Render Freeze - Please Help

[mancunian]

I am a noobie here and to UnDelphiX so please excuse me if this is a stupid question :?

When rendering in windowed mode, using the DXTimer (OnTimer Event) or Application.Idle method, if i drag the Form Window on screen or display a pop-up menu the rendering freezes until i stop dragging or i close the pop-up

Can anyone out there explain what i am doing wrong and show me the right way to fix this problem. I would like my Form Window to behave like Windows Media Player. While you drag the player around the screen or pop-up a menu it continues to play the video/movie in real-time (No Render Freezing!)

[Andreaz]

Try setting the timer's ActiveOnly to false and see if that helps.

[WILL]

Please refrain from double posting. It makes unessissary mess and causes confusion when trying to resolve complex issues. Thanks, and welcome to PGD.

[mancunian]

Thanks WILL and sorry for the double post ops:

Hi Andreaz, I tried it and it didn't help :cry:

In fact the same happens (Render freezing) even when not using UnDelphiX (i.e. just using and ordinary TForm and and a TBitmap Canvas to draw on. I'm wondering if Windows is suppressing certain Events like OnIdle or OnTimer when dragging a window or pop-up menus are on screen?

[Huehnerschaender]

Did you already try to add the following line in your OnIdle/OnTimer event?

Application.ProcessMessages;

Maybe this helps, but I am not an (Un)DelphiX expert... I don't know how the timer works.

[mancunian]

Hi Huehnerschaender, I tried that and it didn't work. I can move the mouse cursor, click/press keys/buttons etc and it all works smoothly with rendering updating OK. Then as soon as i drag the window, or right click my pop-up menu, rendering freezes and only unfreezes when i cease dragging or close the pop-up. I'm mystified :?

[Huehnerschaender]

I just tried out my actual project in windowed mode. Dragged the window and it stops rendering, too. So your problem is no DelphiX problem I guess. It must be something about the window handling of Windows itself. I don't use (Un)DelphiX in my project, so I am sure the problem does not relate to it.

[savage]

I may be wrong, but my understanding is that the action of clicking to begin dragging the window stops other Windows message processing. Hence why it stops. Can anyone on Linux confirm that this happens on Linux as well. In either case it's the way that the Windows messaging subsystem is written.

[Huehnerschaender]

But there must be a way to avoid this, because there are applications which do not stop working when being dragged.

[tanffn]

Don’t have the time to test it right now, but I think that it will stop the primary/gui thread. So maybe if you’ll run a second thread that will do the actual processing and drawing it will still work.

If non of you will I can try and test it tomorrow.