DMX Control playback under Vista

[Undercover]

Hi there,

 

We have a fairly good spec laptop dual 1.9 AMD with 2 gigs of ram running vista.

 

I'm using DMX control free software with Afterglow aurora 2 USB interface. My only concern is that when using software with basic preprogrammed lighting scenes for songs, the audio player cursor as it scrolls through the song sometimes "visually pauses", audio still plays fine but the signal to the lites also pauses and occasionally doesnt trigger the lights at all. (Eurolite LED Pars)

 

Ive turned off the windows indexed search facility to reduce hard disk access etc. (Has made a slight difference)

 

The problem doesnt always happen and seems random.

 

Firewall is off, windows defender is off, Is there anything else I can do other than sift through the DMX control website ?

(possibly a bug in the software - driver issues?, however as far as I'm aware latest drivers and software installed for aurora 2 etc)

 

Any help welcome !

 

PAul

[jakefraser]

I would refer you to discussion somewhere on this forum regarding the OS of choice for production environments - stripped down XP or even 2000 maybe?

[dbuckley]

... sometimes "visually pauses", audio still plays fine but the signal to the lites also pauses and occasionally doesnt trigger the lights at all.

 

No matter what you do, you'll be rogered.

 

Lighting software should run the GUI and processing on different threads, with different priorities, so the GUI can be sacrificed if necessary to keep the show going.

 

Time to change software...

[Modge]

Lighting software should run the GUI and processing on different threads, with different priorities, so the GUI can be sacrificed if necessary to keep the show going.

 

Amen to that. Though it has to be noted the benifit is less on single core machines, it's still the only sensible way to do things. One thing Lime Light is "properly" multi-threaded, we're quite proud of that.

 

(yes it does still run well on single core machines)

[Undercover]

Thanks for your information, is it just me having that specific problem on my laptop, could it be improved via graphics card settings in vista ?

[niclights]

I'm thinking that's just impossible to say. So many possible factors. While it is true the DMX software should be taking priority it doesn't sound right to me that you should see pauses on a machine of that spec doing so little DMX wise.

 

But it's a lottery as to the cause - could be badly written software, driver issues (of any sort). Perhaps the software simply isn't confirmed compatible with Vista?

 

Check to see if there are any clues in Task Manager/CPU usage. Are you running Aero? If so, have you tried turning it off?

[niax]

My universal solution to program skipping is to open Task Manager and raise the process priority of the application in question.

 

You do this by:

Open Task Manager

Select the program

Right click and click "Go to process"

Right click selected item in process list

Select "Set Priority"

Select "AboveNormal"

 

This means that the program is allowed to spend more time on the processor if it needs it, above other applications.

 

 

Note that this can affect the day to day running of a machine and shouldn't be set constantly - especially for very processor hungry applications, at it can break Windows and other running applications through lack of attention. This should also only be used if the other tips given in this thread have not resulted in the required results.

 

 

Nick Hollett

[niclights]

That potentially would mean the DMX output could pause instead. Surely not a good idea?

[niax]

In the OP - the output to the lights is already being paused.

 

This could just be a bug in the way that the program renders audio, locking up the thread. If this is the case - then increasing priority will mean that this potential lock will be dealt with faster.

 

That or windows is getting fussy about the way the window uses it's resources (GDI and Serial Coms dependent how the program works)

[niclights]

So it is!

[Undercover]

Thanks for your advice, have tried changing priority for DMX Control software under task manager, but its the only program that I cant change priority on !

[KidRay]

You could try installing the maximum RAM your laptop will support, Vista is notoriously heavy on RAM, 2GB is generally seen as a minimum for smooth running.

[Undercover]

Thanks for all your advice.

 

Still searching for ways to stop pausing in DMX control on laptop, will try and lower priority on all other services on vista.

 

But have removed the noise problem from laptop noisey power supply with a behringer rack di with ground switch / lift all working great.

 

cheers

[tnk]

I'm using DMX control free software with Afterglow aurora 2 USB interface. My only concern is that when using software with basic preprogrammed lighting scenes for songs, the audio player cursor as it scrolls through the song sometimes "visually pauses", audio still plays fine but the signal to the lites also pauses and occasionally doesnt trigger the lights at all. (Eurolite LED Pars)

 

Take a look at your Network Connections. Change any connections not in use which show as Disconneted to Disabled. It may help. It stop intermittent 'jumping' of MP3 playback on two of my machines running Windows XP and 2K.

[sideshowmark]

1 - Update your BIOS and GPU drivers.

 

2 - If you right click the .exe for the application and cick properties you will find a whole load of settings under the Compatibility tab. If the program was written for XP try running it in 'compatibility mode' for that OS. select run in 256 colours - this will disable a lot of the GUI-heavy aspects of Vista when that program in run.

 

This has worked for me on several applications so you should give that a go - Vista handles requests for desktop space slightly differently to XP

 

3 - I would also install the software on the most powerful machine I can lay my hands on and see if the problem persists. You could also try running the CPU and RAM meter gadget that comes with Vista or download a more advanced one from t'internet - google 'vista sidebar cpu gadget' to find them. run your prgram and keep an eye on the meter when things start going wrong and you might be able to work out where the bottleneck is.

 

however I would also like to reiterate the above posts. 'mission critical' functions like this should be on dedicated, spcially designed PCs. Vista runs much better with above 4GB of RAM - especially on Laptops wth their smaller FSBs.