Digital Workshop

Hi all, I completed a 40 page rolling presentation for our schools open evening, all went well, however on the night the presentation had 'hung'. I was able to ALT & F4 to quit the app and start again.

To cut a long story short, the Opus app halts every couple of days, but otherwise runs flawlessly. I have asked IT for another machine to soak test on, but in the meantime have tried to think of what could cause it. Without adding logging I am not sure what page it halts on as I get a blank white screen, this is the colour of my publication background - so could be anything. The only thing I think it might be is a single page which has a script run by a ticker action.

The page is advertising our school catering suppliers, and shows a pacman like animated gif running across the page, who then appears to gobble up a bowl of fruit and a ham roll. This script (shown below) is run every 50mS to obtain an accurate position as he glides across the screen. My question is this, is this the appropriate use of a ticker and script? Is the ticker too fast? Or is there a more efficient way of doing this with actions (I could not see a way of doing this comparison with the available actions)?

The script is:
USER_PACMAN_X=Video1.GetXPosition()
if (USER_PACMAN_X > 140)
{
ImgRoll.Hide()
}
if (USER_PACMAN_X > 1000)
{
ImgSalad.Hide()
}

I have re-authored the presentation without the script, but it will be a few days until I know the result.

Kind regards, Kurt

Interesting question. So 'pacman' is a looping video?

You might be able to generate the motion using Opus' Tween, and can even combine it with animation of Follow-Path. You could use switch/case to invoke different Paths. Then there would be various ways to trigger the show and hide events. e.g. collision-detect trigger, or a scripted while loop and get position along the active Path.

Timeline object may be another option for you -- and still use the existing video.


[Lar EDIT:] Logging might be a good idea. You would not need long serial logging.... just overwrite a file. Capture the current Page and maybe timestamp. That will narrow down the location (if it is within the Pub).

Hi Lar_123, yes Pacman is an animated GIF, displayed using the video object and moved once across the page by using one of the simple horizontal move actions. Thank you for your suggestions, if the publication continues to hang without the suspected page, I will add logging most definitely.

Is it bad practice to trigger a script that often using a ticker though?

Kind regards, Kurt

I tend to think it is 'okay', especially since it seems your actions are not resource heavy. One thing you can do is take that Page and "Copy into" a new blank Pub. Then modify it to generate a running list of timestamps (once just before your ticker, or just after). Actually it might be easier to 'read' if you simply subtract last millisecond 'stamp' from the latest millisecond 'stamp' -- if you start to see erratic variations in the timing, you could look for what is causing the variation (or you can increase your ticker value). Debug.trace would be easy to display the running results.

Of course, other things going on in Windows can introduce interrupts or varying load/timing -- any networking, human interface devices (esp. USB wireless and Bluetooth), other processes. Also you have a Pub Properties >>> Options >>> to disable Screensaver while Pub playing.

Hi Lar_123, thanks for your always constructive feedback. Two things this morning, I have been gievn a test laptop by IT so I have a sandbox to work in, but more annoyingly the new pub without the script has fallen over, so I guess I will add logging and see which is the offending slide.

What foxes me is why it only seems to fail after about 24 hours, I have no computations regarding time whatsoever.

Kind regards, Kurt

this may not be the issue but in a previous thread I mentioned that I had looping 'slideshow' using frames not just images. The PC crashed regularly.
When I checked with task manager I saw that the pagefile usage got bigger and bigger until the PC fell over.
I got no replies and I found no solution.
cheers
Mac

... is that the nature of a memory leak? If so, I suppose you could relaunch Opus Pub somehow.

Thanks for everyone's input, two days later and it still hasn't fallen over on the loan machine, with little noticeable memory loss over the two days. I cannot get stats from the target machine being as it's a heavily locked down profile. But have spent the last half day and today porting the whole thing over to (cough) PowerPoint until I can get it resolved, at least hopefully that way it will still keep going even if I can't have all the bells and shiny whistles...

Kind regards, Kurt

The definition of a memory leak is when an application uses memory that is not returned to the system when it's no longer required. Just because a program uses more and more memory, does not make it a leak. Additionally, because of the way programs work, just because it has a high memory usage in task manager, does not mean that the program itself is at fault. For example, Opus uses third party codecs to display videos and the codec could cause problems.

In the past, I've had an application that kept crashing. After much cursing, it turned out that my high capacity documents drive seemed to be suffering from the problems associated with the data density barrier. It's a bit like trying to run a 100m sprint and discovering that sections of the track are in fact waist high bogs. Those of you old enough to remember the dreaded click of death from an Omega drive will have probably experienced a similar system instability. The problem is, rather than being instantly fatal, tiny parts of you hard drive slow down and become almost unresponsive but it's too easily written off as something else. If you can, locate a program called Victoria43 (free) and run the test.

Whilst it may not have anything to do with the problems posted, it's too easy to forget about checking the health of your machine's HHD, ram etc - all of which can be a problem.

Mack

Ah - the Iomega click of death, I have such a broken drive in the loft, for old times sake

Kind regards, Kurt

Damn, even back then I forgot is was Iomega.

Glad that today, the noise of old drives is entertainment of a different sort :

The click of death part II

http://silent.org.pl/home/2011/09/29/ev ... anslation/

Mack

Well it still hasn't fallen over on the low spec laptop and shows no sign of memory leakage at all. Funny though even Powerpoint had hung after 5 days this morning on the target workstation. The IT guys are checking the machine over, I thought it might be useful for readers to know what the issue is when we eventually resolve it (I'm told there is nothing in the logs), in case any one else experiences the same problem.

Kind regards, Kurt