Lighting Console Autosave

[numberwrong]

Some one told me that it was a good idea to turn off auto save on Avo Titan during the show as it 'Slowed the desk down'

 

It got me thinking, is the Auto Save function on Titan and other desks responsible for crashing and temporary freezing? It doesn't seem a good idea to be accessing a disk and saving every 5 minutes during operation!

 

I've had a Jands Vista S3 go weird on me a few times (so 3rd party laptop involved here) including freezing, crashing and fader positions on the actual console not relating to the console in the 'Console Window'.

 

I think it would be a good idea to turn off auto save regardless (I'm a save-aholic anyway!).

 

Just wondered if anyone knew any real live reasons for this theoryhttp://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif

[mac.calder]

It can cause crashing - especially if using regular HDD's not SSD's - hard drive read heads traveling over a surface whilst being bounce around by extremely loud PA systems is not good for system stability. The 2-5 seconds the average desk takes to save a show can also really throw off your operating style. So I would advise disabling.

[timsabre]

Avo recommend turning off autosave during the show as (being a windows computer underneath) it can cause a slight pause if you happen to be running a crossfade or a fast chase. I don't think there's any risk of it crashing though, at least not on Avo consoles. They use SSDs (older consoles use laptop HDDs) so there isn't a risk there.

[niclights]

I don't see any reason to draw this conclusion. I can't speak for other manufacturers but I'm confident it is not an issue for Avolites Titan. I have been using Titan since the beginning on various consoles almost daily and never had a release version crash. Much of this time has been spent operating shows with autosave enabled. The default in Titan is once every 30 minutes, but even if you changed this to every minute it would not be a problem in terms of stability or hardware.

 

It is true that in Titan it could cause a small pause in fades, for example a cross-fading chase or an effect, albeit only briefly (I would approximate 200ms, definitely not the actual time taken to save). This is the reason Avolites advise turning it off when operating. However, this was only really an issue on the older (non-pro) consoles or if you are running it on a slow PC and these issues have been resolved in version 7.0.

 

The only way I can envisage drive access causing a crash is if the drive is faulty or has otherwise had a hardware failure, possibly resulting in a BSOD. In this case you would probably be no better off disabling autosave as the drive can be accessed at any time by the OS. The comment Mac makes about vibration is valid and can cause these issues, which is why Avo moved to SSD. However, autosave is still irrelevant.

 

I would consider console drive use to be very low in general. For high demands see server applications or peer-to-peer file sharing which can have near constant read/write. Even in these conditions drives and operating systems can run for years 24/7.