Tough Time with Scenes

[brysava]

Hi

I’m trying to get about 35 scenes ready for a show but can’t seem to get any working reliably. I’m sure I must be doing something wrong, even after reading that section in the manual multiple times. Since the upgrade, the crashing seems to have stopped, fortunately, so I thought I could proceed, but here’s the problems:

I had about 6 tunes on the unit responding to scene/midi program changes numbers. Then, out of curiosity, I highlighted a different scene on the unit’s scene screen just to check the title, and thereafter there was no more response to midi program changes sent. So I restarted the unit, and what came up looked like the same session, but the scene area on the unit was missing all scenes–it was blank. Plus I no longer had audio on chain 1/2. So I re-loaded the scene (saved this AM) from my usb stick, and everything looked back to normal–except (here’s where I hope its me that’s doing something wrong)–A scene will load upon a fresh reload of the session from the usb stick, but fails to change the FX chain that it is supposed to. It works for a couple and then no more. This part seemed to be working well this AM, but not now. However, on the scene page, its showing the correct scene number change, its just not changing to the FX chain.

Here’s how I’m setting scenes up, in case you can see what’s causing the problems:

1. I name the FX chain the same name as the song I want to be called up via the scene, and make the changes I want in that FX Chain for that tune.

2. I name the scene as a midi map, assign program change/number for the trigger, and do a capture scene while the newly named and set up FX chain is loaded. As I mentioned, this was working this AM, but now has the reliability problems I mentioned.

Thanks

Bryan

 

[jfirlik]

Its not immediately clear to me what the problem could be, but I have a few questions that may help troubleshoot:

When you say you name the FX chain, are you saving it as an FX chain preset, or just setting the name of the FX chain container in the FX chains mode view (using the Rename soft key)?  The latter won't be recalled as part of a Scene change, only the preset name will, so this may be causing some confusion.

When you say you 'name the scene as a midi map', this sounds like you may actually be creating a new map, instead of just adding a Scene to the current map?  In most cases, you will only need to have a single map in the left-hand column, with all your program changes contained in the right-hand column.  Is this the case?

When your Scene map won't respond to program change messages, is it shown as being active in the Scenes mode?  The left-hand column should show a green light next to the map name, and the right hand column should show a green light next to the currently selected Scene.  When you issue a program change, the right-hand column will advance to the next Scene with a yellow light, and then a green light once the Scene is fully loaded.  You can use the Load soft key on the right-hand column to manually load a Scene, to rule out any possible issues with your MIDI controller.

[brysava]

jfirlik wrote:

Thanks for the quick reply!

Its not immediately clear to me what the problem could be, but I have a few questions that may help troubleshoot:

When you say you name the FX chain, are you saving it as an FX chain preset, or just setting the name of the FX chain container in the FX chains mode view (using the Rename soft key)?  The latter won’t be recalled as part of a Scene change, only the preset name will, so this may be causing some confusion. I’m saving it as an FX Chain Preset. (resaving it with the changes I want. I name it the same name as the applicable tune). I use the same basic FX Chain preset for each tune, but just make changes in its delay times and change the name to the applicable tune. And do a scene capture for each newly changed and newly named FX Chain preset.

When you say you ‘name the scene as a midi map’, this sounds like you may actually be creating a new map, instead of just adding a Scene to the current map?  In most cases, you will only need to have a single map in the left-hand column, with all your program changes contained in the right-hand column.  Is this the case? No, I am naming the midi map the name of the tune, and making a separate midi map for each tune.  “When focused on the left side of the screen, press the Create Map button to create a MIDI map of a new scene. You will be prompted to name the scene, at which point it will be added to the list of created scenes on the left.” This is what made me think a different midi map (and its name) was needed. Do you think that’s the main problem?

When your Scene map won’t respond to program change messages, is it shown as being active in the Scenes mode? Not right now, but this AM everything looked right and was working right. If I reload the session from the usb stick, which I just did again, things sound right at first but when I go back to a previous tune and try to load it, the scene doesn’t always load or it appears to load, but stays on the previous FX chain. The green light is on the correct scene, but its not sounding the correct scene. The left-hand column should show a green light next to the map name, and the right hand column should show a green light next to the currently selected Scene.  When you issue a program change, the right-hand column will advance to the next Scene with a yellow light, and then a green light once the Scene is fully loaded.  You can use the Load soft key on the right-hand column to manually load a Scene, to rule out any possible issues with your MIDI controller. I just tried that and sometimes it loads correctly, and sometimes it is just staying with the one before it–similar to how its responding, or not responding, when sent from the Midi controller. Its the same midi controller set up that always worked easily and well with my H8000 and H7600 though, so I’ve ruled that out as the problem.

Thanks!

Bryan

[jfirlik]

brysava wrote:

When you say you 'name the scene as a midi map', this sounds like you may actually be creating a new map, instead of just adding a Scene to the current map?  In most cases, you will only need to have a single map in the left-hand column, with all your program changes contained in the right-hand column.  Is this the case? No, I am naming the midi map the name of the tune, and making a separate midi map for each tune.  "When focused on the left side of the screen, press the Create Map button to create a MIDI map of a new scene. You will be prompted to name the scene, at which point it will be added to the list of created scenes on the left." This is what made me think a different midi map (and its name) was needed. Do you think that's the main problem?

I believe this may be the issue… some of the terminology here may be getting confused:

The items on the left-hand side are Scene Maps, each of which contains the list of Scenes 1-128 on the right-hand side.

The Scene Maps on the left are independent of one another (only one may be active at a time), and MIDI commands will only be sent to the currently active one.

In most cases a Scene Map is like a set list, with each Scene representing a single tune.  I think the solution to your issue is to create just a single Scene Map, and load the FX chains for each tune in consecutive Scenes within that map.  If you highlight a Scene in the list and do a scene capture, it will appear under that particular scene.  You can't currently rename the individual Scenes, but the name of the FX chain preset being loaded will appear under each Scene, so if your FX chain preset names correspond to the song names, this should help you keep track of where you are in the set.

[brysava]

I decided to delete my scenes in this same session and start over, trying to use just one midi map for all the scenes–but the unit crashes when I hit delete on the scenes page. I tried a full factory reset and reloaded the session from the usb stick, but every single time I get a crash when i hit delete in the scenes section. So I’m wondering now how do I start over redoing scenes in this session without encountering these consistent crashes?

[brysava]

I see, I was using separate midi maps for each tune so I could see which tune was being called up! I just assumed that was how it was done as I couldn’t see another way on the scenes page to tell the name of the tune that was loaded. Ha! Glad to know the right way now.

Since my last post, somehow the instant crashing on trying to delete all the old midi maps has stopped–I’m not sure what changed. And right after that, I did redo everything with only one midi map, and loading the applicable FX Chain preset, and then doing a scene capture, etc. Even before getting your latest reply, this was obviously the way to do it, as it was working. EXCEPT, now I’m getting intermittent crashing when the unit receives the program change–much less than before the recent update, which was most of the time, but still in response to receiving the pc–about 10% of the time a pc is sent. So still not usable for live this way.

One other thing–I still get those subset names of FX Chain presets below the scene number on the right. One is the correct and intended one and the others either apply to a different FX Chain for another song, or one or two irrelevant ones. I then deleted the ones that were not the intended ones in order make the loading quicker. Maybe this lessened the rate of crashes, I’m not sure, but I’m still getting a crash here and there upon receipt of a pc from the daw.

Thanks!

Bryan

[jfirlik]

Glad to hear you got it working (mostly).  We will look into this intermittent crashing issue, haven't seen this happen since the last release.

[brysava]

Thanks for the help!

One thing I should let you know about and have them look into: This AM I turned on the unit and the unit loaded as expected with the same session I was working on yesterday with the scenes, but the analog I/O FX Chain 1-2 was not outputing any fx or any sound. The other channel (7-8 usb) that I did check was normal. This seems to happen with any of my sessions from 5-30% of the time. Its usually with FX Chain 1/2 but not always. Some of the time I can get it back by just restarting the unit, but today that didn’t work, but doing a soft restart did get it working normally today. Other times it takes a total factory restart. This has been going on since I got the unit, and has not seemed to change with the updates.

Bryan

[jfirlik]

Hey Bryan,

We've been trying to reproduce this Scenes crashing issue in-house but to no avail.  If you have a session set up where this is happening, would you mind sending it to us for investigation?  Also, if this is the same or a different session that has the audio routing issue, we'd be interested in looking into that as well…

You can email it directly to me at:

jfirlik@eventide.com

 

Thanks-

Jackson

[brysava]

Thanks Jackson, I just sent the email to you.

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