Video Pauses in LOR1 Software

[Guest guest]

I wonder why when I play a animation the screen pauses then a few seconds latter it catches up. I moved to a "Better" computer. Pentium D 3.2 with a GeForce 7900GT video card. The old computer was a AMD 3400 64 with a GeForce 6800GT. It never did it. My lap top has a ATI 128 Meg card and it does it too.

Any ideas?

TIA, Ken

[Guest guest]

I don't know if this would be the same problem but I had a Dell laptop that I used some different software on and it was kind of jerky compared to my desktop and it was a faster laptop than my desktop computer.

I found out that there was a setting that made the battery last longer but the computer did not perform as well. As soon as I turned off the "Battery Saver" feature it ran great.

On another laptop I had it did the same thing but it would detect if you had it plugged into the wall and would automatically set it to run the CPU at full power while it was plugged in.

Don't know if this might be the problem but might be worth it to look into.

[Guest guest]

You can try changing the Hardware Acceleration setting all the way opposite of what you have it set at now. You can find that in Window Control Panel | Display | Settings | Advanced | Troubleshoot on XP.

[Guest guest]

Also, on the play button (in the sequence editor), uncheck all the features. This will free up the processing for the animation part.

I just bought a new laptop and when purchasing it, I looked for a higher processor.

Gateway Platinum

· AMD Turion® 64 Mobile Technology ML-37¹
• Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005²
• 15.4" widescreen Ultrabright™ WXGA TFT
• 1024MB DDR memory
• 100GB HDD³
• DVD ±RW multiformat double layer drive

A higher processor makes all the diff. in the world.

Just my experience,

Tom

[Guest guest]

Thanks for all the ideas...... But none seem to have worked. I really don't think its a CPU load problem. It looks more like a video problem. I can live with it because when I sequence, I only use visible screen method. It doesn't bother the running of shows. Maybe I'll get lucky and the new puter will like LOR 2 better!

Ken:D

[Guest guest]

Ken, I didn't see what OS you're running on the newer computer. Is it XP, Me, 98, or what? Also, what brand/model is it?

Tom

[Guest guest]

I'm using XP Pro as I found out that LOR1 wont run on Vista. The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 9300 Pent M 1.7 (1 gig of ram) ATI X300 128 meg video card. The desk top is a half of a Dell E510 Pent D 3.2 (2 gig of ram) Nvidia 7900GT 256 meg video card. My old Frankenstein was a AMD 64 3500+ (5136 gig of ram) Nvidia 6800 GT 256 meg video card. I must say...... Frank had no problems at all with LOR1.

Ken;)

[Guest guest]

I have a similar problem. When running the sequence editor the lights will sometimes pause. MY son seems to think that its the speed of RAM (or lack of) and too much virtual memory usage which can slow it down. Also If your computer is multi-tasking it might run slower. The two computers in our home won't run the lights properly. We are thinking about getting a laptop with all the bells and whistles but after reading this thread I'm getting a little discouraged. Its a little disheartening to dig deep into the bank account to purchase three 16 channel controllers and software to find that they may not even work right.

[Guest guest]

It's important to note that the sequence editor is *not* what drives the lights come 'showtime.'

When running a show the lights are controlled by the core LOR software stuff (like the show and schedule editor.)

I ran my 80 channels last year on an old Pentium 2, with 128 (or 256MB) of memory. Ran it on Windows 2000. Took ages to load (okay, about 3 minutes) the OS, but the lights ran without a hitch. Of course, I *never* tried to sequence on that machine.

The point? Don't worry. You shouldn't need a super computer to run the lights. The sequence editor uses a lot of memory, but it doesn't run the shows.

[Guest guest]

True......... I can say this. I set up my bell racks. I made 2 racks of 8 colored bells. I ran all my sequences in the back yard with the laptop. Ran great....... Not a bug. I had Christmas in July for sure. My back yard suddenly filled up with people watching. I felt like I was running a fireworks show. I will say....... What I saw on the computer compared to the real lights, Was no comparison. Real lights were much better. I just use the sequencer to play whats on the visible screen as I go. Thats fine by me as I seen it work for real with no problems.

You don't need a super computer to run shows.

Ken:waycool:

[Guest guest]

Don't know what my problem is then. Connected to my 16 channel board are simply 16 c7 lights. One light per channel. (for test purposes of coarse). During the song sometimes a light or lights wont flash. My 18 yr old son understands this kind of stuff pretty good and he has been the one to get this thing going. But he has convinced himself that his and my computers are just too slow, jammed up with programs and junk, not enough RAM and too small hard drive.

Our computers are Dell Pentium 3 with windows 98 and Dell Pentium 4 with windows XP.

[Guest guest]

There have been major improvements made in the Sequence Editor's video display code. Both the grid and the animation window have been improved so that they use a little as 1/10 the resources as 1.5.0....

With that said, the show player has always been very efficient. The delays a few people see when they use the Sequence Editor do not cause a problem with the final show.

[Guest guest]

Ken, perhaps a quick checkup of your computer may help. Do the following, and check to see if the problem still exists after each step.

1. Is your antivirus updated to the latest definitions? If not, update it and run a full scan.
2. Go to http://www.windowsupdate.com and make sure you have all updates, including Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) since you're running XP.
3. Go to http://www.microsoft.com/spyware and get Windows Defender (antispyware), then run a full scan of your computer.
4. Before going any further, disconnect your computer from the internet and close/exit all programs running in the tray area at the bottom-right of your screen.

...Still no effect?

5. Go to http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_91.31.html and get the latest Nvidia driver to update your existing video driver.

Okay, steps 1 and 2 are really important for all Windows users. Step 3 only works with XP or newer. If you don't have XP, visit http://www.safer-networking.org/ and get a copy of Spybot Search & Destroy. It's a very effective spyware finder/killer, thought it takes a while to scan all files on older (slower) computers.

Step 4 should likely solve the problem if none of the previous steps work. At least it will narrow the cause down to other software.

Step 5 often works if nothing else does. Not always, but very often.

This isn't an all-inclusive list of possible solutions. It could turn out to be something as simple as a bad keyboard (long story).

Tom

[Guest guest]

Dan,

What is the latest version of Showtime? The version that shipped with my unit a month ago is 1.5.0.

Thanks,

Walt

[Guest guest]

wbaker4 wrote:

Dan,

What is the latest version of Showtime? The version that shipped with my unit a month ago is 1.5.0.

Thanks,

Walt

I'm not Dan, but ... that's still the most recent version. We are all awaiting 2.0 with baited breath.

[Guest guest]

I'm clean! I did shut some stuff off in the sequencer that helped a lot. Like, Run the lights, Blink the channels.

So I can wait for LOR2. Hurry-Hurry-Hurry! LOL

Thanks for all the great help from everyone. What a great place we have here!

Ken:happytree:

[Guest guest]

wbaker4 wrote:

Dan,

What is the latest version of Showtime? The version that shipped with my unit a month ago is 1.5.0.

Thanks,

Walt

1.5.0 is the latest version

[Guest guest]

I noticed occasionally my playback would pause too. I pulled up the task list to see what programs were running at the same time and noticed that EXPLORER.EXE was getting at least 60 percent of the CPU when LOR Software Paused.

I also ran into a situation after completing a music sequence, LOR Software would hang at the end of the song and become unresponsive . I played the same MP3 file with other music playing programs and it played fine and ended correctly.

I then went to the LOR software and trimmed 1 second off the end of the song - that fixed the problem .

Anyone else have similar experiences?

[Guest guest]

wbaker4 wrote:

I also ran into a situation after completing a music sequence, LOR Software would hang at the end of the song and become unresponsive . I played the same MP3 file with other music playing programs and it played fine and ended correctly.

I then went to the LOR software and trimmed 1 second off the end of the song - that fixed the problem .

Anyone else have similar experiences?

Yes. This is a known issue. Dan has said it should be fixed in the new release. (No, we don't have a date for that.)

[Guest guest]

I also had the same issue when running my sequences with the light board simulator and I just lived with it, then a couple weeks ago (can't find the post) someone explained why we should be using .wav files VS. mpg files (Dan has mentioned this before), so after reripping all my songs to wav files it has not froze since, I believe it has do to do with the the wav just streaming the audio and the mp3 having to be decompressed and the computer resources required to do it.

Bill