File wont play -but indicates that it is.

Hi there,

I've got a strange one here, in a show I'm doing I have a cue which won't run a file on the Catalyst.

Basically I'm using 3 layers across 2 networked Catalysts in the Cue, with the 1st layer set as ID1 and the other two layers set to Sync to it. When I run the Cue, the 1st and the 3rd layers run just fine (the 3rd layer being on the 2nd Cat) but the second layer (on the same machine as the layer it's syncing to) remains static. Where it gets weird is that in the HUD, the timeline indicator (the wee yellow bar in the line at the bottom) for that layer seems to show that it is playing -but it isn't.

What is also odd is that, if I release my playlist and jump straight to the cue, it plays fine. (I'm using a Hog II on the latest version of software which I'm aware may have some 'issues')

Now, the fact that releasing the playlist cures the problem would suggest that it is a desk / playlist issue but the running timeline in the HUD looks like a Catalyst bug.

Anyone else come across anything like this ? or am I being dense !

Thanks for your help

Richard

PS. I'm also using Catalyst v 4.10 m119

I'll check to see if there's a timecode track attached to the movie in case that is the problem.

Cheers

Send a screen shot of both HUDs and a copy of your show file....

Check that you have not set the sync ID of layer 2, to the same as layer 1 on the HUD

If the content is identical on all 3 layers, then use 'uselayer' for layer 2 on the same server - not sync ID.

If you are using 3 different bits of content - check that they are all exactly the same length. (and stick with sync ID)

Are you using a 'once' playmode as opposed to a 'loop' - check your programming and make sure that it is not playing in the previous cue, before your cue goes live - use 'onceFW>0' mode instead.

Hope this helps

S

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jzbdski

Anyone else come across anything like this ? or am I being dense !

Thanks for your help

Richard

PS. I'm also using Catalyst v 4.10 m119

I'll check to see if there's a timecode track attached to the movie in case that is the problem.

Cheers

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seen this quite a lot recently . dont know what is causing it. only affects some files - not all- in any one batch.
its not you - im trying to figure out what is causing it- at the moment the common link is compressor rendered files - in particular compressor 3. seemed to only affect photojpeg to begin with.
Seemed to happen more in files created by compressor with a timecode track- though removing this only helped with some files.

Please try to find out how your files were created or post-processed.

not everyone has seen this yet - which seems to me its something that changed in an OS or quicktime update- but im not certain.

I can make this happen on a whole set of files here. it surprised me too.

thanks

i think there is a faulty compressor preset - or output preset in compressor- or bug ( or change in quicktime documentation ) which puts conflicting information into the movie file - about the frame rate of the file.

I examined some files which 'did not play'-

and in quicktime player the frame rate shows are 24.97fps!
This is clearly not right. These are 'PAL' files and the indicated frame rate should be 25FPS - so clearly apple hasnt figured this out either.

Also in my pdf information - the time scale of the movie is wrongly indicated -

seems like compressor has some kindof bug when it is asked to convert files from one frame rate to another.

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On one file i have which doesnt play - which i think was converted from ntsc to PAL using compressor -
For the very technical- the movie header information on one file says its time scale is 2500, its duration 11700. But the media handler says that the timescale is 2997 and the length 14040.
11700/2500 = 4.68, 14040/2997 is 4.684684 - the second ratio is not exact....

I think I ran into this on two shows. The files were photo-jpeg, encoded using compressor, and using presets I had made. The first show I ran into this, I wasnt able to figure out what was going on, the second show I was able to track it down to a specific file, and re-encoding it (oddly enough using the same preset) fixed it.
It doesnt seem to always happen, as I did batches of encoding where the files were all made using the sme program, with the same settings, etc, and it only happened on one file in the batch.

The probelm I would see, so that if anyone else runs into this they know, is that the file will freeze playback, but all other parameters are still controllable via DMX, i.e. color, intensity, position, etc. It really threw a wrench into my day when it happened, as I figured it was something else that had gone wrong with the server.

Jason

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jasonrudolph

I think I ran into this on two shows. The files were photo-jpeg, encoded using compressor, and using presets I had made. The first show I ran into this, I wasnt able to figure out what was going on, the second show I was able to track it down to a specific file, and re-encoding it (oddly enough using the same preset) fixed it.

Jason

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Which version of compressor?

compressor seems to be doing something wierd- and creating inconsistent information in the movie header - it threw me too.

I will see if i can find a workaround.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jasonrudolph

It doesnt seem to always happen, as I did batches of encoding where the files were all made using the sme program, with the same settings, etc, and it only happened on one file in the batch.
Jason

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that file probably had the math error between the movie information headers i indicated above.
they are doing a frame conversion with non-accurate math.

one of my users reported using several different output codecs and it not working with any.
so it could be this...

Hi there,

Thanks for all your input.
I'll grab some screen shots of the HUD this afternoon, Tried to delve into the file info in Quicktime but only got the very basic stuff, no mention of Compressor used, Timecode or anything -are these QT Pro features ?

It's quite possible the files have been buggered about in Post before making it my way, their Aspect ratios have been squashed such that I've a 12:3 image in a 4:3 format so they could have been subjected to almost anything.

Cheers

Richard

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jzbdski

Hi there,

Thanks for all your input.
I'll grab some screen shots of the HUD this afternoon, Tried to delve into the file info in Quicktime but only got the very basic stuff, no mention of Compressor used, Timecode or anything -are these QT Pro features ?

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Compressor is apple's pro compression software that is a part of Final Cut Studio. It allows you to save presets of settings to encode files as, and allows you to do batches of files at once, so you can leave 1 or 100 files encoding and it will run until it finishes them.

Aha !

I've grabbed a couple of screen shots of my HUD.

In the situations where the synced layer doesn't run, it shows that it is 1 frame behind the layer it is syncing to. (both movie files are 125 frames, 720x 576 nd were encoded using a Blackmagic DeckLink DV codec)

When it plays fine, it shows that it is on exactly the same frame.

I'll post the images once I can get them across to this windoze box.

Does this explain anything ?

Cheers

Richard

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jzbdski

Blackmagic DeckLink DV codec

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can you explain what you mean by this- and where you saw such a description - can you double check?

If you are using a decklink codec- it will be uncompressed- and you have a totally different problem.

Hi,

I got that information by using 'Get Info' box in finder.

I can only assume that the file has been captured using a Decklink card (from DigiBeta or similar) and encoded as DV.

The problem seems to be related to the layers not syncing properly. See attached screen grabs:


Confused...

Richard

which lighting desk are you using? ( i noticed some very strange things on chemical brothers last week - using a grand ma )

which computer model is this?

Which hard disc type are you using?

how many total layers are you trying to play at the same time?

Hi,

It's a new Dual 3 GHz Xenon Intel beast with 2GB RAM, we're running OSX 10.4.9, and I can't quite remember the Quicktime version (7.1.3 ?) but it's not the latest update.

I'm running it from a Hog II using the latest software version.

There are never more than 4 layers running at any one time and the load displayed for GFX card and Processor seem pretty low.

The Hard Drive is an internal SCSI -as specified (and put-together) by Projected Image Digital.

I'm going to have a closer look at my cues when I get a chance to see where this 1 frame lag is coming from as that seems to be related to the problem.

Cheers

Richard