gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post your questions, bug reports and feature requests here
bluejaywpg
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:24 pm

gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by bluejaywpg »

The first thing that I noticed is that my hard drive is grinding away constantly since upgrading to version 6.0.1. I tried a few things to see if they helped but my hard drive still grinds away constantly - which it did not do anywhere near as much with version 5.x.x:

Change from DirectX activity (where it would move the pictures in & out) to 2D transitions
Disable SETI@Home
Upgrade RAM from 2 GB to 4 GB (I did this after my son said that the minimum RAM required for Windows 7 64-bit is 2 GB - I did not verify if this is true but I figured it was a good thing to try regardless - even though Windows in general seemed to be running pretty good with just 2 GB)

The screensaver tonight ground to a halt for about 2-3 minutes at 1 point, then resumed on its own. It may have been at the end of playing an MP3 when it halted. The other thing I did when upgrading to 6 was to upgrade VLC to version 2. But the hard drive grinds away whether it's playing videos or not. Though it gets worse during a video. I thought about downgrading VLC to 1.x.x anyway just to see what would happen. Though if I play a video manually without the screensaver running it plays fine.

The drive grinds away even though it's played through 60,000 pictures/videos (out of nearly 100,000). I ran the trial of gps6 on my laptop - seemed fine but didn't pay too much attention.

Any thoughts? Are there other options in particular I should verify?
User avatar
gpb
Site Admin
Posts: 761
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:23 am

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by gpb »

AFAIK there should be no differences for what concerns the disk activity between v5 and v6 if you have the same settings. In particular DirectX vs standard transition causes the same disk activity but DirectX uses twice (or even more) memory.
There are some differences if you are using filters or file exclusions. About VLC v6 tries to catch and recover all errors generated by VLC, this could cause the program to pause for a while.
Anyway scanning 60.000 pictures could take some time... until a full directory scan is not finished gPhotoShow will cause disk activity.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
bluejaywpg
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:24 pm

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by bluejaywpg »

Another related observation plus some more info...

I got up this morning & turned on the TV & displayed the PC with the screensaver running. The hard drive was displaying very little activity at that time. Yet still, the 2D transitions are a bit choppy - doesn't matter which transitions but it's most noticeable during the one that rolls up like a rug & the one where little random squares disappear.

I made 1 change (though I doubt it will matter much) - it now scans the files every 12 hours (used to be 3 hours). Maybe a good idea would be to allow the program to scan at a particular time of day rother than every XXX minutes.

I might try uninstalling 6.0.1 & reinstalling 5.2.2 just for curiosity sake. That way I can see if it's the version or something else (video driver for example - though I don't think the driver has been updated for quite a while).
User avatar
gpb
Site Admin
Posts: 761
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:23 am

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by gpb »

bluejaywpg wrote: I got up this morning & turned on the TV & displayed the PC with the screensaver running. The hard drive was displaying very little activity at that time. Yet still, the 2D transitions are a bit choppy - doesn't matter which transitions but it's most noticeable during the one that rolls up like a rug & the one where little random squares disappear.
This is a symptom of a high cpu usage, 2D transitions use almost 100% of a single core for a short time, if they are not smooth this mean some other program is using lots of cpu time.
bluejaywpg wrote: I made 1 change (though I doubt it will matter much) - it now scans the files every 12 hours (used to be 3 hours). Maybe a good idea would be to allow the program to scan at a particular time of day rother than every XXX minutes.
gPhotoShow always scan folders on startup, in general this option is useful on when the program runs for long periods of time without restarting. Anyway I will consider adding that option.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
bluejaywpg
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:24 pm

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by bluejaywpg »

Cool - if you add it, I'll have it scan at like 4 AM daily. Then when I upload new pics, I know they will appear next day guaranteed. :)

Now I just observed an interesting but very minor bug. When a video is played (one that is long enough that the time changes), the time of day does not quite refresh properly (if it's visible that is). The other monitor displays the time properly - just the one playing the video does not delete the old time, I guess you could say. Here's a picture:

Image
User avatar
gpb
Site Admin
Posts: 761
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:23 am

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by gpb »

bluejaywpg wrote: Now I just observed an interesting but very minor bug. When a video is played (one that is long enough that the time changes), the time of day does not quite refresh properly (if it's visible that is). The other monitor displays the time properly - just the one playing the video does not delete the old time, I guess you could say.
It's a small bug, when video is played time should not be displayed. I will fix it on next update.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
bluejaywpg
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:24 pm

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by bluejaywpg »

Also (separate observation) I've been forgetting to mention that the time displays without the 1st digit on my secondary monitor (1440x900) but displays fine on the primary TV (1920x1080). So 4:51 PM displays as ":51 PM", 10:30 AM would display as "0:30 AM".
User avatar
gpb
Site Admin
Posts: 761
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:23 am

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by gpb »

bluejaywpg wrote:Also (separate observation) I've been forgetting to mention that the time displays without the 1st digit on my secondary monitor (1440x900) but displays fine on the primary TV (1920x1080). So 4:51 PM displays as ":51 PM", 10:30 AM would display as "0:30 AM".
The time is displayed in the same way and in the same position on all monitors, if the first digit is out of the screen maybe you need to increase the margins in the text settings windows for the time display.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
bluejaywpg
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2012 5:24 pm

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by bluejaywpg »

I just want to bring this up again regarding the speed issue of transitions & videos.

I tried numerous things - all of what I specified earlier in this thread (updating VLC, downgrading VLC to 1.x, upgrade to quad core CPU, up RAM to 4 GB, disable secondary monitor, etc.), plus I just recently updated the video card from the built-on card to a PCI-e GeForce 8400GS with 512 MB DDR3 RAM onboard.

I finally downgraded gPhotoShow Pro down to version 5.2.2 and the result is that while it does not play the screensaver perfectly, it displays pictures MUCH better with very little choppiness. However the videos are still not great. Very choppy on the main screen, &

Anyway I am upgrading the PC to Windows 8 so we'll see what effect, if any, it has. This won't be a clean install, for now. I have no idea if gPhotoShow Pro works with Windows 8 - does it?

I will let you know how it goes.
User avatar
gpb
Site Admin
Posts: 761
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 1:23 am

Re: gPhotoShow 6 Observations

Post by gpb »

You didn't say whether the speed issue is with strandard or DirectX transitions, anyway in both cases most part of the code is the same between 5.x and 6.x. The last release has more features but the DirectxX code is the same so I am really wondering why you see a difference. Anyway on a system like that you should not have any speed issue. gPhotoShow works very well with smooth transition on much older hardware, I tested it on several systems with single core 1.6Ghz cpu and 1Gb of ram. I am also aware several customer uses gPhotoShow on Atom based systems with no problems.
Moreover video is played by VLC not by gPhotoShow, so if you have speed issues also with video it means something on your computer is using too much cpu time or it is accessing the hard disk or in any other way is taking too much resources. Consider also that usually the screen saver is run with the lowest priority and any other program can steal cpu time from it.
gPhotoShow Pro works very well with Windows 8 but I don't think your issues depends on the windows versions, you should investigate which program is using so much resources when the screen saver is running.
Gianpaolo Bottin
gPhotoShow.com
Post Reply