Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

[fffrankk]

Structure :

3-Pages AMS-file.
Avis on all pages with hyperlinks over them which are on all pages at the same spot.

Hyperlink on page 1 should open up page 2.
Hyperlink on page 2 should open up page 3.

What happens is that clicking on the Hyperlink over the running avi on page 1 will show for a millisecond page 2 and then open up directly page 3.

It seems that the click is taken more than once.

BUT : the really strange thing is that it only does that the first time you click after opening the autorun.exe !!

When you go back to page 1 (still the same autorun running) and click there again it will NOT pass you over to page 3.

But closing the menue and reopening it, it starts all over again.

Any suggestions ?

[This message has been edited by fffrankk (edited 03-28-2002).]

[Jito463]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

What version of AMS are you running? Have you tried the 3.0.0.7 patch?

Also, does this happen in preview, when building, or after burning to CD?

[This message has been edited by Jito463 (edited 03-27-2002).]

[fffrankk]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

Running on 3.0.0.2, patched with 3.0.0.7.
The preview AND the final autorun.exe both behave the same way.

I sure won't burn this on CD and couldn't figure out why it should not do that when being run from CD.

[Darryl]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

If you like I can take a look at your menu if you send it [email protected].

If you do, please create a ZIP Archive by going to TOOLS->CREATE ZIP ARCHIVE.




------------------
Sincerely,

Darryl Hnatiuk
Indigo Rose Corporation

[fffrankk]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

Thanks for the offer, Darryl, but in fact all the data that come together in this project is about 200MB in size.

But this bug is not only to be found in that project. Any multi-pages autorun-file with avis and a hyperlink over them, will shoot you right to the last page in the row the FIRST time you click on it, as long as the hyperlink on the next page is at the same spot where it is on the page before.

So before i send half a CD across the world via e-mail, you might just try building a small autorun with that arrangement yourself.

[Jito463]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

Did you have a hyperlink over the top of the video, or did you use the click on video action to skip to the next page? If it was the hyperlink method you used, try using the latter method instead. It worked for me.

[Darryl]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

I'm sorry it has taken so long to respond.

I have tried to replicate your problem, although I have not had any luck in doing so. I followed your instructions in creating a test but it did not result in what you described.

If you create a ZIP archive within AutoPlay Menu Studio, you have the ability to include or not include different files. I am assuming that your AVI's are the largest portion of your menu. Therefore you can create one that does not include the AVI files. I can then replace them with my own to test it. Again if you like you can send it to [email protected] and I can take a look.

------------------
Sincerely,

Darryl Hnatiuk
Indigo Rose Corporation

[fffrankk]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

Hyperlink OVER the video.

NOT the video itself working as a hyperlink when clicked.

I cannot take the whole video for a hyperlink, because i need quite a lot hyperlinks there. 5 to be exact.

You sure know the dvd-menues where a film is running in a loop and you can choose the Specials, the MainFilm, a Trailer, Chapter-Menue, and so on ... well - about that is what i am doing.

Very common thing to do nowadays and i am most surprised that this "multimedia-state-of-the-art"-product fails to do it.

Since this software doesn't really seem to be made for multimedia purposes : what do professionals create their interactive autostart-menues with ? As seen in every DVD-Menue ??

[Jito463]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

I couldn't seem to replicate it either. What kind of hardware/OS are you running it on? Maybe it's related to that somehow. If your burn it to one CD (they're cheap after all, you can even use an RW), you can try it out on other systems and see if it's specifically related to your test system.

[fffrankk]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

Sorry. I was gone on hollidays for two weeks.

I run on Windows ME, Intel Pentium III, 256 MB SDRAM, 866 Hz and a 32 MB Riva TNT2 M64 graphic-card, official nVidia 4.13.01.1241-drivers.

Will check out something else the next days and let you know about it and/or send the file to you.

[Bruce]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

fffrankk-
The standard for making DVDs is Macromedia's Director. I highly suggest you try to find your answer here if you can, Director has a massive learning curve!
Feel free to contact me.
[email protected]

[fffrankk]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

So i checked this menu on another computer with a Win98 OS, a very different graphic-card, ... but there its doing exactly the same. I tried it on both machines with movies encoded with different codecs - that doesn't make any difference at all either. I even changed the drivers for my graphic-card - no effects.

Installing the AMS-program on the other machine and creating the same menu there again from scratch will also bring out the same results.

I don't know what machines the guys use who claim not to be able to replicate this menu with its bugs, but i've had it with this **** and do not want to go on trying this and that on machine A or B and send it to C to check it with D .... either this program works or it does not.

Thanks Bruce for the hint with Macromedia i'll check that soon.

[Lorne]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

It isn't likely to have anything to do with your graphics card or drivers. Your mouse drivers/settings might be something to look at.

What did you name the different Hyperlink objects? What did you name the different AVI objects? What did you name the pages? Are all the names unique, even across the three pages?

Hmmm...just thought of something. How are you testing the menu? Can you describe the steps you're taking to run the menu after you've built it?

I don't know what machines the guys use who claim not to be able to replicate this menu with its bugs, but i've had it with this **** and do not want to go on trying this and that on machine A or B and send it to C to check it with D .... either this program works or it does not.

I understand your frustration. But it would be wise not to miss a few important and very significant points:

1. You're the first among thousands upon thousands of users to ever report this problem.

2. None of our tech support personnel are able to reproduce what you're reporting--and we have facilities to test our software on every version of Windows ever released since 95a.

3. One of our most advanced "power users" can't reproduce it either.

The bottom line is, if by some chance you've discovered something wrong with AutoPlay Menu Studio, we'll fix it (at least in 4.0, anyway). But it's pretty darn unlikely to find something that "broken" in a product that has been in widespread use for well over a year.

I'm afraid the most likely answer is simply that you're doing something wrong.

And that might not be your fault, either...it could be a lack in the documentation. Which is why it's important for us to get to the bottom of this, either way, so we can learn how to improve the documentation for version 4.0.

[fffrankk]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

Hi Lorne.Thanks for the reply.
First of all : I really like your program and if it wasn't for that i wouldn't take all the effort again to write this all.


Here are the EXACT steps i took to create the menus :


Open AMS, create a new project. Choose "Empty Project". (AMS is set NOT to play a sound on any mouse-action by default)

Push the AVI-Object-Button and choose an avi from the harddrive, mark the checkbox that makes the video maintain its original size. The video gets set automatically on the upper left corner of the page.

Push the Hyperlink-Button, press o.k. It is automatically set upper left over the video.

Add a page via "Page / Add", call it >Page 2<.
Do the same steps as did on Page 1, just choose another video.

Add a third page called >Page 3< - again : Video (a third, also different one), Hyperlink over it.

Go back to page 1, doubleclick on the Hyperlink, choose the Actions-Tab in the opening Object-Properties-Window, chose the Mouse-Click-Tab, click the ADD-button, go "Pages / Jump to Page" choose Page 2 to jump to in the Value-line.

Page 2 - do the same steps as with Page 1, just tell it to go to page 3 when the mouse is clicked.

Page 3 - again the same, the Hyperlink here should go back to page 1.

That's it.


Now test the AM and watch carefully. It happens so fast you might miss it and it
only happens the ! *FIRST* ! *TIME* ! you CLICK on the hyperlink after letting the menu run !!!

Video 2 does not get played at all, Video 3 neither, it seems as if the page had not changed at all, since your back on page 1. BUT if you click on the hyperlink again NOW it will change to page 2, play the video until you click there on the Hyperlink and then go onto page 3 and so on.

Close the Menu and open it up again. On the FIRST (!!) click on the Hyperlink it will again race over page 2 and 3 for a millisecond and finally display the video on page 1 again. After (!) it has done that it functions perfectly. (And now that is what tells me that is cannot be my computer that causes that, neither the way i created the menu)

You might want to use videos that only display the numbers of the pages they are on to make sure you don't get confused by the content of the videos. And also pay close attention to when you click.

(It might be easier not to place a Hyperlink on page 3 leading back to page 1, cause that way you see directly that you actually DID click and that AMS did not display Video/Side 2. But you will not be able to go back to page 1 to see that on the second turn it all does work fine, which makes this bug even more bizarr and obviously proves that my mouse-settings cannot be the cause of this strange behaviour. By the way ... i changed my mouse yesterday from the simple standard mouse that came with the computer to Microsoft's Optical Trackball and i also installed the IntelliPoint 3.2 Mouse-Software that came with it. Didn't make any changes at all. I've set my computer to open objects on one mouse-click only via the "Folder-Options")

I tested the menus with the "Switch"-button (Test your AutoPlayMenu), built the menu with the "Hammer"-button right next to the "Switch"-button, clicked on the autorun.exe that has been created after building the menu via the "Hammer"-button, burnt the autorun.exe, -.apm, -.inf the DATA-folder on cd and have it run this way ... it is all the same.

Whether i give the Video- and Hyperlink-Objects names (sure everyone has its own name) or let AMS name it automatically (HyperlinkObject1, HyperlinkObject2, ... / AVIObject1, AVIObject2, ...) doesn't make any difference at all.

I've checked the above description of the steps i took to create the menu several times. Please tell me what i did wrong.


(Oh ... almost forgot : when i wrote this letter here and at the same time created a new menu to make sure i write down exactly what i am doing, i also had three other applications running that used up lots of memory. Computer was very much slowed down. So when i tested the menu, my computer wasn't able to display the videos and instead showed a grey rectangle of the avi's size where it would have normally displayed the video. Guess what : THEN it did NOT skip the pages on the first click ! After rebooting the computer and letting the same autorun.exe run it displayed the avis normally and also did that skipping-pages-thing. Does that really leave any possibilities for me doing something wrong ?)

[Lorne]

Re: Bookmarks over avi s in multiple-pages - bug

Thanks for the very thorough reply.

I've followed your instructions, but I still can't reproduce the behaviour you're seeing on your system. Everything works absolutely fine here.

I even tried switching from "double-click to open an item" to "single-click to open an item" but that made no difference (I thought we had a potential "bingo!" there, actually).

The only way I could come close to simulating what you saw is by double-clicking on the hyperlinks instead of single-clicking on them.

I tried using small AVIs and large AVIs...I didn't try any funky divx codecs or anything, though.

Since you've seen the same thing happen on two systems...what do those systems have in common? (Hardware/settings/etc.)