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Re: Sequential slideshow on dual (landscape/portrait) monitors

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2017 6:13 am
by rosenaquin
Looking forward to update.

Re: Sequential slideshow on dual (landscape/portrait) monitors

Posted: Sun Mar 10, 2019 4:00 am
by dbk
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?

* * * *

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

Re: Sequential slideshow on dual (landscape/portrait) monitors

Posted: Mon Mar 11, 2019 2:34 pm
by gpb
Hello,

1) Unfortunately there is no way to get monitor ordering used by windows control panel. Probably developers of control panel applet didn't use the same API function available to third party programs so they have a different ordering, there is nothing to do about it.
Sometimes I noticed the same slowness when saving a file, the slowness is located inside a windows API, I don't know the reason maybe it depends on antivirus scan or something else. It already happened in the past then it was fixed by a windows update

2) The code to get image size and orientation of version 8 is the same of version 7 so it should behave in the same way, maybe the issue is related to 64 bit version, can you sen me an image that is detected in the wrong way ?

3) Weird issue of a library used by 64 bit version, I fixed it in 8.0.1 I just released

4) Apply filter before starting the slideshow is of course possible but with current code rather complex, for now I don't think to add this feature, I don't have enough time to work on the project, maybe later this year.

About contacts form, I added a new anti-spam to stop bots but it should not block messages coming from normal browsers, which browser are you using ?

Re: Sequential slideshow on dual (landscape/portrait) monitors

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 5:10 pm
by dbk
Thanks, as always, for your quick reply.

2) I will try to send you a private message with a view to setting up a Dropbox link -- so that you can access the same 10 test files that are indicating a problem. I reinstalled gPS as 32-bit, but it didn't make a difference, except portrait images are now (occasionally) displaying incorrectly on the landscape monitor (which is the reverse of the situation before). I don't see any pattern with particular images: sometimes they appear correctly (on the portrait monitor), sometimes they display ALSO on the landscape monitor, even though the settings are definitely not set for that. Curiously, the mismatch display continues to be "one-way": i.e. the landscape images now seem to be displaying correctly all the time (i.e. displaying ONLY on the landscape monitor, as they should). Overall, I would say that the 10 test images are displayed correctly about 75% of the time. NB: As far as I recall, my other slide shows were displaying perfectly on my landscape/portrait monitors when I last used gPS (in 2018), and I have not changed any hardware since then. (I have also tested one of these shows that used to work well, and it's totally messed up now -- I have checked and adjusted the settings carefully before the test.)

3) Independent monitor timing seems to work fine now, in Version 8.01. Very nice to have this new feature in gPS!!

4) I do hope you will consider this "pre-filtering option" later in the year when you have more time. I think it could ultimately help to make gPS even more versatile for many users.

5) Contacts form: I had tried sending from Firefox ... maybe the problem was the length of the message?

PS: Suggestion -- At the very bottom of your Forum page, you have a button for "Display and sorting options". Would it be possible to ADD that same button to the top of the Forum page, so that the user doesn't have to scroll down many pages of old posts just to change the display setting to "Descending" (in order to see the latest post first)? (The default setting seems to be "Ascending"; whereas my own preference is "Descending") - Thanks again.

Re: Sequential slideshow on dual (landscape/portrait) monitors

Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2019 7:14 pm
by dbk
After more testing, I think I have discovered what is going on. The problem all stems from the seriously annoying "monitor misidentification" issue, which turns out to be more confusing than I first imagined:

Even though I configured gPS, under "Multiple Monitors", to use "All monitors EXCEPT Number 1", which I thought was my laptop screen, I now realise that under "Filters", gPS was in fact using the settings for "Monitor 1" (!), which turns out to be the Dell monitor where I have been trying to display landscape images. (I didn't pay much attention to those settings for Monitor 1, because I thought they were being ignored by gPS.)

Incidentally, in the "Filters" section, I am still unable to interpret the "Position" and "Size" information that gPS provides, supposedly as a clue to what my monitor configuration really is. According to gPS:

My Dell U2417H (for landscapes) is supposedly: Position 0,0 ; Size 1920,1080 (gPS Monitor 1 = Windows Monitor 3)
My nearly identical Dell U2515 (for portraits) is supposedly: Position 2880,0 ; Size 3072, 1728 (gPS Monitor 2 = Windows Monitor 2)
My much smaller Acer laptop screen is supposedly Position 6720,162 ; Size 1620,2880 (gPS Monitor 3 = Windows Monitor 1)

Even with the known (apparently unavoidable) mismatch between Windows and gPS, for reasons you have explained, I can't make much sense of these numbers, as they relate to my particular monitors/screens. I have a feeling the "Size" information provided by gPS is mixed up.

Anyhow, I think you can ignore Point 2 of my last post -- unless there is anything else you can possibly do to resolve this source of confusion (or at least make it even clearer to users that it exists, going beyond what is written in FAQ Point 43). I'm sure there are other users with multiiple monitors who would benefit from more clarity in this regard.

Re: Sequential slideshow on dual (landscape/portrait) monitors

Posted: Wed Mar 13, 2019 12:16 pm
by gpb
Monitor numbers in the Filters page are always related to number of monitor used by gPhotoShow. I mean, monitor #1 is the first monitor used, #2 is the second and so on. So if you exclude system monitor #1 the one labeled as 1 in Filters is system monitor #2 or whichever monitor the windows api thinks is number #2
Yes, it's complicated but windows doesn't offer an easy way to identify monitors. Positions and size displayed in Filters page are exactly as they are returned by the windows monitor api and the same used by gPhotoShow to display images.
Anyway only a few systems have this kind of issue, I don't know the reason. I have a laptop too, but monitors are well ordered. #1 is laptop, #2 and #3 are the external monitors ordered according to their position.