Example… I have images that were digitized from slides but not in best order. Once in while an image shows up that should be elsewhere. Is it possible to move an image in the sequence or do I have to go back to source (Photos App) to make sure they are in the proper grouping? Of course I didn’t notice until after the project was ‘tweaked’, hence the hope of being able to do it in iScreensaver.
Certainly! In either list view or thumbnail view you can simply drag one or multiple images to change the order. You can even do non-contiguous selections, by holding down the command key as you click images. For example suppose image number 3, 5, and 7 are out of order and you want them to come first. Simply select image three, five, and seven, and then drag them in front of image number one. You will end up with image 3, 5, and 7 showing up first.
Excellent. Sorry to be so chicken to try what now seems obvious. Simply doing too good to screw up now 
No problem. You should also look into the Global Sequence settings, as there are options that may be of use, such as “play first slide first” and “resume with previous item”. If you check both of these, then the screensaver will always start with the first slide (which could be a title slide, e.g. “My family screensaver”) and then jump to the last-shown image and resume from that point.
See https://iscreensaver.com/help/help07.shtml#globalSettings
Seems reordering only works for a single item for me. Tried list and clips view. Keep in mind that I’m on Monterey, one Beta back. I’m going to go to latest Beta and try again.
As an aside observation, if source and destination is in view, reorder is very responsive. When trying to drag to a location not in view it’s somewhat sluggish. Probably my own doing though… working with 1531 items that started out being tifs of varying size. A few 102 error during build that I couldn’t pin down to particular image(s). Exported them from Photos as jpeg’s and re-imported them into Photos App and then used them in iscreensaver. No errors.
That’s odd - we just did a test with a 10000 image project in Mojave (10.14), and drag to reorder works fine. 1500 items should be a piece of cake.
Also, there shouldn’t be a problem in Monterey but I suppose it’s possible? We will run some more tests…
“If you check both of these, then the screensaver will always start with the first slide (which could be a title slide, e.g. “My family screensaver”) and then jump to the last-shown image and resume from that point.”
Good to know. Thank you. More reading to do but having too much fun building
Odd indeed. Have messed around some more. Monterey to latest Beta. Removed LG display. Set iMacPro to default resolution instead of scaled. No change in results.
Reordering 1 image works ok. Even moving it off displayed portion of list. Not quick but ok.
If I want to reorder 2 or more images, no luck. In list mode the ‘grab’ indicator does no show and no reordering, even just a few lines. In clip mode the mouse changes to ‘grab/move’ but if I move, only the image the mouse is on moves and it actually then only shows ‘1 image’.
Another observation, when closing the iscreensaver app it doesn’t completely close. Sometimes project widow stays up and has to be closed manually. Even then the ‘app running’ dot shows under the iscreensaver icon in the dock. Doing a Quit no change. Have to use Force Quit. Cannot get the app to open again until I do a Force Quit.
Open to suggestions as to what else to try, both for reorder and quit. Pretty well don’t to basics now on my iMacPro. Running off a an external 4TB SSD via Thunderbolt. Internal SSD ejected. All other peripherals disconnected. (LG display, Thunderbolt drives). Mouse is regular Apple grey. Any settings I should set/check?
Just a reminder, this is not a bitching type comment, just stuff I thought you might want to know about. Could very well be just me
Thanks for these reports - it looks like there are some new bugs in Monterey, whichi may also exist in Big Sur. We are investigating.
We’ve identified a few issues that affect Big Sur (and probably Monterey):
- Sometimes, quitting the app will hang. Solution: Force quit. It will usually not happen every time.
- upon first launching iScreensaver Designer, some helper apps may not launch, reducing performance. Solution: Quit the iScreensaver Designer app, then re open it.
- Drag & Drop to reorder items in either List or Thumbnail view may not function. Solution: instead of Drag & Drop, you can use Edit Cut (Command X) and Edit Paste (Command V). The items you cut will be inserted immediatly after the currently selected item(s), giving you the same result.
Global setting as per your suggestion above:
<such as “play first slide first” and “resume with previous item”. If you check both of these, then the screensaver will always start with the first slide…>
Does not work as such. Start with first item and Resume with previous item are either/or buttons, not check marks.
Would be nice if it worked as suggested
We have a new beta ready for testing. It should address many of the issues you were seeing in Monterey (and Big Sur)
Added another 1000+ images. Unfortunately (for me) iScreensaver rejected 15 outright and had trouble with another 15 or so. Had a few helper crashes during build but eventually weeded out the offending images. Some were TIF’s, others did not have a thumbnail. Sometimes it would hang during compressing of images. I deep cleaned cache a few times after removing a suspect image and ultimately got a clean build.
I tried to adjust error log to All and Verbose but still found it a bit cumbersome to find offending images. One has to keep in mind that the images I’m currently adding have been copied, merged and added to iPhoto back in the day. They survived many computer migrations/updates so all in all I’m quite happy to finally be able to ‘bring them to light’ as a screen saver.
If there is anything I should do differently next time a get some bad images I’m open to suggestions.
Would you be so kind as to :
- Zip and email any crash logs in ~/Library/Logs/iScreensaver/
- email us a couple examples of offending files that were causing crashes
We might be able to improve the error handling and notification?
Nothing in the Logs folder. ~/Library/Logs/iScreensaver/ is empty.
I can display the debug log ‘iScreensaver Designer Log’ but it does not seem to get written to disk, at least not in that Logs folder.
By default, logs are only written to that folder if there’s an error caught by the app. If the app has a worse crash, there’s another place to check: Open up Console.app, click Crash Reports on the sidebar, and see if there are any related to our app.
Found a bunch there. Emailed some samplings. Will track better in future and save crash log(s) next time it happens.
Very useful, thanks! It turns out that this crash is happening deep inside macOS X, and that’s why iScreensaver is not able to catch it.
Here’s a sample stack trace:
Application Specific Information:
Assertion failed: (0), function img_data_depth, file CGSImage.c, line 4540.
Thread 3 Crashed:
0 libsystem_kernel.dylib 0x00007ff81781c2a2 __pthread_kill + 10
1 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007ff81784c2d7 pthread_kill + 263
2 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007ff81779ed10 abort + 123
3 libsystem_c.dylib 0x00007ff81779e0be __assert_rtn + 314
4 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007ff81cfdf7e9 img_data_depth.cold.2 + 54
5 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007ff81ce213e1 img_data_depth + 1226
6 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007ff81cb83684 img_data_lock + 6300
7 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007ff81cb7e392 CGSImageDataLock + 1398
8 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007ff81cb7d5bb ripc_AcquireRIPImageData + 459
9 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007ff81cb7c24c ripc_DrawImage + 1180
10 com.apple.CoreGraphics 0x00007ff81cb7b494 CGContextDrawImageWithOptions + 527
11 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007ff81a4834e8 __74-[NSImageRep drawInRect:fromRect:operation:fraction:respectFlipped:hints:]_block_invoke + 888
12 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007ff81a48301f -[NSImageRep drawInRect:fromRect:operation:fraction:respectFlipped:hints:] + 743
13 XojoFramework.dylib 0x000000010bc79d1d DrawableCocoaBitmap::CreateMaskFromAlpha() + 349
14 XojoFramework.dylib 0x000000010bd53f35 Drawable::CopyMask() + 45
15 XojoFramework.dylib 0x000000010bdbb63a PictureCopyMask + 236
16 com.iscreensaver.screensaver 0x000000010a4e8ace Picture.CopyMask%o%o + 30
So basically, you’ve got one or more really corrupt image files (or there’s a new bug in Monterey - could be both?)
If you can email us one of those bad files, we’ll take a look.
My money would be on really corrupt image files
Files/images deleted from the project list, how can I get them back into the list? Would make finding the offenders easier.
- If you are running TimeMachine on your mac, perhaps you have a backup of an earlier saved version of the project?
- If not, perhaps a Binary Search would do the trick? Start with all photos. Try to build. if it crashes, throw out 1/2 of the files and try again. If it doesn’t crash, you know the offending file was in the 1/2 you removed.
- Using binary search, you can find a single bad file within 1000 in at most 10 steps.
- Or, look for files with missing thumbnail images - those are likely the bad ones, and since the helper app is crashing, the main app should keep working.