#FLC and CD Performance
6 messages in this thread
I have just cut a master CD which includes several large FLC's and WAV files.
When these FLC's are played back from the CD they are extremely jerky and slow.
In particular, three FLC/WAV combinations. The FLC's range in size from 9.5 to
14.5 megs, and the WAV's from 11 to 19megs. The problem is obvious in that the
I cannot transfer data fast enough from the CD to play both file types.
Has anyone got any suggestions on how to overcome this problem? Would JPEG or
MPEG compression help me? The only solution I came up with is to tranfer both
files to hard disk, however, it's not acceptable since the user would require
an inordinate amount of disk space to run the program.
Help!
Thanks,
Mike C.
Running FLCs from a CD – sounds like you're doing 640×480 animations. These
could be hard to play from a hard disk, depending on the action. JPEG and MPEG
are tricky options, since not everyone can read these files. Since AVI files
seem to be around 320×240, and are somewhat acceptable, can you redo your
animations to FLI 320×200? I think you can probably find a CD or 2 with some
FLI files that you can play back as a sample.
Nik:
Thanks for the reply. They are 640 X 480's. They run fine from a hard disk, and
I developed several at 320 X 200 but they don't have the pizzazz I wanted to
achieve at that resolution. A partial solution I have found is to use Red Book
for the sound and copy the FLC's to HD. Performance is somewhat degraded,
however, with choreographing, I think I can overcome some of these limitations.
Cut, compression would be helpful simply due to size.
You say JPEG and MPEG are tricky. Can you tell me why?
Again, thanks for the reply and suggestions.
Mike, MPEG might be tricky because the playback device will need to
have an MPEG decoder hardware or software device to interpret the
MPEG datastream. Encoding MPEG from video is now relatively
straightforward albeit expensive (we charge L36.50 per encoded
minute) However, in the New Year we expect to hear of more VGA cards
like the VideoImpact from Truevision which has a built in MPEG
decoder chip. Reelmagic currently sell a L399.00 decoder board and
Videologic are about to (or may already have) launch a similar thing.
There are others. Its rumoured that the top-end PowerPC will have an
MPEG decoder chip embedded on the motherboard.
Flitape will enable you to lay your animation to tape for encoding
through this process or alternatively use an off-line software
encoder (try the shareware libraries) to do a frame by frame job on
the original FLC. You can then multiplex the video and audio streams
together and play them back as one file.
The result looks good and will play off a CD running at CD-Audio speeds (=
single-speed CD-ROM) or a hard disc.
Does this help?
Robin
Robin:
I thank you. That's the exact info I need, and its a solution to the problem.
Thanks,
Mike C.
Robin,
Thanks for your info – I'm not familiar with this area and I appreciated your
comments too.