Digital Workshop

Opus Pro 04 XE on Win2000 Pro system with 500MB RAM.
System also has Opus Pro XE v2.81 installed.
Background programs: Norton AV, DirectCD.

Odd program behaviors noted on the above implementation:

1. Customized toolbar disappears after a few uses. Doesn't go "invisible" -- actually no longer appears as an existing toolbar on the View Toolbars.

2. DirectX Exclusive publication does not play embedded standard full-frame *.AVI files (I expected that the "unsupported format" animated *.GIF file would not embed and play as video, but the *.AVI was a surprise). A standard Opus Pro publication also fails to display externally-stored animated ".GIF as a video file.

3. DirectX Exclusive publication fails to preview all the time (perhaps this is to be expected as it keeps trying to be Exclusive on screen & of course Opus is running in the background).

4. This may only be on pubs imported from Opus Pro XE v2.81, but:
buttons using *.TIF images do not display the secondary "rollover" image assigned to the Rollover state & the tertiary "down" image assigned to the "Mouse Down" state. This is remedied by opening up the *.TIFF files in question, then re-saving after "flattening" the image (which was already "flattened" & had no mask saved with it). However, the problem reappears the next day.

Hi,

Thank you for your enquiry.



I am not sure how to go about replicating this problem. By 'customized', I assume that you have modified one of the default toolbars to include a non-default icon. Is this causing the entire toolbar to disappear from the workspace (and the View > Toolbars list)?

Could you please provide me with a series of steps which may help me reproduce this issue?



I have tested this with the 'Made With Illuminatus' AVI file (which can be downloaded from http://www.eccker.org/ilm/templates/cre ... izeavi.zip) and the published DirectX Exclusive publication played the video correctly. Does this file work on your system? If so, would it be possible to forward me one of the AVI files with which you have encountered this problem and I will be happy to investigate further?



I have reproduced this issue and was surprised to find that using the <SYSTEM_PUBLICATION_DIR> as the path to the animated GIF file also failed to resolve the problem. The only solution I have found is to publish the project with the animated GIF internal to the published executable, then manually copy the original GIF file to the publication directory after publishing. The publication should display its internal version of the file without problems, but the end-user should still be able to copy the GIF resource from the CD, if required.

I have notified our development team of this issue and we will investigate further.



I have tried to replicate this by creating a blank new DirectX Exclusive publication and repeatedly previewing and exiting the publication over a period of around three minutes. However, the publication previewed every time.

I then tried adding some video content and transitions to the publication, but this too previewed without fail.

Are you previewing the entire publication or just a single page? If you are previewing a single page (by clicking Publication > Preview Current Page or by tapping the F5 on the keyboard), please ensure that you are not currently editing a Master Page as these cannot be previewed in isolation.



I'm afraid that I have been unable to reproduce this problem. Please find attached a zip folder containing two publication files and four TIFF images.

The publication named 'createdin281.imp' was produced in Opus Pro XE 2.81 and features a Push On-Push Off button which uses the 1.tif image for its Normal state, 2.tif for the Mouse Over state, 3.tif for the Button Down state and 4.tif for the Mouse Over Down state.

The publication named 'createdin04.imp' was produced in Opus Pro XE 04 and features an identical button with the same button state images.

You should find that both publications open, preview and publish in Opus Pro XE 04 without problems and all button images are displayed as expected.

Could you possibly forward me the publication with which you have encountered this problem, along with the corresponding TIFF images, and I will try to reproduce this problem on our test machines?

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

Kind regards,

Actually, rather than alter any default toolbars, I created my own toolbar (named, cryptically, RG_toolbar) and stuck onto it my most-used icons -- formatting, alignment, etc. I then un-displayed some other toolbars, as I rarely use them to their fullest extent. At that point, I worked for a while, closed Opus, then re-opened it and worked again. However, after a preview of the pub had frozen the display, I used Ctrl-Alt-Del to close Opus. After 2 or 3 such experiences, the toolbar was gone -- not even included on the View > Toolbars list.



The file is 20MB. It was standard Microsoft codec, full frames uncompressed -- but a non-standard size. It is actually an AVI made from the non-displaying GIF file I described -- which is only 206KB and which I will send. Interestingly, converting the AVI to MPEG-1 (& altering the width and height to make it acceptable as MPEG-1) resulted in a file that plays fine. For this reason I suspect the non-standard size was the culprit.



I was previewing the entire publication from the button on the toolbar. Settings included separate files for each chapter (although with internal video this can still result in a 90MB ILM file).

Regarding this:
Buttons using *.TIF images do not display the secondary "rollover" image assigned to the Rollover state & the tertiary "down" image assigned to the "Mouse Down" state.

I'll check your posted file this weekend. I don't know why the buttons failed, and initially assumed that this was due to the import & was a lone anomaly; since then it happened with 3 other buttons in the same pub. In earlier iterations they were fine on preview & upon publication; then they were invisible. They had in common their presence on a Master Page -- yet the other Master Pages in the pub used the same art & did not have the same problem. I wondered if the path to the files being a long one might have something to do with this.



Absolutely -- will send. Although now the problem is corrected (I re-created the page) so I don't know that you'll be able to re-create the problem.

And thank you so much for your help!

Well, having tested & re-tested and started from scratch on a new publication, I can report the following:

1. The *.TIF file problem seems to have been related to opening a file created in Opus Pro XE v2.81 within Opus Pro XE 4. To reproduce this problem:
- Create a publication in the earlier version, with different *.TIF files for different states.
- View the buttons; all file names will appear correctly.
- Preview the publication.
- Open the publication in the recent version of Opus.
- View the buttons; all file names still appear correctly.
- Change the publication to Dx Exclusive.
- Preview the publication.
- The buttons don't always appear -- in fact, they disappear upon Rollover, Mouse Down, etc.
- Exit Preview.
- View the buttons; the names of the files for the mouse over, mouse down, etc. images no longer appear in the Rollover or Mouse Down states.

2. The toolbar STILL disappears. I've e-mailed Brenden a copy of a recent publication created in Opus Pro XE 4.5 -- and it works ok except:
- animation isn't smooth
- animated/rotated *.PNG images have unacceptable aliasing
- every time I Preview, my personally-created toolbar disappears the next time I open up Opus.

The Amazing Disappearing Toolbar issue seems to happen whenever I do the following:
- Open Opus Pro XE 4.5
- Create a toolbar and stick your favorite commands onto it. Leave it as a floating toolbar in the workspace.
- Edit an Opus Pro XE 4.5 publication
- Preview the publication; re-save the publication
- Exit Opus
- Open Opus Pro XE 2.81 and work on a publication
- Exit Opus
- Open Opus Pro XE 4.5 again
- Look for your now-missing toolbar via View-Toolbars
- Scratch your head in frustration and repeat the second step, above.

The problem is that you are attempting to run two versions of the same program on the same machine. While different Opus products can happily reside on one PC (as they each use their own registry key for storing settings), different versions of the same product will use the same registry key (This is so people do not use all their settings when upgrading).
The older v2 obviously cannot "know" about changes made in 04 and is unfortunately overwriting your toolbar. I'm afraid the only solution is not to use 2.81 on the same machine as 04.50 (or I suppose you could use a registry backup/restore program to save/load just the Opus key when you want to run different versions).

Further to my previous reply, I have spoken to our developers regarding this issue and they have stated that the Opus player does not contain the LZW/Unisys library required to display GIF files. Including this player would increase the size of the player file considerably and would have also incurred additional licensing fees (although the Unisys patent has recently expired).

It is therefore not possible to display external GIF files within a published executable and these files should be embedded. If you want your end-users to be able to access these GIF files, simply copy these resources to the publication CD before distribution.

Kind regards,

Regarding the animated *.GIF file: the explanation makes sense -- prior to the recent publication using internally-playing video files, I had always published with the video files saved externally (so of course the animation played without a problem).

Regarding the Amazing Disappearing Opus Toolbar: from your explanation, I now understand that it is NOT advisable to run BOTH Opus Pro XE 4.0 and Opus Pro XE 2.81 on the same PC. From other posts & based on notes I've received from other Opus Pro XE users, I was under the impression that the two programs did not conflict & could happily reside on the same PC without conflict.

Does anyone know of a simple workaround for this conflict?

One workaround would be to create several blank custom toolbars (about five should do the trick), followed by your required custom toolbar.

Now close Opus Pro 04 and launch Opus Pro 2.81. The older application will overwrite the registry entries for the 'dummy' toolbars, but should not affect your 'real' custom toolbar.

Now close Opus Pro 2.81 and launch Opus Pro 04. Your toolbar should still be present and correct. If any of the blank toolbars are still visible, simply hide them from view using the View > Toolbars menu.

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

Kind regards,

Robin --

Thanks for the tip concerning toolbars. In Opus Pro XE 4.5 I created 5 blank bogus toolbars and one "real" toolbar. I then exited Opus Pro XE 4.5 and opened Opus Pro XE 2.81. I closed Opus Pro XE 2.81 and opened Opus Pro XE 4.5 but all of the toolbars (bogus and real) were gone.

But it was a Noble Attempt which bards shall sing of in ages hence.

Hi Robert,

Instead of creating a 'new' custom toolbar, have you considered modifying the default ones? Remove what tool icons you rarely use and replace them with what you frequently use. This may resolve the disappearing toolbar for you. (It is easy to reset the default toolbars back to their default if need be.)

See if that works -- or why not use Duncan's tip?

Steve --

Thanks for the good suggestion; however, I had been trying not to modify the default toolbars (deleting unused buttons, adding my preferences) because -- & I hate to admit this -- there are some functions that wouldn't occur to me to use if I didn't see the buttons, so I'd probably end up laboriously writing up some convoluted Opus Script that would serve a function already handled immediately & efficiently via a button already available in the program. Still, your suggestion is an option that I will look into. And -- with luck -- running Opus Pro XE 2.81 might not restore the Opus Pro XE 4.5 toolbars to their default state.

Regarding the idea of Registry backup/restore: having heard horror tales of Registry backups/restores gone awry, all I can say is:
EEYYYYAAAAAAHHHHHGHGHGHGH!
I think I'll stay on the safer side of that street. Knowing my own limits regarding restoration of system files, I will favor caution over convenience.

Another option would be to add another user. As you are running Win 2000 why not set up another user ( Control panel, Users and Passwords) and log on as that user when you want to revert back to 2.81. That way the registry setting will be kept separate as they are stored in the hkeycurrent user area of the registry.

Regards

Brenden Knifton

Side note:

Adjusting the program default toolbars does not resolve this issue (i.e. opening the older program then closing then opening the new version reveals that all toolbars have been restored to their default states).

I may try the last option -- signing on as a different user (quite annoying, since so many files are used back & forth in many directories & I don't want to open them all up en masse to other user names).