Preview Tab... mind of its own

[csmith]

My head hurts.

Created a sequence from scratch using xLights/Nutcracker 3.3.3.  Started under the 'Nutcracker' tab.  Have three models.  Added effects to each model at the appropriate times.  When I play each model in the 'Nutcracker' tab everything looks great. Turn on my live pixels and tears come to my eyes it looks so amazing. I make sure to press the 'Save Sequence' icon regularly. 

While still under the 'Nutcracker' tab I can make a tweak to a model effect, save the sequence, close down xLights/Nutcracker, reboot the computer, start the xLights/Nutcracker program, open my sequence, goto the 'Nutcracker' tab and all effects (including the recently tweaked ones) are there and everything looks fine. 

Now the weirdness.

I press the 'Preview' tab.  Open my sequence (I only have one so it's pretty easy to locate), press the 'play' button and the sequence starts... but it appears to be an earlier version.  I pause the playback, press the 'Nutcracker' tab, highlight the model I know is different than what is shown in 'Preview", confirm the effects are what I think, save, go back into 'Preview', open the sequence and I'm still on an earlier version.

Tried opening/saving/closing in every order I could think of trying to figure out what's happening.  My head hurts.

Even tried playing the sequence in a playlist of just this one sequence under my 'Playlist' tab.  It plays the same as the "Preview' tab... meaning not the same one as saved under the 'Nutcracker' tab.

I'm stumped.  Any suggestions?

[sean]

i havent seen this, but let me explain the difference between the Nutcracker tab and the Preview tab

in the nutcracker tab, everything is real time. modify sliders, effects change. this means we generate the new frame in < 50ms. modify a model, you see changes right away.
you do not need to do a save to see any of these changes. If you highlight the first cell in the grid under a model and press the F4 play (not the F3 play), it will go down, cell by cell, animating the effects and displaying them on your model. This one column play is recreating effects on the fly.

Now press SAVE, 2 things happen. Example you have a file called wizards.
SAVE will create a wizards.xml. this very small (<60kb) file has every slider and text setting from your sequence. it has all the grid timing, it has all the effect blends. in other words the xml file is your complete sequence.

The second file it creates is the xlights xseq file. This file is large. 20-75mbytes. It knows nothing about models, effects .etc. It is one big huge buffer of bytes.

The PREVIEW tab only uses the xseq file. This was needed by Matt's design so he can read and output huge channel counts to the screen.

Here is normal flow:
1) develop sequence in Nutcracker tab, tweak models, effects, timing. press SAVE. Now two files are created (or updated), go to PREVIEW tab and run show. I always re-open the sequence in PREVIEW to make sure i am setting the model flag "Part of my Display" correctly.

If these dont match, it acts like the xseq file was not rewritten when you press save. If this is still happening maybe we can get on a teamviewer and go over it. I cant duplicate the problem.

thanks
sean

send an email to sean@meighan.net if you want to setup a time to chat

[Greg.Ca]

Sean,

I have had very similar things happen to me. The preview  'play' is not ALWAYS matching the nutcracker play. A have to agree with the author, I design in nutcracker tab, save (which takes a very long time) then switch to preview to view all three models and open the same file I just saved and my effects are not always the same when I view them in preview tab. Not sure what to think. As per your advise, I am saving twice but these saves can takes 5-7 minutes each.

My first model is a 46 strand X 150 pixel megatree.

My second model is a tree topper star consisting of 160 pixels with five rigid strips (each 32 pixels)

My third model is the same,  a 'parallel' tree topper star of five rigid strips of 32 pixels each totaling of 160 pixels.

On every song, after I make improvements or changes in nutcracker tab, then I save and I feel that this is taking VERY long. Is this normal? All three models are being saved each time I save. I don't remember having excessively long delays saving last year when I only had one model. In every 3-4 minute song, I usually change effects every 10-15 seconds.

I also notice that some lines just take a second or two to save and other lines take 10-15 seconds to save each line. It appears that during this wait time that the save process is 'stuck'? And then it continues on and goes on to the next line. It always finishes saving all lines in all three models. It just takes different times to save different lines?

it's disappointing when you look at your results in preview and they are different from your results in the nutcracker tab.

From now on, I will save twice and just go make a sandwich while the save is happening.

Anyone else experience a very long save time when saving multiple models?  --Greg--

[sean]

instead of saving twice, try reopening the file using the OPEN button in the PREVIEW tab.

the saves take a long time because that is when it is rendering the data. Loads are subsecond, saves are minutes. The more models you add the longer the save.

We are thinking of adding a bit per grid cell that indicates it has been modified. The idea is we would just re-render the parts that you have modified. this would reduce times greatly.

the only issue is it just don and myself as developers currently, we have lot son the plate.

sean

[Greg.Ca]

Understood, Just wanted to give you more information on a potential bug. Looking forward to 3.3.6. --Greg-- --