Screen Freezes but is NOT Unresponsive during Preview/Playback

[Caleb Nelson]

I'm starting to get a bit desperate here.

TVPaint has never once failed me and Never crashes even during the most taxing renders but right now, the screen frequently freezes completely but doesn't crash or go unresponsive. When I animate I often will hit the spacebar, watch how something moves, and then tap the screen again to switch back to drawing. There is simply no way to switch between the preview and the cursor without tapping the screen/scrubbing tool/layers/etc--but VERY often, doing this will suddenly cause the program to freeze.

Trying to close the program also does not work. Key inputs also do not work. The only way to get TVPaint to work again is to end the task in the task manager. This happens frequently, unexpectedly, and repeatedly, preventing me from saving or recovering the project. Work is impossible to get done like this. I never know when clicking away from the preview will do this, since it usually works fine until an inevitable freeze. This happens on projects of all sizes and complexities, and I cannot seem to replicate it--it only happens at random, seemingly whenever inconvenient.

I'm going to have to learn a new program ASAP if this doesn't get resolved soon. TVPaint is more or less the only program I'm 100% proficient in and this is absolutely crippling to my projects. I've lost hours of work this way. If anyone has ANY idea how to get TVPaint to unfreeze in these instances I'll owe them my life.

I am using TVPaint 11.5 and I am working on updating right now, and would like to avoid having to put everything down to make sure none of my custom panels disappear during a deadline.
I'm working on a SurfacePro at the moment and it is the only device I have at my disposal.

Any advice would be EXTREMELY helpful!

[D.T. Nethery]

That sounds very frustrating. Definitely feel for you.

At first I thought you were going to say that you had recently updated to 11.7 and that's when the problem started, but it sounds like you've been on version 11.5 for a while now , but something has happened to cause the lack of responsiveness. If it was working ok before ,but now it's not I suppose the obvious question is: has anything else about your system changed recently? OS update , new peripheral devices installed , new extensions or software installed that might be causing a system conflict?

Unfortunately,I'm probably not going to be of much help with any troubleshooting , because I'm on Mac , not Windows, and I don't know anything about the Surface Pro.

I am using TVPaint 11.5 and I am working on updating right now, and would like to avoid having to put everything down to make sure none of my custom panels disappear during a deadline.
I'm working on a SurfacePro at the moment and it is the only device I have at my disposal.

Well,maybe updating to 11.7 would solve the problem?

Just to test 11.5 before you update, is it the most recent version ? (11.5.3) Have you tried creating a fresh configuration and using it for a while to see if you experience the same sort of random freezing ? Maybe you current configuration has become corrupted somehow. (by the way, are you on TVPaint 11.5 Standard Edition or TVPaint 11.5 Pro Edition ? Pro allows for multiple configurations ,but I think with Standard it is only one configuration at a time, so before you make a new one , be sure custom panels are backed up so you can restore them later.

I would advise that you export each custom panel as a .tvpx files so you can easily reinstall them if you create a fresh configuration ,or if you update to 11.7 (although your custom panels should still be in the old 11.5 configuration folder , so you copy them over to the new configuration.

Good luck.

[slowtiger]

It sounds like you're on PC, and I'm on Mac, but this happens to me from time to time as well, and not only in TVP. I use to have a lot of programs open at the same time, plus the Mac is streaming some music all day long, so it's no surprise that sometimes the system gets a hiccup.

Accepting no input ("being nonresponsive") usually means that part of the system is waiting for a timeout message is doesn't get. I identified 2 main sources of that problem:
- internal or external drives the system tries to wake up
- WiFi.
I don't use it, but others report something similar while using automatic saving, so have a look into TVP's auto-save feature, and maybe you have a continuous backup running? Maybe even in the cloud, which is a very likely culprit? Dropbox et al.?

So what you could do, for a start:
- minimize the number of programs running at the same time
- check / switch off any background saving operations
- restart your router
and see if the problem persists.

[Matthieu]

All of those suggestions from David and slowtiger are indeed good ones to follow. It would also help to know your computer's exact specs.

If none of them work, please contact us here. If the solution to your issue is not specific, I will come back and post it here for everyone to know!

[Caleb Nelson]

Update time!

Yes, I am using the Pro version.

[qt]Well,maybe updating to 11.7 would solve the problem?[/qt]
Unfortunately the problem is persisting through 11.7. love the new look of the timeline either way.

Restarting the router did nothing--or at least it took slightly longer than usual to encounter the glitch?

Thought that autosave might be the issue and turned if off--unfortunately also didn't work.

Terminating other running programs did little to help--and it'd be a bit of a needle in a haystack to find out which if any running programs might be causing problems.

The surface pro's hardware isn't especially strained from running tvpaint (for me at least) which is why this glitch is confusing to me--the program's behaving like it would if it were "not responding" or using a LOT of processing but this isn't the case.

It never seems to /actually/ stall or go unresponsive. The window looks entirely the same, I'm able to move the cursor around and it shows the play head scrubber, the last thing I "touched", but key inputs and clicks do nothing.

I'll try to grab my specs in a moment and contact support while I'm at it. Thanks a bunch for the suggestions!

[slowtiger]

Ah, another culprit could be a faulty keyboard or USB input ... had this on one of my Macs, very annoying. Try a different USB jack for the keyboard? I don't know if there are diagnostic test programs out there, but may be worth a try.

[Caleb Nelson]

Ah, another culprit could be a faulty keyboard or USB input ... had this on one of my Macs, very annoying. Try a different USB jack for the keyboard? I don't know if there are diagnostic test programs out there, but may be worth a try.

hrmn... another tricky problem, then.

I'm using the Surface Pro 7, 16gb RAM, windows 11 OS--but the surface pro has exactly one usb port, and that's taken up by the dongle, with the keyboard below attached magnetically to the base. I'd much prefer a proper keyboard while animating but I'm not able to invest in too much to get a usb splitter/hub.

If that's... somehow causing the problem, the connection hasn't affected anything else on the PC so far and I'm unable to determine that while tvpaint is running.