Greetings -
I guess I'm probably one of the first to upgrade to Version 8 (having purchased Version 7 around the beginning of 2017). We corresponded then about various issues, which were mostly resolved at that time.
I have two monitors running (from a laptop) in landscape and portrait mode. I just ran some tests with V8 and here are my initial conclusions. (I thought I might be a little "rusty" because I haven't used gPS for quite a while, but I think the following observations are accurate):
1a. gPS is not detecting my monitors (2 & 3) in the same way as Windows 10. (The landscape and portrait monitor IDs are reversed, even after much tinkering, restarting etc.) I vaguely recall you commenting on this in the past, maybe even in FAQ? Not a big problem, since I can "trick" gPS into the correct configuration.
1b. I notice that when gPS is working in the background to save a revised setting (eg. Save File & Preview), it gives a "Not responding" message until the task has been completed. Again, not a big problem.
2. I ran a test using a small number of images: 6 portrait, 4 landscape. The landscape images always display correctly on the landscape monitor However, certain unanambiguously landscape images ALSO display occasionally, repeatedly (incorrectly) on the portrait monitor. NB: the problem is one-way; I never get portrait images displaying incorrectly on the landscape monitor.
The problem is greatly exacerbated in larger slide shows: i.e. many landscape images appear incorrectly on the portrait monitor, which defeats the reason I purchased gPS. This sounds like the problem I was having in early 2017, and which (if I remember correctly) you successfully resolved in Build 917: Please see our correspondence from 2017 on this point, below:
MY QUESTION from 2017: "Do you have any idea of why this "display mismatch" is happening consistently with certain images (and/or certain folders), and how the problem can be fixed? Is there any way to troubleshoot the problem, looking for patterns a file log etc.? (NB: I already tried using the additional height/width filters, to no avail.) The reason I bought gPhotoShow was to avoid having to tag images as being portrait or landscape, or placing them in separate folders. I would like it to work consistently with all images."
YOUR REPLY IN 2017: "This is probably a bug, after your message I did some tests with my images and I think found the cause of this issue. gPhotoShow uses two different components to get exif information, on some images they don't agree about orientation, now I tried to use the same used to rotate images it seems to work. Please download the following updated version and let me know if it works better:
http://www.gphotoshow.com/files/gpsprosetup-917.exe"
--> I wonder if the "fix" you successfully applied in Build 917 has somehow been left out of Version 8?? Otherwise, can you suggest what the mismatch display problem might be now?
3. When I try to add a "Custom Display Time" for another monitor, the dialogue box seems to accept the entry, but as soon as I close the dialogue box and move anywhere else in the gPS menu, the system immediately gives a strange "Out of Memory" error, which doesn't allow me to do anything else except exit gPS without saving. So, I've not been able to test this new function.
4. Last (but not least), I am intrigued by something you wrote in 2017, which I am just seeing again now:
YOUR COMMENT from 2017: "I should filter images before starting to display them but this not something I am going to do because it has several drawbacks, in particular if there a huge number of files it would slow down slideshow startup."
I understand you have reservations about this. But I wonder: Would it be possible to give users the (ON/OFF) OPTION of filtering before start of display (e.g. for a limited, finite number of files), while retaining "filtering on the fly" as the DEFAULT option for most users, who may wish to randomly display huge numbers of files? I mean, if gPS is sophisticated enough to filter huge numbers of files "on the fly", I would think that pre-filtering a limited, finite number of images (and temporarily turning off the "filtering on the fly" routine) would be technically feasible?
As I have explained in the past, I also have 10,000's of images, but I tend to work with much smaller, finite collections at any one time. So, having the OPTION of filtering only few dozen or couple of hundred images, IN ADVANCE, might solve some display problems and create new opportunities for displaying images the way I (and maybe others) would like. (I come back to my old request to be able to display a limited, finite number of slides SEQUENTIALLY, correctly in both landscape and portrait format. This is not presently possible, even if the "bug" identified in point 2 above will be fixed.)
Aside from the drawback of slowing down slideshow startup for huge numbers of files -- which could be avoided by warning users not to select a "pre-display filter" option for large numbers of files -- is there any other impediment to introducing such an option for users who would like to have it? And, would pre-filtering a finite (limited) number of images create new possibilities for (sequential) display in ways that are currently not possible?
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PS: I tried to send these comments by email, using the online feedback page, but "
https://www.gphotoshow.com/scripts/mailcontact.php" returned an "Incorrect request"; so I am posting to the Forum instead.
Best regards