VexFX
Active Member
During our recent demo night for the stakeholders in our show, we noticed a new issue that prevented us from using PangoBeats.
We are running the latest build of BEYOND (as of a week ago) and the latest PangoBeats download.
BEYOND is set to use an audio capture source from our DJ, into a USB sound interface as the "audio device." This is used for audio-reactive cues that are part of our show.
PangoBeats uses the same audio device to detect beats and help set the BPM in BEYOND to match the DJ audio feed.
The problem is that PangoBeats is somehow sending pulses of audio data, somewhat randomly and not super frequently, back into BEYOND that momentarily spike all channels of the audio meter to the max valuje. This breaks all our cues that are audio reactive, as they are set to respond to normal audio levels. Once PangoBeats was closed, this issue went away. We repeated the process multiple times to confirm the source of the audio issues is PangoBeats.
I don't have video of the issue right now, but picture once every 3 to 5 seconds all bars on the audio meter in BEYOND spike at 100% right on the beat. This causes all audio-reactive cues to behave wildly.
Any idea why PangoBeats would be negatively impacting the audio capture inside BEYOND?
It was frustrating to have to pull PangoBeats out of our demo show at the last minute, especially since hitting the spacebar to tap out the beat of a fast song caused BEYOND to crash 2 minutes into the show. Crash recovery was also a nightmare, as almost none of the UI settings are saved when the workspace is saved. This includes things like which workspace page is open in the top workspace view, which workspace page is open in the bottom workspace view, the audio gain level in the audio tab, and the audio release value in the audio tab. So having to wait for BEYOND to slowly load (off an SSD), manually set all the values and tabs back to where they need to be for the show, get everything enabled for the playlist to be active for the timecode portion of our show, enabling laser output in the main workspace, etc. took a few painful minutes. I'm writing a UI/UX report based on our experience with BEYOND, which includes more detailed accounts of these issues, and hope to send it in soon. For the most part, BEYOND has been very stable, but last week we had 3 crashes after a couple of months with no crashes. I have the crash reports saved and will send those in later. It's possible our show laptop was overheating due to the heat here in Los Angeles and our sound stage and front-of-house booth were both pretty toasty. As a precaution, the laptop was shut down for 30+ minutes prior to the show to cool down and booted up right before we started, and all non-critical processes were terminated to reduce load. We even removed the external monitor that was handling video playback from the playlist, as that might have taxed the GPU and generated more heat.
We are running the latest build of BEYOND (as of a week ago) and the latest PangoBeats download.
BEYOND is set to use an audio capture source from our DJ, into a USB sound interface as the "audio device." This is used for audio-reactive cues that are part of our show.
PangoBeats uses the same audio device to detect beats and help set the BPM in BEYOND to match the DJ audio feed.
The problem is that PangoBeats is somehow sending pulses of audio data, somewhat randomly and not super frequently, back into BEYOND that momentarily spike all channels of the audio meter to the max valuje. This breaks all our cues that are audio reactive, as they are set to respond to normal audio levels. Once PangoBeats was closed, this issue went away. We repeated the process multiple times to confirm the source of the audio issues is PangoBeats.
I don't have video of the issue right now, but picture once every 3 to 5 seconds all bars on the audio meter in BEYOND spike at 100% right on the beat. This causes all audio-reactive cues to behave wildly.
Any idea why PangoBeats would be negatively impacting the audio capture inside BEYOND?
It was frustrating to have to pull PangoBeats out of our demo show at the last minute, especially since hitting the spacebar to tap out the beat of a fast song caused BEYOND to crash 2 minutes into the show. Crash recovery was also a nightmare, as almost none of the UI settings are saved when the workspace is saved. This includes things like which workspace page is open in the top workspace view, which workspace page is open in the bottom workspace view, the audio gain level in the audio tab, and the audio release value in the audio tab. So having to wait for BEYOND to slowly load (off an SSD), manually set all the values and tabs back to where they need to be for the show, get everything enabled for the playlist to be active for the timecode portion of our show, enabling laser output in the main workspace, etc. took a few painful minutes. I'm writing a UI/UX report based on our experience with BEYOND, which includes more detailed accounts of these issues, and hope to send it in soon. For the most part, BEYOND has been very stable, but last week we had 3 crashes after a couple of months with no crashes. I have the crash reports saved and will send those in later. It's possible our show laptop was overheating due to the heat here in Los Angeles and our sound stage and front-of-house booth were both pretty toasty. As a precaution, the laptop was shut down for 30+ minutes prior to the show to cool down and booted up right before we started, and all non-critical processes were terminated to reduce load. We even removed the external monitor that was handling video playback from the playlist, as that might have taxed the GPU and generated more heat.
