Digital Workshop

I am working with Opus ProXE2.81 with windows XP SP2. My problem is that when I preview the publication in the editor it works perfect, but when I publish it and run it I get hang ups that force me to shut down using task manager.
My project has many pages in a row that contain MPG1 (640X480) videos. I have a trigger that is synchronized to the end of the video (page action) that allows you to advance to the next screen. The computer usually hangs up when i press the button to advance to the next screen. It just freezes and it's random (not always hanging up on the same page). I preview the publication in the editor and it NEVER hangs up. I even try to bugger it up by pressing other buttons to trigger other actions while the video is playing, but never a problem when previewing in editor, only in the published exe. version.
I have spent a couple of days on this problem and I am losing my faith in this opus program I have downloaded the latest Media Player 10 and Direct X. I have even scaled back the video accelerator which seemed to make the publication go farther before freezing.

WHAT IS GOING ON?? Shouldn't I expect the published version to run like it does when previewing?

Hi Roger

System specs ?
Video Card ?

Have you updated your video drivers lately ?

Chris

Hi Chris, first of all thanks for responding so quick.

I think i found my culprit... Direct X v9. I allowed my computer to do automatic updates last week and that is when my problems with viewing publications started. I have poured through the forums and found them very informative and came across some posts on Dirext X version 9 being evil. Had me to that list of people that had problems with it.

I am not so worried about me being able to view these publications, so long as the end-user can. For the most part previous publications created worked fine on the end user system. I have 2 questions:

1) Do i put faith in the published exe. that it will run alright on the end-user system if the previous ones worked ok. I would be assuming that my lack of playback due to my local system problem won't affect the published version.

2) Should i abandon Direct X altogether and publish the projects without it? I have tried this and the publication seems to work fine again. I had to set my video object to be 'always on top' and to 'start automatically' and it works fine. I found the following restriction:

a video clip must have a sound interlaced, even if is a phantom track. Mpeg clips exported without a audio track do not play (without directX option enabled).

Wave file will not play if a video is playing (without directX option), but i can start the wave file as a page action on show, before the video starts up.

I think this work around of publishing without direct X works fine for my system. Can i expect the same results and performance from the end-user system? If so, i may start to create exe. files with the direct x option disabled, keeping in mind the special treatment and limitations of video and wave objects.

Interested in what you think.

Roger Pomerleau
Vista Training Developer

1) Do i put faith in the published exe

I would say Yes. I have found playback problems to be very
rare. You can never account for every hardware/software
combination but that's true for every multimedia app.
No matter which one you use, you'll eventually find a system
that will have a problem playing the publication.

2) Should i abandon Direct X altogether

I wouldn't, but that's up to you. I've found that pubs tend to run
smoother with DirectX on. If your using any transitions or planning
on doing so, it's a must. I would stick with DirectX, on the whole
it's pretty dependable.

I would dare say, that development systems tend to have more
problems with playback because they are generally loaded up with
heavy software packages like video / audio editors, heavy graphics
editors, often multiple MMA packages ect. A lot of them open all at
once, often during playback.

HTH
Chris

Thanks again Chris.

I will have to struggle a bit more with the staying with Direct X since it burned me a little bit. I don' t use the OPUS transitions since I find them taxing to the LAN system that the pubs eventually get loaded on to. Even with Direct X they stutter when a video is playing. My pages are simply pictures laid out with narration or a video playing with narration. Mind you there is a navigation bar on a master page, with a rotating star for topics comleted, i don't think directX has anything to do with them (the stars are animated gif playing in a video object).

At least my faith in OPUS is starting to be restored.

Are the transitions set to 'Exclusive'? As you may be aware, setting a transition to Exclusive forces it to the top of the processor queue and all other processes, including video, audio and any other transitions are ignored to ensure that the transition displays as smoothly as possible. However, if two exclusive transitions are set to display at the same time, or an exclusive transition is displayed whilst an On Top video file is playing, the two processes can end up fighting for attention, resulting in stuttering or even publication lock-ups.

I would therefore recommend checking through the objects in your publication and ensuring that none of the transitions are set to Exclusive. You should now hopefully find that the publication runs without problems when published and viewed across a network.

I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,