gPhotoShow Products Support Forum

I have a slideshow set up to change the background every 5 minutes. The first change seems to be pretty close to that, but I've noticed the longer the slideshow runs, the longer it takes to change the background. For instance, I started the slideshow at 3:25 PM and the first background change occurred after 5 minutes 5 seconds had elapsed. I left and checked it again at 4:25 PM and it didn't change again until 5 minutes and 23 seconds had elapsed. The slideshow is triggered by an Autohotkey script that checks to see if gphotoshow64.exe is running first, and if so, it exits. If it's not running, it starts the slideshow with a 55 second pause, depending on the current time (04 after, 09 after, 14 after, etc sync the background change with the time). The goal is to have the background change in sync with the time.

To confirm it's not an issue caused by AHK, I manually started the slideshow. After 45 minutes, the background took 5 minutes 25 seconds to change. By 8:55 PM, it took 6 minutes 35 seconds.

The directory is on an NAS and contains just 272 images, no errors have been logged and this is running on a W11 22H2 PC. Any ideas on why the 5 minute interval doesn't appear to be strictly honored?

I don't quite understand the problem. gPhotoShow changes the image after a certain time interval from the last change, not at a specific time. If you set a time of 5 minutes, it will be 5 minutes from the last image plus the time needed to load and process the image. Since the photos come from a NAS, it is possible that the 5 minutes are increased by 10 or 20 seconds needed to transfer the image, this is normal.
By enabling extended log it is possible to see what happens and the time needed to load and process images.

gpb wrote: Tue Apr 08, 2025 10:11 am I don't quite understand the problem. gPhotoShow changes the image after a certain time interval from the last change, not at a specific time. If you set a time of 5 minutes, it will be 5 minutes from the last image plus the time needed to load and process the image. Since the photos come from a NAS, it is possible that the 5 minutes are increased by 10 or 20 seconds needed to transfer the image, this is normal.
By enabling extended log it is possible to see what happens and the time needed to load and process images.

I agree that 10 or 20 seconds is an acceptable additional time needed to load and process an image, but not more than that. I've never used the minute setting before as all my other slideshows change after 10 seconds (or use PhotoWall). I've never had such an additional delay added, and they all pull from the same NAS. To me the issue is that if I set the display time to 5 minutes, I should see the background change every 5 minutes consistently. Not 5 minutes one time and over 6 another.

Again, my goal it to just get it to change the background as close to 5 minutes after, 10 minutes after, etc, just so it doesn't appear to change at random minutes past the hour. I'll monitor it some more today and enable extended logging to see if that provides any details.

I installed an app just for changing desktop wallpapers, and was seeing a similar delay after a period of time (though not nearly to the extent I feel the slideshow has). I have since copied the directory over to my local hard drive and just restarted the slideshow to see what happens.

paul1965 wrote: Tue Apr 08, 2025 9:36 pm I installed an app just for changing desktop wallpapers, and was seeing a similar delay after a period of time (though not nearly to the extent I feel the slideshow has). I have since copied the directory over to my local hard drive and just restarted the slideshow to see what happens.

Well, moving the directory to the local hard drive didn't seem to make an immediate difference. After just 1.5 hours of running, the slideshow is already taking an extra 30 seconds to load the next image. Maybe I'm just being too picky here, but I really don't understand why that's happening.

As I wrote before the delay can't "accumulate", gPhotoShow starts the timer after a picture has been displayed, next image is preloaded as soon as possible so the delay should be minimal. Without an extended log I can't guess the reason of the delay you experienced.

I've attached logging.

I checked the log but I didn't see any problem, the first image was displayed at 7:30:0 the last at 11:25:33
Since you don't use HW accelerated transitions gPhotoShow doesn't preload images. On each image loading and processing takes 1 or 2 seconds and image after image the delay reached 30 seconds.

gpb wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 8:09 pm I checked the log but I didn't see any problem, the first image was displayed at 7:30:0 the last at 11:25:33
Since you don't use HW accelerated transitions gPhotoShow doesn't preload images. On each image loading and processing takes 1 or 2 seconds and image after image the delay reached 30 seconds.

Yes, for this slideshow I disabled the transitions completely, but I'm not sure why I chose no HW over HW Accelerated. Will the images preload under HW even without transitions, and possibly help with my perceived issue?

Using OpenGL or DirectX a quick Fade transition is always performed even if you disable all transitions and the next image is preloaded after an image is displayed, this should allow for more precise timing