when saving SE?

 

"Use compressed sequences" only applies to the Show Player.  Saving the sequence in the Sequence Editor will always save both the regular sequence and the compressed sequence (assuming a compressed sequence can be made for the sequence).  As to why the Sequence Editor always does that, it's just to make compressed sequences as easy to use as possible; if someone has "Use Compressed" off, and then decides to turn it on, it should just magically work without the Show Player needing to take the time to create the compressed sequences on the fly during the show.

 

Is there a way to create a compressed other then open and save in SE or at moment of first play.

   

Not at this time, no, sorry.

 

What would happen if the two computers on different versions were sharing a folder and each wanted their own version of a compressed sequence?

 

 

We don't really make any general guarantees about this sort of thing.  Again, we strongly recommend using the same version of software on all machines.  With that said, there are a few things here:

 

(1) Only the Show Player cares about loading a compressed sequence.  The Sequence Editor never loads them, it only creates them.

 

(2) When loading a compressed sequence that is of an older format than the most recent format it knows about, the Show Player will just load it without complaint; it won't recreate it due to it being an older format.  This is not a general guarantee for all releases in the future (i.e. perhaps in the future we will make a version that does recreate compressed sequences if they are not of the current format - in fact we're actually actively considering doing this for a certain new piece of functionality in the future), but it is the way that it operates today.

 

(3) When loading a compressed sequence that is of a newer format than the most recent format it knows about, the Show Player will refuse to load it, and will load the regular sequence instead.  If "Use Compressed Sequences" is enabled, it will also create a version of the format it knows about.

 

(4) "Older version of software" does not imply "older format of the compressed sequence file".  We've only ever had two formats for the compressed sequence file; the second one is fairly recent (I believe 3.10.14, but definitely some recent release).  So up to recent times, neither of the two versions of software would think anything's out of the ordinary about a compressed sequence built by the other.

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Is there a way to create a compressed other then open and save in SE or at moment of first play.

   

Not at this time, no, sorry.

 

Well, actually, now that I think about it a little more, yes.  In the Show Player, it doesn't happen "at moment of first play"; it happens immediately after load (if it happens at all).  Normally "immediately after load" and "at moment of first play" are in effect more or less the same thing, but if you set your show up to preload sequences, then they're very different.

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It would be a nice option to not save a compressed sequence with the sequence editor. During the coarse of a year I save sequences probably 1,000 times if not more. When you have 15,000 to 20,000 channels that is a lot of wasted time saving a compressed sequence that will never get used. 

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It would be a nice option to not save a compressed sequence with the sequence editor. During the coarse of a year I save sequences probably 1,000 times if not more. When you have 15,000 to 20,000 channels that is a lot of wasted time saving a compressed sequence that will never get used

That is what I was driving at Doug.   The show using compressed is the last thing after months of prep.   And the most annoying part of sequencing is the super long wait to save.   I have always guessed this wait is unneeded time to build the compressed sequence.   Watching the files and times, the last file saved is the .lcs so thats the last thing its doing while I wait wait wait on my i7.    If there is any way to avoid this wait I would love to skip the wait.   Can you tell I hate the wait?   Then after dozens of waits  I have to wait again on the show computer which is 3.10.14 and sequencing computer is beta 3.11.0    

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Pulled a snip from the log.    Took a full minute to create the .lcs in the same version while the show waits.    This is when I try to make a change to a seq while the show is  playing other songs.    Since both SE and SP create the compressed sequence,  there is a shared .dll which does this with a message.   Can we get a method to check for and create .lcs when needed?  Looking to do this while a show is running so I dont want to open SE. 

 

 

 

5:35:40 PM: Loading compressed sequence: C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms.lcs

5:35:40 PM: Cannot load compressed sequence file for C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms: Invalid version (2) in compressed sequence file C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms.lcs

5:35:40 PM: Loading sequence: C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms

5:36:33 PM: Exporting compressed sequence for C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms

5:36:47 PM: Starting Musical: C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms
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It would be a nice option to not save a compressed sequence with the sequence editor. During the coarse of a year I save sequences probably 1,000 times if not more. When you have 15,000 to 20,000 channels that is a lot of wasted time saving a compressed sequence that will never get used. 

It's a double-edged sword. Like Dougd, I have thousands of channels and have to save often. But by saving often you spend a lot of time waiting for the save. But if you don't save often it can lock up on you and you loose everything you have been working on.

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Pulled a snip from the log.    Took a full minute to create the .lcs in the same version while the show waits.    This is when I try to make a change to a seq while the show is  playing other songs.    Since both SE and SP create the compressed sequence,  there is a shared .dll which does this with a message.   Can we get a method to check for and create .lcs when needed?  Looking to do this while a show is running so I dont want to open SE. 
 
 
 
5:35:40 PM: Loading compressed sequence: C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms.lcs
5:35:40 PM: Cannot load compressed sequence file for C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms: Invalid version (2) in compressed sequence file C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms.lcs
5:35:40 PM: Loading sequence: C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms
5:36:33 PM: Exporting compressed sequence for C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms
5:36:47 PM: Starting Musical: C:\Program Files (x86)\Light-O-Rama\Sequences\13\DingDongFrog.lms

 

 

I hear what you're saying and I'll put manual compressed sequence creation into the list of things to do.  However, it's not correct that it took a full minute to create the lcs.  It took 14 seconds.  What took (almost) a full minute was loading the non-compressed sequence, which it had to do because the older version of software you're using on your show machine does not understand the compressed sequence that was created by the newer version of software you're using on your sequencing machine.

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On the control panel status display.

 

Which you can get to by either double clicking on the LOR Control Panel's icon (the LOR light bulb in your computer's system tray), or else right-clicking on it and selecting "Status" from the popup menu that will open.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thank you Bob for hearing and responding to this request.   The Save is much faster with verify turned off.     I didnt know it was reloading what was saved.

 

 

 

 

 

This snip is from the revised help file for beta version  3.11.1

 

Optional Speed Improvements for Saving in the Sequence Editor

 

When the Sequence Editor saves a sequence, it actually saves it to a temporary file first, and then attempts to reload that temporary file.  Only if the load is successful will it actually overwrite the existing "real" sequence file with the newly saved temporary one.  This is intended to minimize the potential for a save where something went wrong to cause the user to lose a good (earlier) save.  This behavior is now optional, via the Verify Load option in the Saving Preferences menu.  It is still recommended to have this behavior enabled, but if you work with very large sequences that take significant amounts of time to load and save, and are willing to take the risk of a corrupted save overwriting your previous good save file, you might want to turn it off in order to speed up saving.

 

The Sequence Editor also creates a compressed sequence whenever it saves a sequence, but you can now optionally disable this behavior via the Export Compressed option in the Saving Preferences menu.  Again, it is still recommended to have this behavior enabled, but if you work with very large sequences that take significant amounts of time to save, you might want to turn it off in order to speed up saving.  If you do choose to turn it off, it is highly recommended that you manually ensure that your sequences each have an up-to-date compressed sequence before starting your show.  You can do so via the Export as Compressed command from the File menu.

  Manual Creation of Compressed Sequences

 

By default, the Sequence Editor creates a compressed sequence whenever it saves a sequence, but this behavior can be disabled via the Export Compressed option in the Saving Preferences menu.  If you choose to disable that option, it is highly recommended that you manually ensure sure that your sequences each have up-to-date compressed sequences before starting your show.  You can now manually create a compressed sequence for a single sequence via the new Export as Compressed menu item on the File menu, or manually create compressed sequences for a show or for the entire schedule via the Sequence Compressor program.

Edited by ItsMeBobO
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3.11.2 Beta has the manual compression program and the feature to disable automatic compressed file creation.  Tested it and it worked just fine after one gotcha.  The file I happened to grab was an animation file and it had a loop - and files with loops can't be compressed (and I knew that previously).  Removed the loop and it worked exactly as expected.

 

Thanks LOR for the time saver!

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Can anyone tell us how often the corrupt sequence problem might rear it ugly head? I'm assuming this feature was added at some point because the problem was happening often enough, that it warranted the safeguard.

Bob - any feedback you can provide is appreciated.

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Some quick feedback...  3.11.2 does, in fact, perform saves MUCH faster with the "verify" and "compressed" options disabled than it does with them enabled.  For me, it was the difference between a 1:30 save time and a 0:15 save time for a 200MB file with about 12,500 channels.  This is good news as it makes the software MUCH more usable, although I'm still curious to know how likely the "corrupt save" problem is to occur, per above.

 

One thing that remains an issue, though, is the file load time.  This happens for any file with a large channel count.  It doesn't have to necessarily be a large file size.  For example, I have a sequence file that includes about 20,000 channels, but no actual sequence data.  Its file size is 4.7MB.  That file takes SE a little over 2 minutes to load on a pretty substantial computer (2nd gen i7 with 16GB of RAM).  Luckily, I do far more saving than I do loading, so this isn't quite as big a deal.

 

My next test will come in a few weeks, as I run a sequence "for real" on my hardware to see if the show player can handle the 20,000 channels without a lag.

 

A final observation and question:  The compressed file saved by 3.11.2 is larger than the compressed file saved by 3.9.0.  By a little over 10%.  The native .lms file is identical, but the .lcs file is larger, as I stated.  Why is that?  I definitely would prefer the compressed sequences be smaller in size, given they're used to run the show and want as little chance of lag or hangup there as possible.

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Can anyone tell us how often the corrupt sequence problem might rear it ugly head? I'm assuming this feature was added at some point because the problem was happening often enough, that it warranted the safeguard.

Bob - any feedback you can provide is appreciated.

 

I am not aware of it ever having happened.  I think it was just a precaution that we put in a long time ago.  I might be misremembering, of course.

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The compressed file saved by 3.11.2 is larger than the compressed file saved by 3.9.0.  By a little over 10%.  The native .lms file is identical, but the .lcs file is larger, as I stated.  Why is that?

 

Due to new hardware support (as of 3.11.0), there's a bit more extra information that has to be stored in there.

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Idea: From reading above it appears many of us have a sequencing computer and a show computer.    While it's great to sequence w/o compressed files, which 3.11.2 allows us to do.  It would be even cooler to have the control panel look for sequences that don't have compresses files and compress them, when the show player is set to use compressed sequences.  This would free the show player to only play compresses sequences.  By compressing to a temp file first then deleting an existing compresses version and renaming the temp file, we could avoid any significant delay in the show.

 

Confused? 

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Idea: From reading above it appears many of us have a sequencing computer and a show computer.    While it's great to sequence w/o compressed files, which 3.11.2 allows us to do.  It would be even cooler to have the control panel look for sequences that don't have compresses files and compress them, when the show player is set to use compressed sequences.  This would free the show player to only play compresses sequences.  By compressing to a temp file first then deleting an existing compresses version and renaming the temp file, we could avoid any significant delay in the show.

 

Confused? 

 

You can use the new Sequence Compressor tool to do this - once you're done sequencing everything, and set up your show, run the Sequence Compressor, point it at your show file (or your entire schedule), and it will make sure that everything in the show (or your entire schedule) is compressed.  When it later comes time for your show to actually start, the Show Player won't have to load any uncompressed sequences (except those that cannot be compressed - i.e. those with loops and those with tracks of different lengths).

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