PTE 5.52 crashes...

[goddi]

Greetings,

I have been working on a 5.52 PTE slideshow. When I was adjusting some text in O&A, it crashed and I got the following error messages:

"Canvas does not allow drawing". Then I got:

"Access violation at address 004D6573 in module 'Apr.exe'. Write of address."

I was able to clear out all the program and start it again. But, again, I got same or similar error messages. I also got a strange screen with "madException non commercial edition".

And I also got "Access violation at address 7C918FEA in module 'ntdll.dll. Write of address 00000010".

I closed it down, rebooted. But, I was able to recreate the initial error messages when I tried to play the show with the mini-player. Got the "Canvas..." and an "Access violation..." error message.

Something else has been happening before all the above started. For some time, it has been happening but I've ignored it until now. What has been happening is that when I make some changes and run Preview (without doing a Save or Create first), the PC and the keyboard locks up. I have to wait several minutes; then the Preview runs.

Not sure how to diagnose these problem. Can someone give me some ideas??? I will poke around some more to see what happens.

Thanks...Gary

[goddi]

I've noticed where the 'glitch' seems to be. I had made some intro text-only slides by deleting the image and putting in text. I did this about 5 times for introductory text slides. When I start the mini-player at some other point than these intro text slides, the mini-player plays fine.

However, when I have it start on the first slide with the mini-player, the mini-player get 'stuck' on the second slide. It continues to play the music but the image of the second slide stays on the screen. I tried dumping the 5 intro text slides but it would not clear it up. I closed the program and reopened it and then I was able to dump the 5 intro text slides.

It appears there may be some corruption with the second slide. But I did nothing that I have been doing normally in the making of text-only slides. I will try dumping all the text-intro slides and redoing it but it does not make me feel comfortable if we can not figure out what is making the program crash.

So any advise will be welcomed.

Thanks... Gary

[potwnc]

I've had the same error messages and similar problems - although not from doing the same thing, I was switching between slide and timeline view as the miniplayer played the show. My files were very large and WnSoft support said to use smaller files.

[goddi]

I've had the same error messages and similar problems - although not from doing the same thing, I was switching between slide and timeline view as the miniplayer played the show. My files were very large and WnSoft support said to use smaller files.

I did have many of the images larger than normal. I have not reduced them yet. However, I just dumped all of the images except for the first 10 images, which all now are reduced. But I still get this problem of the mini-player getting stuck on the 2nd slide. Music plays but the image stays stuck in the mini-screen. The cursor drops down to each slide as it normally does but will not display the image. And then I can not get any of the other images to display in the mini-screen, even if I stop the mini-player. If I close the program, it clears up until I start the mini-player again on the first slide. It is reproduceable every time. I have found that if I dump the first 3 text only images, the problem goes away.

I'd really like to know what caused the corruption or the problem.

Gary

Added later:

P.S. I just tried somemore testing. I tried to just edit the text blocks in the first text-only intro slides. Problem did not go away. Then...I deleted the text blocks and re-made them and the problem DID go away. So it seems something to do with how PTE created the text blocks that created the corruption.

I hope Igor will look at the file and tell me what happened.

[goddi]

Well.... I did some more testing...

I found another way to make the problem disappear:

I had the Comments to show the FileName. I openned the file and before I did anything to it, I first went to the Comments and changed it to show FileNumber, instead of FileName.

To my surprise, the problem went away. I tried this several times and each time this also did the trick (as well as the previous thing I did of deleting and recreating the text blocks in the first several text-only slides).

Not sure how these 2 'fixes' have to do with each other but I hope Igor will determine what is going one.

Gary

[Igor]

Gary,

Thanks, I just sent you PM message. I need project files.

[goddi]

Gary,

Thanks, I just sent you PM message. I need project files.

===================

Thanks, Igor.

I just sent them to you.

Gary

[Igor]

Thanks, Gary, I've reproduced this problem and we'll fix it.

[Igor]

We just fixed this bug for future v5.6. It may happens because of empty text object only (no text) in mini-Player.

In this project there was a text template for all slides - "Display filename of main image". But some slides didn't have main image and text comment became an empty string.

[goddi]

We just fixed this bug for future v5.6. It may happens because of empty text object only (no text) in mini-Player.

In this project there was a text template for all slides - "Display filename of main image". But some slides didn't have main image and text comment became an empty string.

====================

Igor...

Thanks, Igor. It was driving me nuts. I see what you are saying. I see that I accidentally put in an empty text object in Slide #1, which was a black slide, and I copied that slide several time to add actual text objects to the copied slides. These empty text objects were very small so I did not see them. I just dumped them and the problem went away. It was an accident but it is good that now it will be fixed so someone else might not have the same problem.

Thanks so much... Gary

[potwnc]

In my case I did not have empty text objects.

[goddi]

In my case I did not have empty text objects.

==============

Greetings...

Are you sure??? I have been working on a large slideshow and today, it happened again. For this show, I had dumped the image in each of the beginning 8 or so slides and just added text objects. And everything has been going along just fine. But today, the Comment's filenames got blurry again and the show stops at slide #117, while the music continued to play. Everything else locked up.

I went back to look at these beginning blank slides and, to my amazement, those empty text objects had reappeared. I dumped them and replaced the Comment's filenames with slide numbers for the entire show. The problem disappeared. I noticed that, when I had the Comments display the filenames, the filename did not appear in the blank slides where I had dumped the image (in the past, I could be wrong, but even though the image was dumped, the filename did appear).

Since I had added more images, I must have reset the Comments to show filenames, which recreated the problem. So, you might want to go back and look to see if you have any slides where you dumped the image and just put in text objects and have the Comments show filenames. Igor said he found the problem and should be fixed for the next version, but I wonder if you, in fact, had any empty text objects that, maybe, you did not know about.

Gary

P.S. Just noticed. Even though I 'fixed' the problem where it will run, the last 2 Comment filenames are blurry. Strange. Hope Igor fixes this. Even when I change the filenames to slide numbers, the last few slide numbers are still blurry. Dunno.

[Severn Bore]

I have just experienced crashing of v5.52. Mine is a large slide show of 252 slides and four music tracks. The total show is shown as 232 Mb. The frst time the show previewed perfectly until about half way through and then the PC just went dead; black monitor no activity from the PC and no response to Ctrl/Atl/Del. I had to switch off the PC and restart it. The second time, the show ran perfectly until about the three-quarters point and then everything stopped. The monitor just showed an array of multi-coloured lines. When I pressed Esc nothing happened with the screen, but the music con tinued. I presses Esc a couple more times and then the screen went black, the music stopped and the PC was seeemingly "dead". I switched off and restarted and all seems well with the PC generally, but I have not yet had the courage to retry previewing my slide show, although PtoE starts up OK. I cannot lin k any of these events with any of the issues identified in earlier posts.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

I have just experienced crashing of v5.52. Mine is a large slide show of 252 slides and four music tracks. The total show is shown as 232 Mb. The frst time the show previewed perfectly until about half way through and then the PC just went dead; black monitor no activity from the PC and no response to Ctrl/Atl/Del. I had to switch off the PC and restart it. The second time, the show ran perfectly until about the three-quarters point and then everything stopped. The monitor just showed an array of multi-coloured lines. When I pressed Esc nothing happened with the screen, but the music con tinued. I presses Esc a couple more times and then the screen went black, the music stopped and the PC was seeemingly "dead". I switched off and restarted and all seems well with the PC generally, but I have not yet had the courage to retry previewing my slide show, although PtoE starts up OK. I cannot lin k any of these events with any of the issues identified in earlier posts.

I'm assembling a 240+ slide show at present, I have not allowed it to run full term naturally as I plan to advance the slides in time with the voice over, I have however skipped through it by right clicking after each slide appeared and it ran through to the end with no glitches. Maybe if you tried that it may highlight the problem, just guessing maybe a component is overheating when the show runs naturally.

Yachtsman1

[fh1805]

Hi Severn Bore,

Let's get a few more facts before we try and make a decision as to what the cause is and how best to address it.

How long is this sequence supposed to be? (it's total duration is displayed at the right hand side of the line under the mini-player window)

What format are each of your music files, mp3, wav or something else?

I've made a rough calculation based on the four music tracks being no longer than 4 minutes each. If they are mp3 files then they'll each be about 4MB in size. So, 16MB of your 232MB could be music. The remaining 216MB is taken up mostly by your image files. So each of the 252 image files averages about 870KB in this very hypothetical scenario.

This seems a little on the large size to me; but then I build to a specific end-device: my digital projector which requires only 1024x768 pixels. So my files can be reduced down to around 180-280KB each.

What is the device on which you eventually expect to play this sequence? Your PC monitor? A digital projector? Something else?

And what is the native resolution of this device in terms of pxels by pixels?

It would also help to know more about the PC system on which you are running (or trying to run) this sequence. If you could click on the Windows "Start" button and then take: Programs---Accessories---System Tools---System Information and let me know the OS Name and Version, Processor and Installed Physical Memory (RAM) values that should give me something to work on.

Almost certainly we're looking at some kind of resource shortage but what, where and why we cannot say without more information.

regards,

Peter

[nobeefstu]

Severn Bore,

I have just experienced crashing of v5.52. Mine is a large slide show of 252 slides and four music tracks. The total show is shown as 232 Mb. The frst time the show previewed perfectly until about half way through and then the PC just went dead; black monitor no activity from the PC and no response to Ctrl/Atl/Del. I had to switch off the PC and restart it. The second time, the show ran perfectly until about the three-quarters point and then everything stopped. The monitor just showed an array of multi-coloured lines. When I pressed Esc nothing happened with the screen, but the music con tinued. I presses Esc a couple more times and then the screen went black, the music stopped and the PC was seeemingly "dead". I switched off and restarted and all seems well with the PC generally, but I have not yet had the courage to retry previewing my slide show, although PtoE starts up OK. I cannot lin k any of these events with any of the issues identified in earlier posts.

When you say v5.52 crashes ... is it when using Pte program correct ? ... try the compiled slideshow exe ?

If you still have an earlier version of Pte v5.11 still installed on your pc ... open the v5.52 pte file in that Pte v5.11 program. (Newer v5.52 files are somewhat backward compatable in my testing.)

Compile it and test results.

[Severn Bore]

Hi

I have now rerun the preview a couple of times in the past 24 hours without a hitch. My assumption therefore is that there was some glitch in the hardware that occurred while PtoE was running. I am satisfied that PtoE was not the cause of the crash, but more likely, a victim.

Regards