OtsAV Silver Skipping Tracks

[fm100]

So, I am just a hobby enthusiast and have noticed recently, if you set a playlist in a playlist order, it now skips a track, moving onto the next one, resulting in you having a gap at the end of your playable playlist.  Windows 10 and have reinstalled OTS, same issue seems to be happening.  Any thoughts?

[Lane]

Try a re-link.

[socialdancer]

Just to add a bit more detail. Ots will typically skip a track and move on if it cannot play the track for some reason.

Two common causes:
1 for MP3 files coded in some slightly non-standard way, eg bit rate.

2 for Ots files.  Most likely reason is the prog cannot find the file in the location listed in the database (.oml file).  It may have been moved or the HDD drive mapped to a different letter etc.  Whatever the cause, Ots will mark the track as 'unavailable' in the database and move on.

Performing a Relink Unavailable Albums as suggested will make Ots search for the missing tracks and update their locations in the oml database.

[fm100]

Thanks Everyone for Replying - track is fine as you can drag it back into the playlist and it plays fine.  So no need to relink or check codec of the ots file.  Can happen totally at random.  I'm thinking along the lines, that it can't load the track in time (usually loads next track automatically at 10 sec before outro of previous, maybe that needs extended as HDD has 16K ots files at present.
I wonder is that possible to extend the period of loading the track from 10 seconds, to something else?

[milky]

Does your hard drive have a power save mode? Some drives spin down when there is no activity, and take too long to spin back up again. There is a small program called "keep alive" or something similar, which will ensure that the drive remains active.

[socialdancer]

Loading the next track should take only a fraction of a second unless, as Milky suggests, the HDD has spun down to save power.

If the drive is external you should also check the USB connection.  Don't trust a cheap cable, always use a good quality one.

Finally, check for anything else running on the PC that could be hogging the system, ege virus scans, drive indexing or the dreaded Windows update.

[fm100]

Thanks Guys for the info - internal hard drive in use  and not set to go to sleep at any time so active all the time.

Loads next track very quickly (even if it skips a track).  Think it could be a bug, just noticed more often recently skipping tracks on set playlists, resulting in "dead air" at the end of a set playlist, and a quick look to see what happened, and you notice the "skipped track", in history but play info remains unchanged (eg. last played 2 months ago).

[socialdancer]

That's typical for a track that failed to load for some reason.  I would still suspect Windows or the PC rather than Ots at this stage.
Some HDDs are known to doze occasionally rather than spin down.  Try this little test:

Put 4 good tracks in the playlist. Right click on the second one then Insert Directive/Time Sync.  Enter a time about 20 mins in the future.

Start the playlist running.  The first track should play then Ots will wait until just before the allocated time sync before loading the next track ready to play on time.
Leave the PC alone while waiting to allow bits to sleep if they want to and see if the next track gets skipped.

[fm100]

Thankyou for the recent reply - have done all the checks / adjustments suggested by other team members, and the issue still occurs.  Luckily I caught this one (in time to avoid "dead air" and captured a screenshot, which is attached.

Any suggestions / recommendations to cure this strange issue recommended.

Ignore the "ads / v/o version" tracks, and apologies for the poor choice of selection of tracks in case that is not to everyone's taste - purely in house / low background music.

[milky]

There are many, many thousands of copies of Ots running around the country, some 24/7/365, so I think that the likelihood of it being a bug is very, very remote. Therefore, it has to be environmental - something about your configuration or setup that makes Ots skip a track from time to time.

Is it always the same track(s)? If you specifically cue a track that has been skipped, does it play OK?
Is it possible to transfer your music folder to a different drive (even a USB stick), just to eliminate the hard drive as the problem?  Maybe grab four or five of the tracks which have failed, and cue them up several times and then see if any of them fail on any of the iterations.
Are there any other background tasks that may briefly take over the system? Anti-virus? Are you on the internet  and something like Facebook or Twitter doing something?

[socialdancer]

Ignore the "ads / v/o version" tracks,

It looks to me as though a couple of the ads tracks were skipped too.

£££££ welcome INTO ADS ££££ is listed twice at 58min

and

CC-WELCOME/INTRO/OUTADS is listed twice at 57min

To see more easily what is being skipped try enabling logging.  The log will list what was actually played and will not show what was skipped.  Compare the log with the history.  Anything in history that is not in the log was skipped.

You have some very short tracks, including some at just 1s long.  They will make it difficult for Ots to work out when to pre-load the next tracks and may cause problems.

Otherwise I agree with Milky that the problem is somewhere else on your machine.  From your screenshot it looks as though several other things are running in the background.  My guess would be that one or more of those is occasionally hogging resources at just the wrong time.

By my reckoning, Alane was skipped at around 00:12 on 5th Jan.  It might be worth using Event Viewer [Windows+R  -open- eventvwr] to look at Windows logs to see what else may have been happening at that time.

[fm100]

Thanks for everyone, who posted replies - much appreciated.  Think I got issue resolved, by restoring Windows 10 (without losing my files option), and OTSDJ works well with no "skipping of tracks".
Unrelated, however, as I am in a recording studio, I seem to have lost a sound driver which I use, to record audio.  The sound driver was "stereo mix real tek" (a virtual driver which converts your "line in" to what PC is playing (and the ability to record using Cool Edit, Adobe etc.  I have googled it, and installed various other drivers which do not work.  Would anybody / be able to assist to provide a link to download this driver.  I have searched (roughly) through the provider of this driver (Realtek) but not there.  Apparently Microsoft through one of their updates, removed this (going by chat on forums) with recent Windows 10 updates.  Again much help will be appreciated.  Was on with Microsoft about this, through chat, and they suggest doing a complete windows reinstallation to see if that works, but that is a last resort.