Xlights locks after any change to models - temporarily

[ncosper]

I am wondering what xlights is doing whenever a model is modified. I recently add a custom model that consists of two virtual matrices combined so I could good resolution. There are a lot of channels and I knew it would slow xlights but its painful. I have a pretty fast Mac Pro, 12 core, 64 gb of ram and if I make any changes to any model I get the spinning wheel for at least 30 seconds. Same happens when I open the program. I realize this is likely due to my models but what is xlights doing? Anything I can do to improve it without cutting the number of channels in the custom model?

[keithsw1111]

Under the covers xlights is reloading the models ... a step i would love t stop it doing but something that is a lot of work to change and has never gotten to the top of the list. You must either have a large number of models or this custom model must be huge.

The only thing you may be able to do if you have lots of models is not use lots of model start channel chaining ... that is slow to calculate and can be avoided.

[ncosper]

Its a huge model. basically what I have going on is two matrices that are 320x200. They are combined and displayed using two projectors to cover my garage door. I tried using a group but the resolution is terrible to effects applied to the group. The only way I could get good resolution without cropping videos/pictures was to make a custom model. The custom model is 640x200. I know I could cut that in half or so to help this out but it looks so good when displaying videos/photos/certain effects. I wish there was a way to have a group that maintained the resolution of the matrices, but as I understand it they are designed to minimize the resolution for obvious reasons.

[dkulp]

If you create a group and set the Default Layout Mode to "Horizontal Stack", I believe it would accomplish what you want.   That would put the two models next to each other.

[ncosper]

Thanks Dan,
Horizontal Stack repeats the image for each of the matrices but Horizontal Stack Scaled worked great as long as the models are in the correct order. Thanks!

Hopefully this will help get my render times and times changing things back under control.