Problems in V4.0.37

  • Setup:
    • Short new script on MacBook M2 v26.3.
    • Only 10 pages with 3 blocks and a few groups on whiteboard.
  • Crashes (in less than an hour):
    • In whiteboard: moving a beat horizontally (back in time).
    • In beat editor: removing a character from a beat.
  • Annoying (not a crash):
    • Mouse cursor gets stuck with push arrows (old bug that came back)
    • Beat name doesn’t refresh in timeline after changing it in beat editor

Sorry, cannot send a crash dump. Proprietary IP. But maybe can duplicate with fake content when I have some time and send that dump. Not hard to crash.

  • Serious bug (lost beat text):
    • In the script panel, edited the last beat of a script (added a line of dialog). Scrolled to top of script, then back to the end. My change was GONE. Hit CMD-Z to try to undo and bring it back. Nothing. Went to type in the line again and POOF, the entire beat reverted to a much earlier version (losing all my recent changes.) Tried CMD-Z, did nothing. Ended up quitting without saving. Reopened the script. End beat restored. Losing edits like that is serious.
  • Annoying:
    • Imported a script from Final Draft. All UPPERCASE action words lost their casing. Had to go through the entire script again, side-by-side with FD, to redo the uppercasing. (Which is further hampered by not having a shortcut key.)

Hi,

It’s extremely serious, and we’ve finally solved it. Please install 4.1.1 beta from Beta Downloads :: Causality Story Sequencer :: Hollywood Camera Work (or switch to the beta channel in the app).

We’ve had knots in our stomachs for quite some time over this issue, and we thought we had it fixed with 4.0.37, but what this actually fixed was a display issue that looked somewhat the same, but was actually never dangerous. Still should be fixed for sure.

The real issue, we now know, has actually been there for two years, and we’re thanking Jesus that it only affected a handful of people, because this was very serious. It depended on specific tiny behaviors on the part of the user, creating a crack where this could happen.

Basically, the only way the app can display a script of any length is because we recycle beat editors. When you scroll down, the beat that disappears out the top of the viewport gets recycled for display at the bottom.

A beat can be both selected (black outline), and the text editor can be open for editing (blinking cursor). These are supposed to go in lock-step, but there’s a crack when you cursor up/down into a different beat, and then scroll and then select something else. Then they got desynchronized, but the editor was still marked dirty, so when the beat was recycled, it would now write the edited text into the new owner of the editor.

In retrospect, we had left a warning in the code two years ago that this should never be allowed to happen. But it wasn’t completely impossible, and Murphy’s Law kicked in, and someone found that way. We’ve now reworked it so that it’s literally impossible.

We’re truly sorry about this bug. It’s a result of too much complexity, and the only solution is to reduce complexity. The redeeming factor is only that the conditions were rare, so even if it has happened to you, it will likely only have affected one or two beats. But still, it’s no consolation if you lost work. We can’t express how sorry we are.

Please install the beta as soon as possible.

Per

Hi,

About Final Draft, it seems they store all their text in the original, typed case, and then they apply styling on top to make it upper case, and since we don’t import the styling, we then lose the upper case unless it’s baked in.

I’ll make a ticket, but it’s not a super quick fix, as we might have to restructure the importer.