Effects will not drop

[Charles Belcher]

I have been programming non stop for three days now.

I finished programming last night; rendered, saved, backed up and closed the sequence.  Then closed xLights and shut down the computer.
This morning, I opened the same sequence up and no effect will drop onto a model. 
I opened a new sequence and no effect will drop onto a model.
Closed everything, shut down computer, restarted computer and xLights--same thing
Closed everything again, shut down computer, restarted computer and it worked.
___________________

One hour into programming, and now no effects will drop onto any model.  Rendered, saved--still nothing.
CORRECTION:  The effects will drop, but they do not show up in either preview screen.

Anyone have a clue what is going on.  I really need to program.

Charles

[Gilrock]

First off stop shutting down the computer.  There is only one thing shutting down the computer can solve and that is killing off all your processes.  So if you open up task manager and don't see a process called "xlights.exe" then rebooting won't help a thing.  And if you do see a process but you believe the program was closed then just click on it and kill the process.  If that is occurring we would probably want to figure out why.

What do you see when you are dragging an effect over the grid in an area where you should be able to drop?
Do you have a timing track active or are you doing the 1 second drops?

[Charles Belcher]

Gil,

Correction:  The effects will drop, but they do not show up on either preview screen.  I have four timing tracks; vamp beat, vamp bar, 50ms and a manual one I tapped out.

I didn't look at the process.

Charles

[Gilrock]

Does everything work if you create a new sequence?  Is this one of those sequences you concatenated together?

[gerry]

Are you using one monitor or more than one ? Does it show if  you save and play via the layout screen ?

[Charles Belcher]

It even did it on a new sequence
The sequence I am working on is a single song sequence
Using two monitors-big one for the sequence, laptop screen for the previews, settings, etc
Never tried the layout screen

It has been working for over an hour now--When/if it does it again, I will investigate further.

Charles

[Gilrock]

You know it happens to me all the time where I drop an effect and I don't see anything but I'm always able to figure out why.  It's usually an effect settings problem.  The effect you drop takes on the settings from the last time you used it so that might not be something that looks right on the model you are dropping it on.  You should always inspect all the sliders and make sure everything is set in a way that will display something big and then tweak it back down to size.  Also if you drop on a model group the effect might fall in an area that is outside the models in the group depending on whether you use "Grid as per preview" or "minimal grid" for you model group setting.

[Charles Belcher]

You know it happens to me all the time where I drop an effect and I don't see anything but I'm always able to figure out why.  It's usually an effect settings problem.  The effect you drop takes on the settings from the last time you used it so that might not be something that looks right on the model you are dropping it on.  You should always inspect all the sliders and make sure everything is set in a way that will display something big and then tweak it back down to size.  Also if you drop on a model group the effect might fall in an area that is outside the models in the group depending on whether you use "Grid as per preview" or "minimal grid" for you model group setting.

Gil,

OK, that's all good advice and I have seen the settings of one effect still being in place when beginning work on the next effect.  With that said, I was working on the same mega tree, in the same sequence but under a different timing. (song changed beats)  and I even dropped a solid green color and it didn't show up either---so I can't explain it.  Can too many timings cause congestion?

Speaking of concatenation; is there a way to "select" an entire sequence and paste it into another sequence?
For simplicity sake:  I have a 2 minute sequence with 1 minute worth of timings and effects and I have a separate 1 minute sequence that I want to add to the end of the first sequence.  Is there a way to do this without going line by line?

Charles

[Woody929]

Sometimes if I'm not zoomed in far enough into the timing, I can't paste a copied effect into a time slot.  Never tried adding a model from scratch & had that happen though.

[Charles Belcher]

Sometimes if I'm not zoomed in far enough into the timing, I can't paste a copied effect into a time slot.  Never tried adding a model from scratch & had that happen though.

Yea, it wasn't that.  Working on a model, dropped an effect, went to the next timing cell and nada...

not doing it now--I am sure I got a phone call and hit a button or something--

[Gilrock]

If you zoom out and can select all the effects just copy them, close the sequence, open another sequence and paste them in.  If the effects all fit on the page vertically you can just unselect all timing tracks and drag select with the yellow dashed box.  If they don't fit vertically then you need to activate a timing track, select the top left cell for the first model, let go of the mouse buttons and scroll down and over, then hold shift and left click to select the bottom right corner of the last model.  With the shift select you should be able to select the whole sequence.  It might use a ton of memory but the copy will goto the clipboard.  You could close and reopen the program and that copied data will still be there ready to paste.

[Charles Belcher]

If you zoom out and can select all the effects just copy them, close the sequence, open another sequence and paste them in.  If the effects all fit on the page vertically you can just unselect all timing tracks and drag select with the yellow dashed box.  If they don't fit vertically then you need to activate a timing track, select the top left cell for the first model, let go of the mouse buttons and scroll down and over, then hold shift and left click to select the bottom right corner of the last model.  With the shift select you should be able to select the whole sequence.  It might use a ton of memory but the copy will goto the clipboard.  You could close and reopen the program and that copied data will still be there ready to paste.

OK, I will try that. It will probably be this weekend.  What about having two instances of xLights open, one on each monitor? 

Charles

[Gilrock]

If you open xLights twice that's fine as long as you don't touch the models or views or anything that goes into the xlights_rgbeffects.xml.  Judging by all your questions you should stick to the suggestions I gave.

[Charles Belcher]

If you open xLights twice that's fine as long as you don't touch the models or views or anything that goes into the xlights_rgbeffects.xml.  Judging by all your questions you should stick to the suggestions I gave.

Gil,

Yea, nothing but questions from me...Sorry, I had never even heard of xLights/Falcon/Pi/BBB/Octoscroller before the Christmas Expo in Fort Worth.  Hard to see out from under that rock. 

╲(｡◕‿◕｡)╱

[flyinverted]

If you inadvertently have more than one timing track selected on the sequencer tab, you will not be able to drop an effect.  In the subsequent opening and closing the application you most likely clicked on a timing track, did not even know it and that allowed the effect to be placed.