Troubleshooting
This page is arranged by what Visibox put on your screen. Find the message you saw, and the entry tells you what happened and which button to take.
Two things live elsewhere. If the problem is that playback is slow or soft rather than that something appeared, start at Optimizing. If you want to reach a person, that is Support & Bug Reports.
Opening a Project
”Invalid project file.”
Visibox could not read the Project’s data file.
If the Project has backups, the dialog offers Open Latest Backup. Take it. Visibox puts that backup in place of the damaged file and opens it, so you lose at most the five minutes since the last one. Backups covers how often Visibox writes them and what they hold.
If the Project has no backups yet, the dialog has nothing to offer and only lets you dismiss it.
The message also suggests copying the Project to a local drive. That is worth doing, because a cloud-synced folder is the most common way a Project file gets damaged: the sync client can be part way through writing the file at the moment Visibox reads it. Keep working Projects on a local disk and copy them elsewhere when you are done.
”Project file is locked.”
Another computer has this Project open. The dialog offers Open Anyway and Cancel, and Cancel is the default. Take the default. Two machines writing to one Project is how you lose work.
The lock is refreshed by the machine that holds it, and it goes stale after 30 minutes. So if the other computer crashed rather than quit, the Project frees itself half an hour after that machine last saved, and you can open it normally.
This is also why a Project on a shared drive is worth avoiding for anything you are actively editing. Visibox can tell you the file is in use, but it cannot stop two people opening it from two machines if they both click through.
”This project was saved by Visibox …”
You are opening a Project that a newer version of Visibox has touched. The dialog names the version that saved it, offers Open Anyway and Cancel, and defaults to Cancel.
Before it asks, Visibox has already copied the file into the Project’s Backups folder, untouched. The copy is named ORIGINAL, followed in parentheses by the newer Visibox version that saved the Project. So if you do open the Project here and something is missing from it, the original is still on disk.
Open Anyway removes whatever the newer version added that this one cannot represent. If the Project matters, cancel, and open it on the machine with the newer Visibox instead.
You will not always be asked. Visibox only raises the dialog when the newer file uses something this version would have to strip out. When the newer version changed nothing that matters here, the Project opens, and the untouched copy is put in Backups anyway.
”Media files are missing from your project’s Files directory.”
Visibox checks every media file when a Project opens. This dialog lists the ones it could not find, and offers three buttons.
- Close Project is the default and almost always the right answer. Quit, put the files back where they were, and open the Project again.
- Remove Files from Project drops the missing files and deletes every Clip that used them. Visibox asks a second time and tells you how many Clips that is. Read the number before you agree to it.
- Continue opens the Project with the files still missing. The Clips are all still there, and they will not play.
There is no relink step. Visibox will not search for a moved file, and it will not offer to point a Clip at one somewhere else. Putting the files back where they were is the only route.
A second, near-identical dialog appears when the files are present but cannot be read. That is usually a permissions problem or a drive that has gone away, and the same three buttons do the same three things.
Saving and disk space
”Your disk is full.”
Visibox ran out of room. Until you free some up, changes may not be written, and that includes both your Project and your sign-in.
Free space on the drive holding the Project, then carry on. Nothing needs restarting.
The message repeats while the disk stays full, but the gap between repeats doubles each time, up to half an hour. It cannot end up nagging you through a show.
”Not enough disk space.”
You are importing a file that will not fit. Visibox checks the space before it starts copying, so nothing is left half-imported.
A file that has to be converted on the way in is not checked up front. If the disk fills during that conversion, the import fails with a general error rather than this message. Free some space and try the import again.
”There was a problem saving the Project”
A save failed, and Visibox is telling you rather than carrying on quietly. The dialog carries the underlying error and offers Close Project and Continue.
The usual cause is a full disk, which has its own message above. If the disk has room, the next thing to suspect is where the Project lives: a network volume that dropped out, or a cloud folder that has locked the file.
Close Project is the safer answer. Continuing means every later change is also at risk of not being written.
Playback and windows
”GPU acceleration unavailable”
Clips are playing in software instead of on the graphics card, which is slower and can stutter. The dialog offers Restart Visibox and Ignore.
Restart Visibox. If the message comes back, restart the computer. If it comes back after that, your graphics drivers are the next thing to look at.
You see this once per session, and Visibox raises it early on purpose. The graphics system falls back to software after it has crashed a few times, and the fallback lasts for the rest of the session, so getting the warning before the doors open is the point of it. It was fine yesterday and it is sluggish today covers the same problem from the other end.
A window goes blank and comes back
If a Visibox window stops responding, Visibox waits a few seconds to confirm it is genuinely stuck rather than just busy, then reloads it. The whole thing takes about 20 seconds, and there is no dialog.
So a window that has gone white or frozen is worth 20 seconds of patience before you force quit anything.
Audio
”Audio Output Changed”
A notification, not a dialog, and it comes in three forms.
- Your chosen device is gone, and it names what the sound is playing through instead.
- Your chosen device is back, and Visibox has returned to it.
- There is no audio output at all.
Visibox moves the sound on its own rather than going silent, so the notification is telling you what already happened. If it named a device you do not want, pick the right one in Settings > Audio.
Worth knowing before a show: a bus-powered interface that browns out for a moment will hand your audio to the built-in speakers, and this notification is the only thing that says so.
macOS system settings
Visibox checks two macOS settings that stop full screen working properly, and offers to fix each one.
”The ‘Displays have separate Spaces’ System Setting needs to be enabled.”
Without this, macOS will not put a full screen window on your second display the way Visibox needs.
The buttons are Fix Automatically, Open System Settings and Remind Me Later. Fix Automatically makes the change for you. Either way you have to log out and back in before it takes effect, and Visibox offers to log you out once the change is made.
Do this well before a show, not during load-in.
”Your System Settings are preventing the menu bar from hiding in full screen.”
The macOS menu bar is set to stay visible, so it sits on top of your full screen Output. The same three buttons appear, and this one takes effect immediately with no log out.
Still stuck
Help > Report a Bug sends us the details we need along with your message. If Visibox will not start at all, Help > Copy Support Info puts the same information on the clipboard so you can paste it into an email. See Support & Bug Reports.