Playback Connection Does Not Fully Start

[timmbbo]

I can not fully initiate a playback connection. When I start it, the Playback window does appear; however, Start date never activates. The Start date stays grayed out, even when I've waited for over 24 hours. Furthermore, the machine I'm running on is a brand-new install of Windows 10, and this is a brand-new installation of NT8. NT8 is the only program I have loaded on this machine. Finally, I have tried this with an empty /replay director, and a /replay directory with my data in it, with no change of outcome..

Your thoughts? Thanks,

[NinjaTrader_Jason]

Hello timmbbo,

Can you please shut down NinjaTrader and empty the Documents-->NinjaTrader 8-->db-->replay folder. Start NinjaTrader and download a few days of Market Replay data at Control Center-->Tools-->Historical Data-->Get Market Replay data. Subsequently connect to the Playback connection and check if you can change the start date.

[timmbbo]

Jason, I found the problem - the replay database wasn't built.

On this machine, it's not hooked up to the network, since I'm only running it for simulations and back tests. So instead of downloading the replay data over the net, I copied it over from one computer, onto the target computer. Well, it appears that just having the data in the /replay directory, by itself, is insufficient. When I started the Playback Connection, it would hang. When instead I would go to Tools -> Database Management, and then have NT build the database from the copied information already placed into /replay directory, then Playback Connect would complete.

This issue touches upon another topic for me. NT is a wonderful product, with crappy diagnostics. In this instance, instead of staying forever hung, NT should have eventually timed out with a meaningful error message. In my last post, I mentioned how I was confused on creating a connection. I was getting an "incorrect username / password" error, when I knew both were right. Instead, the problem weas an incorrect license key.

Any movement you can make on this issue would be appreciated. Thanks,

[NinjaTrader_Zachary]

Hello timmbbo,

Thank you for your response and for the feedback.

I'm glad you seemed to have figured out the problem and were able to get things working. I have previously seen a similar issue occur when there is invalid or irregular data that has been placed within the folder, or some of the file names are improperly formatted. Often those are accompanied by some kind of error in the diagnostic data/log. I'm not sure if that was necessarily the case in this particular instance but we may have been able to extract more information about this particular problem by reviewing the log and trace files. You are always free to send those to us by going to Help > Email Support and sending an email to our support team so that we can review them in the future as well, and we're happy to continue to assist.

Additionally, we appreciate your feedback regarding the error messaging in the platform. I've passed the feedback along to my manager and development team on your behalf.

Please let us know if we may assist you any further.