corrupted screen setup xml file

[msimon]

I just came across this post because the screensetup.dll bug killed me last weekend.
Unfortunately I had to cancel the show, 10 Minutes before the start, and it was the second show of my bosses production NOOOO!

Everything worked well, setting up the hardware and projectors, behaved like expected and we were finished and ready to go when suddenly one of the projectors missed the signal. I tried to fix it in the Advanced Screen Settings but I couldn't´t handle it, so I wanted to restart Resolume. But that wasn´t working anymore.

I had no chance to open my project again. The setup was made in Version 5.1.1. Then I installed 5.1.2 and I tried older versions down til 5.0.4 but it was the same everywhere.
Because I still had some time left I reinstalled Resolume, updated Blackmagic Drivers, Graphics drivers, but still I wasn´t abled to open my project.
When I temporarily renamed the screensetup.dll Resolume started but (for sure) I wasn´t able to put something out.

The Setup is kind of complex with 7 720p Outputs (3 Over Decklink Quad SDI) and 1 Camera Input. But it worked flawlessly during the 4 Week rehearsal process (on some days 12 hours a day.)

Today is reserved for fixing, so if anyone of you has got an idea what could help I´d really appreciate it.

If I´ve found a solution I´ll let you know.

Greetings

Mario

Here is how it looks when it works ;)

[Joris]

Did you try deleting the config.xml and the advanced.xml?

[Zoltán]

.. when suddenly one of the projectors missed the signal.

that one sounds more like a hardware failure for me, maybe as simple as an overheating video card.
So check that your video card is recognized correctly by windows.
First things to do when resolume refuses to start is to rename the Documents/Resolume Arena folder, so arena can start from scratch creating the config files, and removing third party fx plugins.
Then when resolume starts up fine you can re add the composition, then the screen setup, then the plugins and so on to the new config folder..
so how does resolume start up now?

[msimon]

Hey,

thanks for your replies.
I tried both and could finally manage get resolume to start again.
I could figure out that the problem has something to do with the xml file of my screen setup.
If it is in the screen setup folder I could reproduce the starting failure on the windows machine and I tried it on my macbook and there was the same.
So it looks like the solution is to rebuild the screen setup. That would be time consuming but okay.
But now I´ve come across another weird behaviour. Now every screen setup that was created before the crash is causing the same crash. Even the ones that are quite simple one screen, cropped setups.
And all the older setups have been rewritten at the date and are now corrupted. And none of those files are possible to open anywhere, not in resolume and not in textedit.
But when I build a new screen setup now it behaves as expected. It´s reproducible and you can look inside the file via textedit.

I´ve uploaded the .xml file on my airbridge
Maybe some of you can get an idea of whats happening.
https://mab.to/kG9H39G2Y

[Joris]

That file doesn't contain valid xml. It's completely empty...

[msimon]

Yes, and that is what happened to all the other files in the screen setups folder.
It´s showing me the size of it (74kb) but obviously theres nothing more in it.
It´s really strange.

Nevertheless I decided now to rebuild the screen setup, but that feels quite like alleviating the symptoms, but not the cause.

[Joris]

I understand that. I just wanted to indicate it's very hard to find the cause of this problem.

It can happen that because of some unforeseen circumstance, Resolume can no longer load the previously loaded screen setup file. In case of such an event, you can remove the advanced.xml file from its folder in the Documents folder. This file just contains the location of the last used screen setup file, and removing it will force Resolume to load the default, empty screen setup instead.

Resolume should then start normally and you can then try to load the last loaded screen setup manually.

At no point during these proceedings will Resolume will-fully overwrite other screen setup files with empty data. At no point do we access those files for writing at all. Only once they are opened and adjusted do we touch the data, but then we always write valid xml.

I'm very sorry that you lost a lot of work. It sounds like a lot of things went wrong, and in the panic, the data was lost. I'm not sure how we can help prevent this from happening. If you have a suggestion of what we can improve this, I'll be happy to implement it.

[msimon]

Hey Joris,

I´m defiantly not blaming you guys for this. I´m still a huge fan of your work and especially you are the fastest technical responder I have ever seen in my life
I just wanted to know If somebody has come across this issue and may have found a smarter solution than my not backing up properly and having no fall back solution.
That´s something I´ll work on urgently now.