xConvertor.exe - aka the xlights File Convertor
AMEN for this hidden gem xlights utility ... I honestly didn't know it existed till tonight ... because I didn't see it in the xlights interface anywhere ...
so only via. reading these forums did I learn about the existence of this hidden utility and then looked for it (and finally found it) under C:\Program Files (x86)\xlights on my Windows7 machine.
I believe my problems (on certain sequences) were related to its LARGE file size or just something strange in the sequence that xlights could not process properly. Specifically, I'm talking about LOR S3 sequences and I was unable to play certain pixelnet channels onto a DMX controller Coro Northstar ... but only on a couple sequences only ... and yes, same config file was used. I'm not sure what made these sequences unique, unless it was large file size or just some strange mix of metadata that caused xlights to not play correctly. I noticed that if I ran the sequence standalone ... it would never work correctly the first time. BUt then if I hit stop of the xlights player and then played it a second time, it would work correctly. That was strange, but seemed to work in both sequences I had problems with. If I ran it via. the scheduler, it would never work correctly on these certain display items (i.e. the CoroStar).
In the end, by converting the LOR S3 sequence from an LOR .lms file ... to an xlights .xseq file ... all the problems went away. In the case of one sequence, it dropped from 32.5 Mb to
10 Mb ... but in the second file it started at 10 Mb and ended at 10 Mb ... but still fixed the problems (but didn't have the same size reduction).
I had previously tried converting the audio to use various bitrates and even a .wav file ... but that never solved the problem of certain display items not showing. It seemed that all bitrates and formats worked fine (at least for me).
I wanted to post a thread to advertise what has been a huge problem solving utility for me. I am now under the impression that I should convert all my sequences to .xseq format based on the gains I saw from doing this with my two problem sequences. I wonder what else may have been fixed or improved?!!
Thanks again!
Scott