Mirillis forum

Has anyone encountered a problem where Action! stops recording without warning?

It happens to me when I record something using Windows Journal and has been doing so intermittently for a while now, under various conditions. On my Asus Eee Slate B121 running Windows 7 64-bit, it would suddenly stop and throw an error saying that "Aero is not available" (or something to that effect), even when aero was clearly still enabled. Once the Eee Slate was upgraded to Windows 8 64-bit, the error no longer comes up, but the recording still stops (without warning now) sometimes. When this happens, double-clicking on the Action! button on the system bar no longer brings up the Action! application but just a tiny stub. All you can do at this point is to shut down the programme. Anything recorded so far becomes unplayable - the video thumbnail is merely a gray colour background. The same issue occurs even after I've changed my device to a Surface Pro.

If anyone has encountered the above problem, how could I go about fixing this?

Cheers

Is it possible that you could provide us a screenshot of mentioned issue?

OK I will try to get a screenshot the next time it happens. It'll take a few days before I will be doing my next recording.

Ok, here's how it looks like, and a bit of speculation on my part regarding the source of the bug below.


Figure 1: Without throwing any error, Action! looks like this if I try to re-open its window to end the recording session. Of course, by the time I see this, it has already stopped recording long ago.


Figure 2: Right-clicking on the system tray's icon still works and selecting the "open" option doesn't do anything. The "close" option will still shut down the programme.


Figure 3: If I re-open Action!, the recorded video is grayed out and cannot be played or opened in any video player (not even VLC).

The above scenario occurred when attempting to record at a resolution of 1080p. The same thing happens when trying to record at 1024x768.


Figure 4: I realize by now that the recording had stopped long ago.


Figure 5: Again the programme's window is "truncated".


Figure 6: You can see that Action! was indeed set to record at 1024x768 here which is the screen resolution during this session.

I did manage to complete a half-hour recording session on my 4th attempt though.


Figure 7: The 4th attempt was successful, but you can still see that the 2nd and 3rd videos are unplayable.

Now for my speculation: might it have something to do with the Surface Pro (or my older Eee Slate) being connected to a VGA projector while attempting the recording? I have yet to test whether this is indeed the case. I'm unsure whether I remember the error cropping up without being hooked to a projector. Unfortunately I do need to use Action! quite frequently while being connected to a projector...

I hope this helps. When it works, Action! has been an excellent tool for creating great instructional videos and I do need that capability for my work >.<

Thanks for the detailed feedback. Our devs will look into it. If they will need any more information I will get back to you.

This happens to me to when I'm recording games.