Major Issues With Show Backup File

Hi All,

I'm running a very small studio show on Hog III PC V3.0 on Windows XP with a Playback wing, Programmer wing, and a single USB widget.

I made some changes to the show last night that previously had only one backup made for it. After I finished working on it, I made a backup of the show, but I did not save it to a memory stick.

This morning, I loaded the show and everything was fine, I ran some cues, and then proceeded to exit and shut down.

Tonight I tried to load the show, and began to receive a host of errors. Everything from FPS runtime errors, to an extremely long error regarding a fixture library, and finally, the show server said it wasn't responding and asked me if I'd like to wait. This has repeatedly occurred with this show file, even after several reboots. One of the times, both of my screens went black and the computer rebooted on it's own. Other shows on the computer will open and run just fine.

So I copied the .tar backup file of the show over to a memory stick and then opened the show from it. It worked! But here is where my problems really begin. The whole show seems to be "buggy" to put it best. For instance, cues with 20 second fade times will start to fade, and after five seconds, they complete on what appears to be a zero count, and the cues have no individual parameter timing. Also, chases that are executed by comment macros suddenly stop and get "hung-up" in a certain cue. None of these issues were in the original show file.

Even after quitting the show, a few of my fixtures (CMY color mixing static fixtures) continued to stay on one time, bumping between white and the last color they were in.

It's incredibly difficult to discern what is happening here, but it's very scary. It would appear that the original show file is corrupt, but why? What happened between when I ran the cues this morning, and tonight?

EDIT: After I posted here, I rebooted the computer only to get about eight or so "Windows Recovered From a Serious Error" messages. I'm guessing that Windows itself glitched and that could have corrupted the show file...Is this possible? I was able to fix the specific issues with the backup show file so it's more or less back to where it should be...I think...

Why would the backup file have the different strange information in it that was causing massive problems? What causes show files to corrupt? And perhaps most importantly, what can I do? If anyone could help, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Jason
  • Check to see if your show file is corrupted or not. This can be done in the show manager window. (All this is asuming that you can load the show, or do the errors stop this?)

    As for windows itself corrupting the software, yes. This is possible. I had video driver error, which in the end was windows fault, but HOG 3 PC crashed then the comp shut down. Vista can quite often cause problems. Its to do with the fact Vista itself is new and this is the first release of HOG 3PC on vista. Your findings do help HES a lot, so keep posting.


    Hope this helps, post us your answers.
  • I'm not running Vista; I'm still on XP. Unfortunately, the errors prevent me from even loading the original show. There are a whole host of long errors that are displayed on loading the show, but the one that ultimately prevents the show loading is the "server not responding" error. This is only happening for this show, so I know it's not a network problem, and I even unplugged the Ethernet cable to the computer...same thing.

    I'm guessing that when windows had it's "serious error(s)" the show file was corrupted. I can't figure out why the backup copy was buggy though...either way, I fixed that...Perhaps I should check the backup for corruption. Any thoughts on why the backup copy was acting differently than the original?

    EDIT: I checked the new backup file for corruption and the software replied that it "corrected palette usage in 1 pallete"...that's it. So it seems to be OK I think. Any other thoughts?
  • Jason,

    Please send me your show files (both the fixed one and the one that will not open) via our uploader at: upload.highend.com

    thanks,
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