“68. Effects: Improved the size of custom sim blob text, reducing them to about 60% of their former size”   “71. Effects: Added a check in the ‘Combine as cake’ and ‘Combine as chain’ functions for whether VDL is too large, more than 16384 characters, and display error message to user if so.”     Oh, nice! I knew about the 68 update but somehow missed the error message update. I stopped making such complex effects, so apparently haven’t hit the limit since then but that’s good to know. I recently had problems combining some old effects and the results were similar to problems caused by VDL length limits but it must have been something else. I ignored it and moved on, but if I run into it again, I’ll check into it to document and report.

Neil — it’s true that the character limit for the VDL field in the Effects window has not changed. But we did make other meaningful improvements to address this issue. Specificity, we improved the compression of the custom sim “blob text” significantly, and we added a warning this is displayed when combining effects if the resulting effect will exceed the length limit.   Here are the notes from the July 27, 2023 (2023.07.27) full release:   68. Effects: Improved the size of custom sim blob text, reducing them to about 60% of their former size   71. Effects: Added a check in the ‘Combine as cake’ and ‘Combine as chain’ functions for whether VDL is too large, more than 16384 characters, and display error message to user if so.   Walker Pyrotechnics — If you combine effects to create a cake and don’t get an error message, then that means the VDL length is not the issue. But if your cake doesn’t look like you expected, then something else must be going on. If you can send me a show file with the single shots that you would like to combine into a cake arranged on the timeline, I would be happy to troubleshoot the issue.

The length limit is still an issue. If you have your individual effects created and the problem only happens when combining them into a cake, one (sort of) work-around is to keep 2 versions of the problematic cake — one version that is just the individual effects/tubes arranged on the timeline, but grouped together as a group (so it’s represented with a single handle/marker on the timeline like a cake), and then another, less accurate version that actually works as a cake just to use as a placeholder when you finally export your script. This can be tedious with multiple cakes but it does offer a way to have a more accurate sim for visual use and planning (even if the sim is way too complex to store with current VDL limits), then another sim to swap in when you export the script.

Did this ever get fixed? I am attempting to create a cake with very specific timing, and I believe I am having the same issue as was posted over a year ago. My broken cake simulation is perfect, but once I combine as a cake the effect is not correct at all. Thanks!

Thanks Will (and DrewFinale) – that’s exactly what has happened! I’ve dragged out the effect to less than 25s but made the duration a multiple of 1/10th of a second and the exported script is now the same as the other method I used to change duration, and over 25s the extra lines are there in the script. One learns something new every day 🙂

Hello Blackbat, the fireTEK firing system has millisecond resolution for event times, but only 10ths of second resolution in the duration field of its script.  Finale exports the script as efficiently as possible, with the fewest number of rows.  If the user’s chosen duration is a multiple of 10ths of a second and is shorter than 25 seconds, then Finale can represent the event with a smaller number of rows, employing the duration field; but if the duration is not a multiple of 10ths of a second or if the event is longer than 25 seconds, Finale uses start and stop rows to represent the duration accurately even though it takes more rows.   I cannot be certain this explanation applies to your example, but it seems to fit the details.   Will

Hi Blackbat, it sounds like you’re taking a methodical approach to get your footing with DMX, that’s great! Assuming that the effect duration is the only thing changing, I would expect the scripts to be identical. To help troubleshoot the issue, I’m going to loop in my colleague Will, the developer on our team who handles DMX.

I’m new to the DMX world but have a firing system (fireTEK) capable of DMX control so thought I’d try and learn about DMX. I’ve bought a cheap DMX light and created it as a fixture in My Effects, and have added some colour light effects to the fixture, and exported a firing script with DMX information. So far so good.   If I right click on the light effect on the timeline and edit properties, I can change the duration of the effect and this is reflected in the duration column in the exported 2 line script. If instead, however, I drag the right hand end of the effect on the timeline to change the duration the resulting script is different. Instead of two lines for pins 101 and 102 with dmx values of 255, RampX 1 and the specified duration, I get four lines with dmx values of 255 at the start time for the first two lines and dmx values of 0 at the end time for the new 3rd and 4th lines. All with RampX 0 and duration 0.   I suspect that both scripts will work, but am wondering why two different looking scripts result from changing the duration in two different ways. Is this a bug?

Thanks Drew.  I understand.  Meters only, no feet.