Show Cue System

Dell Inspiron, Windows 7, FocusriteSaffire Pro40 SCS 11.2.4
We have a very intermittently fault which we have seen during the last nine months (with different issue levels of SCS). A manual cue will fail to start playing, the cue panel says “playing” & turns “green” the meter display does not move & no audio is heard. Re starting SCS cures the problem & all cues run ok. It may be a week or more before the fault is seen again. It is not the same cue that fails to play. The fail is more likely to appear if SCS has been standing idle for more than 10 minutes. We are an amateur theatre group putting on seven shows per year, which means the sound equipment is not in constant use, we have put on shows where we have had no fails at all. (SCS & the show files are stored on the C drive) Any suggestion(s) as to what may be causing this intermittent fail will be most welcome.

Any Ideas?

John Hutchinson

I've not seen this from idle time. But it used to happen if we Hibernated XP instead of shutting it down. I'm guessing SCS uses an interrupt to keep real time and hibernating the OS makes the interrupt inaccessible for some reason. So the lack of a clock would stop audio samples being sent to the soundcard and time is stuck at zero. It sounds like you have the same problem but perhaps a different cause. We *never* hibernate XP now and the problem went away.
Dave Cornish

Are you using an external usb sound card as sometimes the usb power goes to sleep so you would need to change the settings to ensure it stays active

We have the same problem. Our machine is Windows XP. Our software version is SCS Professional.

On our XP computer we had no problem when we created the file. When we attempted to play it the next day, the audio cue showed that it was playing but there was no audio output (it was not advancing). The new file that we created today for another show worked fine but the stored show file from yesterday would not advance (play) in either the test programme or the playback window.

The file we created yesterday played fine today once we transferred it to our backup computer (a Windows 7 machine that also had SCS Professional loaded). We later discovered, that in order to solve the problem and play the file we created yesterday on our XP machine, we had to use the EXPORT function (export the cues and cue parameters to a new file).

Any idea why this is happening and what we can do to correct it?

GI Theatre wrote:The file we created yesterday played fine today once we transferred it to our backup computer (a Windows 7 machine that also had SCS Professional loaded). We later discovered, that in order to solve the problem and play the file we created yesterday on our XP machine, we had to use the EXPORT function (export the cues and cue parameters to a new file).

Do you still have a scenario where you can reproduce this problem? EG the cue file and audio files prior to the export? If you can reproduce this problem then I can send you details of a tracing version that should help me identify the cause.

Hello I don't know if you are still having this problem.
i have had this problem before on larger cue lists.

The Solution I found was to open scs and and the show file then open task manager and on the process tab then change the priority of SCS To High/Highest. Then close task manager once doing this I did not get the issue. downside is you have to do it evertime you open scs. Dont know if there is a software issue but this worked for me on many occasions and to other people that have spoken to me about this issue.

Hope this helps

We have had this problem over the past year, if not longer. It seems to affect some operators more than others. During a production there is no option but to restart. However, when it occurred recently while setting up I was able to try some ideas. It is possible to overcome by just reloading the file which is much quicker. Nothing else seems to work.

When it last occurred I had switched to another application and then after maybe ten minutes switched back to SCS. We do use a Firewire Audio Interface (Focusrite) and I have not changed the sleep settings for this although on this occasion it is unlikely that the system would have been sleeping. I have not tried increasing the priority. The system is a quad-core i5 with 6Gb RAM and runs very comfortably in all other respects.

I did take a screen dump and a Diagnostic File if it is of any help.

NeilGoldsworthy wrote:I did take a screen dump and a Diagnostic File if it is of any help.

Yes, Neil. Please email me these files.