Partial completion of images?

taob · Post by **taob** » Tue May 04, 2004 3:41 am

I recently shot at a local nightclub to help promote one of the monthly shows, and was putting together a bunch of photos for a local artist who was providing free glow-in-the-dark bodypainting during the evening. This meant ISO 3200 pushed one stop, f/2.0 lens wide open, 1/30s shutter speed, etc.

I used my 3200+EV1 profile and started up a batch of images. To my surprise, many of the images were prematurely aborted because of the following error:

However, NeatImage itself did not close, but the image that was being worked on was aborted. Actually, the queue showed it was 100% complete, but if you saved out the result, only a certain part starting from the left side of the image was actually done (the rest is just black). The queue would continue, and random images would suffer from this problem.

If I go back and resubmit the failed images, some of them will process fine, and others will fail again. I can repeat this until I finally get all the images done. It does not appear to be related to the source image. It might be because of the profile I am using, but I have not had time to experiment much more.

NITeam... what kind of information can I collect to send to you for analysis? Unfortunately, my Windows debugging skills aren't the greatest, but I'm pretty good at following directions, if you have any.

Post by **NITeam** » Tue May 04, 2004 7:08 am

Please check whether this happens more often with this series of images than with some other series you shoot earlier.

If you can identify an image that fails more or less often I would want to try it myself to see what is going on.

Vlad

taob · Post by **taob** » Tue May 04, 2004 2:06 pm

I did a bit more testing late last night, and it appears to be related to the use of the "Filter low frequency splotches" filter preset. I tried different profiles, different sets of images (including those that I know worked fine in the past in a batch), different output image types, multiprocessor on/off, etc. When I go back to the default filter preset, all images and all profiles work fine. As soon as I select the "Filter low frequency splotches" preset, I start getting random crashes. I can run the same batch over and over again, and each time a different set of images will be affected.

I notice that if I enable multiprocessor support, I will sometimes get the Windows XP error report dialog, in addition to the one I included above. I haven't had a chance to capture it yet, but it appears to indicate a floating point exception as the cause of the abort (perhaps a division by zero error?).

I'll try running a batch tonight (when I'm back home) using the default preset, but then turning on "very low freq" to see if that is directly related. If the XP debugger comes up again, I'll snag a copy of the error report.

Post by **NITeam** » Tue May 04, 2004 5:35 pm

Thank you for additional information, we will try to reproduce this effect with that filter preset. Probably there is something wrong with the preset.

Thank you,
Vlad

taob · Post by **taob** » Wed May 05, 2004 7:17 am

I tried a few more batch tests, and the results strongly suggest something is amiss with the "very low frequency" option. I tried several different batches of images, using a variety of profiles:

First try used the "Filter low frequency splotches" preset. That resulted in random aborts.
Second try used the "Default" preset. No aborts.
Third try used a preset I created called "vlf_test" that is the default preset, but with the VLF option checked. Everything else is at the default setting. That resulted in random aborts.
Fourth try used the "Filter and sharpen image" preset. No aborts.

I tried this on batches of almost 100 images (thank god NI is much faster than it used to be!!!), so the evidence is very strong.

Post by **NITeam** » Wed May 05, 2004 7:32 am

I suspect we have already fixed this issue because I still cannot reproduce it. Please re-download the software to see if the latest version shows the same effect.

Thank you,
Vlad

taob · Post by **taob** » Thu May 06, 2004 12:54 am

NITeam wrote:I suspect we have already fixed this issue because I still cannot reproduce it. Please re-download the software to see if the latest version shows the same effect.

I reinstalled from a freshly downloaded version, and still the same result.

Any other debugging information I can produce?

Post by **NITeam** » Thu May 06, 2004 7:52 am

Thank you, we are continuing to look for the bug.

Could you send me a screenshot of how an incompletely processed image look like in Neat Image?

Vlad

taob · Post by **taob** » Fri May 07, 2004 1:05 am

Here is an example. I tried doing images individually and not in batches, but that still triggered a crash. After I dismiss the error dialog, these are what the four NI screens look like. Notice how NI thinks the image was calculated completely, despite what the image preview shows? The "Apply" button is disabled, and the status line says "calculated".

Post by **NITeam** » Fri May 07, 2004 4:39 am

Thank you for the screenshots. Very strange indeed.

If you save such an incomplete image to a file, and then open it in an image editor, it also look incomplete, right?

Could you send me a set of an image, profile and preset you used? - I am trying to reproduce this effect and cannot so far. Probably your image will help.

Thanks a lot,
Vlad

taob · Post by **taob** » Sat May 08, 2004 2:21 am

I will PM you a link where you can download a couple of ZIP files that should help solve this mystery. Earlier tonight, I rebooted XP into Safe Mode, in case I had installed something that could affect NeatImage's operation. However, even in Safe Mode, NI would show the same crashing behaviour.

Post by **NITeam** » Thu May 13, 2004 11:10 am

Thank you, I have received the PM and downloaded one of the files. It is still unclear what is going wrong but I hope this will resolved in the coming updated version of Neat Image. We are going to publish it later this week.

Thank you,
Vlad

taob · Post by **taob** » Thu May 13, 2004 11:16 am

Thanks, Vlad. I recently bought myself a new laptop. I have my copy of NI installed on there now, and I will attempt to reproduce the problem. I am also running Windows XP SP1 with the same critical patches as on my desktop. The major difference is that the laptop is a Pentium M while the desktop is an Opteron. Possibly a problem with the way floating operations are handled differently on those two CPU's?

Post by **NITeam** » Thu May 13, 2004 11:27 am

It is possible of course but what is strange is that you discovered this effect only recently. I would expect it to manifest itself much earlier if Opteron really did something differently.

Vlad

taob · Post by **taob** » Thu May 13, 2004 11:36 am

It does not seem to be related to the Opteron... I have been able to reproduce the problem on my IBM Thinkpad X40 (1.2 GHz Pentium M). This is using a fresh install of 4.0 Pro+ from your web site, with my 10D profiles. Same test conditions, using the images I sent to you... the crash dialog came up while trying to process the second image (but this is random).

For some reason though, the partially completed JPEG is not saved out. NI does not actually terminate, but it sits there on the same file forever. It does not make any progress (the progress bar does not move), but the estimated completion timer keeps updating (it gets longer and longer, since no progress is being made). All the buttons and menus still work. I cannot stop or exit NI normally... the job status just says "stopping", but it never actually stops. I have to go into the XP Task Manager to kill of NI.

Have you been able to at least reproduce the problem?