POLL - S5 Sequencer - Creating playback files "on the fly" with Show on Demand

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As the originator of this poll, I am biased. I use a PC to control my shows. Ever since ver 5.3.0 when the ability for users to create thier shows with S5 Sequencer was removed from the Sequencer program this procedure is now a function of Show on Demand to create playback files "on the fly" it has been very frustrating to struggle to get a show to perform as expected. It is not easier for a PC user.

2 things that are disapointing to me.

1) Communications - LOR has been less than forthcoming about why this action was taken. Many have asked and questioned the reasoning for this and it has never been addressed by LOR. Please do not leave us in the dark, we have a lot of time and money invested in our shows and we deserve to be informed. This change happened back in July 2019 (IIRC), there has been plenty of time to address this, and yet nothing from LOR

2) Documentation - As far as I have been able to find, there is no clear concise set of instructions on what a pc user is required to do to get a show running with a seperate show pc. Users in the forums have figured some ways to make this happen, but only thru trial and error and a lot of time. As I understand it, users are to move every file that is referenced in File References within the sequence to the show pc. That is a handy piece of info to have. I only found out in a post, when I questioned where the "Create Playback Files" option within S5 went in 5.3.0.

Please do not misunderstand my position or post, I am not trying to trash LOR. I think they are a great company, I have dealt with them on purchases, questions, and warranty issues and all were dealt with very professionaly by LOR. I also think that Forums users are very well educated in LOR products and very helpful and eager in answering questions for other users, both new and veterans. Without these folks in the forums helping out, LOR would be swamped year round with questions.

There, I said my piece.

Alan...

 

Edited November 28, 2019 by default

[PhilMassey]

Well put. LOR  is a great outfit, but it seems to me they have rather bitten off more than they can chew.

What IS disappointing to me is the total silence on these issues, which have been going on for some time now.

Thanks Alan.

[PJD]

Can I be wishy-washy and pick a choice somewhere between 3 & 4?  So far (fingers crossed) I haven't had issues with S5 creating the play files on the fly.  However, I have been moving my entire sequence folder to my show computer and creating the show files there.  If I get to a point where I want to create the show files on my sequencing computer and then move them, I'm sure it will be more difficult than it is right now.  I do think it is very weird that LOR hasn't addressed this.  A simple post here in the forum about their logic and if they intend to bring back the option to create the play files manually or some other method to make it easier to move your final playing show between computers.  Having separate sequencing and show computers seems to be very common.  I know we do it because we don't want to do ANYTHING else on the computer that is playing the show while it is active and it would be a pain to have our main computer unavailable for normal use every night for a couple of months.

Note - moving my sequences to the show computer is easy because I took someone's advice here on the forum (sorry - I can't remember who to credit!) and I have a drive letter mapped to my LOR folder as the default location on every computer (3 - home, work, show) so all I need to do is copy the files around, the "location" for everything stays the same.

[Mr. P]

As a current S4 user who refuses to upgrade to S5 I can't vote in this poll. I just can't see any advantages to S5 other then everything is more compiled into one. From what I read and hear I have to agree with Phil so I think I may just wait until S6 comes out and see if they have worked all the kinks out.

I live by my motto, K.I.S.S., I don't stack channels and I don't power inject, I keep everything as simple as possible and to me S4 is simple.

Edited November 28, 2019 by Mr. P

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Very good point Mr. P. I forgot to add a question / answer for S4 users. Fixed.

Thanks,

Alan...

 

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24 minutes ago, PJD said:

Can I be wishy-washy and pick a choice somewhere between 3 & 4? 

Certainly, creating and answering a poll is never cut and dry. It's not always about the numbers, your post explained your position clearly.

Alan...

Edited November 28, 2019 by default

[ebrown1972]

There are other issues with S5 5.3.10 too. Such as, all of my subsequences that I have used for the last 4 years  do not play correctly in the latest version. When I run the verifier I get no warning or errors. When the sequence plays it acts as though the data is all over the place on the props that use the subsequences. If I delete the subsequence and add effects on those channels everything will play fine. I opened a help ticket and was told this issue would go to engineering but have not heard anything as of yet. 

Also I have a matrix that has 4 strings of 300 pixels each (1200 pixels total) with 5 folds in each string. If I purchase matrix lms sequences for the matrix everything will play from the sequencer fine but not in the show. When creating the play files I get over 6000 warnings. The warnings are related to how my physical matrix is made (4 strings of 300 pixels). LOR is setup to only use 170 pixels (1 universe) per port but I have a Falcon controller that can use a lot more than 1 universe per port so my guess is the verifier sees the carryover of channels and throws out all of the warnings which causes about a 10 minute delay between sequences. I opened a ticket on this issue too but have not heard anything. 

So there are some other issues that need addressed also. 

[TripleJ3EB]

Not sure I understand the particular frustration you describe here, but I have one...I use the standard show editor in 5.3.10, so when I add a new sequence, or make a change to an existing sequence, and the show starts, those new or changed sequences have to create their playback file on the fly, meanwhile the background animations stop in their tracks and the main display is dark until the playback file is created on the fly.  Whats even more frustrating, is my system resources are not even being fully utilized.  Max 25% CPU usage, max 50% memory usage while this happens.  Can take up to a minute to create a playback file sometimes, especially if I have something else running. 

Can we get an option to force playback file creation to the live show doesn't have to suffer blackouts on the fly?

[Dennis Laff]

I have  S5 on a second computer to get familiar with the program for the last year .   Have not switched. I'm  so comfortable  with S4 I really don't see a reason to switch to S5  maybe later ?

 

[PhilMassey]

The intent, is for the user to play a show on demand to create the playback files before show time. When I was testing this it took 2.5 hours to process my 52 sequences.

Unfortunately, even after this there are still delays between songs unless I go back to 5.2.4 and create the play files manually there.

[dibblejr]

As my friend  Mr. P above states, I use S4. I have added S5 as an experiment to a desktop but have no plans to venture in to the unknown. LOR staff are very friendly and professional whenever I have had to submit a HD ticket. I try to lesson some of their burden where and when I can. 

If its not broke don't fix it is one of my mottos I will stick to as well as Mr. P 's K.I.S.S. principle.

JR

[Lee Lunday]

I am suffering from the very slow playback file issue. I have a total of 11 sequences I use in 2 shows. I now have a playback folder with 99 files in it 13.2 gb of data.

Every time a new show starts it is building a new set of files. I don't get it.

 

Lee 

[dibblejr]

9 minutes ago, Lee Lunday said:

I am suffering from the very slow playback file issue. I have a total of 11 sequences I use in 2 shows. I now have a playback folder with 99 files in it 13.2 gb of data.

Every time a new show starts it is building a new set of files. I don't get it.

 

Lee 

~ Semper  Fi

Not sure how you ended up in this thread but maybe someone can move it or you could start a new thread in the proper section of the forum/

JR

[PCRail]

I voted to go back to user creating play files. It was like the final process of creating a video, when the software puts together all the clips and audio and makes that MP4 file. I got thru my show this year by using the same computer to sequence and for shows. At some point, sequences containing .avi files would not successfully be converted to play files. If I removed the .avi, and play files were successfully created. I went back from 5.3.12 to 5.3.10 since it was a logical troubleshooting step and all was OK with .avi files. I'm not sure about this solution and have been unwilling to spend time right now to reproduce. Maybe 5.3.12 solves this. The message shown in the log said something about an unrecognized file format, which I assume was the .avi file since the error went away when the .avi file was removed. By running a show on demand every day before a show (since I edit a lot), I got through the season with everything starting on time and running without delays. Understanding a bit about how this new feature works was helpful. Thanks forum folks.

Richard

[PhilMassey]

If you haven't, see this post. I don't know about AVI files, but the compression is much better.