Auto reopen on crash

[mark]

Dear Graham,

OK -- I've looked over the crash report. It seems like there are dozens of movies that are attempting to be loaded in the background. For sure this shouldn't happen, but it could be a result of your randomization routine. What I think might be happening goes like this:

1) Movie 1 is playing

2) You request movie 5 (i.e., send a 5 to the 'movie' input)

3) Background preload of movie 5 starts; movie 1 continues to play

4) Before the background preload of movie 5 completes, you request a different clip -- e.g., movie 6 -- by sending a 6 into the 'movie' input

5) Movie 5 goes off to the nether world, consuming memory and resources

6) Movie 6 plays, movie 1 gets properly "thrown away"

Repeat this process enough, and eventually, you run out of memory.

Is this possible Graham? That the random numbers are coming so rapidly, that the a new movie would be chosen before the old one is preloaded?

One simple test: put a Multi Blocker before the 'movie' input -- set the value to 2 seconds. (I know that may be too long... but just as a test.) If you do this, does the patch run without crashing for a substantially longer time?

Also, you should really try this patch with 1.3.0f26 if you haven't already. I may have addressed some bugs in this area that will get it to run better. But try the test above first if at all possible, so we can zero in on the problem.

Best Wishes,

Mark

[Skulpture]

Hi Mark,

First off all thanks for looking into this, and thanks to everyone else above for chiming in and helping.

The routine you described is not how I've patched i'm afraid; but it still helps me out and has given me an idea of how to improve the patch drastically.

Each movie player has its own projector and when video one is picked; its turns on movie player 1, when video two is picked it turn on video two. I have used to toggle on/off for visibility on each of the movie players but am starting to think this is not the best way to go about it.

After each video isadora jumps to a secondly scene (jump connected to video end) this plays another video and then goes back to the first scene awaiting a new video to be picked.

I will try and attach a screen shot today. I am going to explore this all day today.

I did also update to 1.3.0f26 yesterday and did see a bit of a difference yes.

Again; thanks to everyone.

[Skulpture]

I think i've solved the problems.... re-designed the patch.

[particlep]

yay !

[vanakaru]

I would be very curious what did you do at the first and then after. I had the installation this summer needing computer restart every 3-4 hours. I thought it was the hardware failure but maybe it was not.

I had different movie clips triggered (some times rapidly) by user without any effects - just plain play. And the whole thing just hung after 3-4 hours.

[Skulpture]

@vanakaru I am going to do a full write up about it on my blog I think.

I originally had 6 movie players and 6 projectors. All 6 movie players initialised with videos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 but all turned off. When a user picked a video it turned on one of the movie players and it started playing.

Now a trigger value sends the number of the video directly into the movie player and it starts. I also upgraded to 1.3.0f26 and changed the movie player to CI and CI Projectors.

If a user does not pick a video for 90 seconds then automatically it jumps to a scene to play a demo video. Every 15 mins it plays a promo video. So its always active and is never inactive for more than 90 seconds. Constantly going.

The system has been going since 8:45 this morning and it is currently 1:50PM in the UK. So its still going strong. I *think* I can still see the RAM being taken up very slowly by this memory leak from Quicktime via the activity window but I doubt it is going to crash my system for another few hours. I am still unsure about this Quicktime thing and as Nick rightly pointed out I was openly presuming this.

So instead of 6 videos being opened in the background, now none are only deployed when triggered; if this makes sense?

In terms of videos being triggered rapidly by your patch Vanakaru; I imagine it relates back to Marks post above;

1. You request movie 5 (i.e., send a 5 to the 'movie' input)
2. Before the background preload of movie 5 completes, you request a different clip -- e.g., movie 6 -- by sending a 6 into the 'movie' input
3. Movie 5 goes off to the nether world, consuming memory and resources

So in theory if you trigger 5 clips in quick fire rapid style, even though a video has not played fully and you are on to the next one, it is still processing in the background threads and 'inner workings' and after a period of time, will slow your machine down. Resulting in a hang up/lock up or crash.

Hope this helps for now.

Graham

[particlep]

@Skulpture

it's good to read that you're getting somewhere with the hang time senario. 

after reading it i drifted off into memories of dvd control in show control mode and a thought occurred to me:- what if you actually only worked with two or even just one video file ?

it would require a radical re think to how you programmed the thing, but in theory if it were to be only one video, you'd simply be locating and playing within one video.

[mark]

Well, let me just add that even if you select 1000 movies per second, Isadora should be smart enough not to crash. I thought I'd handled this problem but I'll revisit it as soon as I can.

Best Wishes,

Mark

[vanakaru]

@Skulpture

Look at the macosxhints forum. There is a possible clue for us to think about:

Looking at the crash log you provided, I see that the IsadoraCore process is not taking up much memory (see "Task Size") so it is unlikely to be an issue with a memory leak. But I see that it is running a huge number of JavaScript threads. I suspect something going astray there. (Again, this is something for the developer to solve, not you)

[Skulpture]

Javascript? Hmmmm.

I've replied anyway with some of my replies/investigations.

[mark]

Dear Vanakaru + Graham,

Don't be fooled by those javascript threads; that's actually QuickTime doing its thing -- it's most definitely isn't JScript. I think if there are tons of threads sitting around, it all goes back to my comment above about background movie loading, etc.

Graham, if you're still having trouble with this, let's talk about it next week and see if you can provide me with a test case.

Best Wishes,

Mark

[jacwdale]

The Isadora watcher looks and sounds great though I can't get it to run. I don't have any experience of automator so this may be why.

When running the script it notes that and unknown token can't go after this identifier and then highlights the firsttwo letters of the script PK but I'm not sure what to do to fix this. 

Can you shed any light?

Thanks

Jack

[Skulpture]

Can you take a screen shot for me please?

Thanks,

Graham

[Skulpture]

Make sure you download the latest one I made this one:

[http://troikatronix.com/troikatronixforum/discussion/download/228/Isadora%20Watcher%20%28MC%29.app.zip](http://troikatronix.com/troikatronixforum/discussion/download/228/Isadora%20Watcher%20%28MC%29.app.zip)

Open it in Automator and you will see which sections to change:

- Isadora File (and location)

- Isadora Version (and location)

[bruper]

which OS?

[mark]

Did you download Graham's version or my version? Mine is called Isadora-auto-restart.scpt -- I posted it in November.

Read my comments inside the script carefully: you need to modify the two properties at the top of the script for it to to work.

Give it a try. If it doesn't work, let me know.

Best Wishes,

Mark

[mark]

Dear All,

A user needed some help setting up the script I posted. I'm posting instructions here, and attaching the my version of the script again for everyone's benefit. I've also embedded the instructions into the script itself.

-- M

----------------------

The attached AppleScript will re-boot Isadora automatically if Isadora crashes for some reason. To customize it for your setup, please follow these instructions.

1) Unzip the attached file

2) Double-click the script

3) At the very top you'll see this:

-- change this property to the full path to the 

-- Isadora application you wish to run

property gIsadoraFullPath : "/Applications/Isadora/IsadoraCore 1.3.0f24.app"

-- change this property to the full path of the 

-- document you wish to open

property gDocumentFullPath : "/Isadora watcher/test.izz"

You need to change these two paths so they are specific to your computer. The easiest way to get these paths is to use Apple's Terminal application, which is located in the Utilities folder.

So...

4) Open the Terminal application

5) Drag the Isadora application into the Terminal Window -- you'll see the full path appear there.

6) Copy the full path and paste replace the text "/Applications/Isadora/IsadoraCore 1.3.0f24.app" in the script with the text you copied. (It is very important that this path is enclosed in double-quotes!)

7) Hit return in Terminal -- you'll get an error like "/Applications/Isadora/IsadoraCore.app: is a directory" -- ignore this.

8) Repeat steps 5-7 with your Isadora document. Except you'll replace the text "/Isadora watcher/test.izz" with the text that appears in Terminal.

c2c74b-isadora-auto-restart.scpt.zip

[Skulpture]

Even though I cracked this I sometimes get automator crashing believe it or not.

I have since found this which I might investigate further...

[http://blairneal.com/blog/installation-up-4evr/](http://blairneal.com/blog/installation-up-4evr/)

[Aolis]

Hello all,

I am currently in the process of researching this type of auto-restart method and am wondering if there is a way of ensuring that the video input is initialized when Isadora comes back up after an auto-restart?

-A

[Aolis]

So - I haven't figured out how to initialize the camera automatically - but I cam across this software that pushes a webcam to a syphon server: https://code.google.com/p/syphon-camera/

The syphon input initializes automatically and thus the video comes up when the system recovers from the crash.

Would still want to know how to use the built in video-in though if anyone knows how.

-A