Digital Workshop

Hi,

Ever since i imported some chapters from my other pub i couldnt save the pub anymore so i had to rely on autosaves and back them up everytime. Untill today ... Ive lost a critical autosave file and just realised i worked the last 3 days for nothing .

Is there anything i can do about this and solve my saving problem? And how can i make sure opus doesnt save corrupt autosaves ( got that some time ago also where half of the objects were missing ) Because opus crashes a lot and i need to have backups each time.

Thanks

Hi,

Thank you for your enquiry.

Our developers are aware of a particularly strange issue when transferring pages containing gradient fills into other publications, causing the target publication to refuse to save. We are looking into this issue and hope to include a fix in the next Service Release. However, the only known workaround is to look through each of the pages you have imported and change the background colour of any objects which have gradient fills applied.

You may also find that importing the pages 'the other way round' (i.e; importing the pages from publication A into publication B, rather than from publication B into publication A) bypasses the problem completely and allows you to continue working on the project and saving your work without errors.

I think the main issue we need to tackle is the fact that Opus is crashing on your system. Although all software is susceptible to driver conflicts and resource problems, general feedback we have received suggests that Opus Pro 04 is extremely stable, so it is certainly not normal for Opus to experience this number of problems. I therefore suspect that Opus is encountering problems communicating with your graphics drivers or some other component driver and this has perhaps caused a corruption in the Opus installation.

I would strongly recommend the following procedure to ensure that your graphics drivers and DirectX components are up-to-date and repair the Opus installation:

Please visit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx and follow the instructions given at the web site to locate, download and install the latest version of DirectX.

Once DirectX has been updated, please use the following procedure to update your graphics drivers:

- Click Start > Settings > Control Panel > System
- Select the Device Manager tab (if you are using Windows 2000 or XP, you will need to select the Hardware tab and then click the Device Manager button)
- You should see a list of hardware types currently installed on your machine. Click on the plus-sign next to the Display Adapters entry to display the corresponding component
- Make a note of the make, model and any other information displayed
- Now visit the manufacturer's website (in most cases, this will be either http://www.nvidia.com, http://www.ati.com or http://www.matrox.com) and click the Download Drivers link on the homepage
- Follow the on-screen instructions to locate the latest drivers for your model of graphics card. Once located, download and install the drivers using any advice given on the manufacturer's site.

Now please uninstall all versions of Opus from your system. To do this, click Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs. Look through the list of installed programs for any references to Illuminatus Opus, Illuminatus Opus Pro, Opus Pro XE, Opus Presenter, Opus Pro 04 or Opus Presenter 04. If found, click on the entry to highlight it, then click the Remove button to uninstall the software.

Once all versions of Opus have been uninstalled, please right-click on your Start button and select Explore... Navigate to C:\Program Files and look for any folders referring to Illuminatus Opus, Illuminatus Opus Pro, Opus Pro XE or Opus Presenter. If found, simply click on the folder to highlight it, then press Delete on the keyboard.

Once all Opus program folders have been deleted, click Start > Run, type regedit and click OK. Double-click on the HKEY_CURRENT_USER folder to display its contents. Double-click on the Software folder to display its contents. Now single-click on the Digital Workshop folder to highlight it and press Delete on the keyboard. Click Yes to confirm the deletion. Now please close the Registry Editor using the X icon in the top-right of the screen.

Now reinstall Opus using the original installation CD-ROM. Once installed, please download and install the latest Service Release from http://212.100.247.34/updates/opus_04_sr1.exe.

Now launch Opus Pro and use the software as normal. You should find that the program is now much more stable.

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

i play games sometimes in free time and have all latest drivers and directx updates. But i can try to reinstall opus for the crashing issue. Maybe it helps.

Altho this is the 3rd computer it keeps crashing too. So i figured it may have something to do with the pub itself ?

The pub is started several years and versions of opus ago and is quite big. Im redoing the layout and adding some features to it.

Since i did the merge with the other pub the saving troubles came in and i have problems with the script console. Whenever i open an object, go to properties and go to border... the script console pops up and i get the error messages from the pub while im not even in preview mode.

The 2nd thing i noticed was the extreme difficultie to have 1 pixel borders on objects, sometimes they show up as 1 pixel borders. But mostly they show a bit blurry and messed up.

Whats the cause of this all?

Thanks.
Kevin

Hi,

Thank you for your reply.



This is unlikely, but I would be happy to take a look at the publication to see if there is anything unusual which could cause problems. Please forward the publication .imp file to support@digitalworkshop.com and I will test this on various system configurations.

When releasing a new version of Opus, we try to ensure full backwards-compatibility with older publications, but it is never possible to guarantee 100% compatibility. As with any software product, it is usually better to finish large, complex, near-complete projects in the original version of the software and use the latest version of the software for new projects, rather than repeatedly import projects into different iterations of the software.



This is actually a known problem in version 4.10 and is not related to the merging of publications.

Basically, the Border dialog box (and Effects and Background boxes) contain a preview of the object with the selected property applied. If the object is defined by a variable, this preview box should be blank (as variables are only evaluated at runtime). However, version 4.10 tries to generate a preview of the object, fails to resolve the path to the file and throws up a script error.

This has been resolved in the forthcoming Service Release 2 (which should be available in the next fortnight).



This could occur if your publication is set to stretch to fill the screen. For example, if the pages of your publication measure 800 x 600, your border should look correct when viewed at a screen resolution of 800 x 600. However, if the publication is viewed on a 1024 x 768 system and the chapter properties dictate that 'Pages can be resized' to fill the screen, Opus will stretch the page, adding additional pixels via interpolation. As these additional pixels are added by averaging the colours of neighbouring pixels, your borders may become slightly blurred.

The only workarounds would be to stop the pages being resized (leaving your publication with a visible border when viewed at screen resolutions larger than the page size), force the end-user's screen resolution to match the page size (although laptops often baulk at displaying at anything other than their native resolution) or tell the publication to display in a window which is the same size as the page.

I hope this helps.

i installed it all again and applied the service release. Had no problems with crashing for half an hour and suddenly some error again :

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtimy Library

Runtime Error!

Program: C:\PROGRA~1\Opus Pro 04\Opus.exe

R6025
- pure virtual function call




this was when i tried previewing. sometimes i can preview, sometimes i cant...