RaceReplay hanging?

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gpraceman
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Re: RaceReplay hanging?

Post by gpraceman »

Bob - Sorry, I haven't yet been able to dive into all the info that you sent me. Hopefully, later today.


With RR, there are some things I would suggest:

Video processing does take a large amount of CPU processing, especially if handling digital video. So, it does help to shutdown any other applications and background processes that will not be needed during the race. It may even help to go into the Windows Task Manager and assign the RaceReplay.exe process a High priority.

If you want to save video files, make sure that you set a plenty large storage limit. If handling digital video, video clip file sizes will be much larger than for analog video, so that needs to be taken into account. If video files need to be deleted to make space, do not send them to the recycle bin. That will remove one potential slowdown. Minimizing the number of times that RR has to do file cleanup does help to reduce any potential for that operation to cause a slowdown.

What video codec that you use does make a big difference as to the video quality and file size as well as the CPU load. For digital video, I have had good results with the "DV Video Encoder". For analog video, "Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V2". ffdshow is a good source for a MPEG-4 codec, if the one that RR tries to install doesn't (the Microsoft installer for it doesn't always work). You can find other free codecs out there that you can try, just make sure to investigate the site that you are getting them from.

If running on the same computer, use the Network mode with 127.0.0.1 as the IP address. Sometimes local mode can cause GPRM to hang if RR has a problem. The Windows messages between applications are supposed to be "fire and forget", so that should not happen, but it still can. The network messages that GPRM sends are truly "fire and forget", so GPRM can go on its merry way if RR has a problem.


On another note, at the end of a round, RR will not be prompted to run the last heat's replay. There are some technical reasons behind this. So, until a resolution is worked out, you will need to start the replay for that last heat manually from RR.
Randy Lisano
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Awana Grand Prix and Pinewood Derby racing - Where a child, an adult and a small block of wood combine for a lot of fun and memories.
SoloTSi97
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Re: RaceReplay hanging?

Post by SoloTSi97 »

Thanks Randy. I believe that in my testing last night, I did see a replay of the last heat but only after I dismissed the prompt to run a grand finals round, which I won't do. I want paying attention that closely to that particular bit, though.

-Bob
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Re: RaceReplay hanging?

Post by SoloTSi97 »

I know I'm way late in posting this, but I never follows up after our derby in January. For anyone else that may happen upon this thread, we had very good luck during our derby booting the laptop into "diagnostic mode" (which basically loads a limited set of background "stuff") and running RR in network mode as described in this thread. I suspect that even running it in Local mode would have worked okay, since we didn't have issues with hangups in this configuration.

One downside of this approach, completely unrelated to RR and probably specific to my laptop, is that whatever limited video drivers got loaded did not support simultaneously displaying on the laptop screen AND the projector. So, I had to leave the laptop lid closed so that the projector would display. Not a big deal, but I didn't have my wireless keyboard with me. So, the few times that I did need to get in there to type, the projector went black.

This year, I have a brand new laptop, new webcam, etc. ... so I'm planning to do a lot of testing ahead of time!

-Bob
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