Mega project: 380 MB (1)

kim · January 30, 2003

Hello,

I am a new member on the forum though I have been evaluating/using P2E for some time. I've recently created a large presentation using v.3.80 and would like to share my experience with you.

The presentation:

442 slides

80 MB of mp3 files (18 files, total of 51 minutes) as background music in random-track order (no synchronization)

Total exe size: 380 MB

Each slide is a jpeg file of size 700 to 1100 KB and there is no way I can make it smaller (managing two versions of the each image will be a major headache).

First observation:

It launches very slowly. Off the hard disk, on a 800 MHz system, it takes 30 seconds *before* the "Loading" progress bar appears -- during which time there is no apparent activity. In fact, the apps name also does not appear during this interval in the Windows tasks-running window, neither does the Windows cursor change to an hourglass.

After 30 seconds the "Loading" progress bar appears and it takes *another* 30 seconds before the slide show starts.

I got around this problem by creating a program (basically a stay-on-top splash screen) in Delphi that launches the p2e exe file and remains on the screen until the slide show starts. I had to make some api calls to determine when the p2e exe window is open. (My program also prevents autorun.inf from running twice -- something that can otherwise happen under certain circumstances on Win98 systems.)

This problem needs to be addressed and I am glad that v.4 promises an improvement.

Note that I only used P2E to compile the presentation. I used text editors and filter programs that I wrote to manipulate the .pte file directly.

Other observations I have, I will post as different topics on the forum.

- Kim

alrobin · January 30, 2003

Kim,

I would be interested in hearing more about your text editors for manipulating PTE. Any possibility for sampling them?

I am in the process of streamlining my Excel "Adjustor" model, and adding in some new features, so any ideas you can give me would be appreciated. I have a lot of development ideas already, to the point of making a "front end" for PTE in C++ or Vis Basic, to run some of the useful slide-show creation features people have been asking for such as more GUI capability, thumbnail control, better previewing capability, transition-adjustment features, etc.

This product is a little like Linux - everyone contributes ideas, and all upgrades are free.

Ciao,

Al

jayspry · January 31, 2003

Kim,

Having seen your computer configuration in another message, I think you will find that most on the slowness and even the music playback issues are hardware, not software. You only have 128MB or RAM and trying to run a 380MB EXE. There is a lot of disk swapping going on. I think you'll find that the system resources are being over loaded. This is a major problem of very large projects. Most PTE users will break a project up into logical sections (if possible) when their project get this large. The main problem will not be so much resources on your machine, but what recources are available on your "customer's" machine? Your projects sounds quite involved and interesting, but I think you will find that unless your "customer's" have large amounts of system resources, they will have difficulty playing your presentation and wonder if this was professionally done.

jayspry

LumenLux · January 31, 2003

Kim, I just re-read your thought on jpg size:

Each slide is a jpeg file of size 700 to 1100 KB and there is no way I can make it smaller (managing two versions of the each image will be a major headache).

I understand what you want to avoid. It drives me crazy sometimes with multiple copies of the "same" photo floating all over my hard drives. But I would suggest: Keep your "originals" safe and untouched. Then make a copy of all your jpg 's in another folder. In this working folder, use a batch process to very quickly get even your 300-400 slides down to sizes that can be more easily handled by PTE. And of course, I am interested to know if there is some compelling reason why you must maintain the large photo sizes. Also, are your slides from a digital camera or scanned?

alrobin · January 31, 2003

Kim,

Another possibility in managing different image sizes is the use of a batch program such as IrfanView. This will assist you in resizing a number of images, renaming them if necessary, and if you put them all in a separate folder, managing them for the slide show should be fairly straight-forward. And, if they get in your way, or use up too much disk space, just dump them off onto a CD.

One thing I am finding in this digital image business is that I am always in need of the same photos in a different format or size than the one in which they were created. But on the other hand, that is one of the advantages of digital - the ability to readily adjust the parameters to meet the needs.

Ciao,

Al

Ken Cox · January 31, 2003

Kim it has been proven many times that a very satisfactory show can be produced using jpgs 75 to 100 kb in size with compression ratios of 75 to 80%

ken

anthrodoc · January 31, 2003

I am getting much out of this discussion! Thanks, all! My question goes to Ken's last point: I have seen reponses on here at times about optimum picture quality on computer screens-- and quality "overkill"; is there a point in a jpg or gif past which more density is just extra weight? On the one hand, it seems to me that even with some of my own, fairly low-end images, PTE does a nice job of smoothing and sharpening, without much intervention on my part. On the other hand, after shrinking some hefty bmp's to 100 k jpegs, and projecting these onto a giant projector screen through an overhead LCD, I have been quite impressed by the maintenance of image quality (for my purposes).

Are there technical limits (with or without PTE) beyond which "more" density in the image is just not useful?

(I ask this too because one of my first PTE shows on my home desktop was a real oinker-- and it would barely run. Then when I worked at reducing jpg sizes, trimming (and merging) mp3's etc., all with the great coaching found here in the forum, I found I had little trouble with subsequent shows on just about any system I was using.

Brian

Ian · January 31, 2003

There are two things to think of when preparing images for projection - the actual pixel dimensions and the level of compression.

Pixel dimension:

It is pointless to use images with a larger pixel size than the projector or monitor can show them. If your projector or monitor is set at 1024x768, then this is the optimum "1:1" resolution for your images to fill the screen. Anything larger will simple get squashed into the 1024x768 format and you will actually lose image quality as a result. Likewise if your shows are aimed at an 800x600 audience then this is the best image size to use.

Compression

The higher the compression, the lower the file size - but also the lower the image quality. As Ken says, using something around 80% will usually give an excellent compromise between size and quality. Personally I am not a fan of batch processing images as I prefer to look at each one individually to choose the optimum setting. I usually use 1024x768 images, and aim for an individual file size of around 150 - 180k.

The shows have been projected on large screens in halls with an audience of 100+ people and the image quality is excellent, even when the shows are mixed in with traditional slide projected sequences.

Ian

Ken Cox · January 31, 2003

for some theory on pictures

see

www.scantips.com

Wayne makes the statement on his site that if you are scanning in a picture that you dont have access to again, scan it as big as you can as a tiff then resize it and save it as a jpg with 75-80% compression -- most of the shows that are offered at the cottage i dare to say are 72 dpi jpgs at either 800/600 or 1024/768 -

my auto calendar show at the cottage was scanned at 300 dpi saved as a tiff and each picture was 20 to 25 meg in size - i then resized them to 640/480 and saved as a jpg using irfanview default settings at 80% -- the resulting picts were in the 70 to 80 kb size each - the 240 picts =15.3 mb disk space the rest of the show is the 6 mp3's music + the overhead of p2e

on the old forum there were many times this subject was brought up and some of the best shows were 75 to 100 kb as told by the authors. Guido and Ian Bateman to name 2 members have said time and time again that they are getting satisfactory results with 800/600 72dpi jpgs with projection shows.

with prices coming down for large hard drives, burners, blank cd's etc it is wise to save your picts at various sizes etc to evaluate things -- i quiite often use the magnifier with irfanview and play with the picture to see what you can get away with --- i used to show the picts on a tv and see where the break point occurs -- i found if you get much below 70 kb size you get the chunky pattern showing up -- the tv is a worst case condition for viewing -- but it is the ideal testing tool for evaluation

ken

Ian · January 31, 2003

Yep - I agree Ken!

I loved that site you recommended www.scantips.com - there is a very thorough piece in there debunking "the myth of 72 dpi" that should be required reading! I come up against the "has to be 72/96 dpi" comments time and time again at AV Days, and its nice to see someone has taken the trouble to explain in great depth why this setting is completely irrelevent in screenshows or web pages.

Ian

January 31, 2003

I wish only to thank both Ian and Ken for their clear, wise and useful contributions, and also for remind us all of excellent Wayne Fulton's site about scanning (and much more about digital images).

Ian, I completely agree with you when you say "I am not a fan of batch processing images as I prefer to look at each one individually to choose the optimum setting". But this is right about choice of Jpeg compression, not (in my opinion) about the resizing (or better resampling) pictures.

JRR · January 31, 2003

I leave all of my images at 1200 or 2400 dpi as this has nothing to do with the (electronic) file size of the image. The file size is determined by (1) the pixel dimensions and (2) the degree of compression.

I find I spend a lot of time "discussing" this with people who argue I am wrong, but so far all have walked away convinced...

I know you can batch size images in IRFANVIEW or PhotoShop (Thumbs Plus will as well, but it seems to want to drop the res to 72dpi !!!), but I tend to do the sizing idividually on critical images so I can ensure I get the exact "line-ups" I want for the dissolves one pic into the next. Not every one is critical thank goodness as sizing can get tedious.

Jim

Ken Cox · February 1, 2003

I should have qualified my reasoning for scanning the auto picts so big -- i was trying to get rid of the jaggies -- with Andrew Busst coaxing me and critquing I searched www.scantips.com and read what he had to say re MOIRE effect - it was a real exercise in scanning but the principle can be applied with all your picts if you want to take the time and have the space on your drives

ken

alrobin · February 1, 2003

Jim,

Guess you and I have never argued about it, then.

Saying "you leave all of [your] images at 1200 dpi or 2400 dpi" doesn't mean a thing! On your computer, the images are just "dots", with no "inches" involved, unless you are referring to the size of your hard drive! You can set them at "72 dpi" (in Photoshop, for example), or you can set them at "2000 dpi", and the file size and image quality will be identical.

The only thing that is relevant while the image is on your pc is the number of "dots" in width, and the number of "dots" in height, period. (oh, and the jpeg compression is significant, too, if they are in that format, as it is simply an algorithm that helps the computer reconstruct the image without having to save all the "dots". Like telling the software that if you see 100 identical dots in a row, don't save each one, just one, as a sample, and then tell me how many there are.) (If you like, you can read "pixels", or "bytes", or "bits", in place of "dots", whichever you prefer.)

It is only when you are scanning an image, or printing one out, that dpi is significant, and here it depends entirely on what you are doing with the image.

I can give you a "72 dpi" image that is exactly identical to a "2000 dpi image" while it is on your pc.

Now, if you are talking about scanning an image at "72" dpi, or one at "2000" dpi, it is a different story, as this has a lot of bearing on how many pixels you are going to have to manage. And this is usually why people think they are saving the image at 72 or 2000 dpi, because this is what they saw on the scanner, and this is what Photoshop shows when they open the image in it. But once the image is in the pc, "dpi" no longer makes any sense.

Hope this helps some. I think most of the confusion (as is usually the case in life, in general) arises due to people talking about two different things, and not finding a common definition on which to base the arguments.

Ciao,

Al

kim · February 1, 2003

Hello all,

Regarding Jayspry's suggestion that 128MB RAM is not enough, I refer to the PTE faq that recommends 300MHz/32 MB RAM (and requires a minimum of 100MHz/16 MB). I would also like to point out that on a much faster system 1.7GHz, 512MB of RAM, the launch time was still 40 seconds for my exe.

The FAQ also states that the maximum size of the exe that can be created is 2100MB and the maximum number of images is 32,000. I must assume that these are maximum *calculated* numbers and no presentation has even come close to testing these limits.

In my opinion, P2E is stretched when the exe size increases and perhaps more realistic figures should be mentioned in the FAQ. An opinion that is buttressed by the fact that when I run P2E itself, it takes 25 seconds to come up because it is set to open up the "last project". My pte file is 1.05 MB. (I don't think the size of each slide is a factor in the time taken to open the project.)

I appreciate the suggestions and discussion regarding the reduction in size of the images and hence of the exe. My images are each full-screen (they cover the whole screen at 4:3 ratio) of pixel size 2400 x 1600. Since I have bitmapped text on them (some of it rather small), I stuck to a fairly high JPEG compression ratio (6 or 7 or 8).

I look forward to future improvements in P2E, specially a reduction in the launch time for large projects, and a more realistic assessment and presentation of its capabilities.

- Kim

Ian · February 1, 2003

I'll stick to my earlier point that if you are displaying images on a monitor/projector that is set at 1024x768, it is pointless using images with larger pixel dimensions than this, and will degrade quality rather than improve it.

The only exception is if you are planning to "future-proof" your shows in the anticipation that at some time in the future, hardware will have been developed sufficiently to allow an output resolution of 2048x1536. This is exactly double the 1024x768 setting, so when images of this size are shown at 1024x768 all the computer has to do is discard every alternate pixel to display the image. The smoothness of contrasting edges in the image will therefore be almost as good as the original 1:1 ratio. If and when the display hardware catches up, the image can be shown at its original high resolution without the computer having to interpolate any extra pixels.

Using any other size image on a current "1024x768" display, like the 2400 x 1600 mentioned by Kim, will degrade the quality by some degree as the computer will discard pixels unevenly, giving the "jaggie" effect that we all try to avoid.

Ian

jayspry · February 1, 2003

Like Ian,

I'll stick with my statements. The parameter in the FAQ are for the program PTE itself and what it is capable of producing. They are not talking about how a generated EXE will perfom on a system. that issue will always be great affected by the configuration of the hardware and software residing on the system. Your show appears to be big to allow it to perform on almost any "standard" configuration of equipment. Music replays and those large images take a lot of memory and the EXE is having to swap in and out. You are not the first to have this problem and you will not be the last. Most of us have set more of less a configuration that will run on most machines. You presentation is special, that makes is large and the price you pay is slower response. I think you will find that even with the "fix" to PTE, you will not be happy with how it performs with that presentation.

jayspry

nobeefstu · February 1, 2003

Kim

Your comment on ... " I refer to the PTE faq that recommends 300MHz/32 MB RAM (and requires a minimum of 100MHz/16 MB). I would also like to point out that on a much faster system 1.7GHz, 512MB of RAM, the launch time was still 40 seconds for my exe."

The PTE Faq you mention is a basic PC requirement ... this is more or less to run a basic and simpile show ... using simple transistions and relative photo sizes (kb). I dont think PTE is assuming your show is

2100MB and the maximum 32,000 images . No Mega Shows will run very well if at all on those systems.

Jayspry's suggestion about your RAM size is something to really consider ... your Celeron 128mb really isnt much for todays programs that want to hog all your pc resources and place themselves in the sys tray... as I assume you have other programs running and using up more of your resources ( just look in your sys tray for icons). Do a check on your PC for available resources and ram when you have your programs running ... you will be surprised of what you have or dont have.

I havent read all your Mega Postings ... so I may not be up to date on all the issues and findings.

As for your Friends loadings times ... was this hard drive loading or CD loading ?

As for your graphic sizes and quality ... if you use a graphics program to work with your images ... read the Image Information on your graphics ... this will help you alot in determining your photo quality needs. Bigger is not better for just "Viewing" a photo ... only for editing and printing. Your .pte file opening delay is telling me PTE is loading all your large photos into ram for use in your setup ... do a available resources and ram check after if opens to see what the numbers are now.

As using your own MEGA description of your show .... one needs also a MEGA sys to run it properly

February 1, 2003

Kim, in your last post there is a new facet that impresses me, the size of your .pte file, 1.05 MB.

Some weeks ago I made a "big" test show (163 MB) with only (!) 206 pictures and a soundtrack with two .wav files.

"Loading" bar appears almost immediately, about 0.5 sec. after I launched exe, and the show starts after 17 sec. Note that my test machine is rather slow (Pentium 2 450, 385MB Ram, video card Intel 740 (8MB).

But my .pte file is only 38.8 KB!

Do you used many objects in your project? Do you have many pictures customized? I cannot understand why your .pte is so large.

alrobin · February 1, 2003

Guido,

I think the key to your capability is the RAM size of 385 Mb. According to Kim's statistics, he has at least 400 Mb of just images (442 images at an average size of 1 Mb each). And, because the show is fairly long, he has 80 Mb of music files. There is no way that this will run quickly on a 32-mb system. Bill Gates already has all of that staked out for his own use.

Even your 385 Mb would not be sufficient to run Kim's show in an optimized environment.

Kim, what you need is not a better PTE program, but a better pc! Especially if your system has only 128 Mb of RAM.

My desktop has 750 Mb of RAM, and Bill Gates (or somebody) has already staked out over 400 Mb of RAM the moment I boot up! 250 Mb of this is called "locked memory". Some program is apparently not releasing the memory it uses (I hope it's not a virus!). A check of the SysMon is very revealing!

Ciao,

Al

Lloegyr · February 1, 2003

Hi Kim

I do think Guru in his usual style has hit on the problem here. A 1Mb PTE file is really very large and must contain thousands and thousands of lines. Other shows I have done with over 200 pics have never got much beyond 50KB PTE file size. Wheter its wav or MP3 makes little difference to PTE file size, that affects EXE size. So the question is? what is going on to make your PTE so big?

Mike

Mersea Island

alrobin · February 1, 2003

Mike,

I agree with you regarding the size of the actual ".pte" file itself. 442 slides shouldn't drive it up to a meg in size, unless a lot of those slides are being repeated, in which case it could.

However, the real issue here is RAM availability and processor speed required in order to work with the pte file, and then to run the "exe". Kim will have to load all of those images and music into his (or her) pc in order to be able to preview the show, etc.

Ciao,

Al

JRR · February 1, 2003

I leave all of my images at 1200 or 2400 dpi as this has nothing to do with the (electronic) file size of the image. The file size is determined by (1) the pixel dimensions and (2) the degree of compression.

Al Robin, in his 9:24pm Jan 31st on this thread, felt that my comments re dpi and file sizing might be confusing for some.

So let me try to say it in a clearer way:

I leave all of my images (from a scanner) at whatever dpi they are scanned at.

The dpi does NOT matter in the resultant file size (measured in bytes). The bottom line measurement is the pixel dimension e.g. 3000x2000 or 800x600. The more pixels you have the bigger the file is in size of bytes.

The file type (e.g bmp, tiff, jpg) and any compression of that file will also factor into the final (byte) sizing.

I was trying to state that you don't need to adjust the "dpi" as so many people seem to think they have to reduce a file (bytes) size.

Hope that is clearer

Jim

alrobin · February 1, 2003

Much clearer, Batman!

Ciao,

Robin

kim · February 2, 2003

Kim, in your last post there is a new facet that impresses me, the size of your .pte file, 1.05 MB.
...
Do you used many objects in your project? Do you have many pictures customized? I cannot understand why your .pte is so large.

Dear All,

I am a bit busy at the moment but will respond to the many posts in a couple of days.

In the meantime, I will send you, Guru, as you requested in private, my .pte file directly.

Each of the 442 slides of my show has two buttons on it, and a short text element.

More later,

Kim

Sign In

Mega project: 380 MB (1)

Recommended Posts

kim

alrobin

jayspry

LumenLux

alrobin

Ken Cox

anthrodoc

Ian

Ken Cox

Ian

Guest guru

JRR

Ken Cox

alrobin

kim

Ian

jayspry

nobeefstu

Guest guru

alrobin

Lloegyr

alrobin

JRR

alrobin

kim

Join the conversation

Browse

Activity