Ideal sequence length

spaulgal

spaulgal

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Oct 14, 2022
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We are sequencing an hour long overhead music loop in xlights. It has a moderate amount of effects and is 40fps. approx 20K pixels. 4 boards and about 10 remotes. Using Xlights on a MacPro (at home) and am i7 / 32 gig when sequencing where the display is.

We divided the music loop in half making two 30 minute sequences.

About 14 minutes in things are feeling heavy and the House Preview is becoming more unresponsive or needs to be rendered more often.

I imagine most are doing one sone=one sequence, but are there any tips on getting my preview to hold up better for 15 minutes? I'm resolved to diving the tracks one more time to about 15 minutes each but it would be difficult to go further because we have tons of recorded messages on the loop mostly between songs.
i'd rather not go to 20fps.
Thanks folks.
 
I can't help but do have a question.

Do you find people watch the entire show? Mine is 6 song / around 15mins which it seems it about average. I was thinking of doing a Xmas day only endless loop of more classical music/songs.
 
Wait, are you playing it directly from xlights? (I wouldn't, but if you insist, get rid of the house preview window and the framerate will probably improve...) Why not play it from elsewhere? (I'd generally say xSchedule -- but mac obvs.)
 
Wayne1 said:
I can't help but do have a question.

Do you find people watch the entire show? Mine is 6 song / around 15mins which it seems it about average. I was thinking of doing a Xmas day only endless loop of more classical music/songs.
Click to expand...
Well there were those 4 people who brought lawn chairs and watched the whole 55-minute show... but most make it 5-20 minutes. One of the amusing pass times is to look at the cars and see if you can tell who is ready to leave but held back by someone else in the car who wants to stay.
 
In our case, the lightshow is part of a larger event. It'll be just another thing for guests to see and do between shows.

Christmas at RCCM | Celebrate Christmas at RCCM!

christmas.rccm.org christmas.rccm.org
Otherwise It does seem like about 15 minutes would be the number... and no lawn chairs in our upstate New York climate!
 
We will be playing from FPP, not xlights.
We are currently sequencing in Xlights.
 
You should break the sequence down into smaller parts. Then when one small change is required it is only that small part (Say 5min section) that needs to change/edit. etc...

Your using FPP, so it can string all the bits together and make it look like one long sequence.

Make your life easy and not complicated.
 
You don't mention the number of channels, but my gut feeling is that you are running out of memory. First thing to do is make sure Render Cache is completely turned off. If running low on memory, you're just going to start swapping.
 
As others have suggested, smaller sequences would be betterfor both your sequencing computer to handle and the player being used.
Depending if you WANT people sitting outside your house for 30 mins at a time, or if your street allows for good traffic (foot or car) flow. Would other viewers get annoyed they can't get a good spot if they are waiting for 20+ mins for someone who is watching the whole show?
Shorter show = quicker turnover of visitors
 
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