We have been using Myriad for just over a year and it has proved to be very reliable and never crashed, that is until we upgraded to V4.23. It will still run happily unattended for days in AutoFade mode but occasionally, when using SegEdit, Myriad closes completely and returns to the desktop. There are no error messages and Myriad restarts without a problem. I know that SegEdit has recently been re-written so perhaps this has something to do with it. Anyone else had this?
Also noticed that SegEdit doesn't like long tracks. When we are loading up our syndicated shows, some of the segments range from 20mins to 3 hours in length. The new feature in SegEdit that allows you to start playback from any point in the track appears to get lost. If you click on a position within a long track it will start from a different point. This is not related to the first issue since the crash happens when using SegEdit on normal length songs.



 
Gavin Davis
HotHitsUK.com

Hi Gavin,

I can confirm we are also seeing this very same issue when in SegEdit . The whole program just freezes or as you say bombs out to the desktop. For us it will also crash out when doing a preview.

This is very annoying when a presenter is live on air as the whole program freezes yet is still playing the current live audio. This then means they have to force it down (ctrl alt del) and do a program restart.

Regards
Mark Carney
Chief Executive & Technical Advisor
Digital Hits Network Limited

Digital Hits One
Home of the Big Hits ...
Online . DAB . 104.4fm
www.digitalhits.one

Thanks Mark,
Reassuring to know we are not alone. Lets see what P Squared suggest.
Gavin


 
Gavin Davis
HotHitsUK.com

Hi Gavin,
as your support contract expired earlier this year, can you supply us with as much up to date information as possible please about your setup:

Windows Operating System version (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10)?
Home or Professional?
32 or 64bit?
Total Amount of RAM?
Processor Model and Speed?
Graphics Card Resolution (Is it dual screen?)
Hard Drive Size?
RAID edition, normal Serial or ATA HDD or SSD (Solid State Drive)?
C:\ Drive Partition and free space?
Do you store the audio files locally on the PC or an external server? 
Is it a NAS or SAN device? 
Or Windows Server OS or Workstation OS?
What is the Soundcard selected for the SegueEditor to use?

Exact Version number and Build Date of Myriad (can be found under Help>About)
What file format your audiowall is set to? Wav or Compressed files? If Mp3 is it Fixed or Variable bitrate?
What file format the audio where these crashes happen?
Can you repeat them? (Does it happen every time with the same bit of audio?)

Are you able to put Myriad into Debug mode and willing to send us debug files?




Regards

David Boulton
Brand Manager
Broadcast Radio Ltd

Hi Mark,

when you say the programme freezes, but Audio continues to play out, can you confirm if the audio plays all the way to the end of the cart, or just for a few seconds more before stopping?

Do you have a Dual Screen system?

Have you noticed when this happens if there is a message box on screen, or if the main Myriad Window has lost "focus"?
Do you use the SegueEditor in "Pop Out" mode?

Did you try the "plugs out" test recommended to you in support item PSQ14016447 as we have not had an update from you on this since 301/10/2014

Regards

David Boulton
Brand Manager
Broadcast Radio Ltd

David, please see answers below:

Windows Operating System version (XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10)?       Windows 7
Home or Professional?      Professional
32 or 64bit?                        32bit
Total Amount of RAM?      8Gb
Processor Model and Speed?      Xeon 3Ghz
Graphics Card Resolution (Is it dual screen?)     1920 x 1080 dual screen same res on both
Hard Drive Size?  OS, Myriad and SQL on drive C: 148Gb capacity with 126Gb free
RAID edition, normal Serial or ATA HDD or SSD (Solid State Drive)?     SATA
C:\ Drive Partition and free space?   148Gb capacity with 126Gb free
Do you store the audio files locally on the PC or an external server?    Locally on drive D: 3TB drive with 2.65 free
Is it a NAS or SAN device?   NO
Or Windows Server OS or Workstation OS?  Windows 7 Pro
What is the Soundcard selected for the SegueEditor to use?   We use a 4 channel AudioScience ASI6500 in SMX mode. SegEdit is assigned to channel 4.
Exact Version number and Build Date of Myriad (can be found under Help>About)         v4.0.23 (Build Date: 21/10/2014 13:26:26)
What file format your audiowall is set to? Wav or Compressed files? If Mp3 is it Fixed or Variable bitrate?           WAV
What file format the audio where these crashes happen?            WAV
Can you repeat them? (Does it happen every time with the same bit of audio?)            No it is totally random.

Are you able to put Myriad into Debug mode and willing to send us debug files?           Not sure how to do this.

 
Gavin Davis
HotHitsUK.com

Hi Gavin,

thanks for that information, that's great - however I cannot find any record of the ASI6500 on the AudioScience website (even under the discontinued products) is there any other information you can supply about the soundcard - driver details, screenshots etc - thanks.

To put Myriad into debug mode there is a couple of ways to do it:

on the shortcut that you launch Myriad from (in the startup folder or using BootStuff), put "/debug" on the end of the target so it look like this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\P Squared\Myriad Playout v4.0\MyriadPlayout4.exe" /debug

(It only says (x86) because i'm on a 64bit OS - the important bit is the [space]/debug)

you should then see some files being created in a folder on your C:\DebugFiles it should now contain several files when you start Myriad.

You need to make sure you are logged on as an administrator to create that folder.

If you experience the same thing happening again, immediately that you have restarted Myriad, goto the Help menu, then Create P2 Support File, can you put PSQ14017547 into the ticket number box and as accurate a description of what you were doing at the time. Depending on the size of the debug files (and if you can send us the audio), and the speed of your internet connection Myriad may become unresponsive during this upload process, if you can please be patient and let it finish, it may be too busy in the background to update the front graphics.

PLEASE BE AWARE: Myriad in general will run a bit slower as it is writing a lot of information to these debug files, also these files can get very large, so if you have not had any problems for a few days with them switched on it is worth clearing them out.



Regards

David Boulton
Brand Manager
Broadcast Radio Ltd

Hi David,

I should have been more specific with the Audio card info. I was looking at the driver name. The actual card is a AudioScience ASI6514.
I'll put Myriad into Debug mode just before the next live show and capture what I can.

Many thanks for you help.

Gavin


 
Gavin Davis
HotHitsUK.com

Hi Gavin,

Ok that's great thanks.

I don't think we have ever used the MPEG range of cards (because even the early versions of Myriad ran on PCM or compressed WAV), are there any settings in the standard driver control panel to tell it what audio format to use?
I'm just wondering if something silly is going on where we are feeding it linear data and its being forced into being converted into an MPEG stream and running out of buffers and erroring??

cheers

Regards

David Boulton
Brand Manager
Broadcast Radio Ltd

Well…I ran Myriad in Debug mode just before a live show and typically, it didn’t fall over once! I’m wondering if there might be a small memory leak that only shows up after Myriad has been running for a number of days and that restarting Myriad has cleared it. I have now left Myriad in debug mode so if it does fall over again hopefully it will show some useful information. (I’m keeping an eye on the size of the log files)

With reference to the second issue I was experiencing when moving around large files in the pop out SegEditor, the issue appears to be related to the “Peak” or “Preview” files. The audio that I had issues with were all syndicated shows that had been imported using the AutoImporter. The peak waveform displayed in SegEdit is from the very first time the cart was imported. When the cart get overwritten with a new show the waveform doesn’t get updated so when you move around SegEdit appears to get confused about it position in the file. The only way I have found to get around this issue so far is to open each audio file in SmoothEdit and then resave it so that the waveform gets updated. Is there any way I can quickly rescan a cart so that the waveform is updated without having to open it in SmoothEdit? Ideally it would be useful if the waveform was updated each time the audio was imported. I noticed there is a setting in the “Global Audio Wall” - others tab that suggest that you can “Use Waveform Preview files if already created”. This is ticked by default but if I un-tick it suggests that it will not automatically create preview files at all.

Any suggestions?

 
Gavin Davis
HotHitsUK.com