Wall Clock triggers - out of sync!

[Willo]

I've had several instances where for convenience I have programmed cues using the wall clock time trigger, when I know that I want the cues to play at precisely the same time every night (for instance, to play house music for picnickers arriving an hour before an outdoor show, or the pre-show warning bells 5 min before the listed start time) both instances where I may be a long way from the operating desk at the time I wanted these cues triggered). I've also set silent cues that alert me to when it's the half hour call, 15min call etc.

As a precaution I've programmed a cue in my pre-show set up that automatically disables any of these timed cues, and makes me set them manually (I was caught out once when a Sunday show was an hour earlier than the weekday shows, and my normal pre-show house music cue came on - luckily during the interval, so the only problem was two house music tracks playing at once!

However I've noticed a few times that even though the cue is configured correctly, and the computer's clock is accurate, the cue doesn't necessarily play when I want it. For instance a cue that should have played at 19:15 played at 20:03...!!

Can anyone suggest what might be the cause of this, or more importantly, how to ensure against it? 

I have a feeling, although I haven't tested it to be sure, that it makes a difference if I have freshly booted QLab prior to running the show program, as opposed to opening a laptop that has QLab open from a previous session. But I'm not sure why that should make a difference to reading the clock inaccurately?

Thanks for any thoughts

Craig

[mic pool]

I used the wall clock triggers for a bell tower project earlier this year.

There were several times when I was aware that triggers had not happened at the correct time

I never got to the bottom of it

Not much help, I know, but more anecdotal evidence of wall clock triggers not being 100% reliable

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Mic Pool
Sound and Video Designer
www.micp.tv
m...@micpool.com
07711 308549
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[ra byn taylor]

Maybe it's possible to also trigger some sort of midi out / midi in loop that can be seen in midi monitor or something to verify that commands are actually happening. 

I've been working on a project where a Mac running Mio Console (Metric Halo hardware's software interface) to record at a certain time each day. I used Keyboard Maestro to do the scheduling  but was having hit & miss success. Recently I added a REBOOT command at midnight each day & so far the recordings have been dead on. 

I set up one @ 10am each day but Sunday & again @ 10pm. It records for 30 secs. With Team Viewer, I'm able to call into to that machine & verify the morning & evening test recordings are actually working. A litmus test for the more important recording on Sunday. If I don't see the 10am / 10pm recording files, I know something isn't working right. 

One would think that computers would just do this sort of thing but no:)

Open the pod bay door HAL!

I'm sorry but I can't do that DAVE...

ra byn

[Rich Walsh]

You might want to look at this thread from last May, which also includes a way of logging cues that are fired:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!searchin/qlab/wallclock/qlab/bEKfTzvzTrU/GnpsnoGhYzwJ

Rich

[Christopher Ashworth]

Hi Craig,

I've now heard of a few reports of this so I think it must be a bug in QLab, but I've never been able to reproduce it or track down the cause.

If you'd like to try getting some logs of when cues are fired, you can do so like this:

From the terminal you can use the following command to enable extra logging: 

defaults write com.figure53.QLab.2 LogLevel 3 

Then logs will appear in Console.app 

defaults write com.figure53.QLab.2 LogLevel 0 

Will turn off the logging. 

I'll also take another look at how the clock triggers work to see if I can find any problems or create an alternate way to trigger them.

-C