Show Cue System

Hi,

I'm currently running 11.1.3 for our Christmas pantomime and am exeperiencing another little niggle that has never really been an issue before - on most of the cues, once they are complete, the 'Completed' graphic stays on screen for 3 to 4 seconds before disappearing. If I press the space bar to start another cue that happens shortly afterwards, it won't play until the 'Completed' has gone, meaning that there is a bit of delay. It's almost as if the graphics are slowing the program down.

I'm reluctant to upgrade to 11.1.4 while the show is running as I at least know its running ok under 11.1.3 (albeit with this issue) and should be fine for the remainder of the run.

Also, and I don't know if this is connected, ever since the upgrade to the latest version, if I change a pan, volume level etc then click on Save Settings, all the graphics seem to freeze - VU meters, progress clock, the lot. The audio still plays fine and the graphics spring back to life when the save is complete.

Has any of this happened to anyone else? Any solutions?

When the 'completed' graphic stays on screen, is this for a cue that has two or more sub-cues? Could you email me a diagnostic dump file? You can create this from a menu item under 'Help'. Let me know which cue(s) show 'completed' staying on screen.

TheSpyHusband wrote:Also, and I don't know if this is connected, ever since the upgrade to the latest version, if I change a pan, volume level etc then click on Save Settings, all the graphics seem to freeze - VU meters, progress clock, the lot. The audio still plays fine and the graphics spring back to life when the save is complete.

Has any of this happened to anyone else? Any solutions?

This is a known issue but I haven't spent much time looking for a solution. What happens is that if you click on any menu item then while the menu is displayed this seems to block the main thread of the program, and that is why all updating on the screen freezes. Auto-start cues etc will not freeze because they are controlled by a separate thread. When I get time I'll see how feasible it is to handle menus in another thread.

Hmm, all seems to be working again. At least it was last night.

I decided to untick Pre Load whole file, which I had done for every cue, to see if they solved my problem. I wondered if I was maybe using too much memory. After un-ticking it appeared to be working better until I started to get skipping/stuttering on a couple of my tracks. I didn't want to risk running the show like that so I put it back the way it was - every cue was set to pre-load. It then worked fine; no latency problems, no graphics sticking - including the aforementioned 'Completed' graphic.

Happy for it to be working again, if a little confused?!?! Have I ended up doing some sort of 'switch it off and on again' fix? Haha!

Hi TheSpyHusband

Just an idea because this was happening to me and I found that a full 'De Frag' to the computers HD sorted out all my similar issues and as an extra I have never had to ask SCS to fully load any cues and have never had any problems during playback.

HTH

PJ

Good idea, Peter. I'll give that a try.

Strangely, after posting that everything seemed to be working as before, it started playing up again.

I discovered something, though, that may or not be related... the affected cues seemed to be ones that didn't have a couple of seconds space at the end. In other words, if I were to rip a track from a commercially released CD then the track will probably have 2 - 3 seconds of space at the end. Some of my SCS audio cue files didn't have this space - literally the length of the cue was the length of the audio - so what was happening was it wouldn't let me fire the next cue as the previous one was still displaying 'Completed'. Once 'Completed' had gone after a few seconds, then it would let me fire the next one.

I'll certainly try the de-frag and I'll get 11.1.4 installed and tested before our February production.