Unwanted delay between stimulus and mask

[jarvis24]

[edited from support email]

I am using DirectRT to present faces for 12ms, which is working fantastically. Immediately following the face I need to put a backward mask. It seems, however, that there is load time in between the face and the mask (as much as 120ms). This seems to be allowing for an after-image. Vision experts in my department have informed me that this would mean that I cannot claim my stimulus is being presented for only 12ms.

I wanted to make you aware of this problem (I suspect you have encountered this and have a solution) and also to inquire whether there is a way to pre-load everything so that there is no interval time in between (naturally, i have set the inter-trial interval to zero in the styles' options--my goal is to actually make this zero).

Note: We are not intending to do subliminal presentation, necessarily. We can make the image "invisible" by using both a forward and backward mask. We would prefer it to be supraliminally presented at 12ms.

I await your response with GREAT anticipation..