Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

Mike et al,

I'm running QU on Windows 7 64bit (actually as a virtual machine via VirtualBox on Mac OS x host).

1/ It performs well but, on start up, I occassionally get a "QImage" headed error message saying "A call to an OS Function failed". I click OK and QU proceeds to run fine.

Any idea what is causing it?

2/ Also occasionally get this when starting the image Editor:

http://pastoralsystems.co.nz/pshphotos/QUScreen.jpg (http://pastoralsystems.co.nz/pshphotos/QUScreen.jpg)

Seems to be a screen refresh problem? The white strip is a residual of the yellow bubble help displayed over the image thumbnail immediately prior to double-clicking the thumbnail to Edit Image.

3/ Loading of a large (eg 250MB) TIFF into the page editor sometimes takes a very long time compared to loading the image into the image editor. Although I expect it to take longer loading into the page editor, the extent of the difference is much more than with Q Studio.  


Thanks

Peter  

I've seen this too on v110 and earlier, but not seen it yet on v111 (early days). I assumed it was something to do with my video card. I was about to check for driver updates.
I'm on XP and and old P4 machine
Terry

Thanks for the response Terry. As you will see I have listed 2 more "issues". Any comment on the others?

Peter,
No issues here wrt the other 2. In fact the image editor seems a little slower that the FPE but both depend on the edit filters present.
Terry

Peter, how are you set in the Full Page Editor?
Under Rulers, there's a selection box where you choose Thumbs/small images or Selected or ALL.
If you use Thumbs/ Small images, the FPE is lightning fast. If you are set for ALL or Selected, then you are asking for a High Resolution image, and it takes a while to load a large file.

Fred

Thanks Fred. I'll check those settings.

Peter

Any comment on the "A call to an OS Function failed" message Mike?

Peter
 

A couple things here:

(1) I'm estimating about a 90% chance that the screen draw problem is a video driver bug.  Could anyone having the problem please list the model number of your video board and also the driver version?

(2) On "A call to an OS function failed", sounds like it might be a Mac specific problem with Macs running Windows.

FWIW, neither of these have been reported outside of this thread/forum.

Regards,
Mike

Hi Mike

I am also seeing the odd apparent redraw glitch ~ my card is an nVidia GeForce 6200 using driver version 6.14.10.9371

For the record I look forward to your thoughts & insight I 'talk' about here http://ddisoftware.com/tech/qimage-ultimate/tts-initial-impressions/

TIA

:)

Thanks Mike.

Yes, I could be related to the video driver (virtualisation with VirtualBox). My Mac has a NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M video card.

The message box relating to the error is titled QImage, therefore I assumed that it was a specific QImage message rather than comming from the OS.

I briefly tested the same images on my Windows XP Pro PC and found that I don't get the problem.

Peter

I've not had the problem since updating to v111 but my video card is an NVidea 8400GT with the latest driver 258.96
Terry

The error is titled Qimage just because the error happened while running "qimage.exe".  The error message indicates that one of the standard Windows API calls crashed.  By definition, that means that the OS either failed when that OS function was called or it crashed inside the OS function.  What that really indicates is that the error occurred inside OS code, not Qimage code.  Of course, that doesn't completely rule out Qimage as the cause (it could have passed "gibberish" to the OS) but usually it is more an indication that something isn't "healthy" with the OS.

Mike

Mike, I have the redraw problem (message from first screen shows up on batch screen and full page editor.) I have an ATI Radeon X600XT, and driver 6.14.10.6483, which is the latest I can find.

Incidentally, I have found the message doesn't transfer if I move the cursor to the folder window after double-clicking and before the batch window opens.

Jeff Jessee

Regarding the QU problems I have mentioned above.

I turned 3D Graphics off (now just using 2D) and so far the various problems haven't reoccurred.

It may be worth other users who are experiencing problems to try similar and see if it resolves the problem on normal machines (ie not as is mine, a virtual machine hosted by OS X). This may help identify the source.

Incidently, prior to turning the 3D off, the initial large yellow start up QU icon would display normally and then redisplay without transparency (ie white around the yellow circle in shape of square). Additionally, within QU, the scrolling of the image thumbnails and selecting of an image was a little erratic.

Again this could be a virtualisation problem, but maybe not since other users have similar symptoms.

Mike I have MS Visual Studio installed and that has installed some sort of continually running debugger which reports problems in programmes. The error message may be generated by that.

Peter
 

         

For anyone having the screen draw/refresh problem, please give 112 a try.  I changed the way Qimage draws the windows and I believe it will gel better with certain video cards.

Regards,
Mike

.112 solves the screen redraw problem with my ATI card.

Thanks,
Jeff Jessee

Thank you Mike,

112: a cautious it's better. So far there's no messy screen updates.

However if I use the "high quality" display for page editing, normal sized images display properly but large images (250MB and greater) simply don't display. In the latter case the busy cursor will display and hard drive shows very busy, but in the end nothing is displayed and I have to resort to Ctl-Alt-Del and kill QImage.

If I use the low res page edit option ("Thumbs/Small Images") all images display quickly regardless of size.

When I printed an image using 112 the usual "Clear Queue" prompt didn't appear. Ultimately I found that it was "there" but didn't have top focus. Haven't experienced that before.

I have turned 3D Graphics on again.

Peter

Peter,
I have been playing around with the scenario that you presented. I have created a number of huge Tifs.
This is what I find.
The "hourglass" (the spinning circle)  times out, but the operation is still live. Sometimes the screen does some weird tricks while I wait, but I wait.
Keep waiting, and finally, there's the HQ image at 525 mb and 900 mb files.
So, my point is, I thought QU was done and "cooked" too when the hourglass quit, but just stay there and the file will open in HQ.

What version of Windows?
I have W7, 64 bit in one, and 32 bit in another. I have Vista Premium on a separate HD which I no longer use, except for testing stuff.

Wait it out, and tell us what you find.

Fred

Thanks Fred,

Yes, the hour glass stops ... and HD activity finally ceases. I'm using Windows 7 64 bit 2.5GB RAM (in a virtual machine on a Mac, not that that should have any significant effect). I wait as long as can be reasonably be expected and then some.

Actually, for most of my page edits the low resolution display of the images is fine and is fast.

Peter

Peter,
Thanks for the information. Unfortunately, a virtual PC running in a Mac is not among my highest levels of knowledge.  :D
I did want to say, though, that 2.5 gigs of RAM seems a little borderline for just a PC running W7; without running a virtual machine on a Mac.

I think we should wait for Mike or some other person with oodles of knowledge on RAM requirements.
I word it this way because I know that the size file that Qimage can handle in each machine is different. One of the major criteria is RAM.

I don't even know if this is relevant, but looking at my screen snap, you can see the available RAM for Qimage based on my setup.
(From Qimage, click HELP, then hold the Shift key down while you click on Analyze Current settings)
Just curious what yours says.

Fred

Thanks again Fred.

I just checked the RAM allocation to my Win 7 and its actually 3GB (forgot that I increased it to accommodate large panorama stitching. Mac host has 8GB RAM).

There's still around 2GB free with a couple of large TIFFs loaded in QU.

The QU memory display is exactly as shown on your screen capture!

Peter
 

You say the file is 250MB.  Is that compressed size?  What actually matters is the pixel resolution (listed on the bottom of the Qimage window when you hover over the thumb with the mouse).  What's the resolution of the image?

Mike

**See Stop Press at bottom **

For example a 500MB TIF 16bit 22548x3753, with no modifications etc, loaded on an A4 page:

1/ Page edit button clicked and displayed in seconds as set to the low res display.

2/ While in page edit screen changed to high res ("All Images") and the image redisplayed correctly in about 2-3 minutes.

3/ Left high res setting on and exited page edit.

4/ Immediately re-entered page edit again and the same image was eventually displayed in 8-10 minutes. During the process the free RAM dropped from about 2GB to just below 1.6GB. Once displayed, the free RAM went back up to just over 2GB.

5/ Repeated 3 and 4 and image displayed in about 45 seconds ! While loading, the page edit screen displayed a "partial refresh", showing remnants of the main screen.

6/ Repeated 3 and 4 and image displayed in between 10 to 13 minutes. The page edit screen remained clean throughout until image was displayed. Free RAM went down to 1.6 GB while processing and back up to 2GB when displayed. After exited page edit, ie back to main QU screen, free RAM increased to 2.3GB.

7/ Repeated 3 and 4 and image hadn't displayed in 13 mintues. This time while waiting, page edit screen showed remnants of main edit screen. CPU load was low and disk activity ended up negligible. At end I Alt-TABed to check free RAM which was 1.6GB. Alt-TABing back again was unresponsive. QU wouldn't display in any form.

8/ Aborted QU.

While processing, the QU RAM use went from about 265MB up to about 750MB.

And so on!

Thanks

Peter

STOP PRESS!

Not giving up, I decided to explore other options.

Thinking out of the square, I allocated only 1 CPU core to Win7 rather than 2 (of the 4).

High res ("All Images") Page Edit display of the same 500MB image as above repeatedly loaded in 10 to 14 seconds!!

Two image on page (total 750MB) loaded in 34 seconds!

The 2 core allocation works fine in other multi-threaded applications.

My question: Is QU multi-threading during "page edit" display and if so does it have an inefficiency/bug, particularly apparent with large images?    
  
Hoping all this helps, Mike.

Peter



  

Thanks for all the details!  Helps to know exactly what you are experiencing.  What are the specs on your Mac?  I ask because a 250MB image loads in about 8 seconds on my Win7 x64 machine.  I have a folder of gargantuan images as well and I've tried a 700MB, 800MB, and 984MB image.  All load in the full page editor (with "All Images" selected) in under 20 seconds.  I'm wondering if the long delay could be causing Windows to do some nasty things to the program.  The first step might be figuring out why it is taking so long to load that 250MB image.  Windows is notorious for mangling screens in a program that it thinks is "not responding".  I think that's what is happening here, and I don't think it would happen if the image loaded in a "normal" amount of time.  I don't understand the wild difference in timings on your machine.  It doesn't seem to be using any more memory than it needs (plenty of leftover RAM available) so I don't think it is disk swapping.  Something must be causing those long loads though.  Even 45 seconds is too slow and it certainly shouldn't change to 10-13 minutes when it is repeated.  Something strange is going on.  Are you sure some virus program isn't stepping on things?

Mike

Thanks Mike. Did you read my STOP PRESS (maybe I was writing it while you were replying)?

CPU i7 2.66GHz plenty of disk space.

Peter



 

No.  I didn't see that.  Wasn't there when I started typing.  :)  It only uses one core for that stuff anyway.  Only time QU will ever use more than one core is for thumbnail building and printing.  Everything else is a standard single core single threaded coding.  Sounds to me more like your system isn't "behaving" properly when only one CPU is assigned to Win7.  It's almost like it doesn't know how to allocate its time.  I think it's possible.  Windows doesn't run perfectly on Macs, even ones with Intel processors.  Not sure why, but there are problems with Windows here and there when running on a Mac.

Mike

Thanks very much for the responses Mike.

The 10-14 sec loading for a 500MB image are comparable with your times.

However:
The "normal" image loading times with only 1 CPU core didn't last! Have reverted to 2 as other W7 programmes run well. Tried fixing page file at 4.5GB (was 3GB auto) and tried turning off ZoneAlarm. No better. It's the inconsistency that is confusing.

Can work well a few times and then goes into snail mode.

The plot thickens. No big deal for me because "low res" page editing is often all I need.

Peter

Hi Peter,

From the description of your problem, it sounds like it is a page file problem. Bearing in mind I have no experience of QU, or windows 7 never mind running any of this on Macs, but it used to be that you had the fastest response by putting the page file on a disc other than the OS. In searching on the web, it seems that many folk using w7 get increased performance, provided they have enough ram, by reducing the pf size to the minimum. Some even mention they get away with disabling it completely, others say that is a bad idea. If you do a search on 'page file windows 7' you will get the Microsoft 'official' explanations, and also what folk do to make it work for them.

hth.

Best wishes,

Ray

Thanks for the comment Ray.

That's food for thought.

 I have tried setting the page file much larger but not smaller.

QU operates without ever getting near to using all the RAM. Whereas my panorama programme, which runs perfectly, consumes nearly all of the RAM and so more likely to need the page file.

That being said, I'll check out your suggestions.

Peter