Synced shows on slow machines

[nspindel]

I recently created a show with about 450 jpeg pictures and a 45 minute mp3 soundtrack. The soundtrack is one continuous mp3, not separate songs.

I synced the show using the timeline and Al Robinson's spreadsheet (great work, Al).

The slideshow works great on my machine, which is 2.4ghz P4 with a gig of ram.

When I go to play it on a slower machine (400mhz P2 w/ 256 megs of ram), I get sub-par results. The syncing remains intact, but it seems the slideshow trips over itself in several locations. Either the music "skips" rather like an LP record, or pictures either stay up longer than you would expect or shorter than you would expect. But the end result is that if the show does somehow get confused because of a slow processor, it corrects itself in these annoying ways.

Also, the fade-in/out is awful on this type of machine.

I am wondering what else I can do to optimize this show for an audience with potentially slow machines. Perhaps I need to split the soundtrack up into separate files? If I do that, do I run the risk of different machines putting or not putting pauses between the tracks, which would throw my sync off?

The current executable is about 125megs on disk.

[Guest guru]

Welcome, Nspindel!

I'm sorry your first post concerns a problem (and it's a serious problem indeed).

You can try to reduce the size of your EXE file by decreasing the bitrate of mp3 from 128 to 64... but I fear this in not yet enough to solve your problems. A P2 400 MHz is under minimum requirement we have experienced for a show with sound, and your show is also very large!...

Please see this long but - I think - interesting thread about problems with slow processors, memory etc.

[HaroldB]

The best advice I can give you is to shorten your transition times a bit where PTE is now tripping up. Until Igor fixes it, if the transtion time exceeds the slide display time plus the time it actually takes to load your slide (which can be much slower on a slow machine), PTE trips up this way. Shortening the transition times at the affected places usually gives you bullet-proof results.

For the fades, I find that the poor fades on a slower machine are especially noticeable when going from a very light slide to a very dark slide or vice versa. Try not to do that, and your problem may be less noticeable.

Harold

[nobeefstu]

nspindel

Just inquiring for a simple detail ... when you say

The current executable is about 125megs on disk

Is this presetation being run from the Hard Drive (disk) or a CD Disc ?

Also, Slow processors or heavy loaded up (memory) pcs will have problems with cetain extended transistion timings. Transistions hog alot of your cpu usuage to display properly ... especially evident on slow pcs.

[nspindel]

Thanks for all the replies.

As for the question about whether it is on the hard drive or cd, I tried it both ways. Neither one yielded good results.

I'm going to experiment and see what happens if I cut the mp3 apart into smaller files, perhaps that makes some difference in the way the exe manages its memory.

I'll also try cutting down some of my jpeg resolutions. Some of them are pretty high, so the files are large.

If that doesn't work, then the folks I distribute this too will just have to upgrade to a nice fat new PC (or suffer).

[Lloegyr]

When you say some of the jpeg files are large, how large do you mean? If you could reduce your file sizes and as Guru says your mp3 size then you may start to get a reasonable size to run.

Mike

Merseal Island

[jayspry]

nspindel,

I think you will get better results doing what you say your going to do. Stu, I think, is pointing out the real problem with the size of you show on that limited system. I bet out of the 256MB of RAM, you have less than half available to run this show. The EXE is going to try to load as much in to RAM as possible and then it has to swap out pieces and parts. This swapping and contiguous free space on the Hard Drive has a lot to do with how smoothly the EXE will perform. So, if you can trim it down you should get better performance.

jayspry

[Lloegyr]

Another thought, how much RAM does your machine have? I have found this has a lot of influence on how programs run, a system with twice the amount of memory as the original exe file seems ok, anything less is a problem. So your 125Mb file really needs at least 256Mb ram. So you really should look at reducing your file size.

Mike

Mersea Island

[Guest guru]

I'm going to experiment and see what happens if I cut the mp3 apart into smaller files, perhaps that makes some difference in the way the exe manages its memory.

No Nspindel, this is surely useless. PTE loads in cache all the soundtrack when show starts, so either if you have one mp3 file or the same file splitted in ten parts is exactly the same... and .pte file (loaded itself in cache at beginning) should become even larger.

You can rather defragment your HDD to optimize its speed; and to decrease both mp3 and pictures size can produce an actual improvement.

I agree also with Mike about your free memory, that depends largely by your OS and by applications running in background.

[nobeefstu]

nspindel,

Another fact to keep in mind :

Comment by Igor ... p.s. don't worry, please, that synchronization can be corrupted. Because PicturesToExe synchronizes show of slides, following by the position of the music player. E.g. if third slide should be shown at 47645 ms. and player reported that current position of playing is 47645 ms. then the slide will be shown immediately.

By the above information supplied by Igor in another recent post when using SYNC mode ... seems to qualify if your pictures (settings) cant keep up to the MUSIC your pictures will be adjusted to match the music timimg .