Skip Sequence with Interactive Input in S6?

[aidancar]

Hello,

In my sequences, I have a long built in silence at the end of each song where my lights stay on. I then have an external audio system that plays a dynamic set of voicelines of different lengths. When the voicelines for the song are done, an advance signal is sent to my input pup that would work to stop the current musical sequence (during the long built in silence) and start the next sequence in the show seamlessly.

 

In S5 I was able to use the hardwired input in a magic toy that would play a very short (0.2s) musical sequence with silent audio. This would cause the main musical sequence to stop, the interactive sequence to quickly play, and the next musical sequence to start.

In S6, the interactive sequence plays but does not stop the main musical sequence. I did notice that it will cause the main sequences audio to cut out, but it continues to play the full sequence length. I know only animation sequences are intended for use in a magic toy but this is a different behavior than S5.

 

Is there any way possible to skip the current song using a signal from my input pup in S6? I like having the new skip button in the control panel, just would love to be able to link an input to it. A big portion on my show relies upon this.

 

I would appreciate any help anyone could offer.

Thanks!

[k6ccc]

As I understand it, the interactives should behave the same as the way they did in S5.  Can you paste an extract from the player log showing that it apparently is playing two musical sequences at the same time (which it should not be able to do).

BTW, I extensively use interactives in my year round landscape lighting show, but the interactives are all animation only using the Jukebox type of interactive group.  

Also confirm that you are on 6.1.0 and not one of the earlier beta versions.  There were some problems with interactives in a couple of the beta versions.

 

[aidancar]

Here is a copy of the logs, you can see the first main musical sequence "Christmas Eve" starts and before it ends, the trigger comes in starting the "Skip Test 2021" interactive musical sequence. The interactive sequence ends right away but the main musical sequence continues for another 21 seconds until the end of the sequence.

In S5 I would see the main musical sequence stop before the interactive would start.

I am running 6.1.0 Pro, actually just started exploring the new features yesterday and testing that everything works using last years show files.

 

Do you have any videos of your landscape lighting show? That sounds very interesting!

 

[Steven]

11 hours ago, aidancar said:

a magic toy that would play a very short (0.2s) musical sequence

Because a magic toy is not supposed to use musical sequences, it is expected that the behavior is unpredictable, and thus may change between versions. It appears that in S5, when a musical sequence is started while another is currently running, the one that was running immediately stops (fails). In S6, it seems this behavior has changed such that the new musical sequence simply takes over the audio. This behavior changed, because "You're not supposed to do that."

Instead of padding every sequence with silence at the end, I would suggest using a Cleanup Sequence. If the Cleanup Sequence is an animation, then it has a better chance of being able to be interrupted early. However, this doesn't solve your S6 problem.

The problem is that there is no documented way to have an input change the main part of the show. This should be a feature request. If there were a command-line program you could run to control the show, then you could run that Windows command from your magic toy sequence.

[k6ccc]

Since I don't use Magic Toy type interactive groups, I carefully read the docs.  What you have been doing is not supported.

And I have a different solution that Steven.  Is there a reason that you VoiceOvers can't simply be sequences and scheduled in the show?  In other words something like this list of sequences:

Musical sequence #1

Musical Sequence #2

VoiceOver sequence #1

Musical sequence #3

VoiceOver sequence #2

Etc...

 

 

[aidancar]

 

3 hours ago, Steven said:

The problem is that there is no documented way to have an input change the main part of the show. This should be a feature request. If there were a command-line program you could run to control the show, then you could run that Windows command from your magic toy sequence.

Yeah, I always was aware that this was not supposed to be done the manner I was doing it. Just had a good streak of luck through the last few updates I suppose. I would love to have inputs be able to control the main show in future

 updates. Seems like S6 gets closer than all other versions before in allowing this, just no way to link the inputs to the new skip button in the control panel.

If I had to, I suppose my animation sequence could run a script to move the cursor and click on the skip button. Just rather have a more reliable way than that.

 

2 hours ago, k6ccc said:

 Is there a reason that you VoiceOvers can't simply be sequences and scheduled in the show?

I used to run the show this way but now I have a way to sort of randomize the voice lines to change them up. I can also modify them with buttons on a phone app to change them for weather issues, heavy traffic, moving over for neighbors to get in, etc. Was just getting overwhelming making several versions of each sequence for each case.