Channels in Tracks - Not Common?

[Duke]

I discovered today that channels copied to new tracks don't neccessarily mean that if you create events in one track that they will show the same in the others and I'm not sure how this happened but here goes..........

Example:

1. Create a new sequnce with 8 channels.
2. Copy channels 1 and 2 into a NEW TRACK.
3. In the NEW track, INSERT 2 new channels below the 2 copied in step 2.
4. Change their settings to match those of channels 3 and 4 in track 1.
5. Make a change to Channel 3 - Track 1 and see it change in your NEW track.
6. Do the same for channels 3 and 4 and note that it does NOT change in the new track even though you have changed their settings to be the same unit number and circuit number.

Is this a bug?

For the longest time I could not understand what was going on in a couple of my sequences.

I would see events in my MAIN track that did not show up in a secondary track for the same channel. Apparantly I did as I described above assuming that the software would know that the track info was the same by setting it that way manually but that is not the case.

Is this something that could be addressed in a future release?

[Don]

This is not a bug.

When you create a new channel, LOR will assign a new "Saved Index" for the channel.

This, for example, is what you see at the top of one of my sequences.

If I were to insert a new channel with the same information, you would see the following (again specific to my sequence file.)

This shows you what happens when you insert a channel. A new 'savedIndex' is created. This would lead to many problems, say, if I had the '200' channel off the entire time, and the '0' channel doing fades and chases. Since there are two channels assigned to Controller5/Channel 1, it would be confused.

If you want to use tracks, you must use the Copy/Move features of the sequence editor.

In case you, or anyone else was wondering "How then does LOR keep track of the same channel in different tracks?"

    ......

[-klb-]

Step 4 is exactly how you do not do it.. It creates something entirely different than copying them from where they already exist in an existing track.

When you copy from another track, you wind up with multiple presentations of the exact same channel.

When you add a new channel in a track, and set it to the same channel data as an existing channel in a different track, you have done basically the same thing as if you went to your first track, added channels at the bottom, and gave them the same channel configuration as channels above.

It would be kind of nice if when you assign identical channel config to two channels, it would at least warn you , and tell you how to do it instead. Giving you the option to update the track configuration correctly has this challenge that if both channels already have sequencing in them, how do you merge it?

[George Simmons]

[Duke]

Thanks for the explanations folks. Now I've got work to do going over my sequences. I think I'll start with my config file.

It would be awesome if the software would automatically assign the same "" value based on the the channels UNIT and CIRCUIT values and prevent duplicates. For example: UNIT 5, CIRCUIT 1 would get assigned the value of 005001. Then if you create a new channel in a new track and assign it the same controller, unit and circuit values, it would check to see if it has already been used and then show a message warning that might say........

"The channel already exists and it will be copied from the original instead"
"Are you sure you want to duplicate this channel?"

If you answer YES then it is copied.
If you answer NO then you are return to the properties screen to re-input the values.

It would make the software more robust in avoiding such errors.

In a nutshell, each channel should be forced to have a unique ID or VALUE to prevent the software from sending "confusing" data out to the controllers.
What good reason is there for it NOT to be this way?

I know this can be done. We have software at my fulltime job that performs this same check of ID's and does not allow duplicates. Prevention of duplicates is forced because of safety reasons which are more serious then a light show but nonetheless it is possible. Version 2.7.0????

[Don]

Duke wrote:

In a nutshell, each channel should be forced to have a unique ID or VALUE to prevent the software from sending "confusing" data out to the controllers.
What good reason is there for it NOT to be this way?

Just to play devils advocate ... when would you want this check to take place? What happens when you import another persons sequence, and you go to modify it for your display? You'd have to first clear all channels, then start to assign for yours. Otherwise, you're going to get flooded with error messages when your trying to re-assign channels.

(Same goes for your own sequences. If you move controllers around for some reason, you'd have to first set them to blank, then re-configure. Much easier to simply reconfigure on the fly.)

[bob]

I agree that it would be nice to have a way to prevent such problems. However, we do have a way to detect them, at least: This is one of the problems that the LOR Verifier will detect.

[Duke]

bob wrote:

I agree that it would be nice to have a way to prevent such problems. However, we do have a way to detect them, at least: This is one of the problems that the LOR Verifier will detect.

Ahhh, verifier will do for now. Didn't know it's function. Never used it since I've been too busy debugging and updating sequences for this year.

Thanks Bob!

Don....
How do you "import" someone elses sequence.
I'm only aware of opening someone elses or importing a config file.
Nothing of importing another sequence.

In any case I would start a new sequence with MY config file then open someone elses sequence from which I would copy and paste events from theirs into mine.
No channel configuration is carried over that way and no conflicts would occur.

Please explain moving controllers around?
Do you mean physically in the field or in your config?

[Feroz]

Hi

I am a newbie. Recently I received a sequence from a friend at the forum. When I try to open the sequence I get the following error:

"Error Loading Sequence: Expected Comment or Processing Instruction"

Can anyone help.

My wife is an expert XML programmer. Can anyone help with how a sequence can be converted to XML and back to LMS.

Thanks

[Dennis Cherry]

The LMS file is an XML formated file. just change the extension to LMS.