Windows fail

General Discussions
1

Hi,

I recently bought iScreensaver designer and made a screensaver with it.

Workflow:

  1. Render out an animation in Cinema4D(64bit) to a H.264 Quicktime movie (.mov) (1440x900 px)
  2. Create a new project in iScreensaver Designer
  3. import the .mov
  4. set the display-type of the .mov to “Fill”.
  5. Built the screensaver

This works perfectly for mac, no problems whatsoever…
Windows on the other hand, is a big set of troubles:

The installer seemingly works good. (pressing the preview button there however causes a crash)
In the screen where you can set your screensaver in windows, you can see the little preview there. So that’s good, but clicking the preview button causes a crash. Waiting for the screensaver to open also causes a crash.

I think it has something to do with quicktime. When i check my windows error reports, it says there’s a quicktime error.

I also tried this with a 720x480px version of the .mov (as you suggest in your guide), but this still causes the same problem.

Crashes occur on windows 7 as well as on vista…

Any thoughts?

2

This does sound like a QuickTime error.

  • The best way to test this is to use the Preview button from within the Installer. (It’s a lot faster than going through the full installation process every time). Once that’s working, then you can try the install button.

  • First, if you can obtain the Exact error message, this will help us. Copy / paste from the error log, or take a screenshot if needed.

  • Because not every video codec works on Windows, we suggest you try this: Simply copy your h.264 movie to the windows PC, and open it in QuickTime Player application. Does it play back OK or crash? If it crashes, then you should try re-exporting it on the Mac using a different video codec (or different settings).

  • Next, make sure you are using the latest QuickTime, which is 7.6.8 as of this writing.
    See: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download

  • Next, if that doesn’t fix the problem: there’s a good chance that your anti-virus software is malfunctioning and blocking either the Screensaver or blocking QuickTime. Try this:
    http://iscreensaver.com/help/notes/anti_virus/anti_virus.shtml

  • Finally – once you get it working, please post your solution to the forums, so other folks can learn from your experience.

Thank you!

3
  • Preview still not working
  • error message screenshot uploaded here: http://oi55.tinypic.com/2r4k592.jpg
  • exported on windows, play back is perfect on windows and mac, yet the screensaver keeps crashing
  • I was already using the last version
  • there is no anti virus running

Like i said, i tested the screensaver on two machines (a dell and an HP laptop, respectively running vista and windows 7)

I think i tried everything your website says… I also googled it, but found nothing…

Any more thoughts?

4

The error message shows that it is indeed QuickTime that has caused the crash (QuickTime.qts, 7.68.75.0). This is probably a bug in QuickTime for Windows.

Try this:

If it works fine, then this means the problem is in your movie file, and you should be able to re-export a new version.

  • If you can, please email us (support at iscreensaver.com ) and give us a copy of your project, so we can test it on our test machines.
5

Yes,

your space saver doesn’t seem to crash…

I sent you the files that i used… Are they okay?

Thomas

6

Interesting: when testing your H.264 1440x900 movie file, we get the exact same crash. So this suggests it’s a bug in QuickTime. I will report this to Apple, and with luck they will fix it.

In the mean time…
I re-exported your file using PhotoJPEG compressor at the same size (1440x900).
For repetitive looping animations, we like the PhotoJPEG compressor as it’s very efficient (low CPU usage, fast startup & fast animation). Its one downside is that the file sizes are very large – but for a short loop this is not a problem.

So, our recommendation:

  • open the highest quality source movie you have in QuickTime Player 7 on a macintosh.
  • choose “File/Export”
  • Export: Movie to QuickTime Movie.
  • Settings: Photo JPEG. Frame Rate: Current. KeyFrames: All. Depth: Color. Quality: High (or Best).
    Filter: none
    Size: Current

I’m emailing you back a copy of the test project, too.

7

FYI, we have reported this QuickTime crash to Apple, the RDAR number is 8599841.

8

Did this ever get resolved?

I’m evaluating iScreensaver and I’d love to buy it to get a project done quickly but I have the same issue on Windows 7. The raw .MOV plays fine on the problem machine and the screensaver works just fine on another machine running Vista.

Thanks much,

9

We have not received notice that Apple has fixed the bug, however that doesn’t mean they haven’t. As of today, QuickTime is at version 7.6.9 – what are the results with testing with that version?

10

Also, are you testing with iScreensaver 4.3? we made some changes to QuickTime on Windows, which might have fixed the issue…

11

Yep, seeing the crash on 4.3.0.312 on Windows 7 Home Premium with QT 7.6.9

12

Try these things:

  1. Disable any “Conform Aperture” settings in the movie. QuickTime Movies with the “Conform Aperture:” setting enabled can be problematic, especially under the Windows QuickTime plugin, and especially for movies that are taller than wide. Until Apple fixes this bug, we recommend disabling this setting. To do this, open the movie in QuickTime Player 7 Pro, Chose “Window/Show Movie Properties”, click the “Presentation” tab, and de-select “Conform Aperature to:” if it is selected. Save the movie file. Rebuild and reinstall the screensaver.

  2. Since this problem seems to be specific to H.264 encoding, try re-encoding the movie:

  • open the highest quality source movie you have in QuickTime Player 7 on a macintosh.
  • choose “File/Export”
  • Export: Movie to QuickTime Movie.
  • Settings: Photo JPEG. Frame Rate: Current. KeyFrames: All. Depth: Color. Quality: (your choice, depending on size/quality tradeoffs).

Do either of those solutions work?

13

Thanks much.

It seems to be specific to the Crop setting in iScreensaver. Conform Aperture and other QT settings don’t affect it, and all other aspect ratio settings in iScreensaver work fine.

It’s obviously not the issue this thread originated on, so if you would like to move it to a new thread, or you’d like me to do that, let me know.

I haven’t tried it on other Windows 7 machines. I’ll do that tomorrow.

thx again

14

Thanks for the input: it’s not clear what’s going on (other than the fact that the crash is happening inside QuickTime itself). In our testing, we can consistently see it crash on one particular windows 7 laptop (a dell mini 10v with the oddly sized 1024√ó576 display, AND when playing back a movie that is 480x640 in size (e.g. taller than wide). In our case, the crash happens when using “Actual Size” mode – however as it turns out, in the case where the movie is bigger than the screen, Actual Size and Crop mode function the same way, so I think this is the issue.

We have submitted this as a bug to Apple, but generally the more submissions the better – if you have a repeatable way to cause the crash, please consider submitting yourself to http://bugreporter.apple.com

The more people that report these QuickTime crashes, the better…