Sequence runs without music

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OptykMuse

New member
Not sure if this is a bug or not, but thought I'd report it just in case... I have one sequence that sometimes plays through in complete silence. I've noticed it twice so far while I was in the room where I have my show computer sitting. Not sure if it's consistent or intermittent, need to listen through a few complete shows to be sure. When the next song/sequence starts it is fine. I'm running release 3.9u2.
I've double checked that the music is associated with the sequence and no problem there. I've also played it using 'Open Sequence' during the day while the show is not running and the music plays fine.
 
This is the first we have heard of that. I would be interested to see the logs to see if anything shows up there.
 
I just caught this happening again... seems pretty random and not the same song every time. The sequence plays through normally but no audio. The next time through the show it would probably play normally with the audio. I have not sat listening to it for hours or I would probably have caught it more times. I've observed this multiple times now though, so seems like an issue to look into.
I'll see if I can figure out how to get the logs...
 
Jeff, I have attached a zip file with last night's logs. The Application Error log does have a couple of instances of audio player errors. I've very curious what the logs mean... is there a guide to reading the logs somewhere in the forum or Vixen website?
 

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  • Vixen 3.9u2 logs 12-17-22.zip
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Logs are from the C sharp .NET Programming language which Vixen is built in, there's endless things which could appear in them depending on where the problem lies, I'm not sure how practical/useful an online guide is therefore. I haven't seen (heard) the audio issue on the current version personally but will keep any ear out for it. What format are you using for your audio files? Do you have any other info such as the bitrate? I know the Vixen team updated the audio component of the software which is used in more recent versions of the software. The application log does show an error with the audio component.
 
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All of the audio files are .mpg file types. There are various bit rates, most are 192K, with some at 128K and one at 96K.
 
From some of the information I have read, that error message is being reported by the underlying audio system in windows. The error message indicates that CPU resources are insufficient to process the audio stream.

Here is the official Microsoft definition of what that means.

Indicates that the process-pass duration exceeded the maximum CPU usage. The audio engine keeps track of CPU usage by maintaining the number of times the process-pass duration exceeds the maximum CPU usage. The maximum CPU usage is calculated as a percent of the engine's periodicity. The percentage value is the system's CPU throttle value (within the range of 10% and 90%). If this value is not found, then the default value of 40% is used to calculate the maximum CPU usage.

Have you looked at the resource usage of the computer while playing a show? Since it seems to be random, is there potentially some other processes that could be using CPU at intervals?
 
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I have not yet monitored resources while the show is running, but at least I know which direction to look now. I'll need to do a thorough search of the processes and see if I can find something that looks weird.
This diagnosis makes sense, as I keep getting little freezes in the sequences while they are playing. Must have gotten some garbageware in that laptop somehow since it was definitely not doing this last year.
Thanks a bunch for pointing me in the right direction! :)
 
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