Hi!
I have tried Arcsoft DVD Slideshow. As what you have described it looks like your system is having problems coping with processes done by Arcsoft DVD Slideshow. The reason why the window itself turns gray is that it is in a "not responding" state. This only happens if too much resources is being utilized by the software and that your system could not cope with the software's needs. I have checked it with my copy of Arcsoft DVD Slideshow. Even with a quad core processor and 4GB of ram running on 64Bit windows 7, the Arcsoft DVD slideshow showed a high utilization of the Computer's resources. You can verify this by opening up your windows task manager by pressing ctrl + shift + esc then click processes. Look for DVDSlideshow.exe and you will see that it has a high CPU utilization and Memory utilization. Here is how mine looks like:
You can also check the performance tab to show you how much total resources is being used. Here is how mine looks while it is loading images that are high definition:
As you could see. My total memory usage jumped to more than 50% from around 30%. While my cpu usage is already at 35% from a normal of 10-20%. My copy slowed down even when i have just added 320 images and 15 mp3 files. I was able to add up to 1000 images but it slowed down a lot and I also had the gray window. The memory used by the DVDSlideshow is up to 150,000K and the cpu utilization is up to 25 or 26. There are even times when the whole software would just crash.
With that said, I think you have to consider the specs of your computer itself. That is the main reason why you cant see the first few images and why your software is having trouble loading the preview. Here are a few things you could do but I doubt if they would help specially if you have a basic system:
1) reduce the size of the images you use. Resize them to a size smaller or equal to 640x480. Do not use the high definition ones.
2) do not use a long audio file. Sometimes other people would record a long audio file. This would cause the file to be bigger and harder for the computer to load since it would need to do some caching and so on. What you could do is split the audio files to around 4 minutes each.
3) reduce the number of images you are loading on a slide. Separate images into different slideshows instead of having all of them in just one.
4) Close other software that is running on your computer.
5) If you are using image files or audio files on an external drive such as a thumb drive or external hard drive, I suggest copying them onto your main hard drive first.
If you still have the same problem then that only means that your computer resources such as the memory and the processor is not that capable of handling such a labor intensive software. I suggest using a different system of higher specs or upgrade your system.
If you have any more questions feel free to come by again here at fixya.com where there are solutions for every thing.
You have a great day.
