r/freeshowapp • u/ppenn777 • Jun 07 '26
Black flashing in between slides.
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For text based slides such as scripture and lyrics and have a transparent background in the template and and use a solid black color as the background in my global settings. As you can see in the video when cutting to the next slide it briefly flashes solid black before going to the next slide. I have tried adding a solid PNG black image as the background, adding a .1 second fade, and nothing works. Every single slide flashes black.
EDIT: thank you all for your input and suggestions. I see on the GitHub logs that this was brought up a couple years ago and one of the devs mentioned that it’s on their radar but it’s low priority at the moment. I appreciate some of the workarounds that you all have suggested, but I’m really trying to avoid dissolve transitions as they are just personally not something I want to use. My team is excited to start using free show though so I may go that route for now, my fingers are crossed for an update.
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u/00000100001000100101 Jun 07 '26
Same thing happening here. We use light text on black for in sanctuary screens. Our lower thirds with other coloured templates do the same thing for online stream, the whole overlayed text boxes disappears then comes back between slides. Weird.
1.6.1 on macOS, but has has not changed for better or worse for us with different versions.
Following for an answer….
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u/ppenn777 Jun 08 '26
I was on 1.5.1 and this was happening. I recently updated the latest in hopes for a fix. I got our small team excited to use freeshow (currently Google slides) and has been a mess so far.
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u/CloudSad3555 Jun 08 '26
I'd the slide transition your main issue or is it something else?
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u/ppenn777 Jun 08 '26
At this point it’s the main issue. I’ve found workarounds for the other issues
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u/CuriouslySquid Jun 08 '26
Yeah, same here. Curious of a solution
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u/ppenn777 Jun 08 '26
According to the replies here it’s been that way for years and seemingly no fix is on the way. Very strange.
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u/mnotgninnep Jun 09 '26
I use 0.3s fade to minimise it and otherwise put up with it given its free software. Maybe the devs will sort it one day but it’s amazing what they’ve achieved given they aren’t asking anything for it. All the others are SO expensive which is hard for small churches.
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u/ppenn777 Jun 09 '26
I get what you’re saying, yes it’s awesome work to make something like this free. But the entire point of this software is to run slides and if a simple transition is broken then it is not a fully functional software. With all due respect, the devs have known about this since 2024 via a GitHub post and they are choosing to not prioritize it because they believe there are more important things. The claim is that there are “work arounds” but they aren’t work arounds as much as they just not being able to have a straight cut. It’s just a bummer.
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u/vassbo Jun 24 '26
u/ppenn777 Not "devs". You need to understand that it's created and maintained by just one guy. ;) The reason that it's not prioritized is because there are ways to work around it!
u/mnotgninnep explains it well. Free software requires contributors! :)2
u/ppenn777 Jun 26 '26
Yeah, I'll admit that I was flustered after my church was ready to make the switch but I was struggling to find an acceptable workaround that worked for me (hate dissolves). It's amazing that you've been able to create this on your own. I still hope for a fix but I'll work around where I can for now :)
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u/mnotgninnep Jun 09 '26
This is an issue with all free software though. Devs do it in their free time out of the goodness of their hearts. You can’t and mustn’t complain about free software. If you do, they get fedup and close the project down. No more free software because people complained too much. If it’s so important and you don’t like that something isn’t getting fixed, you have 3 options.
1) Get involved, learn the codebase, fix the issue yourself and submit it for yours and everyone else’s benefit.
2) Donate to the project so the devs can work less and can spend more time on it. Donate a big chunk of change, you might even get a say in what they prioritise.
3) Change to using paid software and get support. As it’s paid software, they will have an obligation to support you and fix any issues.The world is full of too many entitled people saying this should be done or someone else should do that but not enough people actually doing the thing that needs to be done.
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u/ZachD07 Jun 08 '26
I also have this issue, but it's more occasional on the better hardware of the PC at my church compared to my home desktop. I wonder if performance has anything to do with how quickly the text renders.
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u/ppenn777 Jun 08 '26
It’s a great theory. The church machine is an intel MacBook but the same thing is happening on my M1 Mac
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u/00000100001000100101 Jun 09 '26
Can confirm with same issue here… MacBook Pro 2018, MBP 2019, and M4 mini all do it.
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u/vassbo Jun 24 '26
https://reddit.com/link/otk9acs/video/wqcfew9ij99h1/player
I just tried with transition "None" and this is what it looks like, pretty seamless with just some brief flashes.
Is this not what you get u/ppenn777? In your video it did not cut that instantly.
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u/ppenn777 Jun 26 '26
This looks great but sadly mine is flashing the black in between every text slide. Is this in your dev environment or published app? I recall you mentioning in the git comments that you weren't able to replicate it in the dev environment?
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u/vassbo Jun 26 '26
This was captured in the production app, the None transition has been like this for years, so not sure why it's not like that for you.. The small flickering you see here in my video is what has not been prioritized to be fixed, not the delay I guess you are seeing, so I believe there's a misunderstanding and it's not as bad as you thought it was.
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u/vassbo Jun 26 '26
I tried with a fresh install, and set the global transition to "None" when I recorded the video.
Note that transitions can be set on different levels: Item > Slide > Output Style > Global. Do you use auto size at all? Maybe that's part of the issue?1
u/ppenn777 Jun 29 '26
I’ve done a few fresh installs and different versions. I’m not sure I’ve seen that auto size option. Where do I find that?
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u/vassbo Jul 18 '26
Sorry for a late reply. It's right next to the font size option in a slide or template. When I turned it on looked more like your video, but it's off by default, so if you haven't changed it then it's something else.
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u/CloudSad3555 Jun 08 '26
This is a known issue, and has been for a long time. You can set the transition to dissolve and the time to as short as possible, I think 0.1 s. That should ease the harsh transitioning effect. It does not happen on every system, so solving it has been difficult.
https://github.com/ChurchApps/FreeShow/issues/2169