Presentations on CD

[richardh]

I would like to be able to run presentations from CD, rather than worry about having them loaded on a hard drive or PC.

However if I save the exe file to CD, and I am getting file sizes of 25Mb, the files when they run do not synchronise to the music and basically judder. This isn't what we want.

I would love to be able to give someone a CD of a show and say, there you are, just run the exe file and it will run ok. But right now that isn't the case.

Does anyone have tips or hints as to what I could try. Is it the PC, or is it the way I have done things.

What are sucessful shows on my own PC, well just don't work sucessfully on a CD Help!

Many thanks

Richard.

infodesk@southendexperience.co.uk

[JRR]

Richard:

Many of us have had good success with shows running from CDs.

BUT there are many factors that make it work better or not.

One factor is that the receiving computer CD drive be a relatively fast one in terms of connection to the CPU.

Your 25MB .exe file sounds a little large, but I have run ones larger.

Are your image files all under 200kb ?

Have you used mp3 rather than a wav sound file ?

Is your mp3 file relatively small (96-128kbps usually is OK)

Did you use Custom Synch for your music ?

Hope there is an answer in there for you someplace

[richardh]

Dear Jim,

Are your image files all under 200kb ?

Yes they are. most are under 100kb, and I still get that problem.

Have you used mp3 rather than a wav sound file ?

It is mp3, as that gives much better sound.

Is your mp3 file relatively small (96-128kcps usually is OK)

128kps

Maybe it is the CD drive. I would guess the exe file is loaded up slowly, and to be honest I haven't tried it without music. Probably because I would like to create AV's with music.

I am sure there is an answer, and hopefully I will find it. Jim, thanks for your quick response.

Richard

Did you use Custom Synch for your music ?

Some are, some aren't. it doesn't appear to make a difference.

[nobeefstu]

Richard,

CDRom Drive speeds are by nature alot slower than hard drive speeds. Its all about data transfer speeds ... and how fast it gets processed.

You Show specs as stated seem to be in order by my accounts.

Have you some extreme timing or demanding fades used within your Show? As this can cause playback issues from CD. If your not sure ... remake another version relaxing your timing and or fades to see if the problem persists.

Also make sure to use good quality CDR disc and a not so low X-speed types. As this can also cause problems sometimes.

Also the speed of the CDRom unit itself can play a part in how smoothly things go.

Sometimes it takes abit of adjustment of your Show setup-settings to have a smooth CDR show. As stated before ... CD playing of a Show in no way can match the superior PC hard drive played show. Some setting compromises must be made for CDR playing.

[boxig]

Richard

Try to use "TempCD" utility.

It will temporarily copy your show from CD to HD and run it from HD, then it will delete it from HD. This way you avoid all problems caused when running show from CD.

I have uploaded a new version (version 2.0) today so if you decide to try it you will be the first. In that case let me know how it works.

[Eric Athroll]

Hi Richard

I have just made my first slide show with background music (150 images - 27 mins duration) and it runs very well from CD both on my PC (Pentium III 800 Mhz, 768 Mb RAM, Rage Fury Pro Xpert 2000 Video Card, Windows XP Home, LG CD Rom Drive 52X Max) and my wife's Laptop (Athlon XP, 384 Mb RAM, Integrated Video Card, Windows XP Home, Integrated DVD/CD Rom RW Drive).

I have some slight flickering between fades from horizontal images to vertical images on my PC that does not occur on the Laptop (I put this down to the faster processor and graphics) but other wise it's fine.

I made three identical shows using three different sound files - mp3, wav and wma. The first show (mp3) totals 287 Mb, the second (wav) 41.8 Mb and the last (wma) 41.8 Mb. When each is run they look and sound no different to me although my speakers are very inexpensive units. Images were sized at 768 X 528 pxls in jpeg at 50% compression and are shown with a black border. The sound was edited for volume and duration etc using Nero Wave Editor and the show fine tuned by varying the image duration down to milliseconds.

Things I did do though when making the CD were -

a. Copy all the image files and the sound file to a small partition on my second

HDD that I keep free for writing to CD.

b. Defragment all the data on this HDD once everything was finalised then recreate the show from this data, saving the final show to that same HDD.

c. Switch off the Anti Virus software and burn the CD from that HDD.

I don't know whether all the above makes a difference, but to my mind it should help to keep the data on the CD in an unfragmented state and an optimum playing condition.

I hope you find the above of some help.

Eric

[alrobin]

I made three identical shows using three different sound files - mp3, wav and wma.  The first show (mp3) totals 287 Mb, the second (wav) 41.8 Mb and the last (wma) 41.8 Mb.

Eric,

I suspect you meant to say "The first show (mp3) totals 41.8 Mb, the second (wav) 287 Mb ....." no?

By the way, I don't think you need to go through the defrag process unless you have a very slow hard drive, and/or no buffer over-run in your CD-burning software.

[Eric Athroll]

Hi Al

Yes, my mistake. The wav file is the large one - don't know much about music files so am mystified as to why the other two seem so small and the wav one so large.

I agree that defragging the HDD partition before writing to CD is probably not necessary, but it does make sure that no files are split into parts and (I assume) are written to the CD unfragmented. It takes only a few seconds to do this anyway, so it's no hardship.

Eric

[JRR]

Eric:

The reason for the sound files being of such different sizes is due to compression.

A WAV file is like a TIFF file or a PSD (PhotoShop) file, they are uncompressed files.

While the mp3 is like a JPG file, compressed.

Just as you can compress JPGs to varying degrees, mp3s can be compressed to varying degree by using differing kbps.

Clear as mud ??

[Eric Athroll]

Hi Jim

Thanks for that piece of info. The reason I made three shows using the three different music formats was to ensure that a user of the CD would have at least one of the music formats on their PC/Laptop.

My aim in writing these shows to CD is twofold.

a. To send copies to my relatives to view and keep.

b. To show them to Digital Imaging Group/Camera Club Members via a Laptop/Video Projector - fast replacing the Projected Slides with Taped Sound AV Shows.

[JRR]

Eric:

You don't have to worry about the sound player the receiving computer might have.

PTE has a built-in player.

[Eric Athroll]

Hi Jim

Thanks for that.

In that case, does it make any difference which sound file type I use in terms of the smooth running of the "show"? It occurs to me that maybe despite being a larger file (not a problem) the uncompressed file might put less "load" on a slower PC/Laptop with less RAM.

I assume mp3 is the best of the three I mentioned in terms of size and quality of sound.

Using my Nero Wave Editor to edit/assemble/convert the background music takes little additoinal time to do any or all of them.

I apologise for wandering off the original topic but it is CD related and I hope it is of some interest to the originator of this post.

[JRR]

Eric:

I am speaking not from authority here and thus might not be accurate.

Others more "up" on sound files than I might jump in.

I don't think it is any "harder" on the computer in terms of decompression to use a larger file vs the smaller. But the smaller file over all will help the communication with the CPU from the CD keep up to the show.

[Barry Beckham]

Given the time it takes to temporary transfer a 25 meg file from CD to a Hard drive I wonder if this is such an issue.

I would copy the file to a temp folder and play iot from there.

bbdigital

[Eric Athroll]

For bbdigital

Now there's lateral thinking for you! Why didn't I think of that?

Eric

[nobeefstu]

Eric,

Now there's lateral thinking for you! Why didn't I think of that?

That what Boxigs previous post is all about.

Try to use "TempCD" utility.

It will temporarily copy your show from CD to HD and run it from HD, then it will delete it from HD. This way you avoid all problems caused when running show from CD.