This article contains information regarding the different command and image files that Darkroom software writes when printing to a Fuji Pic/Frontier. This is important for setup and troubleshooting problems printing to the Fuji printer. This article also contains a registry setting which tells Darkroom software how long to leave the rasterized images in the hot folder for processing by the Pic/Frontier. If you are attempting to print to the Fuji Pic/Fontier printer and the software is showing that it has been printed, but the print never actually gets sent to the printer, or the image files are being deleted before the printer processes the print request, or the prints are coming out on the wrong sheet sizes.

REQUIREMENTS
Darkroom Pro, Darkroom Assembly, Labtricity Server, EzLab (with the printer list upgrade)

PART 1
When printing to the Fuji Frontier using the Pic Hotfolder interface, we write 3 files to the Fuji PrintRequests hotfolder:

1. First, we write a command file with the file extension .txt which specifies the size to print and backprint information. this file will be almost immediately deleted if the Pic software is processing the folder.

2. Next, we write a text file with the file extension .edg which is a copy of the .txt file and is used for our internal tracking of the images we have created

3. Last, we write the rasterized image files to be printed.

PART 2
Once we write these files, It is the job of the Pic software to process them for printing. The Pic Hotfolder software will read the .txt file and immediately delete it. If the txt files are not being deleted this means that the folder that the Darkroom software is configured to write the files to is not the same folder that the Pic is monitoring. The way to fix this is to change the folder that we are writing to or change the folder the Pic is monitoring. The Fuji software never deletes the image files, so Expressdigital software watches the image folder and will delete images after they have been sitting a certain amount of time. This time is referred to as the keeptime and can be changed using the procedure outlined later in this article. If we see an .edg file in the RrintRequests folder with no matching .txt file, and the command file is at least as old as the keeptime, then we will delete the image files and the .edg file.

PART 3

***IMPORTANT NOTICE*** This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. How to back up the Windows registry

It is important that the keeptime be set to some value which makes sense in the lab workflow being used. The Fuji Frontier has only one magazine loaded at a time, so if you are printing different roll sizes to the printer all together, then the operator must change rolls to allow waiting prints to complete before the KeepTime timeout period expires. If rolls are not changed regularly, then this time should be extended OR you can enable only the loaded roll width in Darkroom software and allow the prints to be queued there rather than be left waiting on the Pic. The default KeepTime prior to 8.7.1186 was 30 minutes. After 8.7.1186, the keep time was changed to 2 hours. You can change the “KeepTime” by manipulating the following registry key. The value is set in minutes so if you wanted two hours you would set the value to decimal 120. Be sure that you change the radio button to Decimal instead of Hexadecimal.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareExpress DigitalEventLib8.0Fuji Frontier HF] “KeepTime”=dword:00000078

Following are insructions for manually adding this key to the registry:

1. Click Start->Run and type Regedit into the open box, then click ok.

2. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>ExpressDigital>EventLib>8.0>Printers>Fuji Frontier HF.

3. Create a new DWORD key there, and rename it to “KeepTime”.

4. Double click the new value, click the Decimal radio button, and set the value to 120 (for 2 hours).

The image keep time is set in minutes and may be adjusted as necessary, but be careful to view and set the value as a “decimal” not a “hexadecimal” number.