Ruslan Says

Stop Losing Display Calibration with Windows 7

2012-06-07T19:52:00.000-07:00

I purchased X-Rite i1Display Pro Colorimeter recently and noticed that my systems randomly keeps loosing color profile. I have Windows 7. I found blog post that explains how to fix it

http://www.pusztaiphoto.com/articles/colormgmt/win7/default.aspx

Stop Losing Display Calibration with Windows 7

When Windows 7 appeared on MSDN and Technet a few weeks ago, I was eager to download and install it to see whether Microsoft had fixed the losing display calibration issue that made Vista totally unacceptable for anyone in need for a software calibrated display. To cut the long story short, they've made it. There are a few quirks here and there, but basically it works. Besides this, 7's performance is much better than Vista (in the same league as XP was), so I could finally begin replacing XP x64 on my workstation and notebook. But back to track and let's first examine the issue that plagued Vista.

The Issue

Display calibration serves basically two purposes: 1) sets black level and luminance of the monitor and 2) sets color temperature. After calibration one could build a profile that color mangement aware applications will use for displaying correct colors. If you have a high-end graphics monitor (like the EIZO CE and CG series or the NEC SpectraView) calibration information will be stored in the monitor, so the computer will have nothing to do later on. But otherwise it needs to be split into two halves. Black level and luminance, set by the monitor's brightness and contrast controls are stored in the monitor of course (you can read what these controls really mean here and here). Color tempreature setting is a different story, though. It could be partly stored in-monitor, or completely on the computer.

Each monitor has its natural color temperature (which is typically falling on the colder side in today's LCDs) and gamma, which are rarely what one wants. What a photographer would like is something like 6500K and a gamma value of 2.2. To transform the monitor's natural abilities into what one wants, red-green-blue channel intensities should be modified. Some monitors support rough, broad modifications of these by providing color temperature presets, gamma presets and color temperature controls. Using a monitor for photo editing needs a finer level of control, and that's what a display calibration package provides. It fine tunes the RGB channels with curves to reach the desired color temperature and gamma.

The following screenshot was captured from X-Rite's Eye-One Match application after calibrating my Lenovo X200s notebook's display to 6500K and gamma 2.2.

The curves show that the blue channel needs quite a bit of lowering to compensate for the bluish LED backlighting of the display.

OK, we have calibration curves for each channel, but who will apply them? It's the duty of the video card in the computer. There is special place for these curves, called the video look-up table (or LUT for short). Calibration software loads this LUT in part of the calibration process. But what happens if the computer is rebooted or turned off and on again on the next day? Unfortunately video card hardware and driver does not store and automatically re-apply calibration curves on startup. So the question remains: where to store them and who will reload them?

Apple invented a fairly obvious solution to answers this question: embed calibration curves into the display's ICC profile. This way they could be handled together as a single entity. Because the ICC profile specification does not provide any storage space for calibration data, Apple had created a new profile tag, the infamous video card gamma table (VCGT). To complete their solution ColorSync loads these curves when needed. Calibration packages also support this by embedding newly computed calibration curves into the profiles they create.

Microsoft on the other side, although supported assinging profiles to display devices since Windows 98, failed to load the VGCT. Was it some kind of pride denying to support Apple's standard or just plain misunderstanding will remain a mystery... Regardless of Microsoft, calibration hardware and software makers had to do something. So they invented Gamma loaders and Calibration loaders. Tiny programs with only one purpose in life: grab the default ICC profile associated with a display, extract VCGT and load it into the video card LUT. Fortunately Microsoft provided the necessary programming interfaces for doing that.

Photographers and Windows lived in harmony for years, until Vista came along and caused endless hours of frustration. What it did was unbelievable for me when I first tracked down the cause of the problem. It removed calibration curves from the video LUT on several occasions: after logon, after my computer came up from standby, when the dreaded UAC consent screen appeared, when the secure desktop appeared... Yes, it removed the LUT (not just ignored it like some Intel display drivers screw it up - that happens without the knowledge of the operating system).

To overcome this issue one either had to turn off UAC and manually reload the calibration from time to time with the calibration loader installed with the given calibration package, or just go bact to XP which worked flawlessly for years. With Windows 7 it seems Microsoft had listened. At last...

The Windows 7 Solution

Although their soltuion is not as straightforward and easy to use as Apple's in Mac OS X, it works as one would expect. In this section I will describe how to find the checkbox with which you can turn on LUT loading.

Note: Yes, it is turned off by default. Is there anyone who DOES NOT want correct behavior out of the box?!? My only fear is that this feature is a result of cloning a completely useless feature of OS X: display calibration "with your eyes" (what I used to call eye-o-meter). So the Windows color management team still might not get the idea...

First of all, you have to make a display profile. After doing this, I had noticed that LOGO Calibration Loader does not work on Windows 7 and does not load my calibration. Not a big deal, we'll get rid of that program completely later on.

Note: I have an X-Rite i1 Photo SG package and had some issues with installing the accompanying Eye-One Match application. I'm sure X-Rite will fix it, but in the meantime you will need to read the sidebar "Windows 7 Needs Help to Recognize X-Rite Instruments" at the end of this article. Users of other instruments might or might not be affected.

With your profile ready, open Control Panel and click on Color Management.

As the Color Management applet opens you should see the newly created profile associated with your monitor. Windows (since Vista) supports two levels where one could associate profiles with devices: system-wide and user level. Both level's profiles are stored in the same place (unlike in OS X where profiles are stored in separate system and user folders), only the associations are divided this way. Eye-One Match creates a user level association, as you can see on the following dialog. It is also required that Use my settings for this device to be checked.

Click on the Advanced tab. The group box titled Display Calibration is what we are after. Clicking Calibrate Display will bring up the eye-o-meter, so do not disturb it. LUT loading is controlled by the Use Windows display calibration chechbox. You might realize with horror that it is grayed out. Don't be afraid, it can be only controlled on system-wide level, so go there by clicking on Chage system defaults.

Which brings up the familiar profile association dialog - but at system level and with no profiles this time. We already made the association on user level, so do not touch anything here, just click on the Advanced tab.

Note: On the bottom left corner there's a link to the help page that is intedned to explain all this stuff. To be honest, the introduction is quite correct, then there's a big gap and some blah-blah about Canon's Kyuanos color management system that Windows has (and nobody uses), and finally it says that Windows profile loading should only be used for "eye-o-meter" based calibrations. Ignore it. But nevertheless it's a bad sign of misunderstading.

Finally our checkbox is enabled. Place a checkmark there, then close the dialog.

In the Color Management dialog you sould see that the grayed out version is also checked now. If your calibration is not loaded up to this point, give it a try and click Reload current calibrations.

That's it. LOGO Calibration Loader - or whatever your calibration loader is - can be removed from the Startup group in the Start Menu. Windows should load calibration from the display's profile every time the LUT needs to be loaded. It will work even after recalibrating your monitor (of course it will use the new profile then).

I can only hope that in later service packs Microsoft will not create a "fix" that only allows eye-o-meter generated profiles to be loaded this way...

Sidebar: Windows 7 Needs Help to Recognize X-Rite Instruments

Installing Eye-One Match 3.6.2 failed to set up my i1 Pro spectrophotometer's device driver. However, it is possible to install it manually (I heard the same from one of my friends using a ColorMunki).

Go to Computer Mangement, and from System Tools choose Device Manager. You should see your instrument under Other devices with a yellow sign on it.

Right click it, and choose Update Driver Software. On the dialog that comes up, choose Browse my computer for driver software.

Browse to the path displayed below (I'm running on a 64-bit machine that's why I have Eye-One Match installed in "Program Files (x86)" - On 32-bit machines it will be under the normal "Program Files" folder). If you use different software, browse it's main folder and check Include subfolders.

Click Next and the driver will be installed.

You can verify correct installation in Device Manager: there should be an X-Rite Devices folder with i1 Pro underneath.

How to install Windows 8 Developer Preview without burning Dual Layer DVD

2012-01-30T02:37:00.000-08:00

I've spent horrible amount of time trying to install Window 8 Developer Preview on one of my testing machines without burning it on Dual Layer DVD. Making it DL DVD was bad idea in the first place. Most people either don't have DL DVD-ROM or don't want to buy for this purpose.

So my logical path was to do over the network install. My source machine is x64 AlienWare desktop and target machine is x64 laptop. This post describes in details how to do PXE boot. Unfortunately it didn't work for me. TFTP32 was crashing on my Win 7 x64 and x64 version of TFTP failed to find boot\pxeboot.com file.

Then I noticed that Win PE is used in PXE method. So I figured that I can boot Win PE from USB stick and do the same.

Here is what you need to do:

Make USB stick bootable. On source system launch diskpart.exe tool. In the app enter following commands:

list disk

select disk #

clean

create partition primary

select partition 1

active

format quick fs=fat32

assign

exit

In second line use ID of USB drive that will be listed after first command.

Download and install Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7.

Follow Step 1 from this guide. Use 'amd64' since MS gave us only this ISO for Win 8 with developer tools.

Move c:\winpe_amd64\winpe.wim to c:\winpe_amd64\ISO\sources\boot.wim.

Copy content of 'sources' to root of USB drive.

Now when you load into Win PE it most likely won't detect your network card. In order to enable it you need to copy x64 drivers for network card to your USB stick. After you load into Win PE you may not know what letter is assigned to your USB drive. You can launch diskpart.exe and use command "list volume" to see list of all disks. In my case it was F:\

Let say you copied network drivers to folder `F:\net` which contains e1k6232.inf. In order to load it you need to run following command in Win PE console:

drvload F:\net\e1k6232.inf

After it's done run 'ipconfig' to see if you have IP address (assuming that you wire-connected it to your router).

On source machine share folder with Windows 8 installation. Let's say it's `win8` and IP address of your source machine is 192.168.1.3. You can't access it as \\192.168.1.3\win. You need to create network drive by running following command

net use z: \\192.168.1.3\win

It will ask you username and password. When you enter username don't forget to add "domain" so it looks like '192.168.1.3\Administrator'

Finally you can switch to drive z: and launch setup.exe which will install Windows 8 Developer Preview

Thank you, Microsoft program manager of Win 8 team, for wasting several hours of my life !

How to localize your GWT application that uses UiBinder.

2011-11-11T00:31:00.000-08:00

I'll explain how to localize your GWT application that uses UiBinder.

1) You need to modify your gwt module xml

    <!--Defines all possible locales we'll use-->
    <extend-property name="locale" values="en,ru"/>   
    <!--Defines default locale-->
    <set-property-fallback name="locale" value="en"/>

2) Tag messages in *.ui.xml files with <ui:msg>, e.g.

<!DOCTYPE ui:UiBinder SYSTEM "http://dl.google.com/gwt/DTD/xhtml.ent">
<ui:UiBinder xmlns:ui='urn:ui:com.google.gwt.uibinder'
             xmlns:g='urn:import:com.google.gwt.user.client.ui'

             ui:generateFormat="com.google.gwt.i18n.rebind.format.PropertiesFormat"
             ui:generateKeys="com.google.gwt.i18n.server.keygen.MD5KeyGenerator"
             ui:generateLocales="en,ru">
    <g:HTMLPanel>
        <ui:msg key="msg2" description="test description2">Test2!</ui:msg>
        <ui:msg key="msg1" description="test description">Test!</ui:msg>
        <ui:msg>Test3!</ui:msg>
    </g:HTMLPanel>
</ui:UiBinder>

3) Add GWT compiler option -extra that produces resource file with strings.

4) Compile the project. You'll see number of "*UiBinderImplGenMessages_*.properties" in extras folder. For example com.localeTest.client.MyViewMyViewUiBinderImplGenMessages_en.properties. Each property file corresponds to UiBinder xml they were made from.

5) Copy each .properties file to the same folder with corresponding .ui.xml file.

6) Rename each .property file so it doesn't have package name e.g. MyViewMyViewUiBinderImplGenMessages_en.properties.

7) Translate strings in each file.

8) Recompile the project.

9) Now you can test locales but passing it in URL. For example http://127.0.0.1:8888/LocaleTest.html?gwt.codesvr=127.0.0.1:9997&locale=ru

PS.
There are few things you may consider. Official tutorial recommends using MD5KeyGenerator to automatically generate IDs for string. I prefer explicitly set IDs because of how different key generators work.

MD5KeyGenerator - generates ID from text. If you change text ID will change too.
FullyQualifiedMethodNameKeyGenerator and MethodNameKeyGenerator - generates ID such as msg1, msg2 where number is order of a string in your file. So if you swap two strings ID will change too and you will have to catch it in other locales.

And don't forget to set UTF-8 encoding for your properties files as it's described here.

What to do if music stutters/freezes in Windows 7/Vista

2011-01-07T17:21:00.000-08:00

I'm making this post basically to remember it myself and not t waste another hour next time googling for a solution :) Also use DPC Latency Checker to test your machine. Also check useful post on How to get the cause of high CPU usage by DPC (Deferred Procedure Call) and interrupts.

Update: So far the easiest way to find what driver may cause DPC latency issues is to use LatencyMon.

Description:

Enables relative prioritization of work based on system-wide task priorities. This is intended mainly for multimedia applications. If this service is stopped, individual tasks resort to their default priority.

Multimedia Class Scheduler service (MMCSS) gives multimedia applications higher priority. This ensures that music and video playback will not be disturbed by other background services like antivirus and content indexing (or network file transfers). More Info Technet Magazine February 2007 - Inside Vista Kernel, MSDN - Multimedia Class Scheduler Service.

Note if wanting to disable this this service without loosing sound, then remove MMCSS from the DependOnService-list for Windows Audio before disabling it:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \Services \Audiosrv]
DependOnService = "..."

Note another way to disable this service is to change the limit CPU resources that should be guaranteed for low-priority tasks.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE \Microsoft \Windows NT \CurrentVersion \Multimedia \SystemProfile]

SystemResponsiveness = 20 (10-100%, 100 disables MMCSS)
NetworkThrottlingIndex = 0xFFFFFFFF (to disable it)

Vista Default = 20%, W2K8 Default = 100%.

Remakes of famous paintings

2009-08-31T23:48:00.000-07:00

I found bunch of funny "remixes" of famous paintings. Here are some:

"Prince Ivan, the Firebird, and the Gray Wolf" by Viktor Vasnetsov

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch

I know this face but I don't remember who made it

"Bogatyrs" by Viktor Vasnetsov

"The Apotheosis of War" by Vasily Vereshchagin

"A Knight at the Crossroads" by Viktor Vasnetsov

"The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci

"Counting in their heads" by Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky

"Adam and Eve" by Lucas Cranach the Elder

"The Ninth Wave" by Ivan Aivazovsky

"Mona Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci

"Christ in the desert" by Ivan Kramskoi

"Aleksandr Nevsky" by Pavel Korin

"Diana & Cupid" by Pompeo Batoni

"A Rye Field" by Ivan Shishkin

I couldn't find the original

Windows Installer doesn’t finish determining disk space requirements

2009-04-14T14:57:00.000-07:00

Today I encountered weird issue with Windows Installer. I have Windows 2008 Server SP1 installed on Virtual PC with IIS 7 enabled. I needed to install "WebDAV 7.5 for IIS 7.0" extension (instruction). But at the beginning of installation of the MSI file "Please wait while the installer finishes determining your disk space requirements" message appeared and it never went away. Looks like it's some VPC-related issue. You can bypass free disk space check by installing MSI like this: msiexec /i webdav_x86_75.msi /qr

Missing MTP device driver in Windows XP (SP3)

2008-12-13T13:28:00.000-08:00

I wasted 2 hours trying to understand how to fix this issue. I've seen a lot of similar complains by other people on different forums. Here is my experience.

I recently reinstalled system on personal laptop and it stopped recognizing my portable mp3 player. It works fine on my office machine. "Drivers" tab of the device in Device Manager shows that it uses wudfrd.dll, wudfrd.sys and wpdusb.dll (installed via wpdmtp.inf). My home machine didn't have those files and they were not found in driver.cab of installation CD either. Googling didn't give me a clue what distribution they are part of. It turned out that MTP driver is part of Windows Media Format runtime library. I was able to access my mp3 player in Windows Explorer after I installed Windows Media Player 11.

Crazy people

2008-10-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about going to US Virgin Islands on January and was wondering if it's warm enough to swim there. Usually I do a search on Skype or any other messenger for people living in the area and ask questions. In most cases everybody is very friendly and helpful. But sometimes I meet really sensitive people. Check this out:

[10/19/2008 11:17:39 PM] ruslan says: Hi ! May I ask a question about the Islands ?
[10:09:54 AM] O0o~$ViKa$~o0O says: no
[10:10:02 AM] ruslan says: okay
[10:10:10 AM] O0o~$ViKa$~o0O says: go away u freak im only 13 (finger)
[10:10:53 AM] ruslan says: god, what's wrong with people in this country..
[10:10:59 AM] ruslan says: bye
[10:11:52 AM] O0o~$ViKa$~o0O says: yes gud bye u weirdo
[10:12:12 AM] O0o~$ViKa$~o0O says: any way wats d point u writin me?
[10:12:19 AM] O0o~$ViKa$~o0O says: bye
[10:12:28 AM] O0o~$ViKa$~o0O says: im blocking you

Developing AJAX apps using GWT in IntelliJ IDEA and integration with stand-alone Tomcat server

2008-06-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

I started playing with IDEA and GWT recently. It was so cool for me, hardcore C++ engineer, that I can use powerful tools to develop AJAX applications bypassing all cross-browser hell. Everything was great until I went beyond GWT Tutorials. At some point I wanted to use servlets and classes from my old projects. Embedded GWT Tomcat didn't see them so I had no way of debugging it. Perhaps I could copy descriptions of my servlets from web.xml to .gwt.xml but how about ServletContextListener and DB settings in context.xml ? To solve this issue I had to run both stand-alone Tomcat and GWT Hosted-mode Browser simultaneously. I googled it and found that many people facing this issue while learning GWT. Here is what I did:

Make sure you have Module Exploded Directory properly set (screenshot).

I added new Run/Debug configuration which is 'Tomcat Server Local' (screenshot). Nothing special, just standard settings.

In your GWT Run/Debug Configuration you need to add '-noserver' option and set '-port' option with same port which your Tomcat is running on (screenshot). In my case it is 80.

Now you need to launch both Run/Debug configurations in Debug pane (screenshot) and you're done! You can debug both client and server side in Java.