Daveo Posted May 21, 2003 Report Share Posted May 21, 2003 I have been struggling with a presentation I have been working on for a couple of weeks now. My presentation has about 250 jpegs running in sync with 3 MP3's. I can get it to run most of the time but not consistentaly. Many times it will lock up or start to flutter while doing the transitions. Any ideas on how to fix this? My photos run from about 60K to 200K each. The total file size with MP3's is about 37meg. Thanks in advance. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guru Posted May 21, 2003 Report Share Posted May 21, 2003 Dave,we need some additional information about your system (CPU, memory...).Two guesses, for now:1) Your processor is not very fast;2) Some transitions are two long in comparison with slide duration. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daveo Posted May 22, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 22, 2003 Guido, thanks for the response. My cpu is a P3 running at 977mghz. I have somwhere over 400K of RAM. My transitions are fast as I am loading about 267 photos in 10 minutes while 3 MP3's are loaded and played. Most of my photos have been reduced down but remain from about 80K to 150K on average in size. I am having the trouble right when the next MP3 loads up. I inserted a "dark slide" at that point to take the load off the CPU as it is only about 5K in size. This seems to help but it is still unstable. I plan to give some CD's to some lacrosse players and parents from the season's games so I can't take a chance the cd will fail when they load it on their pc. Thanks for the help! Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alrobin Posted May 22, 2003 Report Share Posted May 22, 2003 Dave,You really have to be liberal with your timing at the beginning of the show. I always try to allow at least 3 seconds before the music starts (by having 3 seconds of silence at the front of the piece) and the second transition (the first occurs right at the beginning when the dark slide starts up. Also, I usually make that first transition a "quick" one (20 ms), and then wait 3 seconds before any dissolves kick in. Also, as Guido pointed out, you have to leave lots of time for transitions between slides, and make sure the transition has time to complete before starting another.If Igor is listening, I would really like to see a change in operation to avoid these annoying glitches, and have the timing take control in situations like this. The program should move on to the next transition if there is not enough time to complete the previous one, even if the previous one is not yet finished. This way, one will still know if there is a conflict, but the conflict will not cause the annoying switching on and off of an image, or restarting of a transition. Such a feature would also be useful in being able to have an image fade partially on, and then start fading off again, in an orderly manner. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
think(box) Posted May 22, 2003 Report Share Posted May 22, 2003 Hey Dave - One other often suggested technique is to put all music into a single MP3 so that additional tracks are not loaded after show start.Cheers, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nobeefstu Posted May 22, 2003 Report Share Posted May 22, 2003 Daveo,I aggree with Bob's (think(box) suggestion of combining the 3 separate music files into 1 ... as this remedy usually helps in cases such as yours.Also , I would recommend to relax the timing to something less demanding as Al points out. Since you plan to distribute this production on CD ... various playing results/issues may be encountered by the user and their pc capabilties. If your having sporatic issues from a P3/977 .... those issues usually get magnified when running from a CD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Cox Posted May 22, 2003 Report Share Posted May 22, 2003 start out by eliminating variables1 un sync it -- does it play ok2 take out music -- does it play ok3 try puting music back one mp3 at a timeadvise forum your results of each moveit may be necessary to send the pte file to one the members so they can analyze itken Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HaroldB Posted May 22, 2003 Report Share Posted May 22, 2003 I wanted to second Al's suggestion that this problem be cured once and for all by the PTE run-time engine.I think it's very important to do it, Igor -- see how often it comes up here as a problem!Harold Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daveo Posted May 23, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 23, 2003 Many thanks to all of your for your help and many suggestions. I tried a couple of things:I added a couple of dark slides as I transitioned between MP3's. These slides are only 5 or 6K in size and seem to give the processor a boost for the spike it gets when the new MP3 loads. I waited to load any large photo files until the music is up and running. This seemed to help.How do I combine my MP3's into one. Is there a sound editing software package you are all using here?2nd question: I need to auto boot a CD to a menu where the user can choose between 2 slide presentations. Any ideas on how to do this. I found something in an old file someone had posted on WnSoft but I was unable to make it work. Any new solutions out there?Right now it seems to be working on my pc but I remain concerned that I may have tried to pack too many photo into a short time with one transition nearly stepping on the one after it. I will keep my fingers crossed and let you know how it goes.Again, thank to all for your help. If you have any ideas on my 2 questions above I will appreciate them! Regards, Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nobeefstu Posted May 23, 2003 Report Share Posted May 23, 2003 Dave,So you feel confident enough of your SHOW settings ? ... tempting fate huh ? If you review several of the most recent postings ( or search for older postings) ... you will find the answers/tools that possibly meet your current needs.Our good friend and fellow PTE member "Boxig" has provided many tools to aid in our needs. If you review the posts ... I m sure you will find a few with CD launching with possible alternatives ... and many others.To Boxig's page link of tools :http://www.thailandphotoalbum.com/#programs.Note :Be well advised ... Processor type and speed is not your only limiting factor to playing your SHOWS. Current hardware, avail resources/ram , background processes running ( to mention a few) ... all play a part in the success or failure of your presentation playing properly. To put it basically ... its not only what your PC has installed to perform the tasks of processing ... its also what your PC has left over to perform the processing tasks after the fact.Good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccmanz Posted May 23, 2003 Report Share Posted May 23, 2003 How do I combine my MP3's into one. Is there a sound editing software package you are all using here?Here is a Freeware program that was post on the old forum.I have used it a few times.You just pick the mp3's you want to merge and the order you want them to playIt is a small download only 234kbhttp://mp3merge.netfirms.com/cc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daveo Posted May 23, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 23, 2003 I have been working diligently with Boxig over the last 24 hours to get his applet to work well with my slideshows. I think we are almost there now.Thanks very much for the URL to get to the MP3 merger. I think this could be a big benefit. I already merged the music but haven't tried it out yet with my PTE files. Should be interesting but all of my problems happened right at the music transition so I have pretty high hopes this will solve it. The help you guys have all so willingly provided is terrific!! Thanks again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daveo Posted May 25, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 I have since merged the 3 MP3's and the slide show seems smoother. At least there have been no more crashes at the music transitions. I am continueing to work with Boxig to develop his multiCD software to run flawlessly on XP. I plan to distribute some CDs with several slide shows for them to choose from. Simple will be the ticket to success here. Boxig is working with me to keep it simple and visually appealing. We still have a few things to figure out but he is really being helpful.Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthrodoc Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 Just a plug for the Wizard Boxig and his utility for menus... After I started doing family slideshows (I come from a BIG family!) I wanted to have a nice way to autorun a cd that would then give me a menu that I could use as an index to my growing slideshow collection. Boxig's CD menu was just the thing--- and I have found that it works well on even my puny P2 system...Daveo (and anyone not yet familiar)... Boxig's utilities are worth the effort to download and try out.Anthrodoc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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