IC3 Release 7.4 Introduction
IC3 Release 7.4 is a cumulative upgrade on top of
Release 7.3. Some of the highlights include:
- New Scala System Optimizer tool adjusts various Windows
system settings on a Player system for optimal behavior.
- New feature to Align and Spread elements in
Designer.
- New feature to turn on a Backdrop Image for any
element, including global crawls.
- Automatic “smart quotes” in Designer.
- Improved FTP upload and download performance.
- Resubmit Failed Jobs feature in NetManager.
- Automatic retrieval of billing logs from players back to
the central server.
- Thai TIS-620 fonts are now supported.
- Player heartbeats and log uploads now have a random
hold-off for load-balancing the network.
- TV Tuner EX lets you select the device you're
using, instead of forcing you to set cryptic MMOS.INI
settings.
- Support for passive-mode FTP
- Much faster NetManager log viewer
- Expose bandwidth limiters and a few other Player options in ConfigIC.
- Now include the Python programming language for advanced
scripting through IC3's Windows Script support.
- Various other TV Tuner EX improvements.
- Various bug fixes and minor improvements.
Release 7.4 includes all previous fixes to IC3.
For full details on Release 7.3 and earlier releases, see the
IC3 Change History.
IC3 Changes Affecting All Products
- IC3 may be installed with a Japanese, Korean, Simplified
Chinese or Traditional Chinese language user-interface.
- IC3 now ships with version 4.96 of the Hasp dongle driver, for
compatibility with the data-execution protection feature of
certain processors that is available starting with
Windows XP SP2.
- Improved performance of uploading and downloading data over FTP.
- Scala products now recognize new storage devices added after
startup (e.g. USB memory keys, or new mounted network drives).
- Since Windows Update must be accessed via
Internet Explorer, the installer no longer uses the
system's default browser to visit Windows Update.
IC3 NetManager Changes
- In NetManager's System Settings, added a feature for
automatic retrieval of billing logs. You can enable this
feature and specify N, the number of days worth of logs
that should be retrieved from the players and placed in the
Transmission Workspace Location, in the folder
Receive\Billing\playername . Every night after
midnight, the players will compress and upload any of the last
N days worth of logs that are not yet on the server. If
there are no logs on the player for a past day, an empty log
will be uploaded, so on the server we know there are no logged
events (as opposed to a log delivery problem). The player will
delete any logs older than N days.
On the player, the mmos.ini setting
SSHEALTH_BillingLogUploadDelayHours=h
governs when the player performs the log upload. The player
will hold off for a random amount up to h hours after
startup or midnight, then connect to upload logs.
The billing log retrieval will also retrieve log files whose
name looks like:
billYYYYMMDD_anything.log
which can be used for automatic retrieval of custom log files
as well as or instead of billing logs.
- Added a Resubmit Failed Jobs feature to the
Job Status view. You can select one or more jobs in
this view, then click Resubmit Failed Jobs. This will
resubmit the jobs in question to those players that did not
successfully receive the original job. Players that
successfully received the original job will not be targeted by
the resubmit.
(Any modifications made to the job since it originally ran
will not be used. That is, the job that is resubmitted matches
the definition of the original.)
- When viewing large log files, the response time of the
Log Viewer is more than ten times faster.
- In System Settings, the new Passive-mode FTP Enabled
option tells NetManager to use passive-mode FTP, which is
sometimes needed to traverse a firewall.
- In NetManager Enterprise, when you are using broadcast servers,
you can now specify Use Point-to-Point Connection even for
Broadcast Players when you define or edit a job. This
causes the job to use the point-to-point connection you can
specify for each player, rather than the broadcast connection.
- When the broadcast priority feature of Hughes package delivery
is enabled, then a selector allows control over the priority of
the resubmitted job. The default priority for resubmitted jobs
is controlled by adding this to your MMOS.INI:
SSERVER_HNSDefaultResubmitDeliveryPriority=n
where n can be 0 (low priority), 1 (medium priority), or 2
(high priority).
- If you set the mmos.ini keyword
SSERVER_EnableIPMulticastSettingsOverride=1
then you can specify three additional data items per Broadcast
Server, namely:
- Group IP Address
- Multicast Interface Address
- Maximum Transmission Speed
These effectively override the matching settings within the
Broadcast Server, allowing the user to create multiple virtual
Broadcast Server entries within NetManager, each pointing at
the same physical Broadcast Server, but having unique values
for the above properties.
- NetManager Enterprise can now officially be used
console-style. This is essentially a single-user version of
NetManager Enterprise, allowing functionality such as
groups and broadcasting. Add this to your MMOS.INI:
NETMANAGER_EnterpriseOnConsole=1
then invoke the NetManagerConsole.exe application after
starting the NetManager engine.
- The Problem Notification Email Address can now contain a
list of comma-separated email addresses.
- Fixed a bug in Player and NetManager which prevented Chinese
and Korean installations of Windows from interoperating with
installations in other languages. For new networks, the fix is
transparent. However, for existing Chinese or Korean networks,
there are two options:
The installer will detect affected systems and warn the
user.
The NetManager Install Software Update command will
automatically add the MMOS.INI keyword to any affected
player because in this case it is certain that the legacy
option is desired (otherwise the player will become remotely
broken).
- In NetManager Enterprise, if the user with View/Modify access
logged out, sometimes the next user could not log in with
View/Modify rights. This is now fixed.
- When the built-in FTP server rejected a connection due to too
many simultaneous connections, it would respond in a way that
would tell the FTP client not to bother retrying. This is now
fixed.
- Reserved characters can no longer be typed into the Player
name, Job name, etc., fields. (Previously, they were silently
converted to underscores.)
- Fixed layout problem due to length of the translation of the
Log Out text in the French version of NetManager
Enterprise.
- Fixed a rare crash that could occur when submitting changes to
the database.
- When using the Wait option for the
Run Command task, the wait value is shown in the
Jobs overview page and in the task list in the
Edit Job page.
- Fixed a NetManager Enterprise bug introduced in
Release 7.3 where trying to view the players in a group
would list only those players not in that group.
- Fixed a bug in the top-level Job Status View where the
refresh of this page could prevent the user from reaching the
Job Status Details page or from performing Clear Job
Status.
- When the Job Status View and the Job Status
Details pages update, they no longer scroll to the top and
repaint.
IC3 Designer and Player Changes
- Python is a popular and
powerful programming language that can be used for advanced
scripting through IC3's Windows Script support. We now
include an installer for Python as part of Designer and Player,
and on the Support CD.
- Added a workaround for frame-synchronized display updates, to
benefit certain ATI systems and for VIA S3 systems. The
traditional approach used to work well but broke down on ATI
Radeon-based devices with recent drivers. On such systems, the
drivers end up consuming excessive CPU which badly impacts
performance. The VIA S3 chipset always had this issue.
To enable the workaround, add the following to your
MMOS.INI file:
XDRAW_SimulateFullScreenVBlankFlip=1
A companion MMOS.INI setting can be used to fine-tune
behavior:
XDRAW_SimVBlankSleepThreshold=3
This governs how close to the estimated start of vertical blank
Scala switches to an accurate but CPU-intensive way of
waiting. Setting the number too high will use too much CPU and
affect performance. Setting the number too low can cause the
vertical blank to be missed, producing a visual stutter. The
default value of 3 milliseconds should be OK in most cases.
Note:: If you have previously set
XDRAW_AlwaysSingleBuffer=1 (the previous workaround),
remove that before trying this new option.
- The format of the Weekday variable of the
Timing EX can now be set to Use Windows Regional
Options, so that weekday names appear in the same language as
Windows.
- You can now add an optional IgnoreMissingDestination(On)
suboption to the GotoExpr() and UseExpr()
commands. This suppresses an error if the destination event
does not exist.
- New Movie.Duration() function returns the length of a
given movie file in milliseconds.
- Thai TIS-620 (Thai ANSI) fonts are once again supported. This
worked in Release 6, but required additional internal
changes due to Unicode support.
(Note that Thai Unicode fonts continue to not be
supported — you must use Thai ANSI fonts.)
- The installer now includes various fonts from the Bitstream
Vera family. Bitstream Vera Sans is the new default
typeface in Designer.
- Fixed a caching bug whereby if you reuse a versionated picture
or sound file while you're still using a copy, it might not
pick up the changed version.
- Fixed a crash observed when certain wipes were used on top of a
MovieClip or TextCrawl.
- Player used to record a harmless but confusing error message
to the Windows application log that said
RunIC.app -Embedding is not a valid Win32 application.
This is now fixed.
- Fixed a rare crash that could occur when the subscript ended,
if a TextCrawl was on the last page of that subscript.
- Fixed a potential hang when playing a script with multiple PNG
files on a multi-processor or hyperthreaded system.
- Certain video decoders don't respond to stop time requests in a
timely manner, which causes the desired End Time
setting to be ignored. We now detect and handle this, for the
case where Overlay is off. (The detection is not
possible when Overlay is on.)
- If when playing a streaming video, you encounter an error that
The operation could not be performed because the filter is
not running, this can be resolved by setting the
MMOS.INI keyword:
DSHOWRENDER_IgnoreIncompleteStateChange=1
(We may enable this by default in the future)
- The mouse pointer becomes visible when a page has buttons.
Fixed a bug where the mouse pointer would in some cases fail to
disappear after moving to a page with no buttons.
- Fixed a rare bug in 3D wipes seen in some cases when a piece of
the element was seen "edge-on".
- When re-activating a global crawl that uses a cued expression,
the crawl would sometimes not request more text. This is now
fixed.
IC3 Designer Changes
- New documentation is included with IC3 Designer, and is
also on the Support CD.
- New Align and Spread options in the Design menu
Edit pop-up give you various options to align or spread
a group of elements.
- On the Effects tab, a new Backdrop Image option
lets you set a backdrop image on any element. (You can adjust
the Border values to show more of the backdrop around
the element.) The backdrop image can be a bitmap or
multi-tile, and can have blended transparency. This feature
has some general uses, but can significantly improve the visual
appearance of a global crawl. (Transparency not supported for
the global crawl case.)
- In Publish to InfoChannel Network, you can now specify
Skip Cleanup?, which avoids the cleanup phase after
publish. This can speed up publishing. Cleaning up another
time will take care of all accumulated cleaning needs.
- In Publish to InfoChannel Network, you can now specify
Use Passive FTP?, which tells Designer to use
passive-mode FTP, which is sometimes needed to traverse a
firewall.
- The Publish Server now supports the p flag, to select
passive FTP.
- The Publish Server now supports the CheckPublish
interface to allow the controlling application to monitor
progress. See IC3 Advanced
Configuration for details.
- The Publish Server GenerateThumbnail interface no longer
is limited to 512x384 sized thumbnails.
- Adding a Flash file from the main menu resizes the Flash clip
to fill the page.
- When typing text, "straight quotes" are replaced with
“smart quotes”. This can be controlled by the
Use Smart Quotes? option in the Authoring tab of
the Options menu.
- Certain codecs that cannot be used for Publish to Video
are no longer listed as available choices.
- Fixed a crash in the File dialog when browsing files that have
file dates in the far future.
- Publish to InfoChannel Network would include the imagery
for any alpha wipes, but these would not be correctly
recognized by the player. Hence the wipes would only work if
they were already installed on the player. This is now fixed
(affected scripts need to be republished).
- Fixed a problem introduced in Release 7.3 where
Billing events in sub-scripts would log incorrect page
and script names.
- Fixed a rare hang in the Main menu thumbnail generator.
- Fixed a bug introduced in Release 7.3 where extra quotes
were added to a Billing event which could affect
compatibility of tools that read billing logs. Affected
scripts will need to be resaved.
- Because FTP servers do not generally support filenames that
begin with spaces, the Publish operation prevents this.
Fixed a bug where after a publish is prevented, future publish
operations would be blocked unless you manually cleaned up the
right folder.
- Fixed a bug in Release 7.3 where Publish to Video
fails with scripts containing certain Movies or
MovieClips.
- Fixed a long-standing bug where pasting a string of spaces into
a text-input field would hang.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when undoing changes to a Global
Crawl.
IC3 Player Changes
- There is a new Scala System Optimizer tool that adjusts
various Windows system settings on a Player system for optimal
behavior. This tool can modify various registry settings,
adjust or disable various Windows services, and even schedule a
weekly reboot. You can simply use the recommended settings, or
customize the set changes you wish to perform.
You can save a set of changes to a preset file that can be
used when preparing multiple players. To apply a preset file
from a batch file command, use:
soptimizer.exe --apply=presetfilename --quiet
- In NetManager's System Settings, added a feature for
automatic retrieval of billing logs. You can enable this
feature and specify N, the number of days worth of logs
that should be retrieved from the players and placed in the
retrieved files area of the transmission workspace. Every
night after midnight, the players will compress and upload any
of the last N days worth of logs that are not yet on the
server. If there are no logs on the player for a past day, an
empty log will be uploaded, so on the server we know there are
no logged events (as opposed to a log delivery problem). The
player will delete any logs older than N days.
On the player, the mmos.ini setting
SSHEALTH_BillingLogUploadDelayHours=h
governs when the player performs the log upload. The player
will hold off for a random amount up to h hours after
startup or midnight, then connect to upload logs.
The billing log retrieval will also retrieve log files whose
name looks like:
billYYYYMMDD_anything.log
which can be used for automatic retrieval of custom log files
as well as or instead of billing logs.
- ConfigIC now offers several new useful options that were
formerly only available through MMOS.INI:
- Use Passive FTP?: Tells player to use
passive-mode FTP, which is sometimes needed to traverse
a firewall.
- Enable FTP Bandwidth Throttling?: Enables a
feature that limits the FTP bandwidth used by the
player. You can specify a Throttle Limit, and
you can choose to Apply Throttle always, or
during a specified time-window. For example, you can
restrict the daytime bandwidth used by a player.
- Number of Days to Keep Logs: Lets you specify how
many days' worth of logs are to be kept on the player.
- Minutes to Wait Before Sending Alert: Lets you
tune how many minutes to wait after the Player stops
running before NetManager is alerted.
- In ConfigIC, the Dial-up and Logging options have
been moved to their own tabs.
- The diagnostic pages for the ready script have several
improvements:
- Show total physical memory, free memory, VM size, and OS
non-paged pool size
- Have a new screen-resolution calibration screen
- Streamlined timing and removed some of the less-useful
audio tests
- Adapt to display modes shorter than 600 pixels
(e.g. 848x480)
- With health monitoring enabled, a player sends its first
heartbeat immediately upon startup. In order to balance
network loads (e.g. when players restart at about the same time
due to scheduled reboots, maintenance jobs, etc.), the first
heartbeat is now held off by a random amount in the range of
zero to ten minutes. The range of random hold-off can be
customized with the MMOS.INI keyword:
SSHEALTH_HeartbeatStartupMaximumDelayMinutes=n
If you do not customize the hold-off for the first
heartbeat, the default hold-off is never more than the
Overdue Heartbeat Tolerance less five minutes. This
avoids false reports in NetManager of dead players.
- With nightly log retrieval enabled, a player uploads its log
file immediately after midnight. In order to balance network
loads, the nightly upload is now held off by a random amount in
the range of zero to ten minutes. The range of random hold-off
can be customized with the MMOS.INI keyword:
SSHEALTH_LogUploadMaximumDelayMinutes=n
- When using Send Content to send non-script content to a
player, if the file was updated more than once within the same
minute, the player could fail to download the updated version
and report that the file was up-to-date. This is due to the
fact that timestamps under FTP have a one minute resolution.
This is now fixed, at the expense of waiting an extra minute to
retrieve the file. (The delay does not apply to script files,
media belonging to scripts, or broadcast players, none of which
are affected by this issue.)
- Install Software Update no longer leaves an alarming but
harmless error in the log about not being able to delete
icUpdate.exe.
- Fixed a problem introduced in Release 7.1 that upon system
startup, could prevent either the graphical engine or the
network engine from successfully starting up, leaving only an
error about "datalog" in the Windows Event log.
- When the player is set to receive broadcasts using the
IPPipe, if the multicast receiver fails to add itself to
the IP-multicast group, it will now retry.
- Periodic timestamps are once again written to the IC.log file
(this has been broken in Release 7.1).
- Fixed a bug in Player and NetManager which prevented Chinese
and Korean installations of Windows from interoperating with
installations in other languages. For new networks, the fix is
transparent. However, for existing Chinese or Korean networks,
there are two options:
The installer will detect affected systems and warn the
user.
The NetManager Install Software Update command will
automatically add the MMOS.INI keyword to any affected
player because in this case it is certain that the legacy
option is desired (otherwise the player will become remotely
broken).
IC3 Broadcast Server Changes
- The Recipient's Email Address can now contain a list of
comma-separated email addresses.
- Fixed an occasional crash when the Broadcast Server was
updating its display.
IC3 Reporter Changes
- Reporter now supports 50 profiles, up from 20.
- Fixed a problem where certain user-interface text in Reporter
was sometimes not drawn.
IC3 Add-on EX Changes
The updaters for IC3 Designer and IC3 Player will
automatically apply any relevant fixes to Scala add-on EXes, namely
the CORIOgen EX, MyHD HDTV EX, TV Tuner EX,
Video EXes, and Weather EX.
IC3 TV Tuner EX Changes
- The TV Tuner EX Options menu now lets you
explicitly select the particular tuner hardware you are using.
Making a choice automatically enables the necessary internal
configuration options that are appropriate for that device.
- The TV Standard Type selector in the
TV Tuner EX Options menu is no longer disabled
when the Video Source is set to Composite or
S-Video.
- For most TV tuner cards (not including the Hauppauge
cards), you can now specify the size of the "capture window",
i.e. the resolution at which the original image is grabbed.
Use the MMOS.INI variables
DSHOWRENDER_ChangeTVCaptureToYUV=1
DSHOWRENDER_TVCaptureWidth=width
DSHOWRENDER_TVCaptureHeight=height
Best results are usually obtained when you choose a width and
height that evenly divides into the width and height of your TV
standard.
- Initializing the TV tuner is now much faster for many cards.
- A hidden TVTuner atom will now appear in the right place
when you turn it on.
- Significantly improved TV Tuner initialization time for the
Pinnacle PCTV Rave cards with the MT2050 tuner.
- The frame rate on certain TV Tuners got worse in
Release 7.1. This is now fixed.
- Further improvements for USB capture devices.
