Image files popping up before next cue

[Krystle Henninger]

Hi, 

So here's what I'm dealing with. I've got 51 text and image cues that fade in on a 5 (or more) count, then fade out and stop. The issue is that when I fire the next cue, the previous image or text pops up for a hot second as the next cue is fading in. I have it set that the cues are currently on a fade of 0 then stops at the end (they were originally just stop cues - changed it to see if it made a difference and it doesn't). I changed text cues to JPGs and that doesn't make a difference. I have a couple that are multi-part cues that fade in separately then fade out together, which gave me the most trouble as only part of the text would pop up, so I made the fades on those auto-continue instead of firing all children simultaneously in the group, that didn't matter. There are groups within groups, so I started building a new file from scratch and that didn't help. I've restarted Qlab, the computers, the projector and still have the same issue. We changed computers, I had a monitor as well as a projector plugged in and was getting the same thing on the monitor. I've added in a black slide for some of the ones I could count on screwing up and that seems to help, but not always and adding a little time to the fade helps slightly (again, not always), but they really need to be bump cues. It's not always happening on the same cues but it always happens somewhere. 

Apart from removing and reloading Qlab (which I don't know that it would help since it's happened on multiple machines), I've run out of ideas. Help? 

[micpool]

It's difficult to work out how your cues are structured from your description. If you post just your QLab .cues file, you dont need to include any images, I can have a look.

What you are seeing isn' t normal.

Mic

[micpool]

Actually, you are entirely correct and I can replicate what you are seeing. On my system the previous image only appears for 1/60th of a second, I have never noticed this before. Presumably you are running this with a lower spec mac which means the effect is more obvious on your set up than mine. 

Here's the cuelist. Image snaps in, holds for 5, and stops

And here are 3 frames of output

Cue 2 auto follow, stopping Q2,  completed , STANDING BY Q3  (as in screenshot of cue list) :

Q3 Fired:

1 Frame Later after Q3 is fired:

Mic

On Saturday, August 6, 2016 at 12:30:51 AM UTC+1, Krystle Henninger wrote:

[Krystle Henninger]

Yup that's exactly what's happening.

[micpool]

A temporary fix is to put a black image up  as a video cue before your first cue. (a 1x1  pixel black image set to full screen will suffice) and leave it on.

The previous image bug only occurs when the output screen goes from the desktop background state to outputting a cue. If you don't go back to the desktop background between images all should be well.

It's probably worth assigning a hotkey to the black image, so if you use ESC to stop everything you can put the black cue up before doing another cue.

Mic

[Krystle Henninger]

I put up a black slide between all images that fade out and I'm still having the issue. Sometimes the image flashed quickly before the fadeout when I put the slide up without a fade in, so I put a 5 second fade in on the slide and delayed it .5 seconds, which helped, but even with all of that it still hasn't fixed the problem. And it's never consistent. During our first run I had 4 cues with the issue and in our second, 3 completely different ones. All with the black slide in. It's the closest I've gotten.

[micpool]

Thats not quite the same as what i suggested

If you put up a black slide at the top,of your show and leave it running, i.e all other cues take place on top of the black slide cue which is never stopped, does that fix it?

[Krystle Henninger]

It didn't. I'm done with the show for now - we ended up being okay with a couple jumpy cues, but we're taking the show back out in the future so I'm still working on the issue at home. I hooked it up to my monitor and I couldn't replicate the issue with my black slides in apart from one cue that I plan on rebuilding anyway because it's a multi-part cue. I put the black slide in at the top, left it running, and that cue in particular still had the issue (it's the only one I can count on being consistently jumpy). I think the plan right now is to make the text and image files MOV instead of JPG or text - I've never had issues with MOV files - unless we find another solution. 

[David Stavetski]

Did you ever find a solution to this issue?  We're in tech week and having the same problem.  Thanks.

[Krystle Henninger]

I didn't end up working on the show after that week, so I didn't troubleshoot much after that, but turning the JPG into a MOV file was what I had planned on doing. I remembered that it happened on another show I worked on years ago and that's what I did and it worked. I just made it into a longer video than I needed it to be up and then put fade cues on it. If you know how long the fades are you can build them in or if they just stop you can use stop cues for them. I would recommend putting up a continual black slide behind all the cues from the top - tends to help a little. 

Hope this helps! 

[Patrick Andrews]

Have you updated to the most current version of QLab? I was having a similar issue with some images. I would fade and stop the image but would still get a brief flash of that image when firing the next cue to bring in a different image. The most recent QLab update fixed my problem, the read me stated that this issue was a bug fixed in the update.