gPhotoShow 6 Observations

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bluejaywpg
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Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:24 pm

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by bluejaywpg »

Thanks, that's good info to know.

Anyway after I upgraded to Windows 8, it worked much better. Not perfect, but at least the video is quite watchable compared to before. And I now have to agree with you that it is probably something not related to gPhotoShow.

Now that you mentioned the thing about the screensaver using the lowest priority, I would like to increase the priority - preferably to Normal since the screensaver functions as a digital picture frame.

And to answer your question, the transitions are the 2D variety.
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gpb
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Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by gpb »

Standard 2D transitions use 100% of a single core time during the transition and are very sensitive to cpu load. During these transitions gPhotoShow raises its priority from idle to normal but if you have one or more processes that uses too much cpu time these transitions can't be smooth because even a small pause can be easily seen. DirectX uses much less cpu time but in the same way is very sensitive to timings, if you have a background process that has a high cpu usage (even in small burst) it could cause "choppiness". VLC should use DirectX when playing video and uses very few cpu time but if video playing is not smooth there is something on you computer that is not working normally. It could be a background process, video drivers or something else. Anyway on any modern computer VLC and gPhotoShow should display video and transition very smoothly without any "jump".
It is possible to further raise gPhotoShow priority but I think it would not be useful, because of the way windows works if there is a process with a high cpu usage other processes will be interrupted from time to time, even if they have a higher priority, and this will cause a "jump" in the transition or in video playing.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
bluejaywpg
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Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:24 pm

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by bluejaywpg »

I could never resolve the choppiness. I tried so many things. Installing a PCIe video card (an nVidia GeForce 8400GS) didn't help. Windows 8 didn't help. So for that & other unrelated reasons, plus the fact that I bought a solid state drive for this computer, I reinstalled Windows 8 cleanly. Just the OS runs on the SSD - the pictures & videos are stored on a traditional hard drive on the same PC. Right now, the only apps installed so far are gPhotoShow 6.4.0 & VLC Media Player 2.0.6. It runs perfectly so far for both pictures & videos - meaning 100% smooth playing of videos & pictures/transitions. I can only guess that the constant upgrades of the screensaver, VLC, Windows itself, & other stuff caused it to behave the way it did, but I don't know for sure.

There is 1 quirk though. Even though gPhotoShow was the only app installed, it has so far remained in a disabled state. Whenever I re-enable it, it goes back to disabled within a second or 2. Rebooting doesn't help. Do you know why? Might it have to do with loading from an old .gss file from January, 2012? I did change a bunch of settings after loading the gss file to update it, but I've done that in the past without issue. The screensaver plays fine if I manually start it.

I still have more things to try.

I'll keep the transitions thing in mind if this happens again.
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gpb
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Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by gpb »

First of all make sure gPhotoShow is configured as the default screen saver and the timeout is set to a time of your choice. If the default screen saver is not configured obviously the screen saver will never enable.

The screen saver enabled/disabled status doesn't depend on the screen screen saver. That status is always handled by windows or by some running program. For example Windows media player and VLC disables the screen saver while they are playing a video. In addition windows itself handles that flag in a rather weird way: if you stop the screen saver within few seconds windows disables the screen saver for some minutes. If you it again it disables the screen saver for a longer timer.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
bluejaywpg
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Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:24 pm

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by bluejaywpg »

Thanks Gianpaolo that's great to know - I did some research & found others having the same issue. I now think it's a bug in Windows 8. Anyway I resolved it by chance when I was playing with the screensaver settings. I changed the wait time to 10 minutes & it went active. Changed back to 1 minute & it stayed active.

It's still running really well on my media PC / server so I guess Windows was the problem before! I had reinstalled Windows again because of the activation issue & because I realized later I had used the wrong Windows key to activate (I bought a few keys for all my home PCs).
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