Where did all my work go!!!!

[RobertB]

Been working a couple of days on a sequence with lyrics. I have been saving religiously. I had to reboot my computer because my browser had crapped out it's connection. Had xlights in the background and worked on it everyone so often while I was at work. After rebooting the computer and opening up xlights, now it seems that the lyrics breakdowns of the words and syllables are gone. PLEASE someone tell how to get back where I was. There is no way that save button doesn't work. Program seemed to have saved each time.

[ahb2ukeith]

I use F10 every 15 mins.

[gerry]

Open your sequencer xml and see if they are there. If they are there , then they can be recovered.

There was an issue about someone  using the wrong timing mark ie not the "lyrics" one and then the same thing happened when it was re-opened.

Edit: I think the previous issue was that when the timing was created , it was not blank e.g. it was 50ms. Whilst these enabled the voices to be built, the re-open checked that it was 50ms and did not bring in the voices.
 
I think Gil worked his magic on the file..
 

[RobertB]

So here is the skinny on my sequence;

I had completely finished the sequence. In working on it, I would click on the save every few minutes.  The program was open when I got home from work (was on my laptop). I always have two browsers open. (one for work, one for pleasure :-) Sometimes Firefox would slow down or just about stop working, so I just reboot which always fixes things. So many things open, I just reboot and let everything force close. Open the browers back up and any other programs... and it everything is fine.

The sequence should have come back up since it had been saved. Have I closed xlights and reopened that sequence since I had been working it? No.

The sequence is in the folder where I left it. Ironically the word breakdown and the syllable breakdown is the only thing missing. I can't double click on the Lyric timing marks to get it to open. It has laid down 50ms timing marks, which I did not put in. Think I may have had mine on 25ms...think. Started the sequence with that, but did not mark those and the breakdowns take those away anyway.

 Funny thing is that some effects I put into the tree is still there.  (which was ONLY two effects where words were missing) So the only thing missing is the breakdown.

Now... with this I have NO clue what I am doing. Not even sure if this tells you guys anything. I opened up Dreamweaver and copied this from the file;

 </EffectDB>
  <DataLayers>
    <DataLayer lor_params="6226032" channel_offset="0" num_channels="0" num_frames="0" data="&lt;rendered: erase-mode&gt;" source="&lt;auto-generated&gt;" name="Nutcracker"/>
  </DataLayers>
  <DisplayElements>
    <Element collapsed="0" type="timing" name="Lyrics" visible="1" active="1" views=""/>
    <Element collapsed="0" type="model" name="Mega Tree" visible="1" active="0"/>
  </DisplayElements>
  <ElementEffects>
    <Element type="timing" name="Lyrics" fixed="25">
      <EffectLayer/>
    </Element>

Not sure if that tells you something or not. 

So, I guess I will go work on hardware today instead of working on sequencing :-(  Ideas?

[jnealand]

When you say save, are you using file save or hitting the F10 key which creates backup files in your show directory?

[Santa]

If you scroll further down in your sequence XML file do you see an EffectLayer with your lyrics in it? Mine looks like:

Code: [Select]

      <EffectLayer>
        <Effect label="Twas" startTime="5175" endTime="5375"></Effect>
        <Effect label="a" startTime="5375" endTime="5575"></Effect>
        <Effect label="long" startTime="5575" endTime="6150"></Effect>
        <Effect label="time" startTime="6150" endTime="6650"></Effect>
        <Effect label="ago" startTime="6650" endTime="7400"></Effect>
        <Effect label="A" startTime="7400" endTime="7425"></Effect>
        <Effect label="Longer" startTime="7500" endTime="8025"></Effect>
        <Effect label="now" startTime="8025" endTime="8500"></Effect>
        <Effect label="than" startTime="8500" endTime="8625"></Effect>
        <Effect label="it" startTime="8625" endTime="8775"></Effect>
        <Effect label="seems" startTime="8775" endTime="9625"></Effect>
      </EffectLayer>
If so, I would duplicate your file and try deleting the fixed="25" part from the element type definition in the copy. I added that to a working sequence of mine and the lyrics disappeared, so perhaps the reverse will work for you.

[RobertB]

When you say save, are you using file save or hitting the F10 key which creates backup files in your show directory?

I was using save. Didn't want to backup the whole directory each time. Was I wrong for doing that?

[RobertB]

If you scroll further down in your sequence XML file do you see an EffectLayer with your lyrics in it? Mine looks like:

Code: [Select]

      <EffectLayer>
        <Effect label="Twas" startTime="5175" endTime="5375"></Effect>
        <Effect label="a" startTime="5375" endTime="5575"></Effect>
        <Effect label="long" startTime="5575" endTime="6150"></Effect>
        <Effect label="time" startTime="6150" endTime="6650"></Effect>
        <Effect label="ago" startTime="6650" endTime="7400"></Effect>
        <Effect label="A" startTime="7400" endTime="7425"></Effect>
        <Effect label="Longer" startTime="7500" endTime="8025"></Effect>
        <Effect label="now" startTime="8025" endTime="8500"></Effect>
        <Effect label="than" startTime="8500" endTime="8625"></Effect>
        <Effect label="it" startTime="8625" endTime="8775"></Effect>
        <Effect label="seems" startTime="8775" endTime="9625"></Effect>
      </EffectLayer>
If so, I would duplicate your file and try deleting the fixed="25" part from the element type definition in the copy. I added that to a working sequence of mine and the lyrics disappeared, so perhaps the reverse will work for you.

Ok. To understand you correctly, I would just delete;
 fixed ="25"
Leave in the > . Is that correct?

I am going to include the file that I was working on. I also found for some reason the fseq in a different directory. I had upgraded LOR to S4 and changed directories. My xlights was in LAST YEARS directory. I believe I tried to save THIS xlights file into a new directory. However the Shake It Off.xml was only in the old directory. 

Help!  I really don't have time to go back and redo this thing :-(  Back to soldering jumpers for my window frames :-)

[Santa]

 <Element type="timing" name="Lyrics" fixed="25">

becomes

 <Element type="timing" name="Lyrics">

No guarantees, but worth a shot. I'll look at your file, but I'm not XML wiz.

[RobertB]

Ok.
Got this;
XML parsing error: 'not well-formed (invalid token)' at line 39
That would be at THAT line.

[Santa]

Never mind, the lyrics are not in there. Sorry.

[RobertB]

Sooooooo
That means it's not recoverable? :-(

[Santa]

That's right, unless you have a backup copy somewhere. This XML has lost all phrase, word and phoneme info.

I know this doesn't help you but I wanted to confirm what seems to have happened, so I recreated these steps. I started with a sequence with a properly functioning singing face. I changed the xml so that the timing track had a "fixed" timing definition, opened the file in xLights and re-saved it. The phrase, word and phoneme labels were all lost upon re-saving with the "fixed" definition. I have no idea how that track might have been redefined, but perhaps this will give the programmers a leg-up in finding it.

Really sorry I couldn't have been more help in your case, though.

[Santa]

I guess you didn't have any F10 backups?

[RobertB]

Wow. Ok. Very sad 
For the programmers. I do remember restarting this file a bunch of times. I couldn't click in between marks and had used 100ms. Gill said he had only used or I should be using 25ms. I think I deleted the stuff in the sequence and went back to adding a timing mark in. Then went about the right steps to do the Lyrics. I think it took that time. But again had not closed the program. This time I am going to work a little, save the file, close the program or file, open it back up and go from there. Lost 2 days of programming. Limited time, so... still sad. Guess it will go faster since I know what I am doing now... kind of ;-)
Thanks for your help.

Nope. No F10 backups. Will be doing that though!