Final checks (World's longest post!)

Howdy there guys,

Apologies in advance for the extra long post! But your advice would be greatly appreciated.

You might want to grab a coffee by the way! Here goes...

Been working on a massive project for the past year – an interactive DVD-Rom for PC’s only - and everything is almost ready for duplication. And since thousands of copies will be duplicated, there is simply no room for errors etc.

However, one thing that seems to be highlighted most often from the client’s feedback is that of the DVD-Rom crashing occasionally, either with and/or without errors messages.

The project itself is huge (it includes literally hundreds of videos, PDF/Word resources, high res images etc) and although a large effort has been made to reduce the file sizes (using separate linked movies, videos compressed as far as possible, images optimized etc) the final size of the entire DVD-Rom project is just under 2GB. Hence why it is a DVD-Rom as opposed to a CD-Rom. This in itself is enough to be fairly sure that the reason the project crashes occasionally is due to its sheer size and the end users PC spec not meeting the minimum system requirements.

On the other hand, the error messages are the most worrying. They seem to be system errors from the users PC – see below for more detail on the errors - but nonetheless still worrying. We have tested the DVD-Rom on numerous high and low spec PC systems, and all seems sufficient with no actual system errors as such. They seem to happen more at the clients end, as they also do some testing at their end on various PCs and laptops although I can’t be sure if the above errors are from the SAME testing PC but I will find out.

So basically I’m starting to wonder if it is even possible to have a project of this size to play seamlessly on all PC's and laptops? Nothing in life is guaranteed and I am aware that some things are simply beyond our control. However I would like to hear what you guys think, maybe provide some advice from your experiences on getting a project duplication-ready etc.

For your reference, the error messages in question are presented in more detail below:

Error example 1:

Macromedia Projector - Macromedia Projector has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
Please tell Microsoft about this problem…etc.

Error example 2:

PROXY: Tray Icon - PROXY: Tray Icon has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Error example 3:

Macromedia Projector - Error signature
AppName: ProjectTitle.exe AppVer: 10.1.0.11 ModName: quicktime264.qtx ModVer: 7.2.0.240 Offset: 0005d9a9

Funnily enough, the above errors seem to have appeared recently, on the latest prototype sent over to the client, but there are too many factors that could be causing this such as that the client could be using a different PC to test this prototype than that used to test the previous prototypes etc but I’m also concerned that something else could be causing the issues - either some settings on my own PC where the DVD-Rom was built have been changed, my Director MX 2004 software has become corrupted or some other unknown cause although I cant think of anything and besides, the project seems to work perfectly on my own system as well as others that I have tested it on so the error doesn’t seem to be consistent.

As you can see from above, these errors are not your usual Director "Script errors" as these have and are still being ironed out. They seem to be system errors from the users end depending on their PC settings, or am I wrong?

Again, would really appreciate your advice and your experience’s on getting a project of this size duplication-ready etc.

And of course, any solutions, if any, to the above errors would also be very welcome! Although according to my trusty research, it seems a little tweak here and there is required on the users own PC in order required to resolve such errors like these. But please correct/advise me if I’m wrong.

Thanks in advance,

Darren