S4 won't let jump drive eject

[plasmadrive]

I was trying to transfer a sequence from my programming computer to my show computer and when I saved on to a jump drive and tried to "eject" it, I get a notice that it is in use.  The process of saving has long since been complete and there is nothing else running.  So I eject anyway and it corrupts the file on the jump drive.  I tried with 2 different drives, tried rebooting my computer and the only thing I found it that I have to shut S4 down first.  Then it lets me eject the drive normally and no files get corrupted.  I don't rememeber this being the case with S3.

 

Why does S4 hold onto the jump drive when it is done saving? 

 

 

[plasmadrive]

Bump..

[plasmadrive]

Bump again.. Com'mon LOR guys.. what's the deal?

[bob]

Hello,

 

If I'm reading this correctly, you posted midday, "bumped" towards the end of the business day, and then "bumped" again telling us to "com'mon" early in the AM before the start of the next business day.  I'm sorry, but I'm not constantly reading the forum.  Please have some degree of patience.  Thank you.

 

Now, could you please describe in more detail exactly what you're doing? From what you describe, I'm guessing that you are using the Sequence Editor, that you opened a file on your hard drive, made some changes, and did a "Save As" to a USB drive.  Is that correct? If not, please describe exactly what you're doing.  And whatever you're doing, is the issue repeatable? And what version of LOR are you using?

[plasmadrive]

Hello,

 

If I'm reading this correctly, you posted midday, "bumped" towards the end of the business day, and then "bumped" again telling us to "com'mon" early in the AM before the start of the next business day.  I'm sorry, but I'm not constantly reading the forum.  Please have some degree of patience.  Thank you.

 

Now, could you please describe in more detail exactly what you're doing? From what you describe, I'm guessing that you are using the Sequence Editor, that you opened a file on your hard drive, made some changes, and did a "Save As" to a USB drive.  Is that correct? If not, please describe exactly what you're doing.  And whatever you're doing, is the issue repeatable? And what version of LOR are you using?

Hi Bob,

 

Yes, I posted early morning West Coast time (forgot you have 3hrs diff),  I bumped it twice because it keeps disappearing off my list of new posts.. seems to work it's way down the list really fast.. I didn't want to lose it..  And I admit, when I am crunched for time patience is not my strong suite.  Sorry about that. 

 

I am using a USB drive (jump drive). 

I have 4.20 software on my program compture and 4.12 on my laptop (show) computer. 

You are correct.  What I am doing is doing a "save as" on to the USB drive.  When I try to eject the USB drive it says that a program is using it.  Only LOR is open and long after the program has completed the save.  If I go ahead and eject it anyway then when I try to open it on my laptop it says what is says (see attached). (can't attach the entire screen capture file.  It's too big)

Since yesterday I reformated the USB drive and than tried again.  Same issue.  I tried saving to the hard drive and then transfering to the USB drive... what would allow it to close and eject but the same fault continues.

I tried another drive and this time closed S4 and was able to transfer to my laptop and it worked. 

 

With trying all of what I did I have concluded:

• Either S4 is causing the problem  OR
• The jump drive has issues with the S4 program for some reason (works fine with other types of files). 

Other odd stuff:

• Besides the error message I get some other things on the screen. 
• In case it is too small, it says "An exception occurred! Type:UTFDataFormatException. Message:invalid byte 1() of a 1-byte sequence."   I am unable to tell you what character is in the () 

I have not tried the second drive without shutting down S4.  Haven't had time yet.  But if I shut S4 down, it works..

Edited September 29, 2015 by plasmadrive

[bob]

I'll try it out here and see if I can reproduce it. In the meantime, as a workaround, it seems like you could use Windows Explorer to copy the file, rather than using the Sequence Editor to do so.  Or, as you've discovered, you could exit the Sequence Editor before ejecting the drive.

[k6ccc]

That's actually pretty common.  Many applications that have a file open on a drive (external or otherwise) will consider the drive still in use until the application is no longer running with that file.  I'm with Bob, save the file locally and then use Windows Explorer to copy to the USB drive.

[k6ccc]

Oops.  Double post...

Edited September 29, 2015 by k6ccc

[plasmadrive]

Same happens when I save to Windows Explorer then copy that file to the jump drive... unless I close S4.. then all works fine.  I can get by for now.. it is just time consuming..

 

Thanks

[bob]

Wait, are you saying that if you:

 

(1) Use the Sequence Editor to open a file that is stored on your hard drive;

(2) Use the Sequence Editor to make some change to that sequence;

(3) Use the Sequence Editor to save (not "Save As") the sequence to the same filename on your hard drive;

(4) Use Windows Explorer to copy the file from your hard drive to a thumb drive;

 

... then Windows will not allow you to eject the thumb drive until you've shut down the Sequence Editor? Really? If this is genuinely what's happening, then I strongly believe it's because of an entirely different issue.  The Sequence Editor doesn't even know that you have used Windows Explorer to copy the file to the thumb drive.  What happens if you:

 

(1) Open the Sequence Editor;

(2) Try to eject the thumb drive;

 

... without doing anything else - not even opening the sequence, or trying to copy it anywhere? Perhaps it's something like the Sequence Editor opens a directory on your thumb drive for some reason; perhaps because you have that directory set up as your default LOR data directory, or something like that?

 

In any case, please send me (bob@lightorama.com) the output of LORDiagnostic.  Thanks.

[plasmadrive]

Bob,

 

I have only done the "save as".  I just tried what you suggested and the drive ejected fine.  Even with a sequence open..as long as I don't "save as"

 

I just tried the "Save As" to the USB drive again and it says that is is currently in use when I try to eject it. I closed SE and it allowed me to eject. 

 

I restarted SE and tried to use the file that I had just down loaded to the USB drive and it gave me the error.  Remember, I reformated this USB drive thinking old files might be the issue.  same errors. 

 

Oh yeah.. I can not find LORDiagnostic anywhere

Edited September 29, 2015 by plasmadrive

[k6ccc]

That's pretty normal Windows behaviour.  Once you save to the USB drive and still have the file open in a Windows application, the OS will consider the drive still in use.  You can use the Save As to save with a new filename on your hard drive (that's what I do every time), but then use Windows Explorer (or File Manager for you old timers that still call it that) to copy the file to the USB drive.

[plasmadrive]

Jim, that wasn't the case last year.. Never had that issue before.. don't have it with other programs that I know about. 

 

Also, when I shut down SE and ejected the drive ok, when I tried to use that file back in SE it errored.. That is not normal behavor me thinks.

 

Craig

[bob]

OK, we're not on the same page here (or at least we weren't on the same page and it's not clear to me that we now are on the same page), so I'll try to be more explicit.  When I suggested this as a workaround:

 

you could use Windows Explorer to copy the file, rather than using the Sequence Editor to do so

 

I meant don't use the Sequence Editor to "save as" to the thumb drive.  Just save the sequence on your hard drive.  Not "save as" to the thumb drive.  Keep the Sequence Editor away from the thumb drive, and it shouldn't cause the thumb drive to be locked. 

 

Then after you save to your hard drive, open up Windows Explorer and use that to copy the file to your thumb drive.  There seems to me to be no reason why you need to get the Sequence Editor involved with the thumb drive at all.

 

In response to this, you said:

 

Same happens when I save to Windows Explorer then copy that file to the jump drive... unless I close S4.. then all works fine.

 

This surprised me, because what I suggested was keeping the Sequence Editor out of the thumb drive equation entirely.  So I was surprised that the Sequence Editor apparently still had the thumb drive open.  Which led me to question:

 

Wait, are you saying that if you:

 

(1) Use the Sequence Editor to open a file that is stored on your hard drive;

(2) Use the Sequence Editor to make some change to that sequence;

(3) Use the Sequence Editor to save (not "Save As") the sequence to the same filename on your hard drive;

(4) Use Windows Explorer to copy the file from your hard drive to a thumb drive;

 

... then Windows will not allow you to eject the thumb drive until you've shut down the Sequence Editor? Really?

 

 

Those four steps there are exactly what I meant by my suggested workaround.  Then you replied:

 

I have only done the "save as".

 

Which means we were definitely not on the same page.  My suggestion is do not do a "save as".  Do a "save", to your hard drive, not to the thumb drive.  Then use Windows Explorer, not the Sequence Editor, to copy the file to the thumb drive.

[plasmadrive]

We are on the same page.. what I was telling you is that I had not tried what you suggested ("save") as of that time so basically I had no more info to add to the conversation that would be helpful.  I didn't want you to think I walked away and that it was not important to me.....

 

I will try what you suggested tomorrow and get back to you.  I actually have an out of town guest this evening so I wont' be able to do it until then.  Sorry.

 

In the mean time, closing SE seems to have been a good work around.. just slows me down a bit..

 

I do appreciate the help Bob..

[bob]

OK, I've now had some time to investigate this.

 

It looks like the standard Microsoft-built control we're using (to let you choose the name and location of the file to "save as") keeps the most recent directory open, even after you're done with it.  We're not explicitly asking it to keep it open, and I don't see a way for us to explicitly tell it to close it.  So I'm not sure that there's a quick, easy fix - it seems that a fix would involve us throwing away that Microsoft control and building our own replacement for it.

 

However, there's another workaround based on this discovery.  You may or may not find it more convenient than the "Don't 'save as', and use Windows Explorer" workaround that I mentioned earlier:

 

After doing your "save as" to the thumb drive, do another "save as" to some directory on your hard drive.  That will cause the Microsoft control to give up its lock on the thumb drive.

 

Note that you don't have to do this with the same sequence.  So if the sequence is huge and takes a long time to save, then you can just do something like:

 

(1) "Save as" your real sequence to the thumb drive.

 

(2) File / New Animation Sequence, accept all the default settings and click OK.

 

(3) "Save as" this new animation sequence to some temporary junk filename somewhere on your hard drive.  Doesn't need to be a new filename every time - you could just pick "blah.las" and save to that every time if you wanted.

 

Unfortunately it's not enough to simply browse to the hard drive and then hit "cancel" - you actually have to save the file.  I looked at exactly what the Microsoft control is doing, and browsing to a different directory will cause it to close the original directory and open the new directory, but hitting "cancel" will then make it close the new directory and reopen the original directory.  So you've got to not just browse to a new directory, but also save to that directory.

[plasmadrive]

OK.. Let me work on that..  BTW, now I can't even get it to let go after I close SE

 

In the mean time, one more piece of the puzzle... when I put the USB drive in it starts playing the music on that USB drive.  I have tried everything I can find about diablling the auto sync but it still does it.  I close Media play and it stops, but I wonder if media player is also holding on to it?    Grabbing at straws here.  

 

I will give your idea a try.. Never had this issue before.  FYI, I have tried two drives from two manufacturers just to make sure it wasn't the drives..

 

I will let you know how it comes out..