@Even @Pirany @小莫 Sorry guys.

I have mostly put all my hobby projects in a "maintenance only" mode. I will still support it and try to fix bugs where possible. I wanted to do more, but for private reasons I just had to stop, and felt it was time to just support it, fix bugs. But I need to pick my battles so to speak and what I spend my energy on. I really wish there was more time in a day.

That is the gist of it. There are other reasons I never added video/audio in the past that you could find if you check somewhere in the history of these comments, but basically at the time it was't possible. And right now I just added a feature stop. I wish I had better news.

I want say your wallpaper is probably genuinely the best wallpaper that exists on this program, you added one of thee features that I had been looking for, while I don't know if it is something you are working on or if its even possible but in would really love to see Mp4 and maybe even Mp3 support.

Can you add Video Support?

can you add a function Image Directory alos include subfolder

@YOUNGBOSSVENOM maybe?! I can't say tbh. I got some things I already wanted to do since last year and haven't gotten around to it. I mean, what you are asking is directly related so maybe. But I can promise. I wish I had more time in the day and some extra energy drinks to get around to everything.

Do you think you'll ever add the ability to filter out subfolders?

Just want to thank you for doing all this work, works great!

@CuriosityE So a follow-up. I got more details on the bug, but not sure its actually properly fixable. I did find a thread from 2020 where the developers of WE is made aware of the bug, but it seems to still exist.

The problem is that some of these characters is that if someone along the pipeline of code the encoding is interpreted incorrectly or not up to the newest standards, it can cause errors. The filename receive from WE to open, is ( and I'm making a bit of an assumption here ) not the same as the actual filename ( there are characters that seems to have been processed and changed ).

For now, I think I have the mark this down as can't fix. The correct fix is out of my scope, and any attempts to just apply a bandaid just shows that I can't fix it from my wallpaper. Renaming the file would be the solution.

@CuriosityE Nice. I gave it a quick look and it seems that the ones I tested and several you listed worked for me. But one didn't. So got something to test with now and initial testing already gave me a lead. However I think I might only be able to band-aid the real issue and not really be able to give a proper fix. I will have to test some more to see.

Thanks for letting me know. I just hope I can fix this one. Bugs must be squashed.

Problem solved. The image will be displayed as white in the slideshow if your image file's name contains special characters like ʚ, , 🦄, ☪️, 💜, etc. So just rename those files and remove those characters. I don’t know why, though. Not recognized?

Just wanted to say thank you! I specifically bought Wallpaper Engine because I wanted custom slideshows and this is doing exactly what I wanted and even more. I'm running a 2k monitor + fullHD horizontal monitor. I've split the 2k in three sections with Wallpaper Engine and thus running this Wallpaper four times at the same time and it's running butter smooth with amazing transitions. Amazing extention, thanks for the hard work.

I checked but I think you really need to ask the devs if you want more help. I can't really help with chromium and I am currently on my system not seeing any unexpected CPU usage for webwallpaper32.exe. And all the animation elements are disabled, it should not do more than load an image once in a while.

This wallpaper is certainly not the most ideal and far from the most optimized and ill admit to that. But what you are describing does not sound normal to me. The WE devs should know how to reach me, and otherwise tell them they can if they need to. But right now this sounds out of my control and knowledge.

See I split the monitors 3 ways because the images I cycle every 10 seconds have the aspect ratio of a cell phone screen so they 3 of them perfectly fit into one widescreen monitor divided 3 equal ways. Unfortunately its out of your control. Be nice of the Dev of wallpaper engine would use a less janky .exe to do it.

God knows how old the version of chromium thats included with wallpaper engine is...

I have no panning, zooming, or transitions enabled. Each monitor is split 3 ways so id imagine that is where the root of the issue lies. The images, just instantly change after 10 seconds, there is no transition. Everywhere in settings hardware acceleration is enabled.

As for my hardware, 32gb DDR5 6000mhz ram, i9 12900ks 16 core, MSI RTX 4090 Suprim LiquidX.

Keep in mind webwallpaper32.exe instances are running on 8 efficiency cores, they are not on par with the performance cores so probably why they utilise more % of cpu.

It sounds really weird to me. Not behaviour I am familiar with. I'll see if I can spot any weirdness in the current version when it comes to performance. Because 40% CPU usage for this wallpaper is not normal as it should be using the GPU. It makes me think that your webwallpaper32.exe might not be using hardware acceleration from a GPU.

I would suggest trying to disable panning and/or transitions to see if that helps. If that helps it would really make me think its the hardware acceleration from the GPU that isn't working.

One thing to note that if 1 screen spots multiple processes, it it still only running the wallpaper once. Chromium always starts up with multiple processes for each window. All but one are background processes.

Im sure it doesnt help that I have it on 3 monitors that are each split 3 times equally, So its trying to do whatever its doing x 9 images at once.
Typically it runs on my efficiency cores and runs fine, but I notice when the instances of Webwallpaper32.exe become unresponsive it will just open a new instance and not close the one thats not responding. So eventually it leads to those 8 cpu cores being locked at 100% when typically they bounce between 25-40% typically.

Ill try boosting its priority to above normal, see if that reduces the process instances from stopping responding. Everything runs fine until one of the instances becomes unresponsive..

Hopefully that irons things out a bit because the whole subdividing each monitor to allow more than one image per monitor is what sets wallpaper engine apart from the other programs like it.

@Dersh.. A few things

1. weballpaper##.exe is basically just chromium. I do remember it being 3 processes per desktop, but seems to be 5 per desktop ( just to give an indication ). But this is not something I can do anything about as that is a process from wallpaper engine itself to run webwallpaper like mine. So this is something I can't help you with and I will have to direct you to the WE's bug forum for that.

2. Freezing: I would like to touch on this one, because this wallpaper is merely a webpage, it will not have the best performance out there. This wallpaper is prone to some micro stuttering for sure. Transitions and panning options will make these visible. This is often because chromium can only decode ( not load ) an image on the main thread, and as such it blocks the render thread. I have never found a solution for this ( though in recent years stopped checking )

I just wanted to find out if its specified in SlideshowV4 that it uses webwallpaper32.exe to handle loading wallpaper jpg from a folder. Because although Wallpaper engine is launched with the 64bit exe. When SlideshowV4 is running its wallpaper engine is launching Webwallpaper32.exe instead of Webwallpaper64.exe to do what it does.

Webwallpaper32.exe sucks, it constantly is freezing and launching new instances until it overloads the cores I have it set to run on. I subdivide each monitor 3 times, I have 3 monitors, there should only be 9 instances running at once, maybe 12 at most, Not 45 instances of webwallpaper32.exe, Each instance is using around 60 threads.

Is there anyway to force SlideshowV4 to use webwallpaper64.exe instead?

Sometimes, the wallpaper just turns white while playing images from a directory. I don't know why. Is it because one of the pictures in the directory has an incompatible format? And sometimes, it plays some low-resolution and blurred images from my directory, which were not originally like that. Thanks for your work!

i,

What I am trying to do is set up multiple profiles for each monitor. So, as an example, Profile 1 would be Folder A (Monitor 1), Folder B (Monitor 2), and Folder C (Monitor 3).. That I can do...

What I would like is to have Profile A (As above) and then have a Profile 2, that would be say Folder C (Mon 1), Folder D (Mon 2), etc.. I'd like to have multiple Profiles for different folders, setting etc..

What seems to be happening is everytime I set up a new profile it just copies the previous one, so essentially, Profile 1 & Profile 2 are the same..

Any help?
Thanks!

@Squee It's 100% the emojis, at least on my end. It works fine when I remove them. The commandline arguments and playlist preset thing is also working for you?

@ferny.. Also, if you are able to mention any other details. feel free too and I'll try to think along with you to try and figure it out. If it is the wallpaper I would love to try and fix if I could reproduce the issue.

ferny: Unsure what you are trying to do, but right now it sounds like you are trying to achieve something that doesn't work at all. Emojis in folder names works for me and can be used in a preset too. So at the moment I have to assume emojis are not the problem and it's something else. To me it sounds like some accessibility/use rights issue.

To me it sounds like WE isn't allowing use of the folder for whatever reason. I think that because preset & config handling is done by WE and not by me. I just get the filenames after the folder was selected was accepted.

I would suggest trying the following things: 1. try removing emojies to rule out they are or arent the reason. 2. try to show a slideshow from your document/desktop/pictures folder to ensure that works. 3. try moving the folder to a new location. Anything that might be able to narrow down why WE does or doesn't accept the foldername.

@berafikret32: Not through my wallpaper, no..

can we add a backround music or musics?

I suppose until these are fixed the trick with copy pasting the workshop folder into the projects folder for seperate "playlists" will have to do. Thanks for this great script regardless!

Same parameter also doesnt seem to be applied via wallpaper engine's playlist preset configs. Is there something special about that setting parameter that's locking it down?

It also seems like using commandline arguments to change the config for directory isn't working. Any idea?

Seems like it can't handle folders with emojis

(2/2)

Sometimes, after changing back to Personal Slideshow, I will see initializing, but not see any number of images mentioned, and it will hang for hours. And sometimes, after changing back, it will stay stuck on whatever the Windows desktop background was previously set to.

From what you're saying, it sounds like this might be an upstream bug with how WE loads the filenames...

No worries about looking into this soon. Enjoy your holidays!

(1/2)

When it is stuck initializing, I don't usually see any amount of images mentioned. Usually I will see whatever image the wallpaper was previously set to in Windows personalization settings (usually it's an image set by Wallpaper Slideshow, as it seems that WE interacts with Windows personalization / Windows desktop background settings). Sometimes I see "Use the settings panel to select a directory of images to display", though it seems like an image of that text was previously set as the Windows desktop background, if that makes sense.

It does seem that switching to another WE wallpaper and back resolves the problem maybe 70% of the time. When the problem is resolved, I'll see initializing x/x images within a few minutes of changing back to Personal Slideshow, and then the slideshow will start like normal.

@Dempf ( also second comment )

But everything I am hearing right now does make me think it might be that WE is having problems loading filenames from samba at certain moments. I did find that long pausing in WE could cause it to seem the wallpaper restarted. And if the problems occur when the wallpaper start, when WE might not be able to read from samba, that could be the connection.

@Dempf Unfortunately I don't think I will have time to look into it soon. It could be samba, but I have not tested it. However some of what you are mentioning sounds familiar and similar to things I thought I encountered when I first looked into the problems loading many filenames which makes me think if it only happens when windows boots that it might be smb.

I do have a question though. When it is stuck initialising, do you see any amount of images mentioned? or only the text "initialising"? And I do understand correct that if you restart the wallpaper is starts fine, as well as changing settings?

And not having controls at the very start is currently correct.

(second comment due to Steam comment character limit)

Also, this may be a separate issue, but I noticed that often when resuming from suspend, I am able to see controls / playlists, but no image displays, and I see no items in the playlist. I keep my images on a samba share mapped to a drive letter in Windows. I wonder if perhaps there is a race condition where Personal Slideshow attempts to check/load the image folder before Windows has fully mounted the network drive, after resume from suspend.

Hi Squee, thanks for creating and maintaining this. I am still having issues with a large (70k+) library of images. It seems the slideshow will get stuck and not initialize images. Sometimes I can work around this by changing to another wallpaper and then back to Personal Slideshow. Or re-selecting my images directory. Or perhaps changing the "show image for" slider. I am not sure exactly what triggers Personal Slideshow to start showing the "initializing x number of images" screen. Most of the time it doesn't initialize. When it is in the frozen state, I usually am not able to get the controls to appear (with "show controls" checked). Once it initializes, my images load pretty quickly, within a few seconds, the slideshow starts, and I am able to control it via the controls.

@amgorunceben I'm sorry to say but I won't be adding music support.

can you add music support please?

I am more than willing to wait and honestly i understand that it will take a while specially that you're rewriting the code from scratch , good luck !

@TheClashpoint Well I am impressed you got that far in the mess that is the code. My best suggestion atm is to wait as a lot of code probably assumes that filenames are unique. I still have 1 wish to implement and 1 bug to fix. Both require me to just remove all that code and rewrite it. And if I can make it such that the playlist can work with duplicates I think you will have an easy time to achieve the result you want.

If you want feel free to create a discussion and if I got any updates I can update you specifically there. Or not .. I will always post a comment here when I get around to updating the wallpaper. But that might take a while.

Not ignore duplicates * is what I meant

ya, I edited the wallpaper playlist.js and had addFile always push files and ignore duplicates (which I know is probably is the reason it's breaking) and then edited the project to have multiple directories I can choose, I am however a newbie and struggling hard to understand where the problem is so I am not really relying on that method since it's breaking

@TheClashpoint I am curious about your hacky way? Did you edit the wallpaper to make it work for you? It sounds like that as you mentioned that the code tried to find image by name ..

@squee a little bit simpler than that maybe it will be easier to give an example, I have multiple wallpaper folders that are named based on the dominate thing I like about them, so I have for example :
- beautiful blue
- landscape
- anime
- games
now my biggest collections are beautiful blue and landscape so they are sometimes the only thing I see for hours without ever seeing anything else, so I want to be able to select multiple folders (multiple categories) and say I want to see today this folder 20% and this folder 20% and this folder 60%
hacky way I found which *could* work is having multiple categories enabled , ignoring duplicates when importing, and just making it more likely a folder will show up by brute force . The problem however I ran into is that the code tries to find the next image by name so it will jump to the very first instance of an image if it runs into a duplicate
I understand if it's too niche and thanks anyway

@TheClashpoint . If I am understanding you right.. you want:
1. To be able to have images categorized into different folders
2. Then be able to see how much chance a certain folder has to show up?

While I do have to rewrite some of that code to fix a small bug in the future, from what I am hearing now it would indeed be too niche. But I am asking just to be sure, as I got some hacky ideas too that might work.

I know this is a very niche request, but is there a way to add multiple folders with either
- a way to determine how likely the will show up like a percentage
- or a way to make it add duplicate files but not break the slide show ?
I have many wallpapers categorized and I often want to change up what is often showing up but I can't do that atm :/

I confirm, the slideshow is now loading and showing all my 100k+ images. Thanks for the fix.

So my apologies for the long wait. I put up an update and caught up on all wishes I said I would look into but one I believe.

Improved: Fixed a memory problem regarding many filenames. Wallpaper engines feeds the wallpaper all filenames which means I keep them all in memory. While there was code in place to avoid the bug that was occuring, the code didn't kick in until all filenames were loaded and the "memory leak" already occured.

Added: If you set the image size to "fit" then you can repeat the image to fill up the background of the display area.
Added: Can options set the panning direction to always be the same instead of it alternating.
Added: Option to sort the playlist by filename descending.

Not Added: Filtering out subfolder. I will probably end up doing this as this request got me to find a small bug. If you select a new image folder, and it is a child or parent of current folder, playlist will be empty or incorrect until you you restart the wallpaper for now.

Oh sorry, totally forgot about the update. Got sidetracked by life again. Thanks for reminding me. I believe it was as good as ready to put online. I'll aim for tuesday night, wednesday at most.

The slideshow also seems to not load for me around 72k images.

ok thanks i actually completely forgot about the question but I look forward to an update