Estimated Output Size

[rkligman Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hi there. I'm a brand new Producer user. I have a question specifically about the .px output size. I notice that as I adjust my Show options Display size, Resizing and Rendering, the output bar under the preview window shows you the estimated size of the file it will generate. When it shows 1Mb+, I generate a 9Mb .px file and when it says 4.5Mb, it's generating a 28Mb file. Why is it so far off? I can understand a few 100k but it's consitently telling me the show is going to be 15-25% of the size it actually will be. Right now it's just a learning/curiousity thing. Of course if I can get the same output and have the show be that size, that would be awesome!

[Rik 101]

I think i understand what you are saying but I'm not quite sure.
Are you specifically referring to the px. size for uploading to Photodex site OR
Are you referring to the sliding scale of output sizes ?.

If so this changes depending on what output you are selecting ie a show for the web i am working on is 39.5 Mb but if i change the Tab to DVD it changes to 1.1 Gb this however still wont be accurate as it will then depend on what settings you use when you burn a DVD ie the compression ratio that the final DVD is encoded at.
Does this help?

I'm curious as to what your main concern about different file sizes is ? I think it would be helpful if you could answer that question first
As far as the px. size goes I personally wouldnt be worrying about it ~ Make the show how you want and let Producer worry about what it needs to do to run it as a px stream

If you check out most of the shows on Photodex they have a range from 8-9Mb to 100MB with the odd exception (200- 300) but all seem to load reasonably quickly.
The output size depends greatly on what you are going to do with your show. For example , I use producer mainly to produce (no pun intended) LOL uncompressed avi files for importing into a video editing program and the file sizes can be huge. But thats what I want to keep the quality as recoding an MPEG is like multiple saving of a JPEG (not good)

If you are outputting to DVD, a good rule of thumb (i speak from video editing) is to avoid exceeding 1hr and half on a 4.7 Gb DVD as quality does suffer. I recently compressed 2hrs 20 of an old wedding video ( VHS tape) onto a DVD as the client specifically wanted it on ONE DVD The quality was worse than the original tape despite me having some sophisticated hardware doing the conversion.

So i then burnt it to a dual layerd Disc 8GB of capacity and the difference was amazing.

Hope some of that is helpful to you or others

Regards Rick

[rkligman Profile Private messageWebsite]

Correct, I am referring to the sliding scale of output sizes that is directly under the Preview window.

Right now I'm really not concerned about the final size but I'm curious as to why it's so far off. Obviously they put it there for a reason and if it's not going to be accurate, I'd rather it went away to free up some space.

[Rik 101]

Ok thats easy.

Top of your screen Click to get the drop down menu under "Window"
Now you will see a list of options including Show Size. Tick or untick to Hide or show . Also untick "Show info" for more space and
Experiment with the others too There is lots you can do to gain more working space. Use the 'F" (function keys) at the top for quick changes.
You can adjust how Producer displays the different windows too by moving them around to suit your style. I am fortunate to have two displays ( almost essential for video editing ) so I have made a custom layout that can then be saved.

If you play around and "stuff it up' Just click Window and down the bottom default layout and hey presto you should be back to normal.
A word of caution If you are going to make changes MAKE SURE that you save a layout AND name it as a CUSTOM ONE rather than making it the default as then you will have nothing to return back to if things go awry.

Hope that helps.

Rick

[rkligman Profile Private messageWebsite]

Thanks Rick. I found how to remove the Show Size but I didn't see how to move the windows. I thought they didn't move until you said they did. The only issue I have with that is the File Window doesn't seem to move. It always wants to sit flush left. Is that correct?

There are two ways to Add slides. Drag n Drop or right click and Add Slide. The problem is, the new slide always goes to the far right and my pictures are on the left. So the DnD method is a lot of mouse movement. If I go with a smaller Preview window then I can get the images to sit right on top of the Timeline. Choices, choices.