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[Trumpetguy]

I have the following zones (attachment), with autmatic zone-switching enabled (2-ch music, multichannel music, movies). When current zone is one of the upper three, and starting a movie (defined by filetype) it always switches correctly to 7.1 Movie zone.

Yesterday I had used used the 'Loopback 7.1' zone, which I use for online web contents where convolution is not possible. Ok, so after a while I started a local movie, but MC did not switch to '7.1 Movie'. Stopped playback, activated '2.0 music' and then started the same movie, it did switch to '7.1 Movie'. Tried some back and forth zones and contents, and most times, after using the two loopback zones, it did not switch to the correct zone when starting local movie or music.

There can be many differences between these zones, but the main difference is that '7.1 convolution' does not run Convolution ('2.0 Loopback' does, btw), but Room Correction DSP. The two Loopback zones function is to run "Open Live...", and it may have been "playing" when I started playing local contents.

A bug?

[mwillems]

I have the following zones (attachment), with autmatic zone-switching enabled (2-ch music, multichannel music, movies). When current zone is one of the upper three, and starting a movie (defined by filetype) it always switches correctly to 7.1 Movie zone.

Yesterday I had used used the 'Loopback 7.1' zone, which I use for online web contents where convolution is not possible. Ok, so after a while I started a local movie, but MC did not switch to '7.1 Movie'. Stopped playback, activated '2.0 music' and then started the same movie, it did switch to '7.1 Movie'. Tried some back and forth zones and contents, and most times, after using the two loopback zones, it did not switch to the correct zone when starting local movie or music.

There can be many differences between these zones, but the main difference is that '7.1 convolution' does not run Convolution ('2.0 Loopback' does, btw), but Room Correction DSP. The two Loopback zones function is to run "Open Live...", and it may have been "playing" when I started playing local contents.

A bug?

You didn't mention how you have your rules setup, but what you're describing may just be part of the way zoneswitch is designed to work. 

When two or more zones are set to mutually "stop playback" in each other, zoneswitch "works" whenever you play a file in one of those zones.  If you play a file in a "disconnected" zone (a zone that doesn't have a mutual stop playback relationship with other zones), zoneswitch does not engage.  The result is that if you play something in a disconnected zone, you need to manually switch back to one of the connected zones to get zoneswitch to route a file.

This functionality exists so you can send files to a disconnected zone at all (i.e. so they don't just get immediately re-routed to one of the connected zones) without having to turn off zoneswitch. 

Have a look at your rules and see whether all your zones share a single set of rules and stop playback in each other.  If that is the problem (i.e. your loopback zones are disconnected), one potential fix would be to include your loopback zones in the rules and mutual switching (the expression I use to detect and route loopback is "[Filename (path)]=[live:////loopback]")

[6233638]

Do you have a rule to stop playback in your Loopback zone?

If I recall correctly, ZoneSwitch works by checking if there is a reason it should not be played in the current zone, before evaluating any other rules. If it's OK to play in the current zone, it won't switch away from it.
Unfortunately, this will often prevent playback when you want it, as the Send to Zone function does not override Zone Switch rules.

[Trumpetguy]

Do you have a rule to stop playback in your Loopback zone?

If I recall correctly, ZoneSwitch works by checking if there is a reason it should not be played in the current zone, before evaluating any other rules. If it's OK to play in the current zone, it won't switch away from it.
Unfortunately, this will often prevent playback when you want it, as the Send to Zone function does not override Zone Switch rules.

I double checked- when activating any of the upper three zones, all other zones are deactivated. Any of the loopback zones should thus have been stopped when switching to e.g. the 7.1 Movie zone. But this does not happen and I do not understand why.

When activating a Loopback zone, there is currently no rule to stop any other zone. I'll report back when I have added this. Maybe it makes a difference? I do not undertand why it should help on my problem, though, but no stone left unturned.

[mwillems]

I double checked- when activating any of the upper three zones, all other zones are deactivated. Any of the loopback zones should thus have been stopped when switching to e.g. the 7.1 Movie zone. But this does not happen and I do not understand why.

When activating a Loopback zone, there is currently no rule to stop any other zone. I'll report back when I have added this. Maybe it makes a difference? I do not undertand why it should help on my problem, though, but no stone left unturned.

It does make a difference, and that's exactly what I was trying (perhaps not too clearly) to describe above.  Zoneswitch only works in both directions when playing files in zones that have reciprocal "stop playback" commands.  A zone that doesn't stop playback in another zone is "disconnected" and will playback whatever you play in it (rules be damned).  Check out Matt's posts in this thread for more: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=76216.0 ,:

"ZoneSwitch rules that don't specify zones to stop will always be evaluated, regardless of the current zone (rules that specify play and stop zones only engage when the current zone is in the play + stop zone set).[emphasis added]"  

Also, in another thread:

There are two basic types of ZoneSwitch rules.

Simple rule that always applies

For example, a rule always plays loopback in the zone called 'My Loopback Zone'.

This rule applies regardless of the current zone.  In other words, even if you're currently in a zone for a DLNA device, if loopback is played, it will go to 'My Loopback Zone'.

To make a rule like this, select no zones in the 'Stop playback in these zones' setting for the rule.


Set of rules that work together to direct playback to only one zone at a time

For example, play music in 'My Music Zone' and video in 'My Video Zone'.  

This creates a mutually exclusive link between the zones.

To do this, you set the 'Stop playback in these zones' setting for each rule to include all the other zones in the relationship.

So 'play music' says play in music and stop in video.  And 'play video' says play in video and stop in music.

The rule will not engage if the current zone is not one of the zones in the relationship.  This way, you can still direct music to a DLNA device (since the DLNA device zone is not in the link).  But if you are in the 'My Video Zone' and play music it will go to 'My Music Zone' as expected.

[Italics added]

[Trumpetguy]

Ok, I think I get it 
Thanks! I'll make sure to report back if it for some reason still doesn't work.

[Trumpetguy]

It works! When using one of the Loopback zones (note it is plural), the three first zones are now disabled. I also added an engaging rule to the three first zones play only when Filename Is Not live:////loopback (trick derived from this thread http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=76320.0).

With only one loopback zone, this zone can be engaged by this criterion: [Filename]=[live:////loopback]
This method will only work when there is one loopback zone. I want two, one with convolution (because live playback works well with stereo+convolution) and another without convolution (multichannel or whatever, intended for sources where convolution is not wanted or doesn't work). So for now I have left the engaging criterion field blank. Still, the first loopback zone starts automatically when Open Live playback starts, which is good even if I do not fully understand why. If I want to use the other loopback zone, I stop playback, manually activate that zone and press play again.

So, a bit cumbersome, but hey, it works