S6 Bugs

[NateB2]

Below is a list of S6 bugs I've encountered so far, arranged in order of priority.

1. Issues relating to the show player loading files once into memory and never checking them again: I really want to love the new show player but have encountered a couple of critical near-showstopping issues stemming from the new approach of apparently only reading files once from disk, loading them into memory, and never rechecking the file until the control panel is restarted.  While this is a valid approach for many scenarios (editing a document, sequence, etc.), IMHO it is a very, *very* sub-optimal approach for a live show player, as there are a couple critical reasons why the in-memory instance will become outdated and restarting the control panel is not a good option.  Reasons include: 1) Updating the show file externally while the show is running, either through the LOR control panel app or via manual editing (to add functionality that doesn't exist in the LOR show player, like MIIP), and 2) Fixing bugs in sequences/previews without needing to bring the whole show down. 1) could be at least partially mitigated by a REST API (similar to XSchedule), but in order to fulfill the scenarios needed by those of us using it, it would need to be thoughtfully designed.  My primary use case is that I want to be able to cue an arbitrary sequence file to run right after the current sequence finishes playing.
2. RGBW preview playback: I have roughly 2500 RGBW DMX lights (Twinkly) configured in my preview.  The initial configuration went fine - I imported an xmodel of each of the light strands and assigned each node a channel (the lights are actually WRGB, so I needed to do some Excel-fu and copy/paste to make sure the channels were assigned correctly).  The preview worked fine initially - I was able to preview sequences and it worked as expected.  Once I closed the S6 sequencer and reopened it, all the RGBW lights disappeared from the preview when playing sequences.  If I manually change the lights to "Dumb RGB", close the preview design dialog, have it recalculate the intensities, open the preview design dialog, change it back to RGBW and re-assign the channels, the lights appear in the preview when playing a sequence until S6 is closed.  Playing a show that contains RGBW lights using the new show player works as expected, and the preview of the prop when I assign a motion effect also works, it's just when I preview a sequence that it doesn't.
3. When previewing a motion effect for RGBW lights while outputting to lights, the white channel doesn't appear to be utilized or it's turned on alongside the RGB channels, one of the two.  Previewing a sequence works fine, as does playing from the show player.
4. Transferring S6 sequences to a different PC: I run the show from a different PC than the one I use for creating it.  When I copy sequences and try to use them in a show, they don't work properly if I've created/updated a preview associated with those sequences.  I've fixed it by manually copying over the LORPreviews.xml file, but this is not intuitive - at the very least, there should be a prompt or something that explains the issue and how to resolve it.  Ideally, it should grab the preview from the loredit file using the same approach the sequencer does when opening a sequence that contains a preview it doesn't have.

I'm more than happy to provide more detailed information as needed.

Overall, I appreciate the changes made in S6, especially initial RGBW support (I'd like to see this improved, though, with support for RGBW nodes and a choice to put the white channel at the top instead of at the end) and the new show player, but the various bugs I've encountered have been frustrating as I've had to work through one issue after another when trying to complete my show for this year.  It would have been nice if both the old and new show players were included in the first release of S6 so we could take advantage of the RGBW support and optionally hold off on the new show player until it's working reliably and contains all the features (or equivalent ones) as the old player.

Edited December 2, 2022 by NateB2

[randyf]

On 12/2/2022 at 12:49 PM, NateB2 said:

Transferring S6 sequences to a different PC: I run the show from a different PC than the one I use for creating it.  When I copy sequences and try to use them in a show, they don't work properly if I've created/updated a preview associated with those sequences.  I've fixed it by manually copying over the LORPreviews.xml file, but this is not intuitive - at the very least, there should be a prompt or something that explains the issue and how to resolve it.  Ideally, it should grab the preview from the loredit file using the same approach the sequencer does when opening a sequence that contains a preview it doesn't have.

This is probably less of a bug, and more short sighted view of what the player should be (seems to be designed such that the machine generating the sequences is expected to also be the player); but I do agree that there should be better support for a generic stand-alone player.  With the advent of cheap ARM machines, I would even like it if this capability were on other platforms, but isn't a hardship to keep in on a mini-pc.

[NateB2]

22 hours ago, randyf said:

This is probably less of a bug, and more short sighted view of what the player should be (seems to be designed such that the machine generating the sequences is expected to also be the player); but I do agree that there should be better support for a generic stand-alone player.  With the advent of cheap ARM machines, I would even like it if this capability were on other platforms, but isn't a hardship to keep in on a mini-pc.

Oh yes, definitely.  The S6 sequencer does allow you to export sequences as FSEQ v1, but I wasn't able to get that to work in XSchedule, even though I assigned the channels correctly.  I wish they had clearer instructions around that workflow, as I don't see the point of offering it if it doesn't appear to work as advertised.

IMHO, running the show should rarely (if ever) be done on the same PC as the one you're using to create the show - it should be run on a PC/server/device with a minimal amount of other software running to minimize any potential interruptions/issues.  It also allows you to modify/update sequences while the show is playing on another PC without worrying about crashes (S6 caused a hard reboot the other day) or risking other accidental interruptions.  Plus, unless you're saving them on a shared network drive somewhere, you'll have two separate copies of your sequences, so you don't have to worry about backups as much.

[yffej151963]

Can you tell me what problems you ran into using the fseq export?

I want to incorporate some xlights sequences into my show. I was hoping to play using xschedule. So far, no joy so i am using the lor player.

Everything works except ac lights. I suspect that lor is not including the data in exported sequence for some reason.  The ac lights seem to work fine via sequencing done in xlights. I set the ac controllers to dmx in the sequencer since lor mentions that as a requirement.

I am thinking I will try to parse the exported sequence myself to confirm my suspicion.

[NateB2]

For me, it played in xSchedule but nothing worked - RGB or AC. I'm using DMX universes exclusively (using PixieLink to connect to the LOR controllers) and closely followed their instructions.

[yffej151963]

Just a quick update.... 

I did finally get this working. The problems I had were with setting up xlights. 

I do have one wierd problem. I have a gilbert engineering grinch. I have been able to run it under both the lor and xlights players. It will not play in any sequence exported by lor. It never lights. The problem seems it has to be in the lor exported sequence.