Production Switchers

Hello! 
I am using custom controls to recall 2 separate animations from the Media Store and play them on a monitor.

Both animations (loaded in as png sequences) are stored in the same media store channel, but with separate media numbers. 

When I switch between the two custom control buttons to switch the animation, the animations take around 5 minutes to load, and I can see them loading frame by frame in the MediaManager tab on Dashboard. 

Is there any way for me to get this to happen instantaneously? Both animation png sequences are 181 frames long.

Thank you! 

------------------------------
Zeya H
Operations Supervisor
NewsChannel 21
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Hi Zeya,

The only way for both animations to load instantaneously on the same mediastore channel is for both animations to be small enough to fit on the same RAM cache. What is happening is that when you load Animation #2, it flushes Animation #1 out of the cache to make space for Animation #2. If there is sufficient space, both animations will remain in the cache and will load instantaneously.

2 possible solutions...

1. Make the animation shorter/smaller so that both will fit in the same cache.

2. May I know which switcher is this? If you are using mediastore ch1, can you load the second animation into mediastore ch2? And vice versa. Ch1 and Ch2 have separate RAM.

Hope one of these will work for you.

Hello! 
I am using custom controls to recall 2 separate animations from the Media Store and play them on a monitor.

Both animations (loaded in as png sequences) are stored in the same media store channel, but with separate media numbers. 

When I switch between the two custom control buttons to switch the animation, the animations take around 5 minutes to load, and I can see them loading frame by frame in the MediaManager tab on Dashboard. 

Is there any way for me to get this to happen instantaneously? Both animation png sequences are 181 frames long.

Thank you! 

------------------------------
Zeya H
Operations Supervisor
NewsChannel 21
------------------------------

Hello Aaron,

Thank you so much for the reply! 

We shortened the animations and it seems to be working quicker now (although it still freezes up occasionally). The board is a Ross Carbonite Black Plus with 2 MEs- running software version 13.0.4.17417. 

Unfortunately we use all of the other MediaStore channels for other parts of our production (though I could switch things around I suppose!).

Would clearing out different unused media numbers in MediaStore Channel 3 (where the animations are stored) help things run faster RAM-wise? And if so- how do I go about doing that? I read in the manual that if you try to load the media numbers after deleting the media files for that number off of the external USB, the switcher will prompt you to clear the number from the database. However I did this (using a custom control to load the media number) and I didn't receive any prompt. The system is still registering those numbers as "taken" even if it doesn't load the media and remains empty in the MediaStore. 

Im sure there's some other way I'm supposed to be "loading" in the media- but I can't figure it out. 

Thanks again for the help- new to the industry and still learning how things work! I appreciate it. 

Hi Zeya,

The only way for both animations to load instantaneously on the same mediastore channel is for both animations to be small enough to fit on the same RAM cache. What is happening is that when you load Animation #2, it flushes Animation #1 out of the cache to make space for Animation #2. If there is sufficient space, both animations will remain in the cache and will load instantaneously.

2 possible solutions...

1. Make the animation shorter/smaller so that both will fit in the same cache.

2. May I know which switcher is this? If you are using mediastore ch1, can you load the second animation into mediastore ch2? And vice versa. Ch1 and Ch2 have separate RAM.

Hope one of these will work for you.

Hello! 
I am using custom controls to recall 2 separate animations from the Media Store and play them on a monitor.

Both animations (loaded in as png sequences) are stored in the same media store channel, but with separate media numbers. 

When I switch between the two custom control buttons to switch the animation, the animations take around 5 minutes to load, and I can see them loading frame by frame in the MediaManager tab on Dashboard. 

Is there any way for me to get this to happen instantaneously? Both animation png sequences are 181 frames long.

Thank you! 

------------------------------
Zeya H
Operations Supervisor
NewsChannel 21
------------------------------

The Cache manager automatically does things based on last used moves to the top and it is the things that are oldest used that are Pushed out of cache first when there is not enough space in RAM to allocate for the media Item being requested.

Channels also protect what is in them..

So if you load a Video only animation in Channel 1 (so it does not use Channel 3 for an Alpha) then what ever is in Channel 3 will be retained as it is protected.. then it will move to eliminate what it needs to allocate space for the new item going into channel 1.

Hello Aaron,

Thank you so much for the reply! 

We shortened the animations and it seems to be working quicker now (although it still freezes up occasionally). The board is a Ross Carbonite Black Plus with 2 MEs- running software version 13.0.4.17417. 

Unfortunately we use all of the other MediaStore channels for other parts of our production (though I could switch things around I suppose!).

Would clearing out different unused media numbers in MediaStore Channel 3 (where the animations are stored) help things run faster RAM-wise? And if so- how do I go about doing that? I read in the manual that if you try to load the media numbers after deleting the media files for that number off of the external USB, the switcher will prompt you to clear the number from the database. However I did this (using a custom control to load the media number) and I didn't receive any prompt. The system is still registering those numbers as "taken" even if it doesn't load the media and remains empty in the MediaStore. 

Im sure there's some other way I'm supposed to be "loading" in the media- but I can't figure it out. 

Thanks again for the help- new to the industry and still learning how things work! I appreciate it. 

Hi Zeya,

The only way for both animations to load instantaneously on the same mediastore channel is for both animations to be small enough to fit on the same RAM cache. What is happening is that when you load Animation #2, it flushes Animation #1 out of the cache to make space for Animation #2. If there is sufficient space, both animations will remain in the cache and will load instantaneously.

2 possible solutions...

1. Make the animation shorter/smaller so that both will fit in the same cache.

2. May I know which switcher is this? If you are using mediastore ch1, can you load the second animation into mediastore ch2? And vice versa. Ch1 and Ch2 have separate RAM.

Hope one of these will work for you.

Hello! 
I am using custom controls to recall 2 separate animations from the Media Store and play them on a monitor.

Both animations (loaded in as png sequences) are stored in the same media store channel, but with separate media numbers. 

When I switch between the two custom control buttons to switch the animation, the animations take around 5 minutes to load, and I can see them loading frame by frame in the MediaManager tab on Dashboard. 

Is there any way for me to get this to happen instantaneously? Both animation png sequences are 181 frames long.

Thank you! 

------------------------------
Zeya H
Operations Supervisor
NewsChannel 21
------------------------------