Issues on sequence start up

[MattJ]

Hi folks

I'm having a few challenges on sequence start up and I am wondering if anyone else is seeing the same thing.

I upgraded from S5 to S6 in between Halloween and Christmas and am putting the finishing touches to the Christmas show that I hope will go live on Saturday.

Here's the set up:

• Software Version: 6.1.4
• License level: Pro (Superstar 320_CCR)
• Hardware: Mostly Pixie 2s and Pixie 4s with a couple of Pixie 8s and one CTB16.
• Director: N2-G3MP3 

The issue I am having is that some (but not all) of the first effects in some (but not all) sequences do not load in the live display. This becomes particularly noticeable if the effect in question is of an extended duration or, worse, runs the whole sequence. Like a tree outline, or the "Tune To" sign that don't change for large portions of musical sequences.

It looks like I can engineer around this by (imperceptibly) dimming all effects about 1 second in but I don't want to do that. 

I know that I probably should not have done the S6 upgrade in between Halloween and new year... but.... I did. :)

Thanks in advance all! 

Cheers MattJ

[k6ccc]

Likely not a good idea to upgrade this close to show season.  Confirm that the problem is with channels that are active (steady state) at time 0:00.0?  This has been an issue at times for years.  My solution has always been a very slight level change once in a while.  For example, I have a security light where we park the cars that is generally 100% all the time in every sequence.  I have observed this problem on that light (some others too).  My work around is first timing cell is ramp from 100% to 99%, second timing cell ramp from 99% to 100%.  You will never see it, but it causes commands to be sent to the controller right away.  This is particularly true for shows where the lights are never turned off between sequences so without this, the controller is never sent any commands.

 

[MattJ]

Thanks Jim

 

Understood and agree on the upgrade timing, but at the end of the season I end up packing it all away and running straight into tax-prep season so I never upgrade at the best times. With my level of LOR planning it was always likely I would upgrade too close to some show season - such is life! :)

Yes - Confirmed that the problem is with channels that are active (steady state) at time 0:00.0. And the description of your security light is exactly what I am seeing. It may well have been a problem I've had for a while but seems to be more prolific this year (or with S6!)

I will implement the work around you suggested, and I expected would be the case, on the most heavily impacted sequences.  

Thanks again.

[k6ccc]

At least it's simple...

 

[bdwillie]

9 hours ago, k6ccc said:

Confirm that the problem is with channels that are active (steady state) at time 0:00.0?  This has been an issue at times for years.  My solution has always been a very slight level change once in a while.  

 

Jim, could this be the heart of the issue I was having with my animation sequences in another post?  Of the three animations, the two that gave me fits  were a steady on 100%, the animation that always worked correctly had lots of changes both color and intensity.

[Richard Hamilton]

Years ago, I used to have that same process of upgrading at the wrong time.   Finally, I put a reminder in my Outlook schedule to do all my upgrades in early October and then typically leave things alone once it is working solidly.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Richard Hamilton

[k6ccc]

4 minutes ago, bdwillie said:

Jim, could this be the heart of the issue I was having with my animation sequences in another post?  Of the three animations, the two that gave me fits  were a steady on 100%, the animation that always worked correctly had lots of changes both color and intensity.

Certainly possible.  In real simple terms, as I understood it, if a channel was in a steady state on (non zero) condition at time 0:00.0 the show player would not send the level command to start the sequence.  In my case using my security light again as the example, it is 100% on for the entire time of every sequence (both my holiday and year round landscaping shows), and all of my shows are set to NOT turn off lights at the end of each sequence, the result was that the Show Player was never sending a level command since the level never changed.  Since LOR controllers hold whatever state they are in forever until sent some other command, that was not a problem except at startup and if the controller forgot where it was for some reason.  As I said, my solution was to change most of the always on channels so that they change levels very slightly so there is a regular commands strings being sent to the controller.

 

[bdwillie]

Well I tried it, since the animations were only 2 minutes, I added a fade down to 99 then back up to 100 about every 15 seconds.  It did help but I still lost those channels twice.  They did however come back faster, but not in 15 seconds. 

[MattJ]

44 minutes ago, bdwillie said:

Well I tried it, since the animations were only 2 minutes, I added a fade down to 99 then back up to 100 about every 15 seconds.  It did help but I still lost those channels twice.  They did however come back faster, but not in 15 seconds. 

I have the same issue - it makes the fault less intermittent but has not cured it completely.

My most problematic sequence is a legacy S4 > S5 > S6 upgrade so I'm going to try to recreate it from scratch in S6 and see if it behaves better. 

Still troubleshooting. More later......

[Richard Hamilton]

12 minutes ago, MattJ said:

My most problematic sequence is a legacy S4 > S5 > S6 upgrade so I'm going to try to recreate it from scratch in S6 and see if it behaves better. 

I'm curious if the problematic sequence plays ok when you manually play it in the sequencer?   Does it only go nuts in the show?  Apologies if you said this somewhere and I missed seeing it.

[Richard Hamilton]

2 hours ago, bdwillie said:

Jim, could this be the heart of the issue I was having with my animation sequences in another post?  Of the three animations, the two that gave me fits  were a steady on 100%, the animation that always worked correctly had lots of changes both color and intensity.

This is interesting since I have a couple sequences that have steady on lights (of various intensities from 20% to 100%) for as much as a couple hours after my shows stop for the evening, yet I have not had this issue.  Maybe I am misunderstanding the problem.

[MattJ]

4 hours ago, Richard Hamilton said:

I'm curious if the problematic sequence plays ok when you manually play it in the sequencer?   Does it only go nuts in the show?  Apologies if you said this somewhere and I missed seeing it.

Well Richard this comment was key to me solving the issue. At least solving the issue, for me!

Here are the trouble shooting steps if followed and the eventual solution. Posting here in case it works for anyone else. 

My troublesome sequence, for the record, is a one minute animation sequence where most lights in the display are static for the entire sequence, except for scrolling text on a matrix display. It's intended to be looped, so it's loaded to the card with the "Turn used lights off at the end of each sequence" option unchecked. 

I loaded the sequence to 2 other cards. One to always run when powered and the other to run off a trigger. So now I have what I believe are 3 identical cards with the same sequence. One when powered, one when triggered and one when scheduled. 

I tried these cards one at a time and I ONLY had the issue with the scheduled sequence - both the when triggered and when powered did not have this issue. 

So then I do a double check... I take the SD card that worked when powered and load the sequence as a schedule..... BOOM - No issue. 

Taking a closer look at the SD cards: I have a mix of Class C4 and Class C10 SD cards in rotation. I can recreate this issue by loading this particular show to a Class 4 SD card. I do not have the issue when I load it on a Class C10 SD card. 

My limited understanding of SD cards is that a C4 card will transfer data at 4MB/s and a C10 SD card will transfer data at 10MB/s. I could have the numbers wrong but I still believe the basic premise is: C4 slower, C10 faster. 

I don't know what speed the bus runs at on the G3-MP3 but I'm guessing that, for some reason, the sequence I have created is a little heavy at the start and there is a data transfer speed difference between the classes of SD card that matters to the G3-MP3.

 

I don't know if this is going to work for everyone but it, for sure works for me. 

I have 4 x Class C4 SD cards in rotation and they are all retired effective immediately. Everything is going on a C10 card. 

 

Thanks to all for the help along the way. 

[bdwillie]

unfortunately, I run from a pc, but glad you got it fixed!

5 hours ago, MattJ said:

I have the same issue - it makes the fault less intermittent but has not cured it completely.

My most problematic sequence is a legacy S4 > S5 > S6 upgrade so I'm going to try to recreate it from scratch in S6 and see if it behaves better. 

Still troubleshooting. More later......

The problem for me is intermittent.  The three channels don't always drop out at the same time, or return at the same time or during the same sequences. 

I can say that after adding the ramp down ramp up, one of the problem channels did not drop out at all, but the other two continued to do so, but only twice during the 34 minute show.

 

[MattJ]

2 hours ago, bdwillie said:

unfortunately, I run from a pc, but glad you got it fixed!

Sorry :( Hope you get yours fixed too!

[dibblejr]

21 hours ago, k6ccc said:

Likely not a good idea to upgrade this close to show season.  Confirm that the problem is with channels that are active (steady state) at time 0:00.0?  This has been an issue at times for years.  My solution has always been a very slight level change once in a while.  For example, I have a security light where we park the cars that is generally 100% all the time in every sequence.  I have observed this problem on that light (some others too).  My work around is first timing cell is ramp from 100% to 99%, second timing cell ramp from 99% to 100%.  You will never see it, but it causes commands to be sent to the controller right away.  This is particularly true for shows where the lights are never turned off between sequences so without this, the controller is never sent any commands.

 

At one time I had this problem in S4, that is one reason that all of my sequences fade up from 0 at the beginning.

Brian helped me discover some how sequence started before the time scale, before the music and sometimes the same problem at the end.

It would crash SE.

JR

[MattJ]

I'm coming back to add one last note to this thread as I found one sequence that still had a problem and I found a fix so, again, posting here incase it helps others. 

For the one last sequence I had this problem on, the issue was NOT with the sequence that was failing to load completely at the start but the sequence before it in the show.

When I upgraded to S6 and reloaded my sequences in sequence editor I got the pop-up that says the sequence and the media file were not the same length and did I want Sequence editor to change the sequence length to match the audio. (For the record, I have no idea why the audio and sequence file lengths match in S5 but not in S6)

I selected "no" for each sequence, as the difference was fractions of a second and I didn't want sequence editor to make changes to my sequence. This is, as it turns out, the wrong answer! 😀

For one sequence the difference actually happened to be an MP3 file that was 2.5 seconds longer than the sequence it was loaded to, and that meant that the sequence following it in the show was not loading correctly at the start.

I do not know for sure, but it looks like the software behavior was something like the director being unable to start the next sequence in the show correctly because it was working out what to do with the last 2.5 seconds of MP3 file from the previous sequence. 

I went through and made sure the sequence length matched the MP3 file in S6 (by reselecting the media file from Sequence Menu > Media File and selecting the "yes adjust my sequence length" option) for all my sequences. 

This solved the last of these issues I had. Good luck all.