[monicado]

Hi Jeremy,

I’m having a similar issue with missing results in my data. It appears I’m missing 4 submissions from the following experiment: https://farm.pcibex.net/r/SpzIlM/. I wonder if there is any chance this data can be recovered from the PCIbex server?

Thanks,
Monica

[monicado]

Hi Jeremy, thank you so much for continuing to look into this. I had a lightbulb moment and managed to figure it out. It turns out the problem was with those three particular video files that I had initially changed. Those videos that I put in had an mp4 extension but didn’t have the right codecs or something because were taken out of Elan. I think this prevented them from being run in pcibex. After I realized this, I uploaded yet another version of those problem videos which I think had been edited using a different program and so had been exported as an mp4 file that was compatible with PCIBEX. It worked immediately and now I have no preload issues. I have tested it with someone else who was also able to preload quickly. You may also now be working with the correct mp4 videos.

I think I was lucky because someone else who tried to preload videos had mentioned these issues also and fixed it by converting their mp4 to an mp4 using some conversion software and it also resolved their problem. They were also working with videos originally obtained from Elan, so it might be specific to the exports from that program.

I can send more information about the files if you think that would be helpful to you/others working with video files in the future.

[monicado]

Hi again Jeremy,

I’m sorry about this, but the problem seems to be recurring. The full download of all my resources worked once when I tried the experiment in Safari. But, I emptied my cache in Chrome and restarted my computer and when I tried it again, it was downloading just the same files as before. Safari is also doing the same thing now. As far as I can tell, the file names are exactly the same in the zip and csv.

I’ve also tried to delete/recreate the project again and the same problem continues. Here is the slug for the recreated project: https://farm.pcibex.net/r/RLxaZJ/

[monicado]

Hey Jeremy,

1) Got it! I have tested the Beta version on my experiment a few times now and it has seemed to work so far! Thanks again!

2) I’ve tried both deleting/re-creating the experiment and restarting my browser. It seems to be loading everything properly now. I’ll continue to test and let you know if an issue comes up!

Thanks again so much Jeremy! 🙂

[monicado]

Hi Jeremy,

To follow up on this – I am wondering if the issue with saving is also affecting the files that I need to preload. For instance, for the following experiment (https://farm.pcibex.net/r/MxiUwp/), I just changed the names of the files on my .csv and updated the .zip folder that has the corresponding video files on the server. But, the downloads that are happening are just for the files that were previously unchanged. I haven’t changed the script besides this.

[monicado]

Hi Jeremy,

I’ve got two questions:

1) I was trying to sync my experiment (https://farm.pcibex.net/r/FzdhBx/) with the GitRepository (https://github.com/PennController/penncontroller/), selecting the Main Branch, to get the Beta 2.1 version that you mentioned before. But, I keep getting an error that says the repository is too big to sync. Is this the right repository/branch to select?

2) I’ve been noticing that my PCIbex Farm has been saving either very intermittently or very slowly. I basically have to refresh the page every time in order for it to register any changes I’ve made to the script. A bit ago, other folks in the lab had mentioned encountering the same problem as well. Is there a way to fix this?

Thanks so much!
Monica

[monicado]

Hi Jeremy,

I wanted to follow up on that preloading time issue I mentioned before.

Indeed, it seemed like folks were able to preload much faster (Thanks again for the fix!), at least for the people working in Chrome. However, I think there was an issue in Firefox. Participants were able to load just find in Firefox before the new Beta Penncontroller, participants afterwards reported not being able to load at in Firefox. Once they switched over to Chrome the files loaded almost instantly. Just thought you should know for later versions!

Happy new year!
Monica

[monicado]

I’m somewhat relieved to know that this isn’t an issue on my end and very grateful that you’ve already got a fix in the works!! Lucky me!!

From your earlier message, my understanding was that I don’t have to change anything, my experiment is now operation on the beta version of PennController. Assuming I’ve understood you correctly, I’ve just tested the experiment out on my own computer and it seems to work fine. But, that doesn’t say much since I can’t seem to get a “bad” preload anyway (for me, the preload is always very quick / instantaneous).

Do you have any suggestion about how to see if the new preload for others (aside from running a new batch of participants)?

As always, thanks so much for your help and attention! 🙂

[monicado]

Hi Jeremy,

I’m wondering if you have any advice on the following. I’m running an experiment (https://farm.pcibex.net/r/ldGLsD/) in which people have to watch some videos and decide between some other videos. The issue that keeps coming up is that every once in a while the preload will simply take forever for participants to download or will simply not download at all. The file is not too big (~55MB), so a long download is a little surprising. I’ve warned participants (at many points) to use a desktop and to do the experiment on firefox. And, they have told me that, indeed, they are. Yet, this keeps happening for what appears to be a somewhat “random” subset of participants. In my many tests of the experiment, I haven’t ever encountered the problem.

Do you think this is a server issue? I’m currently hosting on Dreamhost using a shared hosting service. I’ve talked to them to see if there is a server issue on their end, but they didn’t report any outages during the times my participants were having issues. But, I was considering moving to a VPS to get a bit more control to see if this might help. But, I wanted to see if you think there is something else I can be doing to get these downloads more consistent?

[monicado]

Hey Jeremy,

Sorry about that! Here is the link: https://farm.pcibex.net/r/sMlvJt/.

I think this ended up being a Chrome limit thing. I added a warning page to the experiment (in case participants miss/didn’t read the study description) and this has cut down on the issue dramatically! Also, because there wasn’t any grouping variable in the experiment (i.e., for this pilot we just ran one list), I don’t think it was a typo (or else every single person would have gotten that error).

Do you happen to know if they’re going to change this limit issue? I feel like a lot of people use Chrome!

As always, thanks for looking into this!
Monica

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