One scene will not display on Cintiq

[Janet Perlman]

Maybe my Cintiq does not like pigeons. I am working on a scene that will not display on my Cintiq. The display ripples and flickers and turns into a moire pattern and turns off and on. The only way to stop it is to turn off the Cintiq display and try to quit the program and then turn it on again, or sometimes I have to restart the computer. It only happens with this one scene, as soon as I open it. It will display fine on my Mac screen. I see nothing unusual in my prefs and nothing in the project settings, which are the same as my other scenes.

I created this scene on the office setup and am having this problem at home. Both setups are Mac with two monitors, one of which is a Cintiq. I work on the same scene like this going back and forth all the time. In case it matters, one setup is an older Mac with a new Cintiq, the other is new Mac with older Cintiq. What is this, and why it is only with one scene? I open other programs, but can only produce the problem with this one scene in TVPaint. Any ideas are most welcome.

[Elodie]

Hello !

Could you send us screenshots and tell which TVPaint version you have ?

[Janet Perlman]

I made a quicktime to show the problem. You can find it here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/115 ... esktop.m4v" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I am using version 10. I tried it in 32 and 64 bit. The Mac is just a few months old, with Yosemite, and the Cintiq is about 6 years old.

Thanks.

Janet

[Elodie]

What the hell !?

To be honest, I've never seen such an issue !

[Animark]

Yes, what the hell? I also have never seen something like this. Normally I would say, It looks like a hardware problem - but if it is really only this scene while others works fine ... I don't know. But I would like to know what will happen, when you expand your TVPaint to both screens (instead of moving the TVPaint to the cintiq) and place the project window on the cintiq. Did you tried that? Maybe it helps to get an idea on what is going wrong. And also, what will happen, when you are working in fullscreen mode?

[Fabrice]

weird !

[D.T. Nethery]

I'm afraid I also have to say that I've never seen this kind of odd behavior when dragging a scene from one screen to another and I have no idea what might be causing it (sorry Janet, that's not any help to you , but I sympathize and if I can find anything that might help I'll post it here). I also would have guessed that it's a Wacom Cintiq hardware problem had you not already mentioned that this only happens with THIS scene file in TVPaint and not with any other applications . Oy vey ... this has me flummoxed. I hope someone can find the cause. All I can think to suggest is that you share the file with the TVPaint developers to see if the same thing happens when they open the file and try to drag it from a regular monitor screen to a Cintiq.

[Janet Perlman]

Thanks everybody. In the meantime, the scene runs fine at work. I will try Animark's suggestion, and also, I will try rebuilding the scene level by level and see if one animation change causes the problem. Normally I don't drag a scene from one screen to another. I did that to demonstrate the problem, because if I open the scene on the Cintiq screen, which is what I normally do, you would never see the exact manifestation of the problem, just a flickering crashing screen.

[Janet Perlman]

So I checked a few things out. I was not able to stretch the window to display on both screens. It seems that TVPaint will only display on one screen at a time. I deleted the top layer of animation and the scene runs fine. This layer had two frame animation through the whole scene. That layer was made by duplicating and merging the two levels below it, to which I applied a pan using the keyframer. Next I tried simply inactivating that top layer, but when I drag it to the Cintiq window the same problem happens. Well I have to redo that animation anyways, so I'll report back if anything interesting happens.

[Elodie]

So I checked a few things out. I was not able to stretch the window to display on both screens. It seems that TVPaint will only display on one screen at a time.

This is Mac Os limitation. You have to go to System Preferences > Mission Control > and uncheck "displays have separate spaces" then restart your Mac.

[Janet Perlman]

I just changed the Mac display preference and tested dragging the screen over. I can drag it halfway over to the Cintiq, but as soon as I drag it anymore, the problem occurs. But I can easily rescue the screen by dragging the window back to the Mac screen, and the Cintiq recovers. Usually I am in full screen mode. Changing the mode does not seem to make a difference.

[ematecki]

And if you change the zoom factor in TVPaint before dragging the window to the Cintiq ?

[Animark]

I just changed the Mac display preference and tested dragging the screen over. I can drag it halfway over to the Cintiq, but as soon as I drag it anymore, the problem occurs. But I can easily rescue the screen by dragging the window back to the Mac screen, and the Cintiq recovers.

I think, it could have something to do with the graphic card. That would explain, why the cintiq looses the signal as seen in your video. But nothing explains, why this is happen only with the one and only scene. For now, I would animate the scene again (as you said) and more and maybe, the problem don't comes back. Good Luck!!!

And if you're lucky to make more tests, I would change the display settings (color depth, resoulution) to see, if somethings changes. Then I would install a new (or older) driver for the graphic card. Then I would make a test with another graphic card .... but I am on windows. Hope this would be possible on a Mac.

[supraduroo]

I have the exact same problem as Janet. Since yesterday one of my tvPaint files keeps crashing my cintiq... Im working on a macbook Pro (4 years old), OSX 10.9.5, Cintiq 21UX (the black one). I use TVPaint 11.0.3 Pro (64bit and 32bit). It's very mysteriously. The Cintiq runs normal as long as i don't open the specific project. If I do,immediately the screen gets noisy around the timeline and everything turns black. If I close TVPaint via shortcut, the screen turns back on...

[Janet Perlman]

Hi Supraduroo,
I never found the solution. Every now and then a scene will start to flicker or turn glitchy. Here is my workaround: As soon as it starts to misbehave, I quickly grab the scene window and drag it over to the other window. If you aren'y fast enough, you may need to restart and do it again. You have to be fast enough to get it over there, or just restart without the Cintiq. On the other screen the scene runs fine, but you can't use the Cintiq. What I do is rebuild the scene. I select "new scene" and then copy each layer from the glitchy version to the new one. You can copy each and every layer over, and the problem will not be there. Then forget that old scene - label it "glitchy" and work with the new one. It's strange, but it works.