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DMX Recorder window doesn't open


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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I've never seen an issue where it doesn't spawn. However, we have had issues in the past with the dialog being hidden behind other windows/dialogs. Take a look and make sure it's not being sneaky. One other odd ball thing that could be an issue, I think we had problems at one point where if a dialog was put onto an additional monitor and either while Vision is running or not that monitor is removed, then there may be a bug where it tries to spawn onto that non-existent monitor.

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Hi Bbudzon

 

It appears that it is opening somewhere that I cant see it. When I try open the window the main Vision window looses focus which to me means that the recording window has opened and it is the window of focus, but I can't find it anywhere. I have tried disabling and unplugging my second monitor, mirroring both monitors, checking behind all windows of other programs but can't see it anywhere. Also if I hover my mouse over the Vision icon in the task bar (Windows 10) it only shows one window but that might not mean anything.

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Vision does make an attempt at "remembering" the last location/size/position of the DMX Recorder dialog. If this has somehow gotten corrupted on your system and you cannot locate the dialog to fix the issue, the only thing I am aware of that you could do is boot into Safe Mode. This is not easily accessible and typically Vision will only ask after a crash. However, booting into Safe Mode should clear all users settings (without removing licensing / saved presets). This will clear the last known position of the DMX Recorder dialog such that it should spawn the first time to its default location (which will depend upon monitor resolution, number of monitors, and the monitor Vision is on when the DMX Recorder is spawned).

 

I hope this helps!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi Bbudzon

 

I am still having issues with this window not being visible. Every few times I open Vision and go to use the DMX Recorder the window isn't visible. While safe mode fixes the issue it is not easy to get Vision to crash when you want it to.

 

Do you have any other ways to boot into safe mode besides trying to crash the software?

 

Cheers,

Dan

Edited by DBLD
More clarity
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
2 hours ago, DBLD said:

I am still having issues with this window not being visible. Every few times I open Vision and go to use the DMX Recorder the window isn't visible.

That is unfortunate. If we could find the steps to reproduce the issue in-house, we may be able to more easily find the issue in code.

 

2 hours ago, DBLD said:

While safe mode fixes the issue it is not easy to get Vision to crash when you want it to.

😂 Yea... I believe that on OSX a force quit will always trigger the safe mode dialog on next start. However, WIndows Task Manager and End Task does not seem to accomplish quite the same thing.

 

2 hours ago, DBLD said:

Do you have any other ways to boot into safe mode besides trying to crash the software?

There is not. However, I think we are getting to a point where it makes sense to expose a "force safe mode on next boot" button in the Vision Application Preferences. Depending on how things end up working out in code, this may be able to be a "clear all user settings" button (more similar to VW).

 

Any information you can provide for reproduction would be ideal. I'll see if I can get QA to take a look. In the meantime, I can at the very least start proposing that we expose safe mode / clearing user settings in a more user friendly fashion 😉 

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Thanks Bbudzon. I am on Windows 10 and the most recent version and service pack for Vision. I have two monitors and a GTX 1070 with the most recent drivers. I am not sure what else I can tell you except that I open Vision, go to Window>DMX Recorder and the Vision window loses focus (like the recorder window has opened), but I cannot find the recorder. Clicking on Window>DMX Recorder again regains focus to the Vision window as if the recorder has closed. I haven't noticed anything that seems to cause it to not show, it is just sometimes is visible or isn't visible. As you suggested booting into safe mode fixes the issue.

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I'll let the team know. It seems to usually be tied to those "dual monitor" setups. Quick question, what resolution are your two monitors running at? Are both monitors "horizontal" or have you physically rotated one to be "tall"? Do you know if these monitors are HighDPI or not? If so, do you know what scale is being used (usually 0.5, 1.0, 2.0)?

 

Thanks!

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  • 4 months later...

Hi Klinzey

 

As I mentioned earlier I have 4k monitors and run them at 150% scaling. I tried your suggestion of removing the scaling and at 100% the recorder window was viewable. As an experiment I scaled up to 125% and the window opened ok, I then scaled up to 150% and the window opened as it should. I quit Vision before scaling each time. So at the moment it is working. Running the monitors at less than 150% scaling makes text pretty hard to read so I will keep them at 150% and if I run into issues again I will try changing the scaling. If the scaling is causing the issue is it able to be fixed so that it is more reliable?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Thanks for testing all of this out! It does seem like the scaling is causing issues and Qt (Vision's UI Framework) has been known to have issues with HighDPI in the past. I can't believe I didn't think of this myself, so shout out to Kevin 😛  All of your testing results make perfect sense. Most of us also run dual monitors at the VW office, so it being tied more to the DPI scaling is logical.

 

I think the next step for us is working on reproducing this on a machine internally and then getting setup with a development environment where we can debug and try to fix the issue in code. Either way, based on your findings and my experience with HighDPI bugs in Vision in the past, I'm hopeful that we can get this resolved. Historically, Qt has some methods that don't take HighDPI into account. When there are alternative methods provided that do take HighDPI into account, we try to move towards those. But, in the event an alternative is not available they provide a "getter" that gives us the scaling percentage/ratio. So, often times, it's just a matter of doing some extra math in UI/dialogs/pixel related code. It's hard to say if we find a fix when it will ship, especially as SP2 is right around the corner. But, given the details in your report we should be able to bump this up in testing/coding priority 😉  I'll start working with the various departments to get a dual monitor HighDPI setup where we can debug the code and hopefully it will be a quick/easy fix!

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  • 1 year later...

Hi 

 

I am also having this issue. I'm running Vision Plus 2023, 28.0.3.682476, on windows 10. 

 

I have tried the scaling solution mentioned above, but I was unable to fix this issue. It does appear that Vision has attempted to open the DMX recorder window, but it never appears. I'm not sure how to open in safe mode, but I will attempt to do that next. Restarting my computer did nothing to fix the issue. 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I think safe mode is harder to trigger on PC than on Mac. But, the way I would try to do it is by opening task manager and forcefully ending the task. Vision basically writes a flag out when it closes successfully called "CleanExit". If "CleanExit" is set, then we do not spawn into safe mode. If "CleanExit" is not set, then we assume that Vision crashed and ask the user if they would like to spawn into safe mode as a result.

 

If you cannot get the DMX Recorder back into a location where you can see it on the monitor, we might be able to work together on nuking some registry key entries to get safe mode to spawn. Safe mode, when entered, clears out ALL user settings; including the last position of the DMX Recorder window. So, in theory, if we can get it to boot into safe mode, we can reset all windows positions back to their defaults.

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