Need help...slide show goes black...

[Mac Daddy]

So I have confirmed on my machine...fresh install of Windows 7...that on both version 8 SP1 and the trial version of 9 that after anywhere from 2 or 3 to more slides in the slide show the screen goes black. The slide show continues with a black screen and nothing further is displayed.

I tried two different ATI graphics drivers...both the stock 2011 driver installed by Windows and the 3/28/2013 version...no dice. Running the program as an administrator seemed to get the slide show up to about a dozen slides. Same issue in single and dual monitor configuration.

Here's the kicker...version 7 works with absolutely no issues. We bought the upgrade to 8 a while back and it was so horrific we went back to 7. I'm guessing I will not purchase the 9 upgrade.

Let me confess, too, that I only use ThumbsPlus for the slide show. I run a mobile DJ business and we use the program for a live multimedia show at our events. As far as I can see out there this is the only program that works. Every other program I have looked at violates KISS and would take an extra staff person to run the show. I really wish - and I would be willing to pay for - more slide show features. As a previous forum poster mentioned Thumbsplus' slide show should take advantage of video cards for processing. It's also time we got new effects...fly ins...zoom to face features (or better yet harnessing the power of the database features to identify zoom in/zoom out points on pictures.) It would also be fantastic if you didn't have to cycle the slide show for it to pick up on new pictures. And it would be great if you could have a button to force a picture to go next in the random order...aka one of the folks walks up, you have an awesome picture of them, you punch a button and point to the screen and say watch... I also would like a mirror module that would show the slide show in a smaller window on the primary monitor so we can watch the show from our workstation (we use a 27 inch monitor for the primary and a 47 inch LCD screen turned to the crowd...can't see the slide show without walking around.) And last, having the ability to turn off delay count on videos...we seed our slide show with logos and instructions for folks to go to our website and download pictures for free...and recently I built a bunch of videos with flying logos and the like (which is really fun) - but at the end of playing the video it pauses for the timed delay setting - which kills the energy - and should have an option to turn off. And a sync to beat function would be killer...but that's probably asking too much, and I am not sure how you would implement that - not like there is an API for that.

Oh and the Facebook features look very promising.

Thanks!
Mac
Mac Daddy's Mobile Music

[Daan van Rooijen]

The only slideshow bug that I'm aware of -but it's a weird one- is when you run it in a folder that has more than a few subfolders. This may cause it to crash. One user reported that this happened with only 2 subfolders in his slideshow folder, but I had to create 7 subfolders before it would crash. Anyway, maybe you could try in a folder with no subfolders to see what happens.

Also, are you sure that your selection of files doesn't include any blank, corrupt or multimedia files and that it's not related to your timing settings or any effects that you may be using? That is: if you select only a few JPGs, run it without effects and with manual control, you still get those black screens?

Off-topic: Have a look at [link=http://www.zendogsoftware.com/About_zl.asp]http://www.zendogsoftware.com/About_zl.asp[/link]. Zen Light is a screen saver that creates beautiful fractal-like images that respond to your audio-in signal. It was written by David Johnston of Cool Edit (now Adobe Audition) fame.

[Mac Daddy]

Ah ha! So removing my two mov files fixed the issue. So ThumbsPlus 7 works with multimedia files and 8 and 9 don't. Sounds Microsoftesq - remove features and sell it as a new product. So any hope for multimedia files in slide shows or is that all folks?

Will take a look at the screen saver program. We run Mixx on the main monitor, along with Thumbsplus...in between taking requests, adding songs to the music mix and taking pictures we edit the shots and upload pictures with Thumbsplus and cycle the screen saver. You get ugly ten to fifteen second lock ups while it is powering through transitions. Not sure a screen saver program will do that...but I'll give it a shot.

Cool Edit was my favorite sound editing program...and I am still running my copy. I still mourn the day they sold out to Adobe.

-Mac

[Mac Daddy]

Checked out Zen Light...interesting but not what we need...below is what we need/want...Thumbsplus isn't perfect but it's very close.

1. The ability to send a random slide show of a directory of pictures to a second monitor. (Bonus points for supporting additional monitors and additional random slide shows to separate monitors - aka one show on monitor 2 and another on monitor 3.) This cannot tie up the machine - we need to be using monitor 1 to play music.

2. The ability to edit pictures on the fly...delete, rotate, crop and minor color correct are about all the time we have for live. (Bonus points for not locking up the machine while the slide show is running...Thumbsplus seven shuts down completely while doing a transition because it's not using the video card.) Thumbsplus' batch features are a godsend...as are autorename.

Additional features that would be awesome...

A. Fly in and fly out transitions, zoom in and out of focused faces...all that eye candy stuff that you see in a ton of multimedia show generation programs. More the better. If you take thirty to fifty pictures (or more) and have them in a complete random order with random transitions people will watch it all night.

B. Not needing to cycle the slide show when new pictures are added.

C. A button to flag a picture for display next in the random order.

D. Sync to audio.

E. Text overlays...for example we make an announcement...would be nice to type it and have it appear in a section of the screen while the show continues in the background. Scrolling text and/or fly in fly out effects all the better.

F. The ability to give "weight" to pictures...aka the logos...so they would show up more frequently than unweighted pictures.

G. Graphic overlays...transparent GIFs or something like that in spot on the screen with a fade percentage and control of where that image shows up, it's size (and maybe even the ability to turn it off for certain pictures...like our logo slides.)

Looks like all Zen does in sync to the music. Would be fun to run on a giant LCD display while doing a dance...but I don't know how we would cue up songs while the screen saver is running.

Honestly if Thumbplus fixed the multimedia files not playing in 8 and 9 and moved the processing of the slide show to the graphics card I would be ecstatic. Toss in some modern transitions and sell me libraries of additional transitions and I think they could make some money.

And this goes beyond the DJ business. I know a river rafting company that looked seriously at what I was doing for showing pictures of clients running the rapids. Imaging running a photo studio and having a running gallery of your work on a 60 inch LCD screen. Your favorite client walks in, you know you have pictures of his so you quickly find them in the database and queue them to randomly appear next.

-Mac

[Daan van Rooijen]

> Ah ha! So removing my two mov files fixed the issue. So ThumbsPlus 7 works with multimedia files and 8 and 9 don't.

Well, no.. assuming no v8-introduced bugs interfere, it should still work. I guess you just had the .mov files set up correctly in TP7 (that is: you had a compatible codec installed, and the right definition under Options | Preferences | Filetypes) but not so in v8 and v9. I don't use MOV files myself, but there's probably a good codec for them in the [link=http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm]K-Lite codec pack[/link] that several people here like a lot.

> Cool Edit was my favorite sound editing program...and I am still running my copy. I still mourn the day they sold out to Adobe.

And I'm still mourning with you.. I was their distributor for much of western Europe :-D