Gridiron artifacts

[johnchap]

I have just returned to PTE after a lapse of time, and am running 5.6 on a Medion machine with Windows XP newly installed, 1.5 Gb of RAM and an Athlon 3200+ cpu. A curious problem has arisen. I have made a sequence of 39 slides, with transitions but no animations. When previewing, every so often an image will appear with a squar patch on it, heavily criss-crossed with black bars like a grid-iron or a portcullis. It is about 2ins square on my 19in monitor and appears unpredictably, and not always in the same place. Unfortunately, it carries through to a created pte file as well. I have tried various changes of settings to try and eliminate it, but without success. The screen capture below shows the effect. Can anyone suggest a cause/solution?

[Ronniebootwest]

Hi,

Try re-installing the software first. If that doesn't work I would try running a virus check (just in case)

Ron

[johnchap]

Thanks Ron. Have just tried a complete re-install, but the problem is still there - worse, if anything. And a virus scan does not throw up anything.

John

[Ronniebootwest]

I'm sorry that didn't work for you but someone else just might know the answer soon.

It might be that something went wrong during your downloaded from PTE. It might be worth

deleting what you have already and downloading again from the WNsoft site!

Just a thought!

Ron

[Ken Cox]

TRY MAKING A NEW SHOW

use same picts , settings etc cw with a new name

start out with say 5 picts then start adding more - 5 at at time

see what happens

ken

[thedom]

I am not sure if it will change anything but you can try to install the last driver available for your graphic card.

[johnchap]

Disappointment. I did as you suggest, Ken - made completely new sequence, but with same images. At the 'rough cut' stage, all seemed fine. So I went ahead and fine-tuned transitions, added captions etc - and ran preview. As I got to the last few images, the dreaded portcullis appeared again! Has such an artifact been seen before?

[Igor]

I'm sure this visual issue definitely related with video card. Please update or re-install drivers of video card via Windows Update.

[johnchap]

Igor - I have now downloaded and installed the very latest driver for my card, an Nvidia Geforce 6200 with Turbocache. Sadly, it hasn't cured the problem. The 'portcullis' is still appearing in the last few images of the sequence. I will try creating a DVD from the project to see if the issue carries over.

[Igor]

Please start a new project, add several photos and create executable EXE file. Do you see this visual defect?

Also try a new version 6.0 (Release Candidate) - http://www.wnsoft.com/apr/picturestoexe-beta.zip

Really interesting visual problem. Images are damaged in video memory.

[johnchap]

Igor - I think you may have hit on the source of the problem. I was making the sequence with my original jpg files from the camera - which vary in size from 4 to nearly 8 Mb. I have just batch reduced all the files to 50% of their original size, which brings the file sizes down to around 500 kb, and remade the sequence, with all the same images. I have just run a preview, with music and transitions (but no captions) and there was no problem. Could it be that my large file sizes were overloading the video card memory?

[Igor]

Thanks for this important detail. I can only make a conjecture that there is a problem with shared video memory and large images utilize damaged sectors of the memory.

We have a laptop with NVIDIA GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache and I'll perform this test.

Could you check up size of video memory?

Press Win+R keys, type "dxdiag" and press enter, choose third tab (Display) in appeared window and let me know size of video memory.

[johnchap]

Have just run the check and it shows 256Mb of memory. A bit low, I guess!

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Thanks for this important detail. I can only make a conjecture that there is a problem with shared video memory and large images utilize damaged sectors of the memory.

We have a laptop with NVIDIA GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache and I'll perform this test.

Could you check up size of video memory?

Press Win+R keys, type "dxdiag" and press enter, choose third tab (Display) in appeared window and let me know size of video memory.

Very interesting test, how much video memory is needed to use the current beta version of PTE to it's full potential? Will the same test work on Vista & Windows 7.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1

PS the disappearing text is still a problem for me on the forum.

[johnchap]

Further to my last: I returned home last night and ran my new, low file-size, version again, as a preview - and the fault appeared again on several slides. I created an exe file and ran this, and it was even worse. So reducing file size alone is not the answer.

I have also tried closing all possible programs and processes before running PTE, and shutting down and re-booting. Still the 'portcullis' appears, apparently randomly, on some slides and not others - but always towards the end of the sequence.

Is this a software conflict? Or do I need a new video card? Let me know if I can help with further information.

PS I have just downloaded PTE 6 and run the same sequence with it. The defect is still there.

[Igor]

For normal work of PicturesToExe and executable slideshows it's required at least 128 MB of video memory.

Even if some slideshow uses heavy images which take more than 128 MB memory, DirectX performs smart management of memory and will use system memory of PC in addition to video memory of video card.

Sometimes I heard about problems with similar visual artefacts on images and re-installing of video drivers always helped. It's first case when it doesn't help. I'm afraid it can be a hardware issue.

Do you have other 3D applications or 3D games to test work of video card?

[Igor]

We just tested on Sony laptop with NVIDIA Geforce 6200 TurboCache. It worked without problems.

[johnchap]

Eureka! I think I have found the source, if not the cause, of the problem. Lying in bed last night, it occurred to me that the defect only arose after a particular slide to which I had applied a customised effect - the Curling Page transition. When I change that to a simple dissolve, or one of the other simpler effects, the issue disappears! So it seems that my set-up cannot handle the more complicated 3D effects (though it runs the Marine Aquarium screen-saver suggested by Tom above without problem).

It might be interesting to run a test with your Sony laptop again, Igor, with the Curling Page incorporated.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Eureka! I think I have found the source, if not the cause, of the problem. Lying in bed last night, it occurred to me that the defect only arose after a particular slide to which I had applied a customised effect - the Curling Page transition. When I change that to a simple dissolve, or one of the other simpler effects, the issue disappears! So it seems that my set-up cannot handle the more complicated 3D effects (though it runs the Marine Aquarium screen-saver suggested by Tom above without problem).

It might be interesting to run a test with your Sony laptop again, Igor, with the Curling Page incorporated.

I've been using curling pages since they were introduced on both my laptops a Sony circa 2004 and a Samsung circa 2007 & have never experienced the gridiron effects. Just a thought did you take the picture the effect is showing or has it come from elsewhere? Finally the image on your first post is a bitmap, have you tried the show using jpegs?

Yachtsman1

[johnchap]

Yachtsman: Thanks for your interest. All the pictures concerned have been taken by me, all on the same camera,and all are jpegs. The screenshot attached to my original post is a bitmap because that seems to be what you get when you use PrtScn.

I suspect this visual effect is peculiar to my particular machine.I have tried re-making the show with PTE6; but as soon as I insert a page-curl, I get the gridiron a few slides later.

[Igor]

Please could you make as far as possible short demo where you can reproduce this visual problem? And then upload this EXE file to http://www.mediafire.com

I'll try this demo on our Sony laptop with Geforce 6200.

[AnKo]

Chapper,

Just to be sure, did you installed DirectX 9.0c?

Andre

[johnchap]

Igor: I have made a small sequence of ten images and uploaded the 4.8Mb file to Mediafire with the name Gridiron test.exe. The third slide has the Curling Page transition; on my machine, the gridiron artefact appears on slides 6, 8 and 10. I will be very interested to learn whether it happens with your Sony.

Andre: I am pretty certain I have updated to DirectX9, but I will have to find out how to check.

Later: I have now checked and can confirm - I have DirectX 9.Oc, and it seems to be working OK.

[Ken Cox]

CHAPPERS

too bad you did not publish the mediafire link - I imagine others would would also test it

ken

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Igor: I have made a small sequence of ten images and uploaded the 4.8Mb file to Mediafire with the name Gridiron test.exe. The third slide has the Curling Page transition; on my machine, the gridiron artefact appears on slides 6, 8 and 10. I will be very interested to learn whether it happens with your Sony.

Andre: I am pretty certain I have updated to DirectX9, but I will have to find out how to check.

Later: I have now checked and can confirm - I have DirectX 9.Oc, and it seems to be working OK.

If there isn't any music in your sample clip, 4.8mb sounds a lot for 10 slides, my 600 slide plus show with 20 music tracks running for one hour is 188mb, your equivalent would be at least 288mb, this is just an observation not a critisism or solution.

Yachtsman1