preview playing with artificats?

[JasonPortwood]

Is it normal for the house preview to play with artifacts?

Like for example I have a group of 8 arches that I play a single strand effect (single color white 8 segments per arch- 70 lights) going from left to right (or bounce left to right) with 3d fade on or off and with number of chases set to 1, chase size 12 and cycles 0.6.  When I play that I get artifacts, extra channels firing off, behind the arch currently playing.  Usually the second arch is about halfway done and the last channel of the first arch lights up.  The from there it can do the same on the arches and fires a channel on the same segment (usually #3) when the arch part lit is at the end of the arch.

I checked for overlap and double checked the channel start and finish for each arch. The model group is arch 1 through 8 in order.

I have an i5 processor 3.2 Ghz with 16Gb memory. Windows 10 64-bit.  2x Radeon HD 6800 in crossfire mode.  Using xlights 2016.10.  I haven't updated to the latest but I've seen this since I started using xlights this year.

It happens in both the house preview, and size I make it, and the model preview - which I have left in xlights and is fairly small on my screen.

Thanks for any advice on fixing this.  I haven't noticed this in the videos I've watched so I'm thinking I have something set wrong.  I haven't disabled crossfire yet and will try that tonight.

Thank you,

Jason

[JonB256]

One way to eliminate artifacts introduced from previous edits is to erase the FSEQ file while that sequence is not open, then reopen and save it. Xlights will create a new file. If those artifacts are still present, they aren't actually artifacts.

[Gilrock]

There used to be reasons to delete the FSEQ file in the past but as far as I know we've fixed them all.  If deleting the FSEQ file fixes the artifacts then that means you changed the default render mode under Settings from Erase mode to Canvas mode.  If its on Erase mode all the data is erased before each render.

[JasonPortwood]

I figured it out.  Thanks for pointing out the FSEQ file.  I deleted and it recreated with the same problem.

Then I looked at the file size and it was 239MB.  I deleted a bunch of unneeded E1.31 universes and chopped the file size down to 77MB and it started to behave.  I'd have to guess it's my hard drive speed (disk I/O)...  I'll straighten out my universes - I was just following the instruction videos and made way more than enough.  I could always move it over to my SSD if I need to.

Thank you,

Jason