This article is not supposed to be another bashing of the latest Microsoft OS product. I just want to mention a few specifics here to help out my friends in the animation world.

Like a number of folks I have been disappointed and, at times, even frustrated by Windows Vista. Compatibility issues, hardware and software anomalies and the never ending struggle between good and evil I have termed THE CODEC WARS have cost me hours of productivity that could have spent actually creating the things that fulfilled the purpose of my most recent technology purchase. That said, being a person who has worked with, trained others on and repaired/reclaimed technology for the past 13 years, I understand that the more and better the technology, the more and more complex the problems that come with it. So, whatever.

I use a program named CreaToon, version 3.0 , to create simple Flash type animations. It is a very compact and intuitive program. I am thinking of teaching my 4 year old to use it. It’s that simple. Bringing that program to Vista was problematic for one major reason that I recall-the preview window was always black. I am not sure if it was a Microsoft mismanagement of resources or an actual video problem, but after a series of codec updates that accomplished nothing but wasting bandwidth, I solved this problem through the video control panel itself.

I have an NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE adapter on board an HP Pavilion Slimline, dual Athlon 64. When you right click on the desktop, you can select the NVIDIA Control Panel option. This brings up numerous options to control how video elements are represented, 3d and otherwise, on you compy. For CreaToons, I added a program profile and disabled hardware acceleration. This made a smile appear as my preview window showed the little man waving instead of a black void.

Another program that has been around a while is Stop Motion Animator. Obviously this program is used for capturing frames of stop motion animation. It’s superb for onion skinning the frames as you capture them from you camera. The problem here was again not being able to see the preview in SMA of what was appearing on the camera LCD. After a number of failed attempts, the solution, believe or not, actually came from a Windows, um, feature? In Vista you can right click on a program and select the “Properties” option. This gives you a tabbed dialogue. One of the tabs in Vista is “Compatibility”. Checking the “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” box gives you access to a list of OS options you can select. I selected XP Service Pack 2 and, just for good measure, chose to run the program as adminstrator. And, voila!! It worked. No hunt for a mystery codec needed. Incidently, running programs as administrator has resolved a number of issues, with Motorola Phone Tools for example. May not be the best way, but it has worked for me.

So there is a sample of my personal, problem-solving experiences with Vista. There are others. Adobe Premiere and After Effects, for example. I do not guarantee that these suggestions will work for you on your particular computer, but who knows? Certainly not tech support. Give it a try. Don’t be afraid of Vista. It’s just and operating system, after all.