key psydat and .csv output data files missing!!

[d.so...@gmail.com]

Hi, first of all thanks for developing a great tool

and this helpful web site.

Now we have come across some problems,

and are really concerned if we can recover the data

 So of the 6 different files the experiment outputs at the end 

(.psydat, .log, trials.cvs, block.cvs, .cvs .xlsx), 

for some of the participants (AC, KK, RP, FW) 

it fails to produce a .cvs and .psydat.

This happened in 4 out of 20 tested in this particular

experiment, we remain puzzled as to why

More critically at this stage for us, we wonder if

we still can use the files available to analyse the data.

Please find enclosed the output files for one of the

participants - 

Any help would be much appreciated ! ;)

cheers

David

[d.so...@gmail.com]

further to my prior email, we used the Builder

and run it on a Windows 7 machine....

thanks!

ds

[Jonathan Peirce]

And you didn't abort the experiment early (e.g. with the red stop button)? And there was no crash?
Those are the only reasons I can think of for the .psydat not to be saved on a subset of trials (even with a syntax error the data collected up to that point should be saved).

Jon

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[d.so...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the message Jon.

We did not abort the Experiment. And it did not crash either.

We however experience some frozen screens in some participant's session

whereby the participant enters the response yet Psychopy does not move on

to the next frame for 20-30 seconds when it should do straight away. There may be a correlation between this behaviour and the subjects who show missing output files.

My students were loading the Psychopy code by clicking on the file psyexp file

and then running from the Builder. They did not launch Psychopy first then load from file. This may have been done several times for each participant tested during the day

Not sure it is critical but just thought to let you know.

They did not load the the py file and run from the  Coder view, am not sure if this is the best option for running the scripts?

There does not appear to be anything wrong with the code as other student used it for testing 40 participants and the code appeared to run smoothly with each of them.

any further input much appreciated!

PS is there any way to re-create the data? I guess we might using the log gile. We also noticed, as shown in the files I  sent, that  there is one csv which data

arrayed in what appears a different format to the standard column based csv file but am not clear what order it follows?

cheers,

David

[Jonathan Peirce]

I'm afraid I still can't imagine what the problem is and I'm afraid that the psydat file is the one that can be used to create most others, so if that one wasn't saved your only option is a painful reading of log files.

There shouldn't be any need/advantage to run the experiments python (.py) file directly. Running from Builder should be fine.

Is there anything else unusual in your study; any code components?

Having pauses occur is something I've seen when people have nested loops and have excel outputs turned on. This is a bad idea because the excel output opens a new worksheet for each creation of the inner loop and these multiple worksheets have an apparently-substantial overhead.

cheers,
Jon

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[d.so...@gmail.com]

we have code components but those are fine...humm but  we do have excel output and nested loops, so we will from now on turn off the  excel output and see how it goes!

cheers

ds

[d.so...@gmail.com]

Hi Jon, 

[Samantha Abram]

I am encountering a similar issue where my task ends properly; however, the .csv and .psydat files are not save and the .log is empty. I have several nested loops in the task but the files are set to save as a trial-by-trial csv and not an excel workbook. Could the nested loops still cause this issue? Even if I am not using the excel output feature? 

[Jonathan Peirce]

Are you using version 1.83? If not please update to that and see if it's
fixed.
If you are then tell us more about your experiment.

The vast majority of studies do save so is there anything unusual in
your study?

thanks

On 13/11/15 02:58, Samantha Abram wrote:
> I am encountering a similar issue where my task ends properly;
> however, the .csv and .psydat files are not save and the .log is
> empty. I have several nested loops in the task but the files are set
> to save as a trial-by-trial csv and not an excel workbook. Could the
> nested loops still cause this issue? Even if I am not using the excel
> output feature?
>

> ?

[Samantha Abram]

Hi Jon,

I updated the software and I am still encountering the issue. I can provide more info about the task. 

The initial version was roughly 30 minutes long and subjects watch many 4 second video clips. This depends on their choices but is somewhere between 20-50 clips. I recently modified the task to last up to 40 minutes, allowing for more videos to play. On occasion,  the task ends and returns to the builder with the red X still illuminated. I assume this means it is still running. If I hit the red X it will lose the saved data and return a empty log file (even though it is set to save trial-by-trial). Sometimes if I wait for the X to no longer be illuminated (and to switch to the green running man being illuminated) the data is ok. On one occasion, the task ended and my macbook showed it's "beach ball" and stayed stuck in this illuminate red X stage for about 20 mins... never to save the data. The upgraded software has helped with prior video issues, where videos started to stall towards the end of the session; however, now it seems the task is having trouble saving in the last ten mins or so. 

Any information you have is greatly appreciated. I am also happy to provide more specifics. Thanks very much,

Samantha

[Jonathan Peirce]

Ah, OK. Thanks for the extra info. I think most likely you're having memory issues with the movies. If you're using 1.83.01 then could you try setting your movie to use the 'moviepy' backend and see if that fixes it?

Yes, if you hit the redX button it's forcing a quit without saving. That's a last-resort option I'm afraid.

cheers
Jon

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This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee
and may contain confidential information. If you have received this
message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it. 

Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this
message or in any attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the
author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the
University of Nottingham.

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an
attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your
computer system, you are advised to perform your own checks. Email
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permitted by UK legislation.

[dani]

Hi all, 

it seems that we are having similar problems. 

The attached experiment saves a csv file when we run it on mac computers, but does not save a csv file in the two windows computers that we tried so far (it saves a log file that is empty). 

It seems that the problem in windows computers is related to the duration of the experiment. When we reduce the number of repetitions of each condition or when escape the experiment (using esc key) the csv file is saved. 

We are using psychopy 1.83.01

dani

[dani]

We tried another windows computer and the experiment again only saved an empty log file. 

dani

[dani]

We explored a bit more. It seems that it is not related to the duration of the experiment, but to the number of trials. The attached experiment saves all the files (30 trials). When we changed the number of repetitions to produce 40 trials, however, the only file saved in the empty log file. 

dani

[Samantha Abram]

I think I might have found a workaround by setting the experiment to save an extra file at the beginning and overwriting this file at the end of each loop and again at the end of the experiment. I attached an experiment file made by a colleague with example code for this. 

[dani]

Thank you very much for the workaround. 

dani