Jump to content
Light-O-Rama Forums

Are AVI Files Needed?


Ron Boyd

Recommended Posts

Once our sequence is complete, after Migration, (if a migration is done), do we need to keep the AVI files or do we need to keep them until the sequence is tested in November?

 

lms,

lms.bak,

lms.lsv,

lms.pe.lid,

lpe 

lpe.bak

 

files are in the show folder.

 

Are these the only files I need for the show? If the AVI not needed after the sequence is complete, can we delete them or should we not?

 

The sequence plays in the visualizer just fine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The AVI files are not needed for show playback - as the data is incorporated into the intensity data files (lid extension). However, the AVI files are still needed if you ever want to do further editing of the sequence in the Pixel Editor. You can safely delete an AVI file once it is no longer referenced by a Movie effect in a sequence.

 

Matt

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 years later...
On ‎6‎/‎9‎/‎2015 at 12:53 PM, MattBrown said:

The AVI files are not needed for show playback - as the data is incorporated into the intensity data files (lid extension). However, the AVI files are still needed if you ever want to do further editing of the sequence in the Pixel Editor. You can safely delete an AVI file once it is no longer referenced by a Movie effect in a sequence.

Matt

Matt, that is good info to know.  Thanks.

This reminds me of a situation I had several months ago when I unexpectedly was running out of disk space on my show computer (an older computer with not a very large hard disk in my garage).  After snooping around I saw a LOT (300 or more) of these avi fles with an average size of about 20 MB.  What I did not realize at the time was whenever I edited a sequence and saved it out, the old avi files were never removed and just collected as junk.  I'm sure this is no news to you.  I figured out by looking in my sequence files that I really only needed the most recent 15 avi files for my 15 songs and was able to delete the rest.  Might be nice in the future if those old avi files could be removed by LOR automatically, but of course not a big deal for most people I guess.  Just unnecessary garbage building up.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

+1000

You're lucky that it's only 300 for 15 songs.  I will easily end up with that many for each song that are required and several times that many that are no longer needed.  I sequence essentially entirely in SuperStar.  Every time I "Insert SuperStar Effects" for a few seconds of a song, that creates a new .avi file.  Same few seconds for a different prop, there's another one.  Go back and edit one of those, there's another one.  And so on.  Yes, there is a command in S5 Sequencer to list what files are needed (Menu > Sequence > File Reference), but it is only for that one song.  There is a provision to copy all the referenced files, so in theory you could copy all the used files to some other directory, delete all the .avi files in the original folder and then copy the used ones back.  But alas, the Copy function does not actually appear to do anything.  Also, if you have multiple songs saved in the same folder (let's say everything for Christmas 2019 in one folder), you would have to do the Copy routine for each song one by one, pray you don't miss one, and then do the delete and restore procedure - except that the Copy function doesn't do anything.

This would be FAR easier if the software could do all that for you.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wow Jim, I guess I am lucky to have only a few hundred files.   I didn't realize it could get to be that many trash files.   I'll keep an eye on it in the future.  That VERIFY program is pretty nice and has helped me find issues in the past.   Seems like a nice place to have a trash collector :rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Being new to SuperStar,  the .avi files were a bit of a surprise, but the comment above really made sense.   That is, keep your sequences in their own folders (directory).   I was usng a single folder for everything and backing up year to year - but I see the challenge with this with linked files.   

1) they are hard to know what is used and what isn't (like the avi files), 
2) I had opened one up in a temp folder once and all of the related files were still there even though I saved it in a different folder. 
3) I also had image references which meant I deleted those, I might need them later
4) if I shared a sequence with someone, I might miss things they needed 

I have now moved them all into separate folders along with their artifacts.   This should be time well spent going forward.  

Also agree a better method to clean up would be useful.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...