S4 Show Editor major problems

[dibblejr]

Last Christmas I purchased a brand new Alienware laptop. The best of everything was thrown in it. It played my Christmas show just fine at an average of 20 sequences per night. Virtually no lag. 5 pixie16's a pixie 8 and 20 AC controllers. Running 7 networks.

After New Years I shut the laptop down and never opened it until last week. (show computer only)

I now have 7 sequences and had problems with them running. Opened a Help Desk ticket and under advisement from them I turned windows updates on to allow it to update itself. That was Friday night. Woke up yesterday and allowed it to restart as asked by Windows 10. With 5 LOR Networks - 3 being 500K enhanced all of my networks have the HS adapters.

Built a new show and it had serious delay time between the 7 sequences but it played all 7 in order I selected. However on the second round it would only play one or two sequences and every now and then it would play a third. I had at one point 37 mins between sequences. Yes 37 minutes not seconds.

After asking my friends was able to get most of the lag time, I had forgotten about the options tab and selecting the "load all sequences first" (bottom selection). That resolved the lag time, or so I thought.

On every attempt I deleted ever old show file to ensure it was not confusing the system. Prior to bed time it played through two cycles perfectly and then stopped. After 30 mins of silence I shut the show down.

Woke up this morning and started the show. Once again played through two cycles perfectly, then I got about 15 mins of no music, then it played sequence #1 and 1/2 of sequence number 2 and nothing since.

I replied to my help desk ticket with the updates and errors I received yesterday "can not allocate memory" that's when I thought about the antivirus stuff. But all I am getting now is "initializing and recognized as show player" nothing else.

Figured Id ask the community while the LOR Help Desk team is in their deserved weekend break. 

 

FWIW- Let me add- all props do work when the show plays.

TIA

JR

 

Edited October 14, 2018 by dibblejr
Last sentence added

[Mr. P]

Have you tried creating a show with the Simple Show Builder? I only mention this because the SSB is pre-set it doesn't have all the options that Show Editor does so I am thinking if it runs correctly in SSB then there may be some settings in the Show Editor that may need to be changed.

[PhilMassey]

What does the status monitor log say while this is happening. Should give us a clue as to what is going on.

Try making 7 shows of one sequence each and play them on demand, one at a time.

 

[jfuller8400]

I would also check your overall system performance while you are trying to play a sequence:  Ctl-Alt-Del, Select Task Manager, and then click on the Performance tab.  You can then see your CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, and GPU utilizations.  If any of those are really high you can click on the Processes tab and sort the processes by the high utilization component.  This will at least tell you the offending process and you can continue troubleshooting from there.

[dibblejr]

16 minutes ago, Mr. P said:

Have you tried creating a show with the Simple Show Builder? I only mention this because the SSB is pre-set it doesn't have all the options that Show Editor does so I am thinking if it runs correctly in SSB then there may be some settings in the Show Editor that may need to be changed.

I never used SSB until yesterday. It took a min to figure it out but I tried and had the same issue(s)

Yes, I just went through and found (with help from friends) a couple boxes that are not checked. I don’t even know if they were checked last year and since I upgraded to 4.3.34 could have turned them off.

Use Compressed Files

Memory Restarts

 

Built another show in Editor so will see if that fixes it

Thank you Mr.P

JR

[dibblejr]

16 minutes ago, PhilMassey said:

What does the status monitor log say while this is happening. Should give us a clue as to what is going on.

Try making 7 shows of one sequence each and play them on demand, one at a time.

 

Done that the individual shows played fine.

Even the shows would play 1-2 times through and then start going astray. **** With this statement I mean the 7 sequences combined

My verifier has about 3000 red -error entries. So many I just made a 30 sec video in case I need to provide to LOR engineers

Thank you for your help, all and any thoughts are helpful and attempted 

JR

Edited October 14, 2018 by dibblejr

[PhilMassey]

Use Comp Sequences will normally GREATLY  speed up loading of large files.

However the first time and ONLY the first time, there will be a delay of possibly several minutes while the compressed file is created. Once it has been created loading should be almost immediate, unless the sequence is changed, in which case it will need to be compressed again on the first pass.

Show restarts, is just a reporting thing if the player runs out of memory.

I have seen "use pre loading " sequences cause problems and you might want to see what happens if you turn it off

[dibblejr]

5 minutes ago, PhilMassey said:

Use Comp Sequences will normally GREATLY  speed up loading of large files.

However the first time and ONLY the first time, there will be a delay of possibly several minutes while the compressed file is created. Once it has been created loading should be almost immediate, unless the sequence is changed, in which case it will need to be compressed again on the first pass.

Show restarts, is just a reporting thing if the player runs out of memory.

I have seen "use pre loading " sequences cause problems and you might want to see what happens if you turn it off

I never checked the "preload seq" until last night, so it appears I have never used that function. After selecting that and building the show it did remove the down time between the sequences. Imagine 5-37 mins of down time. Not good for public viewing and made me want to get a drink (drunk)

Its now on song 5 after re selecting those 2 items above. Hoping for three recycles before I get me hopes to high.

Went from no problems last Christmas to this.

Last Halloween I felt like an LOR troubleshooter, hence the new show laptop.

JR

Edited October 14, 2018 by dibblejr

[PhilMassey]

7 minutes ago, dibblejr said:

Done that the individual shows played fine.

Even the shows would play 1-2 times through and then start going astray. **** With this statement I mean the 7 sequences combined

My verifier has about 3000 red -error entries. So many I just made a 30 sec video in case I need to provide to LOR engineers

Thank you for your help, all and any thoughts are helpful and attempted 

JR

I don't mean the verifier.

Left click on the LOR control panel light bulb to open the Show Player status log.

The verifier might give some clues too.

You might want to post some caps

[dibblejr]

6 minutes ago, PhilMassey said:

I don't mean the verifier.

Left click on the LOR control panel light bulb to open the Show Player status log.

The verifier might give some clues too.

You might want to post some caps

Verrifier gave me the two clues above.

Heres a good question, where do I find the "show player status log" ? Or is it not available while playing shows? I ran down and looked but didn't see it.

I guess I need to start sequencing and playing shows on one computer. Its just not conducive to sequencing. Since I spend the majority of my days sequencing faces.

Made it throught he first cycle with zero lag between sequences. Just how it used to be.

JR

Edited October 14, 2018 by dibblejr

[dibblejr]

29 minutes ago, jfuller8400 said:

I would also check your overall system performance while you are trying to play a sequence:  Ctl-Alt-Del, Select Task Manager, and then click on the Performance tab.  You can then see your CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, and GPU utilizations.  If any of those are really high you can click on the Processes tab and sort the processes by the high utilization component.  This will at least tell you the offending process and you can continue troubleshooting from there.

Don't really know what I am looking at here since im not a computer guru but the highest percentage used that I see is 10%

Note there are only 2 outside apps/ software on the gaming laptop LOR and Audacity. The first time it ever seen the internet was to do the Help Desk recommended Windows update and the last time was to upgrade from 4.3.18 tp 4.3.34.

My profile will continue to show .18 because that's the version I use daily.

If there is anything specif on the usage let me know,

Thank you too

JR

[PhilMassey]

In the system tray, bottom right of the taskbar, should see the red LOR CP lightbulb, blue if show is enabled, orange if show on demand. Left click on it to open Show status..

If you can't see the bulb it may be hidden. Unhide it in taskbar settings.

[dibblejr]

6 minutes ago, PhilMassey said:

In the system tray, bottom right of the taskbar, should see the red LOR CP lightbulb, blue if show is enabled, orange if show on demand. Left click on it to open Show status..

If you can't see the bulb it may be hidden. Unhide it in taskbar settings.

When I right click on the blue bulb I get the same drop down list of things but I do not see "show status" anywhere.

It is now 1/2 way through 2nd cycle. Still no lag between sequences.

JR

[PhilMassey]

LEFT Click

[dibblejr]

PhilMassey  - disregaurd my last comment, I just always do that out of habit, never realized I was "left clicking" on it. LOL

It shows the next sequences to be played, no errors.

Yesterday and today I had red within that screen as well.

JR

[dibblejr]

2 minutes ago, PhilMassey said:

LEFT Click

Got it LOL

JR

[dibblejr]

3rd cycle of my show has started. That's more than I had all week. 

I believe with all the help I received from you guys and my other friends, it is showing me some light at the end of tunnel.

I will update this if it fails again but it has finally had no lag time since the initial loading of the show. Prob 2-3 seconds between sequences.

Thank you for all the help gents, much appreciated.

JR

[dibblejr]

Semi false hope- it played all day from the post 8 hours ago, no problems, no delay.

A few mins ago it shut down with a bunch of those "cannot allocate memory" errors.

Went down and closed the show and restarted.

If nothing else I am getting my exercise.

Does anyone use that memory extender program that was floating around a few years ago and if so will that possibly fix the error? Of course I will have to go look for it if its still a underground recommended solution.

There is absolutely nothing on this laptop.

I am glad I didn't close my HD ticket. Still some bug that needs to be worked out.

JR

[PhilMassey]

Make sure load before playing is NOT checked, in the show editor.

How big are these files?

[dibblejr]

51 minutes ago, PhilMassey said:

Make sure load before playing is NOT checked, in the show editor.

How big are these files?

The Greatest Show 1.3 million kb

All others are less than 1 million kb

The first time the "load before" was checked but it ran all day 8 hours without fail.

I deleted that show and made a new show remembering what you said above so I didn't check that.

After I posted the last thing I then used Simple Show Builder (would not work last night). It has been playing with SSB since, without fail. I do not like SSB but its all I have that works "right now". Who knows for how long.

My measly little 1.3 million kb sequence is far less than others as well as probably yours. LOL What do you guys that are 100% pixels do. I just hope to get this fixed before Christmas so I can run all of the props. Kind of sucks setting everything up to have software issues. I will need 11 networks based on the pixie16 max capacities.

I made videos and took pics now just have to figure out how and where to host them.

Thank you again for your help and any thought just let me know

JR