Can you loop a show?

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Caroline Lacroix

Hi, I am making an art exhibit, and will be syncing lights to an audio track and I would need this to play on a loop continuously. How would I go about? Is there a loop option for the show?
Massimo Callegari

Hi. I guess you can place the show into a chaser as a step
Caroline Lacroix

Thank you! I really love this program. Can't believe I wasted so much time before finding this!!
Caroline Lacroix

Hi… I've completed my show and I put it in a chaser with a loop but when I play the chaser the lights turn on and then nothing happens… Do you have any suggestions?
Caroline Lacroix

Here is the file with my show in the chaser but it doesn't work...
Attachments
LAMPS%20CARO.qxw
(3.93 KiB) Downloaded 445 times
Luis García-Tornel

Hi Caro:

I've checked your file and found 2 issues:

1. In the Virtual Console the button is not linked to the Chaser but to the Show.
2. Your chaser must have a hold time that equals the total time of your Show. In your case is approximately 4m03s.

In the attached file those issues are fixed. Hope it helps ;) You may need to tweak a little bit the chaser's hold time to make it loop exact.

Luis

EDIT: In fact the exact time in your show is 04:02.52 (not counting your audio)
Attachments
fix%20LAMPS%20CARO.qxw
(55.25 KiB) Downloaded 596 times
Luis García-Tornel

@ massimo and/or jano:

Checking this out I've noticed the yellow cursor stops at the end of the HOLD time of the last sequence, not at the end of the Fade Out time.

To loop a show seamlessly you need to add the total time of the show to the fade out time of the last sequence. It's not difficult, but if your not aware of that you may run into trouble.

Don't know if fixing that may break other things, but it would be nice to have an exact measurement of the show's length (including the fade out time).

Or better still... it would be awesome that if you put a show in a chaser, the hold time automatically changes to the actual time!.
Caroline Lacroix

THANK YOU SO MUCH LUIS!!!! This show is my final piece presented in order to obtain my bachelor of fine arts degree and I am presenting it today, so your prompt response is very much appreciated! I will post the final result once I document everything, to show what this program can do for visual artists as well! :D
Luis García-Tornel

You're welcome! Best of lucks with your presentation.

And yes, please, share your results.
Caroline Lacroix

It crashed every time the show reached the end. :\

(I still have a few days until I need this to work for 8hrs straight… I really hope I find a fix to this problem soon….)
Help!!
Luis García-Tornel

It worked for me... but I haven't the audio so this can an issue with that

We need some more info:

- Which OS are you using?
- Which version of QLC+?
- What format is your audio?
- What crash errors appear?
- Any other info you can provide
Luis García-Tornel

Ok, made some quick tests, and there is in fact some strange behavior in Windows. When the audio is ends later (or at the same time) than the last sequence there is a crash.

In my Ubuntu machine everything works fine even if the audio is longer.

As a walkaround for Windows:

-Create a new "dummy" sequence (with all channels at zero) that surpasses the audio.
-Make the chaser's hold time a little bit longer than your audio. In my machine and my test files I had to make it 0.30s longer than the audio to avoid crashes.

Check the test files that I'm attaching

or better still ... get linux! ;)
Attachments
test.qxw
(9.62 KiB) Downloaded 310 times
Caroline Lacroix

Thank you. I am using a Mac though… and it seems that I am not able to adjust the hold time for the chaser.. it just automatically is set to the end time of the show..I will try your dummy sequence fix and let you know how this goes. Thanks so much for helping me out! This is so very stressful!
Luis García-Tornel

So, you're on a Mac, then I must warn you, I think QLC+ is kind of buggy on MacOS. In the past Massimo had a hard time making it work on MacOS (and if I don't misremember whith audio).

Unfortunately, with a Mac I can't be of much help since I don't have one.

And with a project of such importance I would play safe and try to get a linux machine

EDIT: If you provide some specs of your machine (OS version, etc.) you may get better help
Massimo Callegari

There's a known nasty bug on OSX and audio end-of-stream.
https://github.com/mcallegari/qlcplus/issues/231

You have two options:
- go with another OS. I suggest Linux
- try to add a few seconds of silence to your audio track to pass the chaser total duration. See if it works
Caroline Lacroix

Thank you! I tried it on a Windows computer and the end of audio bug was still present, so I simply made the chaser loop before the end of the audio and it works fine now! Doing a 8hr test run tonight, then it's exhibition time! I'll post the video once I have one.

Thanks again for all the help!
Cheers!
thespfxman
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Oct 19, 2017 9:22 pm
Real Name:

This is probably long solved, but this thread helped. I too was crashing at the end each time, then I realized I set my audio track to loop instead of single shot, after switching back it worked great.

Thanks all.
andreadj1972
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Jul 01, 2021 8:22 am
Real Name: Andrea Croce

Sorry... I was wrong but I don't know how to delete it ...
Last edited by andreadj1972 on Thu Jul 01, 2021 7:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
HarryManback
Posts: 2
Joined: Sat Aug 06, 2022 4:48 pm
Real Name: Albert

I'm also trying to loop a show. However the tips given here do not seem to fix my issue.

The shows is to be used for the lighting of a float for our annual flowerparade. I've made some scenes and chasers (probably a little bit messy, but it works for me)

To loop the show I created a case that contains the show, timed it exactly how long the audio is and set it to loop. When I start the chase everythings goes as programmed. But then when it is supposed to go for the second time the audio keeps playing, but my show does nothing, lamps just stay as the were when the case ended. I tried adding a fade out to the last scene in the chase, like described here, hower that seems to do nithing in my case. What's also weird is that even when I stop my chase the audio keeps playing. Sometimes even after closing qlc.

I'm Running it on a laptop with windows 10 pro version 21H2

Is there someway you guys can help me.

Thanks in advance for any tips and tricks



UPDATE
Kept on struggling with this issue and it seems it has something to do with timing. I made sure the last sequence stopped 10 or 20 ms before the end of the show / audio. Sometimes the loop works for 2 or 3 times, then "it gets stuck". Found out that audio keeps playing until the audio files is completely played.

The timing issue could that be caused by my cheap ali express usb2dmx (uDMX)? When checking the in/ouput section in QLC it sometimes doesn't show op, unplugging and replugging fixes this. Sometimes i get that windows sound that a usb connection has been lost or made during work in QLC. I also have an error with my system clock precision. It tells me I have 512 channels, DMX frame frequency is 30 HZ, systemclock precision fault.

Image

I've been looking for other usb2dmx solutions, could enttec open DMX usb be a solution to this error.

Albert
Attachments
rider.qxw
(17.81 KiB) Downloaded 209 times
Last edited by HarryManback on Sun Aug 07, 2022 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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GGGss
Posts: 2664
Joined: Mon Sep 12, 2016 7:15 pm
Location: Belgium
Real Name: Fredje Gallon

Albert,

You have many questions inside 1 thread; please deduplicate for future use. (This thread started in 2014 ... can you reccon?)

In regards to your problem use master chaser with sub chasers.
Every song is a chaser on its own, use infinite time here
Your master chaser is bound to a VC control and is to contain all sub-chasers.
With this VC-widget you can set the next step (external or Loopback control)

I know - a workaround - chaser inside chaser is powerfull
All electric machines work on smoke... when the smoke escapes... they don't work anymore
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