I’m sure I saw somewhere it is when you have your Zwift session full screen, rather than windowed. I used to get all my pictures fine, started using full screen and they all came out black, maybe this is the same issue?
Hmm… My laptop is 14", my “big screen” TV is 40".
And I’ve been that path with support. To no avail.
I also fail to see the technical merit of what you propose… if I may, what is the technical reasoning behind your proposal? Is it that screen duplication in Zwift causes issues with image processing?
The images are there, regardless of external monitor. Zwift “senses” something (as the display is different than that presented when no images at all have been taken…) but does not display the images (maybe because it is unable to read them, don’t know), and no images get uploaded - “unable to read them” being the technical lead I would hone on.
@John_Murray: Black image are, well, black. None of the images involved in this issue have ever been black. There was a time I got black images - a long time ago. Haven’t seen that since, so can’t comment, but seems unrelated)
That’s exactly right. It’s a simple check to determine if your device is up to the task of pushing enough pixels to two screens simultaneously. Here’s a case where we conclusively determined a cause of blank screenshots was caused by an underpowered laptop.
A lot of people on this thread have been trying to help you, and we’re all rooting for you. I get that you’ve been frustrated for a long time about this, but if you’re not willing to try the suggestions, we’re not going to make progress.
Will you disconnect the HDMI cable (or DV, or whatever) from your laptop and try a brief ride of greater than 2km? This is the minimum ride distance for bike sessions to upload to Zwift’s servers.
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I will give it a try.
I will postpone any further technical discussion until after I try that. Note, however, that as the issue is random (I haven’t noticed any pattern), the issue not showing doesn’t really tell anything.
(btw, I never had black images in relation to this issue… in fact, the images are all there.)
Hey @shooj,
So I gave it a try… disconnected the TV, and took a short ride, taking ~20 captures.
Finished the ride, Zwift presented images to be uploaded. Images were then uploaded to both Zwift activity feed and Strava.
Conclusions?
@B_CN thanks for giving it a try and reporting back.
We can conclude that your laptop is adequately spec’ed to run Zwift on its own screen, if you’re ok with looking at a 13" or 15" screen, or whatever it happens to be.
If you want to also attach a second monitor, a more robust computer with better graphics capabilities would make a big difference as this other person discovered.
While you don’t need a high-end gaming computer to run Zwift, something with a little more GPU horsepower than your laptop would make a difference in your setup. ZwiftInsider has some useful articles you may want to consider.
Hi,
Thanks for getting back to me on that, @shooj!
Over the period of my screen capture issues (years, now), I’ve switched machines a couple of times (while basically maintaining my ride configuration, that is - external TV), and the issue persists. While the first machine had integrated graphics, another one had a low-end discreet graphics, and the latest is a fairly high-spec gaming-class laptop. All machines had multi-core i7 CPUs (some more, some a lot more…)
But the issue of the machine’s performance is unrelated - and thus mute.
The “issue” was never one that would have put the question of graphics capabilities or graphics B/W - and while I did have “black” images in the past, that was a l-o-n-g time ago, and has not reappeared since.
But Zwift not uploading perfectly formed non-black images is not an unheard of event (for me…), has persisted for years, and is a constant concern which does materialize on occasion.
Mind you, by the time images are to upload, all B/W issues have long past. The issue manifests itself in displaying blanks (that is “white space”), in the ride upload screen:
Something I interpret as Zwift app being “aware” of their existence - but not accessing them for some reason.
Had those images been unidentified, or no pictures taken at all, the display would have reflected that, as it does on those rides I take no screen captures:
So… the case (when it occurs) description stays: machine is plenty capable (irrelevant), good images are taken, ZWIFT displays none, and uploads none (I can upload them manually without an issue to, say, Strava)
Thanks again for the effort, but it seems we were looking at the wrong direction.
So here is another one:
Isn’t it time Zwift addresses this issue? Clearly, my setting has nothing to do with these issues.
I’ve still never experienced this. Are you still taking a lot of pictures during the ride?
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Yes. I took 31 - all using the companion app. 21 of those had “clean” version in addition to the HUD images. None of the images are corrupt.
I’ve tried taking none, however, this does no allow exploring the issue, as if there are no images to upload, it is impossible to tail to upload any…
… what I find especially annoying is that the image upload/display bug has nothing to do with the screen capture issues (of which there are more than one…): The images are there, Zwift “senses” them, but does not open, display or upload the images it created.
How often does this happen for you, once a month, once a week?
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Let’s settle on once every three weeks…
Ok, once every 3 weeks. And do you always take 30+ pictures per ride? I wonder if Zwift has some sort of “time out” at the end of the ride when it pulls all the images/thumbnails to their end to display and upload? More images, more information being uploaded, and any blip in your wifi or network cancels the operation. I don’t know, grasping at straws here.
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I abandoned WiFi more then two years ago, when it was blamed for all the evil in the world. I moved to “gaming package” to reduce latency, for the same reason… I increased my internet connection speed (that was even before that…), to “solve” some other issue (too long ago for me to remember.)
Number of images: the number varies, 5-30 or so, but I am yet to find correlation between this issue and the number of images taken (not saying there is none, only that there is none I can guess.)
And “more images, more information” is irrelevant, as no images are displayed at the end of the ride - when the user is supposed to make a selection. At that time, no image upload (no “pull to their side”) has commenced.
I’ve tried everything - to no avail.
And I do appreciate your effort trying to help… Thanks!
But they are displayed so you can choose which ones to upload, give it a clean HUD, favorite, etc… How ever those image thumbnails are displayed could be where this bug lives.
I have heard people mention a max of 20 images, while I was on a ride in discord. I did not ask more about it since I rarely take more that 2 or 3.
Absent user selection, Zwift automatically makes a selection for the user.
In my case, no images are displayed, and no images are uploaded - but Zwift display is different than the one that would have been displayed had no images been taken - which means Zwift is aware of the images, but fails to read their content (which may explain why no images are uploaded.)
Why would Zwift fail to read images it created? I’ve ruled out OneDrive (uninstalled), Google Drive (not installed), DropBox (likewise…). The machine is practically vanilla Windows 10, with very little else installed.
No more than 20 (or so…) images can be taken using F10. One can take as many as one wants with the Companion - and I’ve switched to the CA when I realized Zwift will not fix the 20-image limit for F10, a l-o-n-g time ago (it was Aug 19, 2019, and you were wondering “Why would you want to take that many photos” 
- and here we are, a year later, and nothing has changed.)
For those (still…) interested: I don’t think Zwift goes over the list of existing images on disk. My guess is Zwift is maintaining an internal list of images to serve as upload candidates, and a thumbnail, and only those images are upload candidates (i.e., only these images are presented to the user at the end of the ride.)
My guess is Zwift’s thumbnails somehow get overwritten/cleared.
Now, why would that occur is for Zwift to know (and fix…)
I had a read of my logs after playing around trying to see if I could offer any advice (I cant by the way!) and the logs say the pictures are written directly to the server - have you actually found the picture/files on local devices?
I tried to find pics I was taking but couldnt. And my SSD usage wasnt going up with each press of F10.