Support

Revision as of 20:30, 24 April 2012

Technical Help

VisiPics is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind and without technical support.

Inquiries and feedback are welcome to my personal email (check VisiPics's Help).

Known Problems

System

I have a Dual-core, but CPU usage never goes above 50%

First, make sure the "Threads sync" option is unchecked: This option prevent crashes on some systems, but disable VisiPics' ability to use Dual-core's processing power.

If "Thread sync" is unchecked and the processor still doesn't go above 50%, maybe the "To compare" indicator shows "0" (zero). If it does, it means VisiPics doesn't need both cores yet, and is mostly loading pictures to memory.

VisiPics will generally start to use your Dual-core after 5,000 pictures in memory.

I have a Quad-core, but it's not four times faster

On a Quad-core system, VisiPics will technically use three of those cores. Your third core will be used to display the interface, which is not very heavy. So, basically, the difference between a Quad and Dualcore system for VisiPics is extremly small.

Fonts are too big and doesn't fit the interface

If you change the screen DPI, Windows will try to adapt VisiPics to the new resolution but will fail. Normal screen DPI is 96, but when you use "Big fonts" Windows changes to 120 DPI. Windows doesn't manage fonts correctly when it tries to resize them. There is no way to force Windows to not resize the fonts without unchecking the "Big fonts" option. Microsoft said Vista fixes this problem.

The directory box doesn't show "My Pictures"

This is due to an inconsistency in Windows' API and Registry. If you don't use Windows in english, it will most certainly fail to find the "My Pictures" folder. Tell me if you know a work around...

My security tools warns me about ImageMagick being dangerous

And it certainly asks you to update ImageMagick. For technical reasons, VisiPics uses an old version of that library which, from security experts, contains smalls but existent security vulnerabilities. Updating the library is not easy: all my attempts in the past failed, but I will try again in the future. Read more about the security risk.

ImageMagick is a developer tool. It is used in VisiPics to load pictures from disk to memory. Though not used, the whole library allows a lot more: draw, filter, crop, rotate, etc.

It crashes or shows an error box

Damn! Please send to my email an explanation of the steps leading to this problem, if possible with a screenshot.

Graphical

When I move or delete pictures, remaining pictures overlap

I never managed to reproduce the problem, but I believe it exists because a few people reported it.

VisiPics won't display the thumb-list correctly on Wine

Update Wine to the latest version. I tested VisiPics successfully on Linux, and many users report it works like a charm. You may deactivate "Balloons" and don't use "Minimize to tray". Those didn't work on my KDE system (you can try on other Window Managers and tell me if it works?).

What do the green, yellow, and red circles mean on the thumbnails

They inform you on how similar each picture is compared to the one you are pointing with your mouse. Green means similar, Red means very different, with all the intervals : green-yellow-orange-red.

Options

I can't change some settings, they are greyed out

This happens when you have directories already added to the work queue. Remove them, change your settings, then add them again.

When I use the "Slower VisiPics" option, it doesn't work anymore

Actually it is working, but very... very... slowly. I noticed this bug after the 1.22 release. It happens when you scan directories containing files which are not pictures. "Slower VisiPics" makes the loader wait a few milliseconds after each load. For exemple, if you have 10 pictures and 1000 text files, it will take 4 minutes to load when it should have taken less than a few seconds, VisiPics waiting a little after each text file.

VisiPics 1.25 fixes this bug.

Sometimes VisiPics freezes for a few seconds, and eat all my memory

Try to use the "Ignore huge images" option, it makes loading slightly slower, but limits the effects of huge pictures on the system. VisiPics will still freeze and eat lots of memory, but WAY less than it should have with loading truely the picture.

VisiPics freezes completly

I have to admit one of my biggest challenge was to make VisiPics using Dual-core systems. In programming, we call this: asynchronous multi-threading. Trust me, it's a nightmare when you know nothing about it! The point is, this functionality is not stable on some configurations, and I never managed to find why...

If VisiPics often freezes and the task manager shows your CPU isn't used anymore, then you have to check the option "Thread sync". The loader and comparators will be synchronized, and the bug should disappear. The side-effect is you will use only one core, and scanning your pictures will take a little more time to accomplish.

I have a lot of pictures bigger than 4000x4000 pixels. But they are not loading

On VisiPics 1.25 and before, uncheck the option "Ignore big pictures". This option was added after getting many requests to avoid the extra-large pictures, because they are slow to load, and eat lots of memory.

On VisiPics 1.30, open the "Loader" tab (next to "Filter"). You can choose if you want to ignore very small or very large pictures. If you don't want to ignore those pictures, just change the parameter to None, on top of the list.

VisiPics 1.30 is slower than 1.25

Make sure those options are not checked :

• Scan for 90° rotations
• Slower VisiPics
• Thread Sync (except if you have observe freezes on your computer)

Then go into the "Loader Tab", next to the "Filter Tab", and make sure no filter is activated :

• Bigger than "None"
• Smaller than "None"

The filter moves down at the bottom when I start a scan

This behaviour comes from the option "Loosen filter automatically". It moves if no duplicate is found during the scan. Uncheck this option to prevent the slider from moving by itself.

The ergonomy can be improved here, it will hopefully be done for VisiPics 1.40.

Intelligence

VisiPics doesn't detects some duplicates

I teach VisiPics to solve different kind of problems. For exemple, two pictures can have a different contrasts, a title on one, a decorative border on the other, etc... I do my best to teach it everything, but some problems are just too complex to program. For example strong rotations, cropped parts and line Art against its colored version are three frequent problems VisiPics isn't able to solve (yet). If you can, send those duplicates to my email, I will use them to tune the algorithm.

Some people told me about wavelets to solve the strong rotations and cropped pictures, I won't implement this algorithm because:

• It requires a lot of computing power, and would slow down VisiPics way too much
• Also it increases dramatically the number of false-positives, which I don't want

I have duplicate animated GIFs, but VisiPics doesn't detect them

VisiPics doesn't work on animations and never will. Try a duplicate files finder for those instead.

Some of my PNG files are black

VisiPics doesn't compare transparency (aka Alpha channel), so it converts transparent parts to black. The picture will look strange, but it shouldn't affect VisiPics' ability to find those duplicates.

Tools

I want to move both files in a group, but when I move the first one, the group disappears

Indeed, this is a problem. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future release. I suggest you to double-click on each pictures (it opens the container), then do the move manually.

I loaded my project but nothing happens

The save/load project options are still experimental but should work just fine. Just load your project, then click the "Play" button. It will then regenerate the database ("Work in progress" will appear), and scanning will be eons faster. If I get enough requests, I will improve this option in a future release.

I deleted pictures, but they don't show in the recycle bin

VisiPics never delete pictures itself, it gives the list of files to delete to Windows. Depending on where are the files, and on your configuration, it may not send them to the recycle bin. For example, files on a network drive are always destroyed.

I don't want to see the pictures set to "Ignore" and it keeps forgetting them

When you save your project, it also saves the "Ignore" state. It is currently not possible to make them invisible, but since I get lots of requests for this, it will certainly be included in the next version.

Publishing

I want to publish VisiPics on my Website, or on a CD-Rom for a magazine

The copyright notice says: "It is strictly forbidden to modify, merge, publish, license, distribute and/or sell copies of VisiPics". Many websites publish VisiPics without authorization... I don't really mind, but I would prefer a link toward my official publisher (see the download page). If you want to publish it along with a magazine, please contact me by email. I usually ask for a copy of your magazine for collection purposes.