Only activate 1 rackspace

Scripting with Gig Performer
21

I thought I’d add one more thing. From many of the conversations I have seen, I wonder how well the predictive loading feature is really understood. With predictive loading off, as I understand it, GP preloads certain elements of all the rackspaces. With the advent of the VST3 standard, many of todays current plugins work a lot better with respect to loading, but there will be some overhead. Then there are culprits who don’t play nice and load things up.

So predictive loading was introduced, a feature that looks ahead and behind on your setlist to allow you to switch seamlessly with minimal wait time - and reduced resource usage. The “odd number” in the predictive loading feature is as it is because you have the current rackspace, then the one (or more) ahead and one (or more behind). In other words, with a value of 5, it has the current one loaded, plus the two ahead and two behind.

It is interesting to note that, as I understand it, if a value of “1” was possible to select, that would mean only the current rackspace would be loaded. To change to any other rackspace, even the next one in the setlist, would be the same thing as jumping around to any other rackspace not covered by the normal predictive loading feature. As a consequence, it would be the equivalent of having a gig file of only one rackspace, and swapping out (importing/exporting) rackspaces on the fly, something that has been discussed in other posts. In other words, doing this saves the overhead and time of having to load GP each time, just the import/export time - which is very fast. Once you get past having only 1 rackspace per gigfile, well that scenario would be the same as either predictive loading off and GP loading the two rackspaces, or if a gig file had 3 rackspaces, having predictive loading set to 3 - or off, as all 3 rackspaces would be loaded. I don’t have a clue, but I would guess that the “new” version feature is a more streamlined version of importing/exporting rackspaces. Time will tell.

One of the other offhand comments in the documentation is the ability to just drag and drop rackspaces in the setlist, and if you have any inkling of what your future songs might be on any given day, an easy way to get it in the predictive loading bracket. With judicious use of the number of rackspaces in a gigfile, predictive loading, and export/import, you can pretty much have your cake and eat it too with the current version. It will be interesting to see what the update brings :slight_smile:

It might help too to review the documentation and videos available on predictive loading. I know I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. Note - my references to Import/Export are part of the File Menu in the Main Ribbon. I can’t find anything in the user manual to link to, but experimenting is pretty straightforward to figuring out the choice. Please see the links below.

User Manual - Predictive Loading

Predictive Loading in Gig Performer

1 Like
22

Thanks for putting in the time for that post. I appreciate the input this community offers trying to help solve my issue, which I’m thinking is probably just not possible with scripting at this point because no one has said it is possible haha so I’m going to leave it be and see what the future holds.

I understand the nature of having only one rackspace eliminates the “predictive” element, and if it were my own operation I would be able to try the individual rackspaces as their own gig file which would solve the problem and eliminate extraneous loading/unloading processes when switching songs, it’s just the nature of the archiving and time stamping protocol prevents me from breaking up the rackspaces, otherwise I would have 80+ rackspaces that have to be time stamped and archived several times a day during rehearsal blocks, so it’s just a unique problem I guess.

Regardless, thanks everybody for the input!

23

Even though your use case might be unique, many of us have the same frustration you’ve described. I understand the use case for predictive loading, but that feature solves a different problem. The issue many of us have is that when jumping around a large set-list in a live or rehearsal situation, predictive loading is not the solution (even with a value of 3).

If we can have a value of 3 or above for predictive loading, why can’t we have a value of 1 and only load the current rackspace? I know I’m over-simplifying, but I’m looking forward to the next version of GigPerformer and really hope we get this feature.

24

Well you can do exactly that - have only one rackspace loaded, and then open a completely new one and close the old one using the close/import commands on the main menu. As I said previously, the hints that are being dropped is the way this is done is getting an upgrade to make it more visible and easier to use. And to repeat my disclaimer, this is pure speculation on my part (the “how” part), but Nemanja (@npudar) has made it clear that this feature is coming. I’m chomping at the bit to see this and some of the other goodies, especially the sampler feature which, at first looks, is going to be spectacular.

1 Like
25

Well, I don’t want to be going anywhere near import menus in a live context:) Ideally, I’d love to have all my songs loaded in a single gig and when selected, the import/close actions happens transparently. In my case, the actual ‘selection’ would be done in MobileSheets which would load (via MIDI PG) the corresponding Song/Rackspace in GigPerformer.

Fingers crossed!

26

Be careful here — when plugins are not preloaded - you’re going to have a different problem (outside the control of GP) — when a plugin is loaded, it may choose to contact its home server, possibly performing other licensing or admin operations and you have no control (neither do we) for how long that can take. So even if you could load just one rackspace, you could still have long delays when you jump to a rackspace that is “far away” and so has to load a plugin that hasn’t already been seen.

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27

Yep, but I’d have the same issue hitting that plugin with predictive loading - I’d just see the error message quicker with a value of 1! :slight_smile:

As always, test plugins and refresh plugin updates regularly before gigs to mitigate this risk.

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But you won’t see an error message, it’s simply that the delay time is non-deterministic.

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