Sean Meighan

Software => Bugs in xLights/Nutcracker => Topic started by: oakridgelights on July 08, 2017, 08:23:31 AM

Title: Rendering won't stop
Post by: oakridgelights on July 08, 2017, 08:23:31 AM
I'm not sure if this is a bug or if I have some setting wrong, but pretty much every time I make a change to a sequence, the program starts rendering the effects and, basically, I have to wait until it finishes before I can move on.

I'm using xLights Beta 2017.18 64 bit.

Any suggestions?
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: keithsw1111 on July 09, 2017, 01:02:57 AM
We need a bit more info ... maybe send us your sequence or make a video showing what is happening.
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: Gilrock on July 09, 2017, 04:23:13 AM
Well it is true that we render the effects when you change them.  Its not normal to take very long to render unless you have some of the effects that take longer and have long durations like the entire song.
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: danj on July 11, 2017, 07:44:05 PM
Keith--this sounds similar to the question I posed on FB last week....  The particular sequence I was working on had a lot of effects applied to numerous models, and I think it started taking just long enough to re-render that I noticed it--which is when I asked on FB if normal/abnormal...   I finished that one and have since started tweaking on a much simpler sequence from last year and now that I am aware of the rendering, I see occurring on that one too but it is really really quick--wouldn't notice if I wasn't looking for it...
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: Gilrock on July 12, 2017, 07:40:40 AM
Well the rendering when you adjust an effect can also cause other models that are impacted to be rendered for that time slice.  Users complained that xLights didn't keep everything up to date so the result is sometimes you wait longer for those up to date results.
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: oakridgelights on July 14, 2017, 07:59:05 PM
I looked at a couple of my shorter sequences and noticed that when I made a change they were also rendering, but, as danj pointed out, it wasn't noticeable because it was quick since the sequence is simple and not effects heavy.  The sequence with the rendering issue IS effects heavy, which is why it's probably taking so long.

So is there a way (or could there be in the future) to set xlights to only render on save?
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: keithsw1111 on July 14, 2017, 11:35:19 PM
There are many many more downsides of not rendering until we save ... so no I dont think that will ever happen.
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: Gilrock on July 15, 2017, 11:06:51 PM
Sounds like you need a new PC if its really that bad.
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: Boof63 on August 01, 2017, 06:01:22 AM
Hi, am having similar problems, video, man yeffects (not yet finished song), render has been running for 75 minutes. Clicking on the render completion button(bottom of screen) brings up the order and progress of the elements, i seem to be stuck/slow on the P10 render 4x4 boards.
It was working fine until had a crash a week ago and had to kill xl4 to get out.
Has been slow on this sequence ever since, other sequences no problem, computer 12 months old so not its problem (I5 skylake, 3.5 mhz, 16 meg ram, 4 gig video card)
FSEQ file is 200 meg in size , mp4 is 78meg
Any ideas to speed up or let it run over night to finish and hopefully that will correct itself once its processed its way through the sequence
Cheers Boof63
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: keithsw1111 on August 01, 2017, 12:06:07 PM
Send it to us and we will take a look. There is no reason why it would take that long on the current release.
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: Boof63 on August 02, 2017, 03:02:22 AM
Hi All, here is link to the packaged sequence
Cheers and Thanks in Advance
Boof63.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3vr11ik0pcxe2ll/JB%20-chan%20Test%20faces.zip?dl=0
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: dkulp on August 02, 2017, 10:19:00 AM
You're specific issue is with the onehorsesleigh.gif file.  For some reason, there is no information about the 3 frames in there for how long each frame should be displayed.   It's returning "0" for each frame length which gives a total time of "0" milliseconds which (internally) is causing an endless loop.   I've gone ahead and added a guard for that to hopefully prevent this, but ideally you would get that image updated to have proper timing.
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: Boof63 on August 03, 2017, 03:31:50 AM
i will use another gif, thank you for the prompt answer.
You guys are really great and as a community we are all damn lucky to have you onboard.
So again thanks to all the team for your help and work
Cheers Boof63   ;D ;D ;D
PS is there an easy way for us plebs to look for these errors and save you folks some time?
PPS (I have no coding experience )
PPPS changed gif for different jpg and all good- thanks again :)
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: keithsw1111 on August 03, 2017, 05:39:24 AM
When it is a bug in the code there is not much you can do other than be very specific in how you describe the problem and share us the simplest example you have that shows the problem. When that happens ... bugs get fixed fast.
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: Boof63 on August 03, 2017, 05:50:22 AM
OK, thanks again
Cheers Boof63 :D
PS Happy to leave it to the pros!!
Title: Re: Rendering won't stop
Post by: dkulp on August 03, 2017, 07:34:09 AM
When it is a bug in the code there is not much you can do other than be very specific in how you describe the problem and share us the simplest example you have that shows the problem. When that happens ... bugs get fixed fast.

Yea.. what he said.   Basically, if we can reproduce the issue in the debugger, things are usually fixed pretty quick.   In this case, I just opened your sequence, hit render, saw it "hung", hit "pause" in the debugger and looked at where it was stuck.   From there is was fairly quick to figure out what is going on and fix it.

If we cannot reproduce the problem in the debugger, then things are WAY WAY harder and likely not to get fixed.