Saving a show and how to avoid "stuttering"

Post your tips & tricks here for creating slide shows with ProShow Producer. This could include suggestions for style and content in addition to working with the software itself
Joelscapes

Postby Joelscapes » Mon Jan 15, 2007 12:19 pm

Mikey,

Your idea of using a "mobile rack" for back-ups is a good one, but there can be problems, as I've encountered recently. A little over a week ago just as I was finalizing a show on my laptop the whole system crashed. Without going into details, the unit is now as dead as a brick and the repair shop says it requires a new motherboard. Being 2-1/2 years old it is not worth the expense. The shop said the hard drive seemed to be working fine, but they wanted a bundle of $$ to retrieve my data. Instead I removed the drive and slipped it into a mobile rack for laptop drives I borrowed from a friend so that I could access the data. I've learned from bitter experience to back up my data files, and most everything important is safe on an external drive. Everything, that is, except the show I was working on when the crash occurred. Of course, my most recent .PST file containing a week's worth of emails was also there, plus a few other less important files.

Here's the problem: The rack uses a USB 2.0 connection, and when I plug it into another laptop or desktop, whether at home or the office network, the computers detect the new drive hardware. However, none of the computers will assign a drive letter, and none of the files are visible. All these computers are running Windows XP, including my old laptop, except for one that runs Windows 2000. In "Start/Control Panel/Administrative Tools" the drive (it's a Fujitsu) is listed, but not as a logical drive, and there are no properties associated with it. Changing the jumper on the drive has no effect, and after a week playing with it, I'm about to toss the old hard drive into the trash, unless someone has any idea how to read the files. I sure would like to salvage my show, if possible.

Advice would be welcome.

Joelscapes

.
User avatar
Posts: 7501
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 6:35 pm
Location: Kirkland,Wash, USA, Earth

Postby gpsmikey » Mon Jan 15, 2007 3:49 pm

Joel, I suspect the issue you are running into is the drive
is formatted NTFS and the external drive / USB2 boxes
I *think* only handle fat32. If you have a spare IDE
connector in a regular PC, take a look at this gadget
to adapt a laptop size drive to a standard IDE cable
connector. (sorry - forgot to stuff the link in mjf)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812119020

From that, it really *is* on the IDE bus instead
of going through a translator (USB2 - IDE). If the drive is
indeed OK, then hooked up like this with the IDE-IDE
adaptor, your system should be able to read it without
any trouble. I have used the old "move the system disk
to a different PC as a data disk" a number of times in
the past -- it allows you to really scan a disk for viruses
and other junk that don't get a chance to hide themselves
if you don't boot off that drive.

NOTE: the "mobile drive racks" I had been talking about
do not do any "translation", they simply provide a convenient
carrier that plug into your IDE (or SATA) bus.


mikey
Last edited by gpsmikey on Tue Jan 16, 2007 7:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

andy

Postby andy » Tue Jan 16, 2007 12:56 am

gpsmikey wrote:Joel, I suspect the issue you are running into is the drive
is formatted NTFS and the external drive / USB2 boxes
I *think* only handle fat32.........................................

mikey


Mikey, I have a friend who like 'Joelscapes' has been left with an undetectable hard drive for the past 3 months. So with bated breath I hoped you would come back with some suggestions. You sure did boy oh boy!….I emailed your response to my friend, who after a sleepless night has now been able to retrieve everything. He is thrilled, thinks I’m (yes me!) ‘the-man’ (See….. it’s not, in my case, what I know anymore but WHO I know). Anyway he has asked me to send you a very big thank you, so here’s your big “THANK YOUâ€

.
User avatar
Posts: 7501
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 6:35 pm
Location: Kirkland,Wash, USA, Earth

Postby gpsmikey » Tue Jan 16, 2007 7:20 am

Glad it worked -- see my post, I edited it to put the link in that I
meant to when I wrote it as an example of a simple part to do
the job (also below)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812119020

I have a problem remembering to put links in sometimes. :oops:

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

Honorary ProShow PHD
Posts: 569
Joined: Wed Jun 28, 2006 10:49 am
Location: Eastern Oklahoma (USA)

Postby DanDan » Tue Jan 16, 2007 7:39 am

Mikey, Andy,
Ok! All of this is way over my head. Glad I never needed to know, (Knock on my wooden head!). I had to look up the acronym of the day "BOFH". You guys are,....too funny. But,.............I love a happy ending!! :lol:
_Dan

Joelscapes

Postby Joelscapes » Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:57 am

mikey,

Thanks so much for your help. That sounds like it could well be the answer; I will give it a try when I locate the right unit and connector, and will let you know how it goes. I'm very encouraged that it worked for Andy's friend.

Thanks again,

Joel

.
User avatar
Posts: 773
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2006 3:01 pm
Location: First house on the right after you go around the curve...(John Lennon is on my shirt)

Postby imabeatlelover » Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:55 am

Hey Mikey....I just got around to trying this (changing the shows to a .px file) and you are a freakin' genius! I'M NOT WORTHY....I'M NOT WORTHY! [She said while bowing to the Guru of ProShow] THANKS!!

Pat

.
User avatar
Posts: 1660
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:09 pm
Location: Traverse City Michigan

Postby marmart » Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:27 am

Hey Mikey, I did this once and it worked gREAT, but I have tried again and it doesn't work. I am trying to do this for a show that I love and want to study. Any thoughts??

Mary

.
User avatar
Posts: 7501
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 6:35 pm
Location: Kirkland,Wash, USA, Earth

Postby gpsmikey » Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:28 am

Mary define "doesn't work" ... you mean you can't find the show or
the downloaded file will not play after you change the file name or ???

We gotta give credit to Andy for first bothering to look up where it
was stuffing the temp show -- he just inspired me to snoop some
more and figure out what all was going on.

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

.
User avatar
Posts: 773
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2006 3:01 pm
Location: First house on the right after you go around the curve...(John Lennon is on my shirt)

Postby imabeatlelover » Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:32 am

Thank You too Andy. You guys are truly "THE BEST"!!!!!

Pat

Honorary ProShow PHD
Posts: 569
Joined: Wed Jun 28, 2006 10:49 am
Location: Eastern Oklahoma (USA)

Postby DanDan » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:00 am

Hey guys!
Thanks for all of the tips. I tried this yesterday am with the .px from temp. It does work. The one I tried though hung up about half way through playing. Not a clue as to why. I will try again later. Now that I know where my comp keeps its temp files. I like to have never found, even "trying to follow directions". I failed to "show hidden folders". Even then it was so imbedded, took a while to locate. Most likely to do with comp crash abouth this time last year. I had to go through the sytem recovery (back to original factory state). lost all files and aded programs. luckily I had backed up all of the important stuff except music. A year later I am still working on rebuilding that library.
Anyway, thanks!
_Dan

Honorary ProShow PHD
User avatar
Posts: 717
Joined: Wed Jan 03, 2007 6:31 pm
Location: Ontario, Canada

Postby Tarafrost » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:02 am

I tried to follow the steps noted earlier, and found that newer versions of PSP (1897+) seem to put the downloaded files elsewhere.

On my Win2K box (and on my WinXP laptop), it stored the temp file in the directory where my TEMP environment variable was pointing (h:/temp in my case). And the filename was not as noted earlier, but was something like psgXX.tmp (where XX was something that looked like "B9" for Joel Henner's most excellent stop motion Hallowe'en animation).

Once the download was done, I just copied the .tmp file and renamed it as something.px.

To find out what your TEMP environment variable is set to, execute the command "set t" on the command line.

Still had some issues with the local playback halting randomly though.

I think PSP 3.0 still has a lot of nagging bugs in it, including ones in the Presenter plugin.

Hope this helps.
....Andrzej (aka: the curmudgeon)

Tarafrost Photography: Specializing in Wild-Life
http://www.tarafrost.com

.
User avatar
Posts: 7501
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 6:35 pm
Location: Kirkland,Wash, USA, Earth

Postby gpsmikey » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:16 am

The location of the saved file probably is going to vary if your TEMP variable is
different. The psgxx.tmp is consistent with what I posted earlier where in your
case the "xx" was "B9" -- the "B9" is a hexadecimal number representing 185
decimal. The next show you watch would be "BA" then "BB" ... "BF" "C0" etc.
I don't know if after "FF" it goes to "00" (rolls over) or goes to "100" though.

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

.
User avatar
Posts: 1660
Joined: Sun Feb 12, 2006 3:09 pm
Location: Traverse City Michigan

Postby marmart » Wed Jan 17, 2007 9:34 am

gpsmikey wrote:Mary define "doesn't work" ... you mean you can't find the show or
the downloaded file will not play after you change the file name or ???

We gotta give credit to Andy for first bothering to look up where it
was stuffing the temp show -- he just inspired me to snoop some
more and figure out what all was going on.

mikey



Hi Mikey,

Thanks to you also Andy for beginning this thread!!

What I mean by not working is this: I copy the tmp file, paste, change name adding .px and when I click on it, PSP opens, but of course nothing opens with it. The first time I did it, as soon as I changed the name and added.px, the icon immediately changed and when it opened, of course it opened in Presenter. So I assume I must be doing domething wrong??

Thanks guys!

Mary

.
User avatar
Posts: 7501
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 6:35 pm
Location: Kirkland,Wash, USA, Earth

Postby gpsmikey » Wed Jan 17, 2007 10:02 am

Hmmm -- two things come to mind:
1) you say "added px" - did you actually add ".px" to the tmp or did you change
the file name from psgxx.tmp to psgxx.px ??? (if the icon does not change to a
photodex icon, it means your system does not recognize the fact that .px is a
photodex extension)

2) did you uninstall presenter from your system for some reason ?? Are there
other files on your system that end in .px (do a search) -- do they show the
photodex icon on them ?? If not, somehow, your system has lost the association
between .px and presenter.

mikey
You can't have too many gadgets or too much disk space !!
mikey (PSP6, Photoshop CS6, Vegas Pro 14, Acid 7, BluffTitler, Nikon D300s, D810)
Lots of PIC and Arduino microprocessor stuff too !!

PreviousNext

Return to PSP - Tips & Tricks

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 6 guests