Delay between songs during show

[redsea300]

I built a show like normal. Went out and did a run thru. There is a 10-15 second delay between songs. I also noticed the light on my ccr controllers go from solid on to blinking back to solid between song. It is like it it loosing communication between songs.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advan

Don C.

[dgrant]

I can't imagine they are losing connectivity between shows but go look at the red lights on the CCR controller between shows and it'll tell you. 10-15 seconds delay sounds strange. In the show editor, you have the option of setting a delay between shows therefore did you specify a delay in there? I use a 5 second delay myself. There's also an option to turn off all lights at the end of each sequence. I do not use that option as my "Tune To" sign must remain on. Are yourt sequences large as in 30+ megabites? There's an option there to load before playing or load as needed. You might try changing that. This year, I had to change it myself as I saw weird things happening with my new pixel tree, till I changed that option to load before.

[redsea300]

My main display is smaller than last year by about 80 channells. I did ad4 CCR to my existing 12(now have 16) also added 6 lor floods( using a cmd24). Yes the lights on the CCR controllers go from solid to flashing back to solid.I checked Show editor, Delay set to Zero and I do have turn off light at end of song like always. I dont see the option to Load before playing or as needed. Some sequences are on 5 MB some are as high as 21 MB. depending if I am using CCR's. The delay happens between all songs.

 

Thanks again for the help.

[dgrant]

Go to the "Show Editor" then select the "Options" tab. You'll find the selection there. It sounds like your USB port is disconnecting or something that behaves like that. Try setting up on a different port(s). With that many CCR's now, you probably should have them on their own port therefore a new USB485 high speed interface for those. Keep all the rest of the controllers on their own port.

[dgrant]

Send a PM to "DON" as he's seen just about everything and encountered just about every possible problem. I'll guess that he's got an answer real fast.

[CLD Kevin]

I noticed a longer delay between songs if I didn't use that "load before" option. If you click on the "Status" you can see what the show is doing while it's running. If you chose the "load before" option all the sequences are loaded before the show starts. But if left uncheck, the seq loads right before each song. 21MB seem too small to cause any real delay. I have some 350mb seq and there is a short delay without using this option.

What type of adapter are you using. Having that many CCRs on one network with the older adapter would be too much. I personally would split that many into 2 separate networks using 500k adapter. If your using older adapters....then I would split up into 3 or 4 networks.

[George Simmons]

Also, make sure you've selected the option of using compressed sequences.

If it's a load time issue, it will totally go away the second time through the rotation when the show loops.

[redsea300]

I will check intof the stuff listed above and do a test run tonight. I am using 5 networks. $ networks for the 16 CCR and 1 network running the 14 lor 1602w..

 

Under options it was Sequence are  loaded when needed. Ichanged to load befor they are played.

 

I have not done the compressed sequence route, nor do I know how to. Wait i am assuming I just click on use compressed sequence in the Control panel menu.

 

I will post back later after i do another run thru tonight.

 

I really appreciate all  the help.

Don C.

Edited November 20, 2014 by redsea300

[redsea300]

Ok so i clicked on the Load before they are played. Turned on show and nothing. It just scrolled by each song and did nothing. I put back to Load when needed and it played the show. Aprox 5 sec between each song first go thru. Second go thru it played with no delay.

[Don]

Ok so i clicked on the Load before they are played. Turned on show and nothing. It just scrolled by each song and did nothing. I put back to Load when needed and it played the show. Aprox 5 sec between each song first go thru. Second go thru it played with no delay.

 

Any error messages in the status window when this happened? Seems odd that turning on the load option would cause that problem. I've used it for a few years now at various places without a problem.

[ShellNZ]

Has done the same thing to me, I was getting the error in Status window.  Is the commlistener.exe window closing then reopening? 

 

If I choose Load as they are needed it will go through the playlist, sometimes crashing with songs.  If I choose Load them all before option it crashes after loading them up.

 

I have installed the 4GB patch to LORMonitor.exe (which I recommend you do redsea if you havent already).   Today I have re-compressed the entire show again and I will run the patch again just before testing tonight.

 

Hopefully will get through the show without crashing.

[redsea300]

Any error messages in the status window when this happened? Seems odd that turning on the load option would cause that problem. I've used it for a few years now at various places without a problem.

 I did not see any error message. It would load a song not play it and load next song and so on.

 

 

I have installed the 4GB patch to LORMonitor.exe (which I recommend you do redsea if you havent already).   Today I have re-compressed the entire show again and I will run the patch again just before testing tonight.

 

 

 Were did you find the patch and how do I install it.

 

Thanks again for all the help. This forum is awesome.

[dgrant]

http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php

 

C:\Program Files(x86)\Light o Rama    or similar.

Locate the LORmonitor.exe and apply the patch to it. Probably a good idea to apply the patch to the sequence editor too. I'm not an expert on this patch but Don can advise better.

[Denny]

I had the same problems as far as preloading the sequences.  Contacted the help desk and this was Bob's response.

 

"OK, it looks to me like probably what is happening with the 10053 errors are that it's taking a while to load the sequences, and during that time the Comm Listener shuts down (it automatically shuts down when it hasn't received a message in a certain amount of time, and that may happen when a lot of other stuff is going on - e.g. loading a large sequence). 

But it's also designed so that the Control Panel will automatically restart it, if appropriate - so if you'll notice in the log, whenever you see a 10053 (likely meaning the Comm Listener has shut down), you'll soon thereafter see "Connected to DMX Listener" (the "DMX Listener" is just another name for the Comm Listener).  And then when everything is finally loaded, you'll notice one last "Connected to DMX Listener", with no more 10053 errors after that."

 

It takes my computer approximately 11 minutes to preload my show, so my solution was to start the show 11 minutes prior to the actual start time.  I don't leave my PC on when not running the show, so every time I restart the LOR control panel, the show would load again.  I imagine that if you leave the Control Panel open and don't turn off the PC, the show would stay loaded. 

 

If I run the show without preloading, the first time the show runs that night, it will pause between sequences, load the sequence and then play that sequence.  After the first show runs (and all the sequences have loaded), it will run without the pauses.  Since some of the delays between sequences were running a couple minutes, I found this unacceptable and just start the show 11 minutes early so everything is preloaded.  In my case, I think it is the large video files and the Nutcracker pixel trees causing the delays.

[bob]

I second George Simmons, regarding compressed sequences.  They are much, much more efficient than regular sequences.  Unless you have a specific reason to disable compressed sequences, you should have them on.

 

Please note that the first time the Show Player plays a show with compressed sequences, it may take a while to load anyway: If the compressed sequences don't actually exist, the Show Player will load the regular sequences (which takes much longer) and creates compressed sequences from them (so that it can use them in future runs of the show).  So, in addition to turning on "Use Compressed Sequences", I'd suggest that before your show is supposed to run, use the LOR Sequence Compressor program to create compressed sequences for everything in your schedule.  That way, when the show actually does run, the Show Player can just load the compressed sequences (which is much faster) rather than needing to load the normal sequences and create the compressed sequences from them.

[ShellNZ]

Success with last nights test.

 

I compressed the whole show (.lss) file then also shutdown LOR control panel, applied the 4GB patch to LORMonitor.exe again and then started up Ctrl Panel again.  Show ran through twice beautifully.  Hoping I dont have to do that every day lol.  Im thinking its because Im still editing a couple of sequences during the day is the reason for hiccups.

[bob]

When you edit a sequence, the Sequence Editor (by default) automatically creates a new compressed sequence when you save your changes.  So if you find that your Show Player is loading a regular sequence and then compressing it after you have edited that sequence, then I suspect that either:

 

(1) In the Sequence Editor, the option "Export Compressed" in "Edit / Preferences / Saving Preferences" is unchecked, or

 

(2) You've got two separate machines, one that you edit sequences on and the other that you play the show on, and the new version of the compressed sequence is not being copied over to the show machine when you copy the new version of the sequence over.

 

If (1), I'd suggest turning it on, unless your sequences are huge (it can take some time to create a compressed sequence, so sometimes people with huge sequences turn this behavior off so it doesn't happen every single time they save).

 

If (1) is not the issue (or if you want to keep that option disabled), I'd suggest running the LOR Sequence Compressor against your schedule sometime before your next show whenever you have made changes to a sequence.  It will only compress those sequences that it needs to, so if you've got ten sequences and their compressed sequences are all up to date, then you change one of the ten (and you don't have the Sequence Editor automatically update the associated compressed sequence), when you run the LOR Sequence Compressor against your schedule, it will only compress that one sequence - it doesn't waste time recompressing the other nine, which don't actually need to be recompressed.

 

As for the 4GB Patch, you won't have to do it every day, but do remember to do it again whenever you update to a new version of LOR.

[ShellNZ]

Wonderful thanks Bob.

 

It was due to having "Export Compressed" being unchecked.  Recall turning it off to save time in saving   Will turn it back on

[redsea300]

I will check the compressed sequence and try to figure how to apply the patch. I am going to do this on my show machine. I program on my main computer and have a second dedicated machine for the show.

[redsea300]

I could not find LORmonitor.exe in the lor file