eMedia Users' Club

Club home

FAQ

Forum

Newsletters

Support

Partners

Evolis

Evolis ID card printers

Microsoft Certified Partners

eMedia Links

Home

Features

Downloads

Support

Press

Users' Club

Registration

Partners access

Screen shots

Contact us...

Frequently Asked Questions

 

 

Summary

Which edition of the software shall I install?

The installation may be performed from a CD-ROM or from a package downloaded on our web site.

There's no standard, Professional or Expert editions CD-ROM or package. When you install the software on a workstation, the full eMedia Card Designer package is deployed on the hard disk.

The edition is defined by the license you bought or not. If you didn't pay for a license, then your eMedia Card Designer edition is Trial or Standard (see "What are eMedia Card Designer bundles?" below). If you bought a License Key, this one is just a "proof of purchase" supplied by the reseller or by us, and our License Server will combine it with the Installation Key generated by the setup tool to create the unique Activation Key that enables the features of the corresponding edition.

What is the Demonstration Mode?

All the Professional/Expert licenses features can be freely checked out from any edition.

For this purpose, in design mode, click on the "DEMO" icon of the toolbar in the eMedia Card Designer main window. All the features are enabled, but some limits appear when you try to print your cards out.

  • the word DEMONSTRATION will appear across the card when printing.
  • You can prepare the encoding magnetic and Contactless cards, but you cannot physically encode the cards

To remove the DEMONSTRATION label on the cards, just disable the demonstration mode from the "Help" menu or from the last toolbar button while you are in design mode.

Which version and edition of eMedia Card Designer are you using?

There are four editions of the software:

  • Trial
  • Standard
  • Professional
  • Expert

And there are may versions:

  • 3.xx 4.xx
  • 5.xx build xxx
  • 6.xx build xxx
  • 6.10 build xxx

Your current version and edition can be displayed from the "About…" command in the "Help" menu.

What are eMedia Card Designer bundles?

The Pebble and Dualys series from Evolis Printer works automatically with the Standard edition of eMedia Card Designer, as long as you print on either of these printers, so you can create and print your cards for free without needing any additional software.

You don't have to enter any License Key, you don't need a second key and you don't need to buy any license unless you have to use the Professional or Expert features of the software.

The bundle is only valid with EVOLIS PEBBLE series and EVOLIS DUALYS series. For all other printers, your eMedia Card Designer edition is a Trial edition, that works as a Standard edition for 30 days. After this trial period, if you want to continue using the software, you'll have to buy a license.

Once the trial period over, the label DEMONSTRATION will appear on each printed card while a message will warn you about the expiry of your software copy. It's time to call your local reseller.

In other words, when you're printing, the word DEMONSTRATION may appear across the card. If this happens, either you enabled the demonstration mode from the "Help" menu, either you're not printing your card on an EVOLIS PEBBLE or EVOLIS DUALYS and your software has been installed more than 30 days ago.

How may I move my license from a computer to another one?

The Activation key (that begins with "AK-") received by email unlocks the features of the software only on the computer on which you installed eMedia Card Designer, as the Activation Key depends on the Installation Key generated by the setup tool.

The Activation Key will not be valid anymore if:

  • You want to install eMedia on another computer,
  • You plan to format the hard disk,
  • You want to upgrade the Operating System (upgrade or reinstallation of Windows),
  • You plan any action which will require to reinstall eMedia Card designer,

That's why a migration tool is provided in the setup tool to obtain, before any transfer or upgrade, a Migration key (that begins with "MK-"). This Migration Key will help you to obtain the Activation Key for your new installation:

  • Switch to design mode, and in the "Help" menu, select the Migrate your license command. Or, just uninstall the software from the Control Panel, the migration tool will be launched.
  • This utility will request a confirmation, then will remove from this workstation the eMedia Card Designer license. The software then turns back into a Trial or Standard edition.
  • In the same time, the utility gives you a Migration key. During this procedure a Migration key will be communicated to you, and a file will be creates on the hard disc C:\ eMedia Migration.txt. This file contains all information to obtain a new activation
  • You will enter this Migration Key as the second key in the "Register now" dialog box of a new installation of the software, as you did previously for your License Key and/or Activation Key.

The "Migrate your license" command is grayed out, why?

The "Migrate your license" command from the "Help" menu is intentionally grayed out in Operating Mode as this mode is intended to be used by any regular user, who is intended only to enter the holders data and to print the cards, and thus must not have any administrative rights over the card design or the software itself.

Switch to design mode, enter if needed the administrative password, and then open the "Help" menu. The command is now enabled.

When using a database, the pictures are not saved correctly. Why?

In Operating Mode, you may change the center of the picture with your mouse. You can also change the zoom level and the rotation of the picture with the "Zoom and rotation" dialog box, available in the picture combo-box of the "Input" window.

If you want these modifications to be saved when you save the record, you must:

  • Acquire the picture from the software,
  • Or use the "Load a picture" function from the picture combo-box of the "Input" window, AND load the picture from the folder defined as the default pictures folder (you may define this folder from the "Options" command of the "Tools" menu, "Images/Folder" category, and by default this folder is located in the "My pictures" folder.

Explanation: as a picture file may be modified by other programs or may be used by other programs, eMedia Card Designer doesn't modify it if the picture has been loaded from a disk drive. Only pictures acquired by eMedia Card Designer or located in the pictures folder are considered as owned by the software and will be saved cropped and zoomed when you'll save the record.

Which database type is suitable for eMedia Card Designer?

eMedia Card Designer can use any existing database if an ODBC driver or an OLEDB driver exists. eMedia accesses to the data using the Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and is only a front-end to the data. Of course, this includes the ability to retrieve the database structure and data, to print the cards with these data.

The only thing you have to do is to install on the computer the correct ODBC or OLEDB driver, then to configure it to access to your own data: in eMedia, select the existing database type corresponding to the database type you have, "ODBC driver" or "Other OLEDB provider". This must be done in the "Database connection wizard" dialog box that appears when you select the "Database connection" command in the "Tools" menu.

Then, configure your access to the database.

Never forget that you can test a connection in demonstration mode, and make sure that the solution covers all your needs, before buying a Professional or an Expert license.

How may I print only the front side or the back side of a card?

In operating mode, if you want only print one of the two sides of a card, you may proceed as described below:

  • If you want to print only one card, select in the "File" menu the "Print" command, the click on the "Front side" or "Back side" commands.

  • If you want to use batch printing (printing cards from a database), select in the "Card" menu the "Single sided - Front" command or "Single sided - Back" command to keep on the screen only the side you want to print, then print your cards. Only the visible side will be printed.

  • Create a text object. Name it ("Name" property) _PRINTCONTROL. Its value will control the printout. The value may be set as fixed, user input, from an expression, from a database field, etc. The possible values are:

    Value Means
    0 Nothing is printed.
    1 Only the front side is printed.
    2 Only the back side is printed.
    3 The two sides are printed.

How may I print many cards from a database (batch printing)?

To batch print your card, you must create before a selection request.

In operating mode, you must display the "Find records" dialog box from the "Input" window toolbar or from the "Tools" menu. Then, four tabs allow you to select your records:

Standard

With this tab, you may search for a value in one of the database fields, by entering a criteria.

Example :
In the "Database field" combo-box, select NAME
In the "Value to search" text-box, enter B*

You had just created a selection request which will permit, by clicking on the "First", "Previous", "Next" and "Last" buttons to see all the cards for users in the database having their NAME beginning by the "B" letter (the * or % characters replace any following characters). By clicking on the "Print selected" button, you will print all of these cards.

Advanced

Press the F1 key of your keyboard to display a full online help about the way to express a SQL request.

Field range

You may limit your search to the given criteria, entering a mini and a maxi value to look for in a database field.

Example :
In the "Database field" combo-box, select the field that contains interesting values, such as ID_NUMBER,
In the "Mini value" text-box, enter 120,
In the "Maxi value" text-box, enter 149.

The "Print selected" button will print all the cards for which the ID_NUMBER field contain a value between 120 and 149 (included).

Record range

The selection request will use the record list in your database in the original order.

Example:
In the "First record number", enter 12.
In the "Last record number", enter 18.

You will obtain 7 records, from the 12th to 18th in the table.

TIP: To avoid any printing problem, never select more than 30 to 40 cards at a time. You Windows spooler may overflow (on Windows 9x systems), the printer may have problems to load cards, or your printing ribbon may be empty.

eMedia Card and Microsoft Windows Vista / Windows 7 (32 or 64 bit) Operating Systems

The latest versions of eMedia [6.5 built 694), can be used on a computer running the Microsoft Windows Vista / Windows 7 (32 or 64 bit) Operating Systems.

if you can't launch the installation software from the CD, it's because you're running a 64 bits version of Windows, and because the autorun cannot be started. In this case, browse the CD contents, and launch the "setup.exe" program located in the "eMedia" folder.

You can also download the 6.5 version on this website

Under Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows7 Operating System you must install and launch the software one time with administrative rights so that the installation can be completed.

If the first time the software is launched after installation, the "Unexpected error; quitting" error message appears, just click on the "OK" button to close the message box and eMedia Card Designer, then restart the program from the administrator account.

To do so:

  • Open Windows Explorer and browse to the folder where eMedia Card Designer has been installed (commonly the "c:\Program Files\eMedia" folder).
  • Right-click on the eMedia.exe file and select in the popup menu: "Run as administrator". eMedia Card Designer is launched and appears on screen.
  • When the software is ready, stop it. Once this has been done, the software can be launched from any user account having the authorization to do so.

Error-1311 "Source file not found" while Installing eMedia Card Designer!!

When you try to update eMedia Card program with the zip file downloaded from Web site, you receive this error message

It's that you have tried to launch the installation from the ZIP file itself.

When you click on the setup.exe itself, in the Winzip window (or whatever the program you are using to read the contents of the ZIP file) the extracting of the setup.exe program is carried out in a temporary folder, but only this file, not the other files that contain the components to install. So the setup.exe notified you that he was alone, and couldn't find the other files.

To resolve the issue:

  1. Extract the files contained in the ZIP archive in a blank new folder.
  2. Once the files extracted, use the Windows Explorer to view the contents of the folder
  3. Then, double-click on the setup.exe file to launch the installation program

Error E-20080, 20082 or E-20090 when you click on icon "Acquire a picture"!!

The generic error E-20080, 20082 or E-20090 relates to the camera connection. eMedia Card Designer states only that it cannot launch the Microsoft driver TWAIN or WIA.

eMedia Card Designer uses the TWAIN or WIA drivers provided by the Operating System and/or the device to retrieve the pictures. Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) is a Microsoft driver model that enables graphics software to communicate with imaging hardware such as scanners, webcam, digital cameras and Digital Video-equipment. It is said to be more flexible than TWAIN because it is a standardized

To resolve the issue:

In Operating mode, when you have activated the icon "Create a new record" or "Edit the record", of "Input" window, to add a photo, select, "Please select..." in the object combo.

The Source selector opens the Windows dialog box in order to establish the appropriate connection to an image acquisition peripheral. Each device has a separate driver. Select the appropriate source, TWAIN or WIA, of your device, before selecting Acquire...

For more explanation see the online help by the F1 touch of keyboard

  • In the "left" frame of the help window, click on the topic. "Operating mode\Photo acquisition" (input)
  • For the best solution and in all cases, if you don't have a driver, click on the topic. "Tools menu\Options\Acquisition using the folder supervisor"

 

©1999-2024 Mediasoft Technologies
All rights reserved - Terms of use | Privacy statement

228, rue de la Convention
75015 Paris - France