No longer able to drop and drag seq files and play them on Showtime Director?

[tvweather62]

Hi there and Happy Thanksgiving!

  I'm running into a problem I've not seen in the past. I used to be able to just load a sequence by dropping and dragging onto an SD card and play it using Showtime Director. (In other words, just take a sequence that has already been transferred from a loredit file to an seq file through the HUB and written to a SD card and just write them onto a new card. 

  Now, that doesn't seem to work.  The only way I can get it to work is using the Hub....and creating a show that way. Anytime I try to drag an existing sequence from a card,

  which will NOT have a loredit suffix (it has a seq suffix( and load it into the Hub it won't show up as available files to use.

  Taking an old file from an SD card and simply using my computer to drop, drag, copy, move...etc...no longer is working. I DID have an old Showtime Director...now I'm using a G-3 MP3

player...which is still older, but not the latest version. Any suggestions? (No, I don't have the original loredit files on many of these as I got them from someone one)

[Orville]

I have always copied the Show SD card to a Hard Drive on my computer.  And I've never had an issue copying them or dragging them to an SD Card and have them work in my Director.  Been doing this since the original MP3 Director came out, now using an N4-G4 and this still works fine.  But I also copy the entire set, NOT just the SEQ file, but the .lcs and .lsv files, along with the MP3 file that goes with that sequence file.  If I just copy only the SEQ, and the .lcs, .lsv and MP3 files were updated and not copied, I did have issues with the Director NOT playing the sequence, or if it did, it was erratic.

And you may need to update the Firmware to the latest revision for your Director, sometimes a FW update fixes issues, sometimes it doesn't.  But most often, I've found updating the FW to work and be reliable.

[Don]

@tvweather62 - What I don't know is if there was a change in the config files from the older Director (without readouts) to the newer line. It *could* be that something there has changed in the .cfg file, which is causing the problem.

That said .. I'm assuming you are copying the .cfg file onto the SD card as well. Does the Director say "Init" when you drop the SD Card in, or something else (or nothing?)

What you describe does work. That's how I send "sd" cards to customers. Send them the files, and they do the rest.

[Orville]

Don is correct. I forgot about the .cfg files, yes, those definitely need to be copied as well.  And when I started using the new N4-G4, I did have to redo all my old shows, as the old .cfg files would not initiate the N4-G4 Director {at least that's what I think caused the sequences not to run}.  The N4-G4 Director wouldn't run a thing until I redid all my old shows from the original DC-MP3 Director, once that was done, everything worked fine.   So what Don said could very well be the problem.

[tvweather62]

Aren't the config files created automatically by the Hub when creating a show? Which leads to the problem, if I got a SD card already written for playback,  the Hub and sequence editor won't read them to create a new show. As far as I can tell, no loredit or lorprot, no show. Or maybe I'm missing a step. Either way, at least LOR remembers when you bought a sequence and will allow you to download it again. But when I tried to drop and drag old sequences to a new card, it wasn't working. It used to...but not for me this time using 5.6.8

[Jimehc]

The HUB writes the compressed Show files to the SD Card along with a Configuration File (Network Type, Speed and related Sequence location(s) & file count/Play order)

If you "Edit" the Show the configuration file points to the Original Sequence Location (and looks for changes in those Sequences) assuming that sequence location exists...

To "Create" a Show you need the Original Files created by the Showtime Software..

You can copy a backup of a prior Show Card to another Cards and it will play - assuming all the compressed files and Config are present.. (Don's method of Show Transfer)

The HUB reads the .Loredit and .Lorprev and MP3 files then compresses them into Show Files - those Show files can not be decompressed backwards to original state...

Edited November 25, 2022 by Jimehc