"Left moving" text on my mini LED matrix displays have a long delay before showing the text?

Hi All,

I'm playing with some 8x32 (256 pixels) RGB 5050 SMD flexible matrix displays as seen all over ebay for around $25 each.

I currently have 4 of these displays linked to eachother, which just happens to be the full 1024 pixels and are wired to just 1 port on my controller.

I have a simple "Merry Christmas" message that is set to "Left" scrolling, so the text begins at the far RIGHT of the displays and scrolls towards the LEFT side.
However, i notice that the text doesn't appear immediately when i press the play button for this test sequence, it can be 2-3 seconds before the text begins to appear.
I *think* it is because the data is entering the matrix at the LEFT end of the display and needs to clock through 1024 null data packets before finally sending the first part of the text data.

If i change the direction option to "Right", then the text data appears immediately on the LEFT display and moves towards the RIGHT display when i begin the sequence, which seems to prove my data flow theory.

I'm guessing there's no hidden setting to pre-load a data buffer to make this display more immediately?

At the moment, i probably have to slide my text effect to a position on the timeline where the first part of the appearing text will coincide with any other props that i intend to start moving at the same time.

Is there a workaround for the delay? or are we stuck with this scenario?

Is your sequence that you are working with set to 25fps or 40fps? If it's 40 then the maximum number of pixels that can be sent in that time frame is about 750-800. What happens if you have 40fps and 1024 pixels I don't know but it could lead to some sort of dithering.
Is there definitely no leading spaces in your message?
I can't remember if there is any alignment options with the text settings but if it was right aligned and moving left then there would potentially be a large gap.

AAH said:

Is your sequence that you are working with set to 25fps or 40fps? If it's 40 then the maximum number of pixels that can be sent in that time frame is about 750-800. What happens if you have 40fps and 1024 pixels I don't know but it could lead to some sort of dithering.
Is there definitely no leading spaces in your message?
I can't remember if there is any alignment options with the text settings but if it was right aligned and moving left then there would potentially be a large gap.

Click to expand...

Thanks Alan,

It's just a 20FPS sequence and there's no spaces in front of the text, nor is there any alignment left/right positioning (i don't think it's even an option?) and the X/Y offsets are both "0".
I purposely created the test sequence as 20FPS because i knew i'd be maxing out the port with full 1024 pixels at 40FPS and there may be obvious problems as most of us know.

I've proven again tonight (just so i'm not losing my marbles), but when i set the text direction to "right" mode, then the text appears as soon as i click the play button, it's IMMEDIATE.
But when i set the direction to the "left" direction mode, then there's a 2-3 seconds delay until the very first text character decides to appear.

I still think my theory about the null buffers to load the text into the far end of the display is still valid, and maybe this is a bug that nobody's noticed in Xlights before, but i feel strongly that this probably isn't avoidable as it's the only way to send all the data to the far right end of the matrix display..

It's not a function of having to fill nulls as literally every movement involves filling every pixel quite likely from the left to the right.
Does the model preview show it moving left instantly?
Can you post a screenshot showing your text setup?
Can you confirm that your matrix is actually the size that you think it is? If you accidentally had the size double the width it really was there would be a big pause while the text was moving through the non existent section of matrix.

AAH said:

It's not a function of having to fill nulls as literally every movement involves filling every pixel quite likely from the left to the right.
Does the model preview show it moving left instantly?
Can you post a screenshot showing your text setup?
Can you confirm that your matrix is actually the size that you think it is? If you accidentally had the size double the width it really was there would be a big pause while the text was moving through the non existent section of matrix.

Click to expand...

Hi Alan,

No the preview also takes 3 seconds before the "M" of "Merry" appears in the preview window.
The matrix is 4 lots of 8x32 (256 pixels) for a total of 1024 pixels.

If i remove some displays and re-assign the pixel dimensions in the layout editor, then obviously the delay is shorter, but the right-most data still appears about 1 second after pressing the run button and if i change it to "right" direction, then it's instant as per my messages above.

If it's not some data buffer setting (if there is one?) then i still understand that 256 nulls are being clocked through the entire matrix so the the 257th pixel will appear on the right at the next clock cycle.

Sorry, i don't have a screen shot, i'm not near the Xmas PC at the moment.

Oh, i also don't have the countdown option enabled either ;-)

with thanks.