Lion and Keynote Problems

what worked for me - was what Joel suggested earlier in the thread - you choose duplicate from the file menu and uncheck the box mentioned earlier. Once you have duplicated one file in this way all the others seem to work without the beach ball.

I only reposted because some users didn't seem to have read the whole thread and I know how worrying it is. I have to go to Bucharest on monday and present four days of lectures - I was very grateful for Joels solution because without it I would have been f****d.

J

The so called Joel solution is NOT a real solution for 5.1 It ONLY works if you do not save the duplicated file. Once you save it you start the autosave beachball endless loop which stalls you for long periods at non-predictible times. Even the slightest edits will trigger a 2-4 minute beachball. You will spend more time on the beach than editing. In fact you will spend most of your time waiting for the saves to complete. And presentations with video will stall. In short, bring a pina colada because you are on the beach and on vacation with 5.1 if your slides have any embedded video. Work on your tan. But you won't get any editing done.

Joel and presenter-John - take a file with embedded video, do your "trick." Then take a slide with embedded video and try to play it. It will stall and stutter and if it is more than a few seconds long it will start the beachball. It might autosave 2-3 times in the course of playing a 3 minute video. Each auto save might take you 2-3 minutes. So it will take you 15 minutes to play a slide with a 3 minute video.

As for the duplicate but don't save theory I for one don't want to work on a file and take the chance of a crash and the loss of all edits made to a file. There are only two solutions that actually work on files with embedded video.

1. Downgrade to version 5.05 (the one without auto save).

2. Lock the file if you are done editing and it will allow you to do presentations.

As I have previously stated the problem is a systematic design problem with iwork. When it saves it saves the entire index file that is the heart of the three applications. It doesn't only save changed pieces. That is why autosaves take so long. Apple will need to redesign iwork so that it does not depend on an index file design. Until that is done using keynote with autosave in Lion just isn't going to work properly.

Message was edited by: fuzzydog

Dear friends,

I would like to thank Fuzzydog and his friends. I think the downgrade is the only real workable solution till now. I am a medical proffesional and academic and lecture very often. It works just fine.

Ali

My work requires Keynote. I have about 100 presentations, some of these hold huge media files, some don't. I occasionally deliver key presentations to an international audience. I've recently upgraded to Lion and have had nothing but problems - as described on these pages. This is unacceptable I am now relying on powerpoint until this is sorted. I dont intend to reinstall SL. Given Apples clientbase they have got to resove this asap. I also moved recently to FCPx and am dissapointed with that, my message to Apple is forget all your gadgets and iphones and get back to computers!! For me to look at Adobe as an alternative to FCP today is unthinkable -but I did.

Apple user for donkeys years

fuzzydog wrote:

The so called Joel solution is NOT a real solution for 5.1 It ONLY works if you do not save the duplicated file.

It did work for me. Keynote went from unusable to "back to normal." It continues to work as it did in Leopard and Snow Leopard.

Joel and presenter-John - take a file with embedded video, do your "trick."

The file upon which I initially tried this did have embedded video files in it. It is the one that "fixed" all the others in my case.

As for the duplicate but don't save theory I for one don't want to work on a file and take the chance of a crash and the loss of all edits made to a file.

I immediately saved the file after I duplicated it, before I made any changes. I was not really expecting this to work, it was probably my last step before reinstalling Snow Leopard, and it saved without beachballing or crashing. As noted before, normal functioning since then.

There are only two solutions that actually work on files with embedded video.

1. Downgrade to version 5.05 (the one without auto save).

2. Lock the file if you are done editing and it will allow you to do presentations.

I would agree with you, except that there are 3 solutions. ::grin:: If mine doesn't work, do your two. If mine does work, you don't need to do your two.

Before the 5.05 solution in Lion, I had planned to go back to SL, I'm glad there is another way that is not so drastic.

Regards. Joel.

....Ok - When duplicating I duplicated by dragging the file from one disk to another.

I will try your suggestion now, as I understand you are doing serious support business here (thanks alot, and sorry for being a little "harsh"). After duplicating I will do the "witchcraft movment" with hand and mouse over the dustbin and ditch the old one... ;-) ....

Have an extraordinary good trip in Eastern Europe!

....like you said - I´d say "Like magic"....

It actually works when doing it this way.... like getting rid of the plauge.... like sun after heavy rain and flooding.

I´m OK now, and have made a new presentation without the "hassle-wheel" wheeling.

Thanks a lot!

Fantastic!

Glad it worked.

Hi all,

I am so disheartened to hear so many are having tzures (woes) with the Lion/Keynote combination.

I am preparing a presentation for an aviation conference in Seattle next week (APEX - Google it and my name), and likely will be the only Mac user, much less Keynote user. I am expected to give the organisers my Powerpoint sides for central server uploading... as if...

My presentation, which I'm still working on contains many movies, animations, and animated themes (clouds in motion). Rock Solid, I have to say...

Yes, I started with a clean slate. In KN preferences, under SAVE, of the five check boxes, only one is ticked: "Copy audio and movies into document". With older KN files, such as one I have used many times but modified for an Apple Distinguished Educators presentation I did recently (so it was stuffed with movies etc and >1.5GB), I duplicated a master presentation file I use, and saved it, renaming it "ADE Augus"t. Worked flawlessly in front of a crowd not easily impressed where the presentation really counted, to coin a phrase c.2003.

Thus: there is a problem with the combo, but in my experience (with a 2011 Macbook Pro 15", i7, 500GB 7200rpm HD) it doesn't require such radical and parasuicidal efforts such as resorting to Powerpoint. It may be worth for some to partition your drive, reinstall SL in one (leave Lion on the other) and see if this will get your work done, while your work through resaving your important KN files in the hope it will work with Lion.

Les Posen

PresentationMagic.com

I think I found the solution. Had the same problems with Keynote. Tryed the previous version, tryed reinstalling Lion, Did a clean install, bought the app store: didn't work. The solution is actually quite easy.

1-Run Font Book (applications)

2-Select all fonts

3-File>validate fonts

4-Erase the fonts with problems

5-Reopen Keynote

6-Reopen the presentation

7-"some warnings occurred"- select review

8-Select "missing font"

9-Replace font with the one you want

10-Solved!

I'm a medical doctor with all presentations bigger than 4 GB- not a problem since just now :-)

Hope it helps!

Please be very careful when following advice about font problems resolving the Lion/Keynote issues.

I am going to have to resort to Time Machine backups to restore my system fonts now that the dreaded Block-A font problem is occurring in Safari and Mail.

Yep, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Les Posen

PresentationMagic.com

I have today made the decision to go back to Snow Leopard - very dissapointed with the spinning beachball. Lion/Keynote cannot handle large presentations with embedded videos. That's my business and I cannot afford the risk.

I'm actually not too keen on the new mail layout either.

Update: My iMac (A1311/2308 / 3.06 GHz / 8 GB RAM), which seemed to be running Keynote 5.1 smoothly and without problems, suddenly went beachball yesterday and had to be force quit after five minutes. All I did was execute some quick formatting changes that involved playing the imbedded video files. In my discussions with colleagues who use this software professionally, the problem seems to be arise with imbedded videos. I'm now downgrading all my machines to iWork 9.05 until this problem is solved. iWork 9.1 is clearly not ready for prime time.

I agree with you- its just not possible to rely on something you have no confidence in and crashing hals way through a class is a nightmare. Like you I'm reverting to Snow Leopard. I also miss the 'save as; feature.

You don't need to revert back to Snow Leopard...just revert back to the previous verson of Keynote. It works fine with Lion.