I have a powerpoint Auto_NextSlide macro that is used to automatically launch an external player in the background (Media Player Classic Home Cinema) to either play music or video and then automatically end the slideshow.
Using powerpoint on its own, this works perfectly, the slideshow ends immediately the music or video is started.
This should have two advantages:
1) Allows the operator to play a video from the zionworx playlist using powerpoint, but then immediately get the next song ready which will then appear once the video has ended, (MPC Home Cinema opens the video on the secondary display and automatically closes when the video has finished). Alternatively when the video has ended it will allow the operator to press F4 to move onto the next song in the playlist at that point. I don't want the operator to have to press the Stop button because this is confusing (as discussed in another thread).
2) Allows the operator to play music (no video) from the zionworx playlist using powerpoint, and immediately display the next song (that may have the words that go with the music). MPC Home Cinema in this case is used to open the music player on the laptop screen instead of the secondary display so that Zionworx should be able to display the song words.
In both cases the powerpoint is set to not display a black slide when it ends (the one that says "click to exit") so sometimes it ends automaticaly and everything works. However, sometimes I still end up with a black screen (again as discussed in another thread).
The reason for this new thread is because I have now added the following command in the macro that runs immediately after the video or audio has started:
Either
ActivePresentation.SlideShowWindow.View.Exit
or
SlideShowWindows(1).View.Exit
When running powerpoint on its own, this does exactly what is should - it ends the powerpoint show immediately, leaving the music or video (that was launched in the background) still running.
However when launched through Zionworx (either as part of the playlist or from the powerpoint tab), a black screen is displayed on the secondary display that is impossible to remove, even if both the powerpoint application and the MPC Home Cinema applications are both closed down.
The screen appears to be opened by Zionworx because (1) the powerpoint slide is white, but the screen is black (2) it stil happens when I set MPC Home Cinema to open on the laptop display, (3) zionworx is showing that the powerpoint has ended because the Stop button is greyed out and the zionworx display status shows that powerpoint is no longer active (4) the only way to remove the screen is to close Ziooworx altogether, and start again.
During this testing, Zionworx was set to display background and text (F12).
This seem to me to be a bug in Zionworx. If the bug didn't exist, the problems with powerpoints not always ending correctly and having to press the Stop button un-necessarily that i have mentioned in another thread could be solved, and I could get powerpoints to work seamlessly and consistently with Zionworx in the same way as any other playlist item. (ie Press space to advance the powerpoint / song, press F4 to end the powerpoint / song and move onto the next item in the play list.)
Is there a way to solve this, or can the bug be fixed in Zionworx?
Note I am using Powerpoint 2003, zionworx 2.6 and Windows XP SP3. Dell Latitude D600 with all the latest drivers installed.