OS (e.g. Win10): MacOS Monterey PsychoPy version (e.g. 1.84.x): 2021.2.3 Standard Standalone? (y/n) If not then what?: y What are you trying to achieve?: I am trying to show 150 videos and have participants rate them on Affect Grid and valence/arousal sliders. There are 10 practice videos, and 150 real videos. This works on my 16GB macbook pro, but once I am trying to load the task onto my lab’s 8GB mac minis PsychoPy crashes during the real videos. It usually gets through one video and then crashes, but gets through the 10 practice with no issues. I’m thinking that 150 videos is clogging up the RAM? Is there a way to fix this? I’m loading the videos through an excel sheet pointing to a folder of 150 videos.
What did you try to make it work?:
I double checked that it works on my personal computer, and that all the file path locations are correct. The first video (randomized) usually plays so I know it is not the file path. It gives me this error at the end, though I’m not sure if it’s related: File “/Applications…visual/movie3.py”, line 225 in loadMovie
if os.path.isfile(filename):
file “genericpath.pyc”, line 30, in isfile
TypeError: stat: path should be string, bytes, os.PathLike or integer, not NoneType
Is there a way to preload the movies? Would that help? Thank you!!!
I think what you want is the opposite - preloading loads it to RAM, if you’re loading 150 movies all at once would most likely fill up that 8GB and cause a crash. What you need to do instead is load the movies a few at a time.
Running locally, the best way to do this is with a Static component: add it at the start of the routine with the Movie component in and set the movie to “load during [whatever you called your static component]”
Hi! Thanks for the suggestion. I’m getting a similar error for my task, and I have the same version and OS. I tried your suggestion, and it worked for a few trials, but it still crashes after a few trials and I’m getting the same error. I changed the ISI from 0.5 s to 1.5 s, but that didn’t help. Do you have any other ideas for what to do? I will be doing this in the MRI, so I don’t want to have ISIs that are too long.
Update: Luckily the problem had a much simpler solution than I anticipated. I used a formula to fill out the video file names in my excel file, and PsychoPy read the file names as formulas instead of values, so it didn’t know which movie files to call. After changing all of the cells to values instead it ran through with no issues! I’m hoping to add more videos (~900) in the future, so hopefully no problem arises then. Thank you all for your help!
Static component: add it at the start of the routine with the 
Movie component in and set the movie to “load during [whatever you called your static component]”