Photo - Black Screen of Death?

Question

Level 1

65 points

Photo - Black Screen of Death?

For those that have not seen what Aperture looks like when you get "black screen of death", I post the following link: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3152/25828656846723f2bfd8b.jpg

This happens on occasion while making an adjustment. In the example above I was making an 'Exposure' adjustment via the Exposure slider. The 'Command' key was NOT pressed while adjusting.

Now once this black screen manifests itself, any adjustment leaves the screen flickering between a preview image or a black screen. In the sample above it happened to remain black. Other times the preview image will return once adjustment sliders are 'released' or let go. A reboot is required to get Aperture running again. Didn't BSOD used to mean something else?

Is this a failure of:
Graphics/video driver -or-
Code contained in Aperture itself -or-
A "Core" service of OS X. I.e a weak foundation.

I like Aperture enough that this maddening bug will not stop me from using it. It will stop me from recommending it. BTW I own both competing products of this type and prefer Aperture. Just a shame that Aperture is more buggy than the competing product. Where is the fault? Bad app code or bad foundation/OS or bad video drivers? I'm sure not equipped to solve this one.

Mac Pro 2.66 Dual Core, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 8800GT (Legacy)

Posted on Jun 15, 2008 7:47 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 15, 2008 8:40 PM in response to jbhmacpro

Seen it on rare occasions (really rare for me; I saw it exactly once). Video card issue.

Are you still using 10.5.2? I haven't seen the issue recur since upgrading to 10.5.3, but I'm using an ATI X1900XT card. Perhaps it's an NVIDIA specific issue -- make sure you submit feedback via Aperture's mechanism. I agree it's an annoying issue.

I haven't see this cause Aperture to lock up totally. When I had this issue, if I set the value back to "default" the image would reappear

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Answer 2

jbhmacpro Author

Level 1

65 points

Jun 15, 2008 9:43 PM in response to William Lloyd

No, I need to update my profile. Using 10.5.3 with the 8800GT of course.

As you state, Aperture does not lock up. However, the histograms disappear and the preview image is gone.

Don't remember if I mentioned. This is the fourth time for me over a period of several weeks of intensive use. It's not a show stopper. But having to reboot sure is a pain. Especially since I enjoy the program so much!

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Answer 3

Jun 17, 2008 1:54 PM in response to jbhmacpro

seen this myself
it is a pain in the aperture
ive found that switching to full screen mode
using the HUD (heads up display) to edit
then going back to image and browser mode keeps me up and running
without the need to reboot

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Answer 4

Jun 17, 2008 7:44 PM in response to jbhmacpro

You really have to reboot? Quitting and restarting Aperture (or, just resetting the adjustments on that specific image) doesn't fix it?

If you actually have to reboot, I'd say look in Console and see if there's some note that something in Core Image is crashing. I would expect that rebooting is an extreme and unnecessary measure to fix this.

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Answer 5

jbhmacpro Author

Level 1

65 points

Jun 18, 2008 12:52 PM in response to William Lloyd

Do I have to reboot? Ok you got me 🙂 Not every time. At the most recent occurrence (screen capture above), exiting/restarting restored normal operation.

For prior occurrences, exiting Aperture was not sufficient. There could be some combination of things I could do to fix the problem. However, if exiting and relaunching doesn't work (which takes seconds), it is more efficient to reboot. I can be back up running again in about 90 seconds.

I looked in Console (system messages and crash log) after it first happened and didn't see any entries that looked related to: A core service of any kind or Operating system related. That I could tell. I'm certainly not versed on every message OS X can put in a log.

There was one message from Aperture about a "factory default" not being found (going by memory here, it said "factory" something or other). Also, if I remember, that error occurred well before the BSOD. Will double check.

I have installed:
Aperture
VMWARE Fusion
SMC Fan Control
Google notifier
Office 2008
PS CS3
Lightroom
Canon DPP
Flip4Mac wmv decoder
Flash etc

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Answer 6

jbhmacpro Author

Level 1

65 points

Jun 18, 2008 4:09 PM in response to William Lloyd

Don't know if this is related to anything. But I found the following in my system log. The 15th is the last time I had the problem. And the last message has a time stamp of 21:22, which is just about the time of the bsod.

Jun 15 00:29:55 Aperture[736]: No Factory Layouts were found.
Jun 15 12:22:06 Aperture[242]: No Factory Layouts were found.
Jun 15 15:25:17 Aperture[297]: No Factory Layouts were found.
Jun 15 21:22:22 Aperture[669]: No Factory Layouts were found.

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Answer 7

Jul 7, 2008 12:47 PM in response to jbhmacpro

I've also found that unticking and then ticking the adjustment box that contained slider I was using fixes this e.g. if moving the Vibrancy slider causes a black screen, then untick Exposure Adjustments, then retick the box to apply them. Works most of the time for me

David

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Answer 8

Jul 9, 2008 8:24 AM in response to khaosproductions

I just experienced this problem for the first time and it's very disconcerting. I looked in console and found these entries for Aperture:

"09/07/08 10:51:04 AM [0x0-0x2d02d].com.apple.Aperture[310] Wed Jul 9 10:51:04 andrew-ross-computer.local Aperture[310] <Error>: CGContextGetType: invalid context"

"09/07/08 10:51:17 AM Aperture[310] No Factory Layouts were found."

Unticking and re-ticking the adjustment box did not fix the problem for me, and the black image is only visible when I'm in "Viewer & Browser" mode. It looks fine if I'm in Viewer only or Browser only.

Restarting Aperture seemed to fix it, but it still worries me and I will send feedback to Apple as well.

Thanks,

Andrew

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Answer 9

Jul 10, 2008 12:28 AM in response to jbhmacpro

Hi, I experienced this black screen yesterday (9 July ) for the first time also. Oddly enough I had just read about it in the forums the previous day...voodoo do you think..?? :o)
It happened while I was editing too. I had just cropped a photo and as soon as I moved the White Balance slider the screen went black. As I switched to the next photo and back again it was ok.
It did it several times. I closed down Aperture and re opened again and all was ok.
I have within the past week installed Canon DPP software...do you think this has a bearing ?
W

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Answer 10

Davoz

Level 1

5 points

Jul 10, 2008 4:11 AM in response to jbhmacpro

This problem has begun happening to me since I moved all masters to an external drive, thus far undoing changes restores screen. iMac 2.16Ghz and Wd 1td firewire800 ext drive. Previously no problem.

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Answer 11

Jul 23, 2008 12:57 PM in response to Davoz

This has hit me too, many times. I would find it hard to believe that the development team don't know about it.

In my case, the histograms (main and in Levels) blank as well.

Very irritating.

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Answer 12

Deeepak

Level 1

0 points

Jul 26, 2008 8:28 AM in response to jbhmacpro

I have a very similar problem here, just that in my case the viewer turns white. I can still see the image when I zoom or move to full screen. It usually happens when I am adjusting levels. The levels histogram also looks weird (just one tall bar). Removing and applying levels again doesn't fix it. The only workaround (ok hardly a workaround) is restarting Aperture.

FWIW, I am dealing with Canon EOS 350D raw files.

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Answer 13

TestEng

Level 1

15 points

Aug 4, 2008 3:28 PM in response to streetcore

I've just started having the exact same black photo problem on a particular photo, and only when in the browser film strip mode. It looked fine in the other modes. Eventually, it stopped displaying as black and looked OK. I think it was after I restarted Aperture.

I also just started having the "Unsupported File Format" error on select other photos, where the preview looks OK but the photo won't load and you get the reddish frame instead. This problem does not go away when you restart Aperture.

I'm using a 20" G5 iMac with my Aperture2 library on external FW drives.

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Answer 14

Aug 5, 2008 7:00 AM in response to TestEng

HAVE YOU FOUND ANY WAY AROUND THE UNSUPPORTED IMAGE FORMAT WARNING,
I AM RIGHT THERE TOO, BUT THE DISC CONTAINING MY VAULT CRASHED ALSO.SO I NEED A WAY OUT (IF POSSIBLE)

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Answer 15

TestEng

Level 1

15 points

Aug 5, 2008 12:02 PM in response to David Monahan

No, I haven’t. And restarting Aperture doesn’t help either.

So far, I just found one file that’s affected (and stays affected), but I haven’t started to look for others yet.

It seems like a bug in Aperture, and I don’t know if the original file has somehow been corrupted, or if things will start working fine once they fix this bug.

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