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Q. I have just upgraded my BlackMagic and I can't see new features in the customise window that are detailed in release notes. A. The customise boxes are part of the drivers and therefore have to be re-loaded. Customise boxes are found in the pagesetup and RIP's tab of the control panel. The action is the same for both, just where I use "printers list" below for the control panel one, substitute 'Input filters list' when re-loading the RIP's one. 1. Make sure that you have more than one printer configured. 2. open the customise box and make a note of your settings in there. 3. Close the customise window and select another printer from the "Printers list" 4. Wait until the interface has re-freshed and then select the original printer again. 5. Go to the customise box and you should now see the new items. Note: If for some reason you do not see the new items after doing this, create a new setup by going to Prject/New and select the printer you want to configure. If you do not see the customise features there now, there maybe something wrong with the upgrade. [ Top ]
Q. I get a red box in the middle of the screen titled "Catastrophic notice" - Error reading from socket - End session or Ignore. What does this mean? A. You get this message when the GUI ( Graphical User Interface) cannot talk to the BlackMagic server. The chances are that server has crashed for some reason or someone has quit the server without quiting the GUI. If you End Session - You will close the gui If you Ignore - You will leave the gui open and but it will not display any applications as it is not connected to a server. To re-connect to a server, choose Utilities/server connection and either choose the server from the list or enter the server IP address in the box. Then select connect. You can use the search button to look for a server on the network. (NOTE: The search does not work on the Mac client) [ Top ]
Q. I get a GUI error complaing about the language kits like this class ss.guikits.KitParser ** Error:: could not find language file ./lang/en_US/messagekit, using the default one class ss.guikits.KitParser ** A. This is because the language of US has been selected under the Launch pad/Utilities menu, but there is no language enabled in the software. You should select English as the language. To avoid this problem, navigate to the install irectory of BlackMagic using an explorer and go to lib/java/lang and remove all the directories EXCEPT "en" - Then restart the Gui and you should not have the choices to select. If anyone wishes to add aditional languages other than English, they should contact Serendipity Software at mailto:support@riponce.com for further information. [ Top ]
Q. I have installed BlackMagic on MacOSX but I cannot find where it is installed A. By default BlackMagic is installed in Applications/Serendipity/BlackMagic To get there, double click on "Macintosh HD", Click on the Applications icon, then the Serendipity icon and finally the BlackMagic icon. There you will find 2 Applications, BlackMagic (which is the server) and SSClient which is the user interface. You may drag these to your dock for easier access, or even better go to the "login items" control panel and add BlackMagic to the list of apps to be started at login. [ Top ]
Q. I have installed the MacOSX version of the BlackMagic polling agent, the computer has restarted but the agent has not started A. You also need to install Eve3.pkg from the BlackMagic CD as it is required by thae agent [ Top ]
Q. I have BlackMagic installed on my C drive but want to move the spool directories to the D drive. Can I do it? A. Yes you can. You need to create the directories that you want to move on the D drive first. The ones to watch are spool, tmp and raster. If you move raster (this is where the processed jobs are held, the ones you see in the printer queues) then all the jobs that you have in the Queue Manager at present will no be able to be printed. Then edit the file Blackmagic/etc/ss.conf - Look for the appropraite sections for these directories and change the paths. Make sure you read the warning at the top regarding line feed and carrige returns with the editor you use. If you make a mistake, delete the file and restart BM and it will be recreated with the default locations. If you wanted to move the whole BM dir, then do that, delete the ss.conf file and start BM and it will be created for D drive. Same goes for the current jobs as I said above however. Another place to look out for if you process PS files, is the system temp dir.This is located under system in the widows control panel. Choose "Advanced" and select "Environment variables" Look for where you have the temp and tmp dir configured. This is probably something like %systemroot%/tmp etc (they vary depending on the system) . Just change it to read. D:\TEMP and D:\TMP ( or they can point to the same dir if you like.) Make sure that you have the directories created. [ Top ]
Q. Can I poll a Celebra RIP with more multiple Genstores? A. Yes - There are some conditions though. It is assumed that there is only one Celebra RIP and therefore one database. Also, each genstore must be visible to on the same machine ie the one being polled. To configure 2 genstores of the following paths - E:\Ffei\genstore\cpsirip F:\Ffei\genstore\cpsirip Set the path to /Ffei/genstore/cpsirip and set 2 stripe paths as follows E:/ F:/ If you have more directories then add the extra stripe paths. [ Top ]
Q. I cannot poll a rips network drives using the agent. A. This is quite important, especially when polling a Celebra with multiple Genstores like in a multirip configuration. When the agent is running on the RIP, it does not have permission to poll network drives. To fix this you must configure the agent to run as valid user of the RIP. To do this go to the control panels and select "services" (this can be under the Adminstrative Tools). Find the "Serendipty Remote Agent" and select properties. Choose "Log on" and select the option "This account". Choose the same account as the RIP runs under i.e. the log that you use when you start the computer and click OK. You will need to restart the service so that it runs as the new user. It should now be able to poll the network drives. [ Top ]
Q. What does the message mean maximum number of retries exceeded when resubmitting a job A. We try three times to get the file from the RIP. This is when we poll or spool after submittng. If we cannot get the file then we give up and give the message. There is probably a problem with the file. e.g. you submitted the job from the RIP monitor and the file has since been removed or it is locked. [ Top ]
Q. My Jobs get so far imaging and then fail with an error "failed to process - Check log" A. One of the reasons for this could be because the system drive fills up. This is only if processing PS/PDF files or rotating an image. A comon install is to install the BlackMagic Software on the boot drive which may only be 2GB. If this is the case, you should configure the TEMP and TMP folders to located on the larger partition. This differs slightly between OS, but here is how you do it on a Windows 2000 machine. 1. Create a folder the large partition for TMP and TEMP 2. Go to the control Panel and select "System" 3. Go to the "Advanced" tab and select "Environment Variables" 4. Scoll down the "System Variables" until you see TEMP and TMP. Select one and choose edit. Change the variable value to point to the new folder location. For example, if the disk is partitioned as C: System and D: large for spool files etc. your valriable may read %system%TEMP Change this to read D:\TEMP 5. Click OK 6. Repeat the same for the other variable ie. D:\TMP Then save and exit out of the System configuration and re-start the system. [ Top ]
Q. My server crashes and gives message "restarting in 10 sec." - This keeps looping and I can't get my interface up A. This could be one of two reasons. Firstly, a job may have got stuck in the imaging folder. Go into the BlackMagic/lib/defaultss.dbd/ssjobs folder and remove the files that are in there. Start the server and see if this fixes the problem. If not, then remove the files in BlackMagic/lib/defaultss.dbd/RIPqueues and start the server again. If this does not work, you may have to remove whole defaultss.dbd directory and restore your backup and start the server. [ Top ]
Q. When Linux boots up I get a "Repair disk prompt" and the system does not fully boot up A. There computer was not shutdown properly, and Linux was unable to automatically repair all disks. Here is what you do. If prompted for a user password, put in your root password. At the "repair disk" prompt type in fsck -s -A and press enter When prompted for various repair options just press y Once you are back at the "repair disk" prompt just type in exit followed by enter to reboot the computer [ Top ]
Q. How can I save my existing configuration and restore it if something goes wrong. A. This has been made easier from V2.5.3 onwards but it is still valid for all V2 versions. It is also valid for MegaRIP and GIS Print although - just substitute the product name where applicable below. We assume that BlackMagic is installed in Program Files/BlackMagic. All of the configurations are stored in one directory which is BlackMagic/lib/defaultss.dbd This is the directory that should be copied to somewhere as a backup. If you are porting the BlackMagic to a new machine or restoring it after a crash, install the BlackMagic and then restore the defaultss.dbd directory into the lib folder. Then when you start the BlackMagic you should have all of your old settings in there. If you have started the BlackMagic already, a default directory will be created. This can be removed when the server is closed and your saved one put in it's place. When you save your directory, we recommed just zipping it up as a directory. This way all the subdirectories are stored together and cannot be removed. This is still valid for V2.5.3 and above, but there is a much easier way, which is to use the database manager. Please see the V2.5.3 release notes for more information on this. http://www.riponce.com/onlinedocs/release2.5.3/release2.5.3.htm#78207 [ Top ]
Q. My Launch Pad takes a long while to come up. It says "retrieving GMT Offset" for a long time. A. The reason for this is that the log file is large and it is taking a long time to read it. To remedy this problem, when the launch pad has completed its start, go to "Utilities" and start the "server log". Select the length of time desired to look at the log file, say last 4 hours and select "Trim older lines". This will redeuce the log file size and the Launch Pad will start much faster next time. [ Top ]
Q. Can I drive a Fiery RIP A. Yes - We have tested 2 Fiery's, the X12 and XP12 connected to a Xerox machine and both work. You need to select the Postscript driver from the printers tab. Then in the pagesetup, customise area, choose the paper size that relates to the job and output device and choose RLE compression. It works equally well without compression but obviously is bigger. [ Top ]
Q. One of the plates from my proof from Celebra comes out rotated and low res A. The reason for this is because BlackMagic has picked up one plate as the low res preview file and included it in with the other plates for proofing. There are two possible reasons for this. Firstly, the Celebra database may have become corrupted and be pointing at the wrong files. There is a utility to re-build the database. The other is that the polling of the Celebra files is set too low in the directory tree and is picking up the preview file incorrectly. The correct place to poll on a celebra is Ffei/genstore/cpsirip. Some installs only poll to the Genstore point which will work mostly but can cause problems. You will also find that polling is faster as there are less directories and files to look at. [ Top ]
Q. I poll my 1 bit Tiff files but they appear as 4 separate jobs in the RIP Monitor - Why? A. The reason for this is beacuse the naming of the files aer not recognised as part of the same job. There are two things you can do. 1. If it is a one off test, the best thing to do is to stitch them toegther in Virtual Press. Select the first job/plate and press the Virtual Press button. If it has not found the correct colour, move it to the correct colour with the mouse. Then select the other jobs/plates, either separately or all together by hold the shift key and selecting the first and 3rd plate, and drag them into the Virtual Press. This should also assign the correct colours. Now submit the job. 2. If this is a repeated action, then you can select the Tiff Based RIP (User Configurable) and configure a Job Genie to automatically collate the plates into one job. See the release notes on the Job Genie Editor (ftp://ftp.riponce.com/pub/release_docs/blackmagic/releasev2_5/html/release2.5-13.htm#pgfId-1052341) for more information. [ Top ]
Q. I have installed MegaRIP on MacOSX but cannot find where it was installed A. By default MegaRIP is installed in Applications/Serendipity/MegaRIP To get there, double click on "Macintosh HD", Click on the Applications icon, then the Serendipity icon and finally the MegaRIP icon. There you will find 2 Applications, MegaRIP (which is the server) and SSClient which is the user interface. You may drag these to your dock for easier access, or even better go to the "login items" control panel and add MegaRIP to the list of apps to be started at login. [ Top ]
Q. The sub windows of my gui do not centre on the first go when running on Linux A. The problem lies with the window manager, eg KDE or gnome. If you disable the "smart placing mode" of the window manager then it should work first time and every time. This can be turned off under the preferences or control panel of the window manager. [ Top ]
Q. My server takes a long while to start. In particular "checking for availble printers." A. On the Mac Platform, if you have Classic running as well it can cause delays in the server starting as it shares the dongle port with Classic and takes a while to get the info from the dongle. It is always recommended that the Classic environment is not running when operating BlackMagic. [ Top ]
Q. My Epson 10000 shows a command error and all the lights flash when I send a file to it. A. This is caused by sending a file with wrong the ink type to the 10000. i.e. sending a pigment type file to a Dye machine or visa versa. To change this, go to the customise section of the pagesetup and select the Ink type to the same as your machine in save. [ Top ]
Q. My HP printer cuts the job a few centimeters from the bottom every time. What's wrong? A. This has been reported on HP 2500 and HP 3000, but may occur on other large format HP devices. The problem is that the Margins option on the HP control panel is set to Extended. This should be set to "Normal" which fixes the problem. [ Top ]
Q. Why does my pagesetup not publish on Appletalk? I get an error messge in the server window "Module atalk.c OpenPAPListeningSocket: Cannot register Tanglefoot Epson 10000 - Backlit:LaserWriter@* error = 10022" A. This is because the name of the pagesetup, which is the name that gets published is 32 characters or longer. Mac's cannot view files 32 characters or more. To fix this simply rename the pagesetup to something less than 32 characters long. [ Top ]
Q. What is the best method to poll a Scitex Brisque RIP with a Mac OSX version of BlackMagic? A. The best method is to export the Volumes on the Brisque where the Jobs are held and mount them on the Mac using NFS. There is a help document that details the method to mount an NFS volume on Mac OSX at ftp://ftp.riponce.com/pub/help_docs/NFS-Mounts-on-Mac.pdf There is also an example of the NFS file on the Mac located at ftp://ftp.riponce.com/pub/downloads/fornfs.tar This can be used in conjunction with the pdf document. [ Top ]
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