P: Slideshow - Black screen

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Entering Slideshow after selecting a few pictures gives me a black screen and a wrong preview, see atached picture. This happened after upgrade to LR5 earlier this week and was not a problem in any version of LR4. I have tried with both NEF and DNG files.The only thing working is Export to PDF.

I am running a Dell Studio XPS with Windows 7 64-bit and ATI 4850 graphic.

[icepucks2]

It amazes me that this has been on going for a year and the only response we get is this:

Becky Sowada (Adobe Employee) 27 days ago
We have uncovered a bug where the slideshow acts this way when your username on the OS contains accented characters. We are working to fix this.

Becky
Lightroom team

My user name on my Mac is 4 simple characters. I paid $79 for the 5.0 upgrade and a key component of the product doesn't work. Fix it or refund my $79.

Why does this problem not affect everyone? It also seems to be across both PC and MAC platforms and OS.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Bob, they need to be able to reproduce it in order to fix it. They've clearly managed to reproduce a case where accented characters in the username can cause it. Of course there may be other causes too, as in your case, and just because they've acknowledged one cause doesn't mean they're not still looking for other causes too.

The slideshow module back end was rebuilt for LR5 in order to include videos. That means that new bugs can happen in LR5 that didn't happen in LR4, even if nothing's changed on your system.

If a bug is only happening to a small number of people, which is true in this case, then that makes it all the more difficult to find and fix. There's something specific about your system and a small number of other systems that conflicts, but finding that is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Everyone with the problem (except those with accented characters in their username) listing their full system specs to look for a common theme would be as a good a place to start as any.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

It's been a year now Victoria. How do you know it's only a small number of people? Most people don't bother to find an appropriate forum and just remove the function from the menu (as I finally did).

I can repeat what I said a year ago, if Adobe wanted anymore information I assume they would have said so..

"I have tried with both NEF and DNG files.The only thing working is Export to PDF. I am running a Dell Studio XPS with Windows 7 64-bit and ATI 4850 graphic."

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

Because if there's a large number of people (relatively), then there's a much larger outcry on the forums in general. I'm not talking about a small number of people as in 10 or 11 posting in this thread, but as a percentage of Lightroom users. Widespread problems create more noise.

That said, I know that's no consolation for those affected!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Your guess is as good as mine. I guess that Adobe never tried to reproduce the different reported configurations but if you are right then mine Windows 7 64-bit and ATI 4850 has been tested without problem and I have to live with it (which I can since I use other software for my slideshow production).

What bothers me is that nothing has happened in one year except for one reply from a employee a month ago. That is bad!

If you had the same kind of support I would never had bought your publications ;-)

I rest my case.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

I can't argue with that logic! 😉

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I was happy to see that the LR 5.5 update solved at least mine slideshow problem.

There is still a minor graphic glitch but I can easily live with that

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I too upgraded to Lightroom 5.5, sorry to report that I still have the BLACK SCREEN in my slideshow

[johngersh]

No help for me in 5.5, still a black screen for slideshows.

[icepucks2]

Same here. Upgraded today to 5.5. Come on adobe there is no excuse for this.

[bkahn0206]

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents to this rather disappointing thread...

About My Hardware & Software:
Mac Book Pro Retina -- fully loaded (2.6 GHz Intel Core I7, 16 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB graphics card, External Apple 27" Cinema Monitor connected via Thunderbolt)
Mac OS X 10.9.4 Mavericks
Lightroom Mac 5.5

Problem 1: Impromptu Slideshow (pressing CMD-Enter/Return keys from Library/Develop modules) causes:
1. spinning beachball for seconds to minutes depending on how many images are in current folder/collection
2. followed by "Preparing Preview progress bar
3. followed by entirely black screen. Pressing forwards/backwards arrows do nothing; pressing ESC or mouse click returns to Lightroom module

Problem 2: Slideshow Module - Clicking Preview button (or Preview triangle under slideshow window) causes:
1. Preparing Preview progress bar
2. followed by slideshow window turning completely black.
Pressing forwards/backwards arrows does nothing; pressing ESC or clicking mouse returns slideshow window to display of slideshow layout

Clicking the Play Slideshow button exhibits exactly the same behavior as above, except that my entire screen blacks out instead of just Lightroom's slideshow window.

Notes: I've been using Lightroom on various Mac computers since the first Lightroom beta release over 10 years ago. I generally don't use the slideshow functionality of the program, so I was quite surprised to discover yesterday that it's not working in Lightroom 5.5.

I know that the slideshow functionality used to work back in Lightroom 3 and 4. I hadn't tried to use it in Lightroom 5.x until now, so I don't know when it became broken, but it's definitely broken now...and from reading this thread, it appears that Adobe is in no hurry to fix it...very disappointing!

[kevvyb3]

LR5 here. Slideshow working fine until I tried to add in audio. Merged MP3s into one file and I heard a second or so of muted audio on first time around.

Second play no audio and black screen. Now can get it to play again without black screen. Will run a manual slideshow.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

This is BS

[kevvyb3]

Update:
Lightroom working again next day after shutdown and restart. Then I upgraded to 5.5.

Haven't managed to reproduce bug again but I steered clear of trying to run slideshow with audio in LR itself. Have managed to produce a video slideshow and export with audio.

Will; test running slideshow in LR with audio now I have upgraded to 5.5

[bkahn0206]

Update:
Just upgraded from Lightroom Mac 5.5 to 5.6.
Per my post above, creating an impromptu slideshow (CMD-Return) or using the Slideshow module produces either a completely black preview or a completely black full-screen slideshow.
While Adobe addressed other issues and bugs in Lightroom 5.x, they apparently did not address the slideshow functionality in this release, alas....

[icepucks2]

Same problem. Upgraded to 5.6 today. Still black screen!

[icepucks2]

Upgraded to 5.6 today. Still no fix for black screen in the slide show module.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Get emotional? Describe how this topic makes me feel?

Frustrated! Swindled!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I have the same problem also. One of the biggest reasons I puchased Lightroom 5 was to create Slideshows. I get a black screen every time.

There is no accented character in my username.

This is the thread in which Adobe mistakenly attributed the problem as happening with accented characters in usernames: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/12368...

ONE user commented that changing his username to remove the accented character seemed to solve the problem, and Adobe Staff responded to this comment but seemingly didn't read through every other comment prior to that one. (And seems to have ignored all comments afterwards too). There are many people with this issue and for the rest of us it has absolutely nothing to do with accented characters in usernames.

I've been playing around with all of my slideshow settings but nothing is working.
HELP!!!! I'm so disappointed that I spent all this money and can't use the program for my intended use. Really frustrating.

[icepucks2]

Adobe sucks! Fix this problem or give me my $$ back. This is an unacceptable software glitch. Stop denying it and fix it! I to have no accent characters in my user name...Whatever that means. What user name? I purchased this software...there is no user name associated with this software.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

My slideshow was working prior to the latest cc update to 5.7.1. Now I have this problem. System Win8.1 Pro X64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2450M CPU @ 2.50GHz, 6GB RAM. No special characters in username.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Windows 7 64bit, LT 5.7.
Slideshow problem still there, just a black screen on each slide's image. But shows my optional text / caption overlays (only) when I have that option turned on, so slides are advancing, rest of screen black.

[F. McLion]

Has this been fixed in LR6?

[Technomad]

No. Still an issue with up-to-date Lightroom CC 2015.3. Can't make slideshow work at all.