Show Cue System

11.5.0 on XP Pro (still!)

I have a show with a few adjacent manual audio cues of around 10 second length. I was playing them back as usual, for the first time, at today's rehearsal. One didn't play. I tapped the spacebar a few times. On checking the screen, I saw the cue was not loaded, and I was still pointing at it. I am used to 5 ahead being loaded so I have no idea what happened. Has anyone else reported a similar event?

I played the next cue OK by clicking a couple of cues higher then Down-arrow to the next cue in time to play it.

After the rehearsal, I tried the sequence again and all cues played successfully. Perhaps it was a one-off glitch.

Could you email me a diagnostic file? You can create this file by selecting 'Create Diagnostic File' from the drop-down menu displayed when you click the Help button in the main window. The file will be saved in a folder named "SCS Diagnostics" under "Documents" or "My Documents".

Criterion_Earlsdon wrote: Has anyone else reported a similar event?

I have encountered this a number of times over the years and we have never tied it down to a specific issue. Typically it might be a list of 30/40 cues, of 30/40 seconds length although sometimes extracted from longer tracks, played at irregular intervals. I used to find that SCS would load the first 15 or so, but not update the loading as the show progressed until I was caught out as you were. A quick flick with the up/down cursor buttons updates the loading. In the past it would then load the next 15 (or whatever was set in the preferences) and then go to sleep again. Random thoughts have included some part of the system hibernating, and Mike did some tweaking.

The problem seemed to have gone away, so that I forgot about it, but I was caught out a couple of months ago. Memo to self - keep an eye on the cue status!

Log file sent.
Best,
Dave

Note for other users reading this. Mike pointed out to me that the current default for preloading audio cues is 40 (I was still using 5, from some years ago, I think). For me, for most shows, this would mean all cues were 'Ready' before I even play cue 1. The 40 doesn't include SFRs, Level Changes etc, so this would cover most stage plays, I'm sure.

Indeed, but in the past having so many loaded could lead to memory issues. Now memory is so cheap, many of us have more memory than we really need, so it is not a problem.

However even having 40 loaded doesn't help if SCS randomly neglects to update the cue loading as the cues are played and you have 45 cues in the show.

Malcolm,

Is this a problem you can specifically reproduce, or is it somewhat random? If you can reproduce it then I can send you a tracing version of SCS which will help me identify the cause.

Mike,

It's random, I'm afraid. I see I last actually reported it in 2010, but it has happened from time to time since then. When I step through it doesn't happen. I shall, however, be running the same show next Friday, so we could try a trace, if it will help.

I am currently using 11.4.2.2 on the show machine.

I've just stumbled on a condition that can cause this and it's unrelated to the maximum number of audio files that may be preopened. The condition can occur if you set the loop start point in the editor, play the cue in the editor, then stop the cue. What happens then is that the audio file state is 'ready' and the sub-cue state is 'ready', but the cue state is 'not loaded'. If you then close the editor, the cue is shown as the 'next manual cue' but because the cue state is 'not loaded' it cannot be played. That's wrong. Under these conditions the cue state should also be 'ready'.

I'm obviously now looking to fix this, but thought I'd at least let you know of a condition that can cause the error.

Thanks Mike