MagicQ PC fade times

[Crash_Override]

Hi,

 

When I have a cue in cue stack that has a long fade. Let's say 30 sec. Then the fade actually will be like 33-34 sec long when measured with stopwatch. I can see the cues fade time freeze from time to time for a little while. The clock that's on the Magicq screen isn't freezing and is accurate.

 

Can anybody give me any pointers? It's hard to run a show like that.

 

 

Connected to MiniWing.

Soft: 1.7.1.0

 

PC:

Win 10

Intel i5

4GB RAM

[Judge]

Is it a clean PC? My show laptop has nothing at all installed on it except Titan and MagicQ and thats the way it should be. Is all firewall and antivirus turned off?

[Crash_Override]

Is it a clean PC? My show laptop has nothing at all installed on it except Titan and MagicQ and thats the way it should be. Is all firewall and antivirus turned off?

 

Almost clean. Did a clean install (restore to factory settings with deleting everything) of win8 then updated to win10. Only have MS office and web browser there. No antivirus at the moment. I will look tomorrow about the firewall.

[jameschamsys]

For accurate timing (particularly over longer periods) I would suggest using internal timecode on the cue stack as this uses the system clock to time the execution of cues.MagicQ Fade/Delay timing on PC systems is subject to delays of your PC/Mac OS, which taking into account other applications and processes also running on the PC which we do not have control of are likely to make this less accurate. If you need any help in setup of the cue stack to Internal timecode do let me know.

 

[Crash_Override]

For accurate timing (particularly over longer periods) I would suggest using internal timecode on the cue stack as this uses the system clock to time the execution of cues.MagicQ Fade/Delay timing on PC systems is subject to delays of your PC/Mac OS, which taking into account other applications and processes also running on the PC which we do not have control of are likely to make this less accurate. If you need any help in setup of the cue stack to Internal timecode do let me know.

 

 

Hi James,

Saw your answer in other forum before but will also reply here.

Tried again setting the Halt as Timecode. When I set them all to Tc, it will trigger all the cues one after another, after activating the playback. I'm new to timecode so maybe I'm doing something wrong?

[peza2010]

That sounds like your cues all have the same timecode value.

 

You would need cue 1 to be something like 00:00:01

 

And your next cue 00:00:05 for a 4 second delay.

 

However traditionally you would start you timecode at the 1hr mark.

[Crash_Override]

That sounds like your cues all have the same timecode value.

 

You would need cue 1 to be something like 00:00:01

 

And your next cue 00:00:05 for a 4 second delay.

 

However traditionally you would start you timecode at the 1hr mark.

 

But doesn't that mean, I have to have very accurate show to have everything running automatically?

I can't have it fully automatic.

What I need is manually triggered cues that run in specific fade times.

[Judge]

I have never come across a problem like this and it seems a bit of a worry. So you you saying that in a normal cuestack I put in a fade time of 30 seconds, it will not necessarily be that - unless I use timecode option? Why is there even an option to do so? Why does the software not use the most accurate method by default? Confused.

[themadhippy]

Why does the software not use the most accurate method by default? Confused.

At a guess id say the console will remain accurate,however running on a pc you dont know what else is causing things to slow down

[Judge]

Well yes, to an extent. But on a freshly installed system as the OP says he has - this should not be a problem. Granted, there could be all kinds of nonsense going on like little background apps, Apple scheduler and nonsense like that - and that can all be taken care of using selective startup and kill everything thats not needed. But even so - the actual PC system clock is not affected by this. My desktop often has a dozen apps open, plus a browser with ten tabs open. It always seems to show the correct time though.

[timsabre]

But even so - the actual PC system clock is not affected by this. My desktop often has a dozen apps open, plus a browser with ten tabs open. It always seems to show the correct time though.

 

Crossfades don't use the system clock though, as it's made up of a lot of little steps which have to be done much more rapidly.

I don't know how MagicQ is written but in Windows programming there are only 2 time sources, a system ticker which happens every 15.6ms but is notoriously inaccurate and can vary wildly depending on what else is going on. There is also a multimedia timer which is much more accurate but not all hardware provides it.

[Judge]

Tim I get your point about Windows accuracy of clock and I have just tried an experiment with both MagicQ and Titan on Windows machines.

On a 120 second crossfade the MagicQ was 5 seconds behind.

The Titan One was 1 second early.

So neither accurate, also totally different software architecture. Titan is Windows based, and MagicQ is platform independent, and will run on Mac PC or Linux. Having said that I was running the Windows version.

So, I very rarely need an accurate fade that runs over 2 minutes. But it does seem to raise some issues. It seems that ChamSys are aware of this and they also note that their own internal timecode is accurate. In which case why is it not possible to have their own timecode running as soon as the system starts, and use that for timing?

Anyone care to run this test on a Mac and on Linux box just for kicks?

[Crash_Override]

It seems that ChamSys are aware of this and they also note that their own internal timecode is accurate. In which case why is it not possible to have their own timecode running as soon as the system starts, and use that for timing?

 

I agree, they should take the timing from their own timecode and use that for timing, not windows timing. It shouldn't be that hard.

 

For me it is bad this timing issue. I have lot's of cues where I trigger sound and lights together and have lights on delay or next cue on follow where I need it to be accurate to the mark in music.

[cedd]

I remember when we used to get a Pearl on hire and the first thing we had to was work out how long that particular desk thought a second was, then tweak our timings to suit.

 

We had an issue last week where our Chamsys setup was running slow, but we had Chamsys HD running in the background as well for some projections. We didn't actually need it running on that machine as we were controlling a separate machine with the content on via artnet, so we deleted the files on the desk PC and MagicQ suddenly sped up to its' normal speed again.

 

 

 

 

I remember when we used to get a Pearl on hire and the first thing we had to was work out how long that particular desk thought a second was, then tweak our timings to suit.

 

We had an issue last week where our Chamsys setup was running slow, but we had Chamsys HD running in the background as well for some projections. We didn't actually need it running on that machine as we were controlling a separate machine with the content on via artnet, so we deleted the files on the desk PC and MagicQ suddenly sped up to its' normal speed again.

 

 

 

[Wol]

AFAIR it should be running at 33Hz internally (or might be 30?). If you press ctrl+shift when it's running, it'll show up the actual clock rate it's running at. If that number is less than 33, then it might be the reason why its running slow.