Major bug - Preview stops working

[Jimbo]

Hi,

I have a major bug in x lights which is now causing me  nightmares.

I programmed a section, click save and then when I play it back, bits and pieces of it only display, despite all being in the sequencer still. For it to display properly I have to click on the effect in the sequencer to make it show properly again. I hit save and it does it again.

It know means it's virtually impossible to programme.

What is causing this? It makes no sense at all!

Now  doesn't matter what file I open it doesn't show the preview unless I re-click on it!

[Jimbo]

The issue seems to be around the rendering.

When it saves it is not rendering all channels properly.

SO for instance an effect in leaping rches over 8 channels, some have no colour in the sequencer and need to be clicked on again to work.

I have turned off rendering at save and this seems to have stopped it.

DO I need to render the effects to run through FPP?

[Gilrock]

It could be a lot of things.  Post a screenshot of your sequencer grid zoomed in a little so we can see the effect icons and/or post the sequence XML file.

[sean]

remember that there are two files.
1) wizards.xml. This is the gold. You never want to lose this. Every effect, all timing marks.  All your work is stored here. Press F10 to backup all your sequence xml files and your model xml files.

2) wizards.fseq. This is the fully rendered binary file created from the wizards.xml. You could delete this file as it is recreated when you press save. Note: depends on "Render on Save" checkbox

You editi in theSEQUENCER tab. Dan Kulp has created a very optimized engine to make rendering of effects fast. It is multi trheaded, has to determine which row to render .etc. your wizards.xml is processed in realtime and displayed in the Model or Whole House previews. This is why you can slide slider and check boxes and immediately see changes.
This is NOT what we would use to play your sequence. Think of it as the intermediate steps. Its advantage is its real time component. This is where people say things like "I add an effect, it doesnt show until i click on the effect". Clicking wakes up the render logic to go process that thread. Dan has worked and improved this engine over the last 6 months. There are probably still some issues. If we did not have this multithreaded engine, my current 5 second save would be taking 1-2 minutes on every save.

As long as "Render on Save" is checked when you press save we also create the wizards.fseq file. the fseq file is what the xlights scheduler or FPP needs to run your show. Neither will ever look at wizards.xml, they only want the binary file.

You want to see what your show will look like? Go to LAYOUT. On layout we just pump the data from wizards.fseq directly to the screen. In other words, LAYOUT is the preview for your show.

Here is the box that will make sure that the fseq gets created. Why turn it off? It saves time on pressing save. i just always create a fseq so my checkbox is always on.

[Gilrock]

I wanted a screenshot to make sure he's not another user that converted version 3 sequences in April and have the Off effect bug.

[deacon]

I'm having this same problem.  I started with a fresh version 4 install and created all new sequences.  It happens sometimes, then other times it doesn't.  Randomly will show only certain model previews until I click on the effect, so for some parts I have to click on every single effect for it to show up when I try to preview what I'm doing. 

Seems to happen a lot to color wash, the effect icon on the grid will be smooth, or only partially colored in.  Then it doesn't play back, but when I click on it, the effect icon will be 'blocks' of color fade through the timing mark, then it plays back.  This is one example of what happens. 

update:
Haha, so I'm toggling between windows typing this message and the preview that didn't work now works.  XL was minimized, then I brought the screen back up and it seemed to work ok.  Wierd.  Still love XL's and all the hard work you guys are putting into this, it's been a great tool for sequencing my lights.