Andy Budd's dashboard

Hey DK. I have to admit that we haven't extensively tested on multiple screens as it's fairly unusual for people to use multiple screens when running a usability test. This is because people usually try to mirror the normal browsing habits of their users when testing and it's rare for people to use multiple screens. In this situation I'm guessing that you're probably just using your MacBook to run the test but are letting your subjects use a bigger screen to mimic a desktop environment. Would I be correct?

I can't say for certain as I don't have access to a second screen at the moment. However have you tried turning your secondary screen to your primary screen. I believe you do this by tearing the toolbar off your main screen in the layout settings panel and dropping it onto your other screen. – Andy Budd, on January 21, 2009 11:52

Hi Gideon,

You can access the video feed by going to Library > Application Support > Silverback then navigating to your session. However I'm afraid that the screen capture data needs to be assembled before it can be viewed, and this is one of the processes that happens during export.

Unfortunately you're right that only one application is allowed to control the camera feed at any one time.

We're definitely interested in looking at adding a remote component. However that probably won't come for a while yet I'm afraid. – Andy Budd, on January 15, 2009 10:11

Thanks for letting me know John, much appreciated – Andy Budd, on January 15, 2009 10:06

Sorry Gideon, I'm afraid this bug is proving really difficult to track down as it's only happening on a small minority of machines and even then, in an unpredictable way. However we are getting steadily closer to a fix and I'm actually just uploading some new data on that ticket as we speak. So I hope to be able to push a new release in the next couple of weeks.

Hi Tim, I'm really sorry to hear you've been experiencing problems registering your application. Unfortunately we believe this is due to a corrupted preferences file and is something beyond our control. However if you feel that this experience has negatively impacted your usage of Silverback please let me know and we'll happily refund the purchase price. – Andy Budd, on January 12, 2009 10:50

There are several ways to activate your licence once it's been emailed to you. These include.

* Double clicking the file in your mail app.
* Dragging the file from your mail app to the Silverback icon in your dock.
* Downloading the licence to your desktop and then double clicking it there.
* Dragging the file to the licence preference pane in the application.

The most effective method depends on the version of the OS you're using and your chosen mail app. So if you're having problems, please try a different method.

Occasionally servers or online mail clients may try to "sanitise" the licence and end up blocking or breaking it. This was happening with GMail a couple of months back until we fixed it. Unfortunately zipping the licence up doesn't always work and may cause problems for other people. As such, if you suspect there's a problem with your licence due to your ISP or server settings please contact us directly and we'll try to find an alternate way of sending the licence to you.

A couple of people have experienced problems with corrupted preference files. This results in a message saying "No valid Silverback license found." Unfortunately the only way to solve this problem is to trash your Silverback preferences and try again. To do this...

1) Trash the app's pref file: Library > Preferences > com.clearleft.Silverback.plist

2) Open Silverback and select: Silverback > Preferences

3) Click the "Register" menu option and drag the license file into the box labelled: Drag your license file here to register Silverback

If you find yourself having any problems with your licence files please contact us straight away and we'll sort it out ASAP.

Nice idea so thanks for that one. Will definitely consider it.

Thanks guys. We're on the case and hope to get this fixed in the next release.

OK guys, to debug this flicker we're going to need you to send in the session files along with the exported video so we can try to replicate the problem. These are likely to be pretty big so either post them up on your ftp server somewhere or use a service like getdropbox.com

Thx – Andy Budd, on December 17, 2008 11:59

Hi Guys,

Could you let me know what version of the OS you're using. Thanks

Thanks guys. That looks like a bug so we'll push a fix for the next release.

I have to admit that we've not tried it yet. If OS X identifies the camera as a recording devive rather than mounting it as a volume, then the native video controls would presumably kick in. However my assumption would be that most ameras would mount as a volume and not be able to record.

Hi Eric, from what I can tell from the link you sent, Techsmith currently only have a Windows version of the codec for screen recording, and the other codecs are purely for viewing encoded videos in QT. However if they do produce a Mac version and it's any good, we'll definitely consider implementing it. – Andy Budd, on December 15, 2008 14:41

Hi Ferrai, just to make sure you're looking in the right place, when you open up the exported movie in iMovie you should see a dropdown in the control strip along the bottom with all the chapter markers in. If you're not getting that, let me know and we'll look into it.

Hi Paulo, we've got a small number of people reporting the same problem as you, and we're currently looking at the problem. Unfortunately we've not been able to replicate the problem so it's proving quite tricky to fix. It would be really helpful if you could send the session files over so we can see if they crash any of the machines here. We will of course pay for the cost of transferring the files over. Our email address is info@clearleft.com – Andy Budd, on December 07, 2008 20:03

I'm a little unclear if the problem is with the screensaver or silverback here, so can you clarify