#179 after windows 10 creators update the presentation of verse on 2. monitor/beamer need 5 seconds

[Anonymous]

Hi,
I'm german and my english not so good, but I want tell over a problem.

Last week (before creators update) was all good and now (after the creators update) the presentation need circa 5 seconds before a vers or pre-chorus is on the 2. monitor or beamer. It isn't for chorus (also text) or pictures => there the text or the picture is promptly on second device.

I don't understand this. Have you a statement and solution?

[Anonymous]

I have the exact same issue, and I can tell that it is not my computer the problem. We do HD video streaming with no lag in the video rendered on sunday, and when I put up the list at home with only OpenSong running on the same computer, I experience huge lags.
What I did to help with readability when unticking the shadow and box options, is that I gathered a folder full of jpeg that are predominently black, and I pick images in this folder, while waiting for either the windows update, or the OpenSong update.
Hope this helps

[SvA]

I had some success turning off ClearType instead of font smoothing alltogether. Search for cleartype in the start menu or run cttune.exe, as microsoft removed the setting from the dialogs, or hid it too well.

You may find some additional tips on superuser.com: How to turn off ClearType and use whole-pixel anti-aliasing in Windows 7?.

I tried to solve the issue with program changes in OpenSong. The problem currently is hidden in Xojo's runtime and caused by some change in Windows. Alternate rendering methods tried so far are either uggly or not really fast enough. So, please bear with us and be patient, as we search for a solution.

[David Leigh]

To add my 2-cents worth - I can confirm the same problem using version 1.7 of OpenSong (we use a companion search application that only currently works with 1.7 hence the back version). Perusing the link offered in the post above, there is mention of a program called "MacType" that purports to allow a customized font rendring of any program (it's freeware). I installed it and had it act upon OpenSong. It resolved the problem for me. I'll keep testing and if I find anything different I'll post back, but it looks like it might be a creative solution for this problem without a huge downside (so far). http://www.mactype.net/

[Anonymous]

I tried the mactype option but the program is not very intuitive for me. Could someone who is using this option (or an option confirmed to work with Window 10) please post some step-by-step directions to work around the issue until someone can create a fix?

[Anonymous]

The problem must be that Opensong used GDI text rendering. This was superceded by DirectWrite several years ago so it is likely that Microsoft are not unhappy about slowing it down by about 40 times with Creators Update. The solution is to rewrite the text outputting in DirectWrite; it is also hardware accelerated and includes routines that allow for text outlining and shadowing in a far better way than with GDI.

[Vwout]

You are probably right about the GDI rendering. The most recent releases were build with a Xojo release that did not support this yet. Support is only available as of Xojo 2016r4 (released December 2016). As far as I know, none of the developer has a valid license to be able to use that version for a release. But maybe I am mistaken.

[Anonymous]

Question: is it mainly a windows creator problem or a HDMI to VGA problem?
I can't verify it, but we also had to change laptop;
on the old laptop win 7 with usb-to vga convertor the presentation did work ok
( this usb-convertor broke and old laptop problem with keybord)
and on the new laptop with newest win10 software no VGA output, so use a HDMI to VGA convertor, and as soon as we want to present on 2 screens it is indeed very slow, and sometimes almost opensong hangs itself....

[Vwout]

It is a problem with OpenSong in combination with Windows Creator. Is it not an HDMI to VGA problem, although it could be that it effects you less when your screen is at low(er) VGA resolution.

[Anonymous]

hello to all,

I have the same problem.

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Deactivating the border on the body text really helps. I can leave shadow which helps in the readability but if I activate the text border setting than it takes 3-4 seconds to change slide.

Phil

[Anonymous]

Yes the problem is with the GDI text output functions such as TextOut and ExtTextOut. in order to produce an outline font you have to redarw the same text in up to 12 different places in the outline colour and then draw the text in the normal colour. if you want a shadow you draw that first with once. thats why shadow text is ok and the outline text has the problem. unfortunately as you are using Xojo you will not be able to do much about that. There are two ways round it with GDI one is to draw the text in the outline colour once on a memory hdc and then use TransparentBlt, which is hardware accelerated, to draw it on the output hdc as many times as you need to get the outline. You then draw the normal text on top. The other way is to use some of the transformation functions in GDI+ which also work wuite well. DirectWrite wotks OK as you can use the geometry and transformation functions.

[Wayne]

For simple step by step instructions system wide you can disable font smoothing as shown here https://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/choose-whether-to-smooth-edges-of-screen-fonts-in-windows-10.html

I noticed that opensong display is a bit chunky like this, and found an alternative ClearType Switch (http://karpolan.com/software/cleartype-switch/). It looks best if you Enable smooth font edges but disable Use ClearType.

I also found PowerShell scripts that can do this. Create a file Smooth.ps1 containing:

#requires -version 2.0

$signature = @'
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern bool SystemParametersInfo(
    uint uiAction,
    uint uiParam,
    uint pvParam,
    uint fWinIni);
'@

$SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHING      = 0x004B
$SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHINGTYPE  = 0x200B
$SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE        = 0x1
$SPIF_SENDCHANGE           = 0x2
$FE_FONTSMOOTHINGCLEARTYPE = 0x2

$winapi = Add-Type -MemberDefinition $signature -Name WinAPI -PassThru

[void]$winapi::SystemParametersInfo($SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHING, 1, 0, $SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE -bor $SPIF_SENDCHANGE)
[void]$winapi::SystemParametersInfo($SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHINGTYPE, 0, 0x0, $SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE -bor $SPIF_SENDCHANGE)

The above will enable smoothing but disable ClearType. Run it by right clicking and "Run with PowerShell"

To re-enable smoothing and ClearType change the last two lines:

[void]$winapi::SystemParametersInfo($SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHING, 1, 0, $SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE -bor $SPIF_SENDCHANGE)
[void]$winapi::SystemParametersInfo($SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHINGTYPE, 0, $FE_FONTSMOOTHINGCLEARTYPE, $SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE -bor $SPIF_SENDCHANGE)

To disable smoothing (and consequently ClearType):

[void]$winapi::SystemParametersInfo($SPI_SETFONTSMOOTHING, 0, 0, $SPIF_UPDATEINIFILE -bor $SPIF_SENDCHANGE)

[Anonymous]

Thankyou for that. It works well. Much appreciated!

[Ed Palmer]

I am currently testing a couple of things that will address this issue so the workarounds suggested (turning off font smoothing in Windows or border/shadow in OpenSong) will no longer be needed. In part, the fix requires compiling OpenSong with a newer version of the Xojo compiler than was used for the current version of OpenSong. Due to changes in the Xojo language, this means working out some conflicts so that the active members of the dev team who cannot upgrade their copy of Xojo can compile the project.

I will add another post on this thread when something is available for download.

[Anonymous]

Can anyone outline the steps to that workaround? any help in reducing the lag will be a great help.
Thank you and blessings.

[Vwout]

Check the posts by others, e.g. the one by Wayne, 4 messages ago.

[Anonymous]

While I'm not a user of open song, I came across this forum while searching for "slow rendering of text in Windows 10 creators update". I am the author of a music notation program that uses GDI text for its output. I c an confirm that the the Creators update (either one) broke GDI text for font sizes 36 point or larger. My program uses a 36 point musical symbols font to get notes large enough to be legible on a high dpi screen. It slows to a crawl under the creators update. On a lower resolution screen an 18pt font is sufficient and that renders at the speed I'm used to seeing. I have tried reporting the problem by posting in various forums and calling Microsoft support. I have been bounced around to at least 7 different people or forums. No one will accept responsibility for the problem or even direct me to a person who would understand the data I've collected that shows large gdi point sizes take at least twice as long to render as they did under version 1603. It's very frustrating. I don't know if the newer DrawWrite is similarly affected, but turning off clear type does seem to speed things back up on at least one of my test machines. But you shouldn't have to do that!

Terry Kelly

[Bruce Blum]

Was glad to find it wasn't just me. With the cleartype workaround it renders faster than it has since I began using it, though the transition speed has made it unusable since the creators update. Hoping to hear good news on this soon.

[Anonymous]

Any further updates anywhere, as I am now having the same problem?????

[Anonymous]

Thanks Wayne, that resolved it quite well! It makes it usable :)