SuperStar Effect converted itself to a Motion Effect?

[k6ccc]

This I'm sure is going to be a Matt question.

Had something odd happen.  Yesterday I was working on a song.  Anyone who has read this forum very long knows that I do essentially all of my sequencing in SuperStar  What I was doing, was converting a song that was last edited several years ago in S4 SuperStar into a series of S5 "Insert SuperStar Effects".  I do this by opening one copy of SuperStar with the original S4 SuperStar sequence, and then in S5 sequencer, I create a series of "Insert SuperStar Effects" and copy and paste the SuperStar commands from the standalone copy of SuperStar to the instance of SuperStar that opens when you execute the "Insert SuperStar Effect".  This sounds complex, but is really fairly easy (but tedious).

At the end of the evening, I was completed and file saved and backed up at the end of my work yesterday.  Today, I was working on the same song, doing the same conversion to a later portion of the song.  Played the song from start up to where I was working, and one 12 second segment had my pixel tree 100% solid white.  Not what I had sequenced!  When I double clicked on it, it brought up Motion Effects instead of SuperStar and was a single color of full white.  Started a little research, and the file references did not show the avi file that was that SuperStar segment.  The avi file was still in the directory and play correctly in Windows Media Player.  But for some reason, the S5 sequencer essentially lost the file reference, and it would appear that it substituted the Motion Effect in it's place.  Trying to figure out why...

As a work around, I can (and did as a test), change the Motion Effect to a Movie Effect and load the avi file that SuperStar created.  That does work, but of course I can no longer edit the SuperStar effect if I do it that way.  I discovered all this because I wanted to copy part of the song (chorus repeats) and then tweek it a little.

Also, as anyone who reads this forum know, I am exceedingly diligent about saving the sequence with a new filename often and backing up my data.  As a result, I was able to determine that the change occurred between my d and e revisions last night.  Between those two revisions, I did make a change to the affected 12 second segment, and there is an avi file that reflects the change.  There were also a couple other "Insert SuperStar Effects" done after that time.

Fortunately, I can go back to the d revision and re-create the SuperStar Effects by copying  (via the clipboard) to today's version.  That would only leave about two minutes of effort that I can easily redo (the part I edited of that 12 second segment between the d and e revisions).

[MattBrown]

Jim,

I can't say with any certainty what happened there. The simplest explanation would be that you accidently touched the "N" key, which would produce the effect you saw.

Do you have the "Show the first 4 letters of the effect" option enabled in preferences?

http://www1.lightorama.com/help/motion_effect_preferences.htm

When enabled, it helps identify that sort of problem.

Matt

[k6ccc]

1 hour ago, MattBrown said:

I can't say with any certainty what happened there. The simplest explanation would be that you accidently touched the "N" key, which would produce the effect you saw.

I can't say for certain either, but can't rule out the possibility that I had hit the "N" key.  I tested that and yes, that gives EXACTLY what I saw, so that's a good guess.  That's awfully easy to mess something up...

1 hour ago, MattBrown said:

Do you have the "Show the first 4 letters of the effect" option enabled in preferences?

I didn't, but do now.  That is hard to read...