Autorun CDs

[waweva]

Hello all:
I have been using Proshow Gold and Producer for many years.
My problem is very simple: Proshow is excellent for DVDs, but if you get an Autorun CD, Proshow has many problems. I have an excellent video card, but motion in autorun CDs is not perfect. If I use smoothing at 100%, the problem remans the same. What a solution? Does anybody know a real professional software which allows to make excellent :lol: Autorun CDs?

Thanks to all

[hardsoftware Profile Private message]

I've never made an auto run cd so what follows is just a thought if what might be happening.

Perhaps the read from the CD is the bottleneck. The computer is fast enough but has to wait for the CD to load the information so that it could do its thing. Kind of a "hurry up and wait" type of deal. Perhaps one of the Guru's here can better explain it better.

Ben

[waweva]

Thanks Bell. This is not the problem. There is some delay but it is acceptable. What I want to say is that all the motion excellences (panning, zooming, rotating, multiple layers, etc) run perfectly in DVDs and videos, but this is not the same for Autorun CDs or executables in PCs. That is the reason why most slideshow softwares don´t use motion in CDs, only in DVDs-videos. But, if Proshow Producer, as a professional software, gives the alternative to use or DVD or CD, we should have no problem. And the aspects they suggest: smoothing at 100%, 800 x 600 Limit image display size or Limit rendering size, etc. don´t solve the problem. Moreover, if you have the best PC components: excellent video card, 4 GB RAM, superior processors, etc, you have the same problem.
I am a professional. If one of my customers tells me that has problems (stop, stuttering, stop and continue) to see my Autorun CDs I gave to him, then the product is not professional. I need excellence. That is the isuue.
Can anyone tell me if you know a REAL excellent and professional software for Autorun CDs for PCs (not for DVDs)?

Walter Wellmann

[VidQueen Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hi Walter,

I don't really have a solution to your problem, but I can tell you that the smoothing setting has nothing to do with the final output format of your show. 100% smooth will make your image ease in and out of position/rotation/scale and 0% smoothing will make it a constant in and out. Smoothing settings won't affect the output, whether on CD or DVD.

I am inclined to say that no matter what format you put your show on, if you are giving it to your client and, therefore, can't control the computer in which they play it on, it won't matter what program you use.

I should also say that even though Computer screens and tv screens look alike, they are truely different animals. If you want your videos to look sharp and professional, tell your clients not to view them on their computer screen. If they have thier monitor set to 1024 x 768 (which you can't control; it's their monitor) and you've given them a CD set to 800 x 600 and they "Full Screen" it, it's like stretching your images to 140%. Ick.

I'm sure my babbling didn't help you in the least, I'm sorry! Just know that technology isn't perfect and the only way that you can have a 100% perfect outcome 100% of the time is to control how and where your video is played.

Cheers!
Jennifer

[waweva]

Hello hardsoftware: It seems to me that you are okey. The bottleneck is the read from the CD. What could be the solution? I need urgently a solution.
I wonder if you or anybody can help this poor child.

Walter Wellmann V.

[weldr Profile Private message]

I burned 3 Autorun CD's last night. Two ran smooth, on my computer, one was a bit jerky. Haven't trien them a on any other computers. Don

[TracyM]

The problem is a CD drive is likely unable to keep pace with your system. Your show will almost always run faster when the executable is running from the hard drive instead. Try copying the executable from the CD to your C: drive and run it from there. It should work much better. If you're worried about your customers the most compatible way would probably be a regular DVD. You'll lose quality but DVD players are much more standardized than computers. That's my experience anyway.

Hello hardsoftware: It seems to me that you are okey. The bottleneck is the read from the CD. What could be the solution? I need urgently a solution.
I wonder if you or anybody can help this poor child.

Walter Wellmann V.

[waweva]

Thanks Tracy: I can not believe that there is no solution for the problem. My idea is the next: if Proshow Producer offers Autorun CDs as one of its products, they must be very responsible for the same, because I have bought a professional software. But if you read www.photodex.com, they do not speak too much about the problems we are talking about. That is my complaint. And this must produce controversy. And my first idea is true: Proshow only works well in videos (DVDs-VCDs, etc), BUT NOT IN PC (Autorun CDs).

Definitelly, I would make the next questions. I hope someone can help me. I am very grateful for your opinions:
1) How to solve the CD drive velocity (without copying the executable from the CD to my C (I can not say such a thing to my costumer))?
2) Does anyone know a specialized professional software for Autorun CDs, not for videos or DVDs?. My SlideShow ( from www.anixsoft.com) is one of the alternatives.

Walter Wellmann

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Walter - assuming you are running into a "data transfer rate" issue,
there are many variables that affect this and only a couple of them
are under Photodex's control. They could probably smooth it out
some by changing their software that actually is part of the "exe" to
buffer more data to RAM in the pc when playing, but that has potential
issues depending on how much RAM the destination PC has, what other
tasks are running etc. The transfer speed is also dependant on what
media you wrote to (some can be read faster than others), how fast
a CD drive is that is being used to read that CD (and what else is on
the same IDE connector that can be slowing things down -second drive etc).
It also depends on how fast the PC is that it is running on and what else
is running on it at the same time (other tasks) - some people have LOTS
of stuff in the background - either on purpose of because they have
installed so much junk. If you are trying to play this on an older
machine with a 4x CD-ROM and limited memory, you are going to have
problems with anything more than a very simple show.

What you can do to make it as good as possible is to make sure you
use good media that is easy for the destination drive to read (there are
some free test utilities out there you can use to "scan" a CD or DVD and
see how it reads back. You may want to experiment - I'm not sure just
how original picture size affects the data rate in the exe (it has no effect
on the DVD because it gets "rendered" to the size it needs). You might
experiment with using smaller pictures and see if that helps. You might
also want to experiment and see if using a smaller display size has any
impact on how it playes.

I personally have not had any issues with an exe, but there are a number
of variables that affect how that is going to play and while Photodex can
do some stuff (like possibly buffering the data better in RAM), manyof
them are outside of their control.

Hope this helps some.

mikey

[briancbb Profile Private message]

Walter

I'm going to add in some more info to what Mikey has said about 'transfer speed'.

The standard transfer rate required for an mpg2 movie, be it in PAL or NTSC is 9.8 Mb/s or about 1.225 MB/s.

A CD x1 transfers 0.150 MB/s and at x8 1.2MB/s, hardly enough to sustain an mpg2 movie resolution.

However a DVD x1 transfers 1.321MB/s which will sustain an mpg2 movie, and you are quids in at x8 which is 10.57MB max. (It is infact lower than this as this is only achieveable over part of the disc.

As you may now realise transferring data from a CD is nowhere near the rate of a DVD, hence with high resolution video cannot sustain the rate required, hence flicker.

I am no expert but this is just gleaned in a couple of 'google' searches and the above may be subject to interpretation as regard rates near and away from the centre of the disc, but is largely accurate with a pinch of salt.

Brian