Chameleon Showing Temporarily

I have a Gig file setup with several rackspaces that use various amp simulators and other guitar-oriented effects. I never had any issues with this Gig file until yesterday, when all of a sudden, I started having the Chameleon plugin show up temporarily while loading some of the rackspaces. It reports that a certain plugin, e.g. Amplitube 5, is not on my system. However, it then goes away and Amplitube 5 does load. Amplitube 5 is the main culprit, but it has also happened with Nembrini Bst100. Chameleon does not appear every time. For example, I can switch between two rackspaces that both contain Amplitube 5 and Chameleon will show up maybe 75% of the time when I switch to the first one, and 50% of the time switching to the second one.

I wouldn’t worry about it too much except that GP is also crashing occasionally now after switching to a new rackspace. It will sometimes crash while the rackspace is loading, but sometimes it doesn’t crash until a few seconds after the rackspace appears to be fully loaded.

I am using GP 4.1.5 and have predictive loading set to 5.

Thanks!
Tom

What happens when you reinstall the plugins which sometimes appear as chameleon?
Do you have any invalidated plugins showing up in the Plugin Manager Window?

Do you have a crash report?

Then something changed since yesterday! Did you update anything, OS, plugins, etc

Thanks for the quick replies, guys.

@pianopaul
1- I reinstalled Amplitube 5 but it made no difference.
2- Amplitube 5 and BST100 are both enabled in Plugin Manager
3- Does Gig Performer have some means of generating a crash report? I can’t find any info on that. The crash is intermittent - seems to be about 10% of the time when I switch to a specific rackspace. However, all of the plugins in that rackspace appear in at least one other rackspace.

@dhj
The only thing I can think of that has changed since yesterday is that I duplicated a rackspace twice and made some tweaks to the two new ones.

I just discovered something interesting, though. The Chamelon issue only occurs when GP tries to open the GUI of a plugin on rackspace activation. In fact, it happens every time GP tries to open a GUI on a rackspace switch. This can happen in one of two ways:
1- The last view of a rackspace had a GUI open so GP opens that GUI when I return to that rackspace.
2- Some of my rackspaces have code in their script’s “On Activate” method that opens the GUI of Amplitube. However, that code has been in some of my racks for over a week.

I want to make sure it is clear that the plugins do load - it’s just that GP thinks they are unavailable initially, then loads them anyway. However, when GP does crash, it is always after one of these temporary Chameleon episodes.

Tom

Are you on Mac?

No - Windows 11

Hi. My experience the last few days is exactly like the OP describes. I never even saw Chameleon until this week. Suddenly it is a common occurrence, along with some recent crashes on switching rackspaces.

These observations on Win 11 here.

Chameleon states: “This plugin is either missing or has been disabled.”

Well, the plugin is not missing (i.e. deleted from the file system). In fact, as the OP describes, it ultimately loads. What is meant by disabled in this case? Bypassed? Is something just not happening “:fast enough”?

Is there logging done by GP that will have more information about what is happening here?

Do GP developers have a “Gig File corruption detector” available to analyze a submitted gig file?

There’s no magic – something had to have changed on your system. I know you’re doing a lot of GP Script as well. did something change there? Or was there a Windows update? Are you using predictive loading but were not before?

Post your crash reports

When it loads, and in the gig file it is show as Chamäleon
then the saved plugin state differs from the plugin installed.
Are you sure you have the same plugin installed as it was when gig file was saved?

Or was there a Windows update?

FWIW, this does seem to be recent -

Snag_a66126a

S-Gear has also joined my system, first as a trial, then as a purchased license, but the Chameleons are reporting on Korg synths and others, none of which have been updated recently.

Scripts change rather frequently. How does that feed into Chameleon?

Any chance the path to the plugins has changed?

Predictive loading is on. I’m not sure if that is a recent change or a long-standing setting.

Snag_a6d5473

Any chance the path to the plugins has changed?

Not to my knowledge. I mean, I have not moved any of the plugin files. But that is one reason I ask about logs - if GP is looking for something in Location A and not finding it, or finding it elsewhere, it would be quite helpful to read that in a log file, yes?

When you load the gig file and get the Chamäleon, can you load the plugin and save the gig file?
What happens when you reload that gig file, do you get 2 Chamäleons?

Fresh load of a gig saved using Save As … multiple times this AM.

First, a long pause here:

Snag_a9bdc12

Then a set of Chameleons:

and I was able to snap this from the Wiring Diagram:

after which the load completed on its own.

Did you try to do what I suggested?
How looks you plugin manager window?
What paths did you set in plugin manager?

Then turn it off temporarily and see if that fixes the problem!

Then turn it off temporarily and see if that fixes the problem!

Indeed, not getting Chameleons with PL disabled. Very interesting.