screen savers?

[DustyDesert]

I'm thinking about putting together a screen saver. What's the difference between a screen saver and a slide show? What do I need to know to produce a successful one?

Thank you,

~Cindy

[think(box)]

A few of the obvious and the not so obvious:

• A screen saver is selected in Windows to activate when keyboard is idle for some number of minutes.
  
• Windows can run the "screen saver" for a while and minutes later shut monitor off to truly save screen.
  
• Screen savers have file type .SCR and are program files to Windows, and are checked by anti-virus software.
  
• If you use music keep it in one .MP3 for no skips and recognize that music may catch people by surprise.
  
• Screen savers exit and return to Windows when mouse is moved or keyboard key is pressed.
  
• Screen savers consume system resources and slow down long background tasks. Consider "no repeat".
  
• Screen savers can be promotional (ugh - we get so much of this).
  

[DustyDesert]

Maybe I should be a little more specific. Most of that info was way more obvious than I was looking for. What I'm asking is from the creation stand point, what's the difference besides the .SCR? I AM looking at this for a promotional thing as an alternative to a printed 4-color brochure to offer clients. An exe slide show on a CD isn't working out real well because it seems everyone's computers process the pictures at different speeds, even when they are small jpeg files. with MP3 music. I had problems with a 10 MB, 33 pictures, and one MP3 song exe playing the way it was supposed to on 2 different computers.

Just wondering if screen savers work any different.

[think(box)]

OK, that sets the context more completely. The magic is in what the show creator makes. Screen savers are simply special purpose .EXEs by another name. They don't work any better, and can still have performance issues.

Along the lines of setting further context: I am guessing by your description that you synchronize your shows to music. But if you do, and you adhere to minimum computer performance limitations show design suggestions, it should play the same on any computer. When a show developer is over-aggressive with show design w.r.t. computer performance requirements, the show music usually "skips" on too-slow machines. It is really "go/no-go" and nothing in between for synchronized shows. With careful design they can always be a "go". What were the playback differences vs. your show "Synchronize slideshow to music duration" timeline on this example?:

I had problems with a 10 MB, 33 pictures, and one MP3 song exe playing the way it was supposed to on 2 different computers.

The only way to stay clear of on-the-spot generated show, machine horsepower issues is to make your shows into some form of movie, like VCD, SVCD, DVD etc., or even conversion to VHS as from another one of your posts. Igor says he is working on this capability for future Wnsoft products. Competing products have video disc capability but are sorely lacking in show design capability, for which PTE is best. Neither .EXEs nor video discs solve everything. The .EXE option may really be the most universal.

By the way, I love your beautiful photography - thank you for the link from your earlier post!:

Dustydesert's photography

[think(box)]

One other thing I should have mentioned - to the extent that audio is overextending machine performance requirements, Igor has nearly completed an important improvement for next release that will help:

Igor's note about better sound function and timing

Images will still be able to push a machine too far.

[boxig]

Cindy

Another partial solution is to let your customer view your exe from his hard drive which will make it look much better than running from a CD. You can check some utilities made for this purpose HERE.

[alrobin]

An exe slide show on a CD isn't working out real well because it seems everyone's computers process the pictures at different speeds, ..........

Cindy,

The only way to achieve consistency across a number of pc's is to sync the show to the music. This takes a little more "fiddling" to arrange the images, and to make sure there are no glitches due to incompatible transition/delay timing, but it's worth it in the end.

[nobeefstu]

Also keep in mind :

Most ScreenSavers are not meant to be user interactive as the executable is . They are meant just to be view.

Howerver, In the past versions of PTE I have created a few interactive PTE SCR files using some specific settings to needed to accomplish this.

[DustyDesert]

It was from the hard drive they viewed it. I did have to put the only slide show I've done so far on a video, but I don't have a video card or whatever it is I need yet, so I had someone do it for me. The pictures went faster than I had synced them for. Yes, it was synced to the music, and yes, it took a LOT of fiddling. For the final presentation that was for about 100 people, I put the music through an editor and had to speed it up to 97%, then I turned the TV volume down and played the new sound recording on a stereo. Problem is now, people want copies so I HAVE to get the card and do it myself. TV resolution is so dreadful, though, and I'm trying to sell art. So quality counts.

The computer I do this on is Pentium 4, 2.53GHz and 256 MB of RAM. Not a monster computer but not a dinosaur. I had problems with other computers slowing the pics down, and to speeding them up. The latter was a monster computer. The worst was the pics went so slow, though smoothly, and the song ended way before the pics and began to replay. I don't know what the system was for that one but the program was the 10 MB one.

What pixel size and file size works best? How low do you compress a jpeg file? It sounds like if I can get an exe to work, it might work better for me than the screen saver idea. It sure looks better on a monitor, unless the resolution has been reduced too much.

Bill, I'm glad you like my stuff! Thank you!

~Cindy

[alrobin]

I usually use image sizes no larger than 1024 x 768 pixels, compressed to a factor of around 50. This gives me image files of around 100 to 150 kb in size. And they still project quite well - well enough for our Camera Club presentations and competitions.

I set the jpeg quality in Photoshop, but you can also use a free utility such as IrfanView, or a whole host of other programs such as the ones supplied with digital cameras and scanners.

I find it hard to understand why your mp3 music plays faster on one pc than another. And, if the slides are synched to the music, they should cue in according to the settings, unless the file sizes are too large, or the transitions are too long, in which case you will usually see glitches, with some slides repeating, or the music skipping or stopping altogether. Test out a new version of the show with fast transitions, and smaller images to see if the problem is with someone's hardware, or mp3 program, and not the show itself.

Also, when these problems occur, disable any programs running in the background (even virus checkers), but especially fax programs, email and web browsers (my email program, itself, takes up a lot of RAM space, even when it is just sitting there waiting for mail).

Best of luck!

[think(box)]

Since you may not have a slow computer to test shows before giving to customer, I have suggested to Igor to add "required machine performance" indication for show developer while making show. It looks like this could take the guesswork out for this topic thread too. Check out my recent forum entry on this topic, describing proposed indicators:

Click to see proposed performance info indication by PTE to show developer

[DustyDesert]

That sounds like a great idea.

I do have a slow computer, and I'm going to reduce the file sizes to what alrobin said he uses. I thought they were small, but they were over 700 kb per picture. The music played fine and hasn't been a problem on any of the computers providing they played it from the hard drive. The pictures have been my problem.

[think(box)]

One thought for Igor to consider when telling user about performance issues found when show "Create" is done (my previous reply 2 posts ago):

When PTE tells show developer their show may fail due to performance demands, they may be stumped as to what do they do next. If PTE doesn't help them on the spot we will continue to get lots of requests in the forum for what to do. PTE should tell the show developer so they can get the job done fast! To that end they need a short list that PTE will give them if they do something like click a "?" question mark next to the "May fail" status indicated. The short "How to fix, general suggestions" list can include:

• Make pictures no larger than 800x600 or 1024x768
  
• Move slide transitions further apart where they are spaced very closely
  
• Set up show to play from hard drive instead of CD
  
• Suggest to show viewer to reduce screen area and restart show if there are problems
  
• Etc. - Forum can list more *short* and *one-line* fix suggestions