I could really use some help here... please

[anne]

I have created a presentation for a company. They love it and have approved it but now the website people are not happy with it and want me to reduce my images from 1200x1200 px @50% jpg to 755x755. I was told that reducing the image quality would decrease the CPU usage. I was also told that optimal flash apps should probably not tax the targeted systems cpu any more than 50%.


Thoughts?

[HansNyberg]

Hi Anne

They seems to have very limited knowledge about internet today and how flash works,

Flash used as interactive or as video always use up to 100% or even more on dualcores.
Take CNN video. My Safari uses up to 115%
Here is one of the latest IKEA, it use s from 80 to 110%
http://www.kominigarderoben.se/

You can probably find hundreds of similar examples from the worlds largest companies.
Your site only uses 88% even during autopanning,

750x750 means that your viewing size should be max 500x700 pixels

It sounds that they do not even know about the Flash security restrictions for local viewing which every flashdeveloper should know about.

Hans

[Trausti Hraunfjord]

the app was so processor heavy that it crashed jen's machine every time she tried to run it. Her machine is only 5 years old and has a decent memory and she is running windows 2000

I compared your pano project with some of my own (reduced my file sizes to fit yours, then went down to 750x750) and yours is absolutely decently running (dual core AMD).

That these folks are requesting full viewing performance on a 5 year old machine that runs 10 year old software, is nothing short of laughable.

"decent memory" they say... for a 5 year old machine, that would probably be 128 mb... back then 128mb was seen as "decent". Today "decent" in normal consumer terms, is 1gb... but rapidly moving to 2gb.

My single core 1.6 ghz centrino 3 year old laptop (now upgraded to 2gb memory) with 10+ pdf files open in acrobat, a few excel files open, outlook, 20+ tabs in the browser plus a few other things, had no problem opening and running your pano on top of everything else.... so for me it is absolutely clear that the problem is NOT on your side, but rather on their end, where they are trying to find excuses and create problems that are not present.

[cheathamlane]

Anne:

See my responce to your post at:
http://flashpanos.com/forum/need-some-help-please-0

[Ewart]

Hi Anne,

Nice Tour :) I always give them 3 versions of the tour on the DVD I deliver. I take the same swf / xml & resources and put it in 3 folders, 'High Quality,Medium Quality,Web Quality'. The only difference between the folders is the cube images. I use Photoshop 'Save for Web' to size & compress the tiles. I give them the option to run the different quality tours from a batch file in the root folder.

This way they decide what size vs quality is acceptable to them and the client. I live in South Africa where a lot of people are still on dialup, so people have asked me to resize to 50k total!

Good luck,
Ewart

[LepLep]

at your place i would resize lets say down to 20-30% from actual quality and let them choose

tiny tiny thing: while on "staenberg studio" pano, after click on hide filmstrip it doesnt hide its miniature

[Jareish]

I alsoo deal with customers like these. Best is to give them a bone, even if it means that the tour is ugly.

Stuff you could try:
Decrease the segments
Use the shrinking parameter
Load in passes (first preview then load the high quality)
Qualitymotion = low

Saying that a laptop of 5 yrs with decent memory, doesnt say a thing. You can have a celeron in there with shared memory ddr 1. + windows 2k = ancient.

I use pano's of 6000x3000 @ 1.5mb. Laptops of 5 yr old with just 1gb or Ram can run it pretty much smoothly @ fullscreen.

[anne]

Thanks everyone for your helpful input. I ran a test with a reduced pano @ 755x755 which is the size he wanted me to make them and I came up with this.

I have three computers, one that is a year old, a four-year-old laptop and also a five-year-old laptop. I compared the CPU usage on all three computers between the COCA presentation and a test presentation where I reduced the lobby panoramas to 755x755. On my 5-year-old laptop the CPU usage went from 96% to 95%. On the four-year-old computer it stayed the same and on my one-year-old computer it went from 44% to 43%. However the image quality on the reduced one is terrible and a 1% decrees in CPU usage hardly justifies it.


Also, here is what really surprised me. I checked the CPU usage for a low-end real estate tour (also Flash) and it actually had a higher CPU usage than one of my panos. These images are very low quality and they sent my laptop to 100% CPU usage.
http://www.obeo.com/Public/Search/AgentSearchResults.aspx?agent=98737

When you turn off the auto-rotation the usage goes down considerably but reducing the image size doesn't change a thing.

[izoneguy]

Yes the reduced image quality is not worth trying to be all things to all computers. Having to do a high res and low res version is usually not worth it either. I would strike a balance and make the quality acceptable to MOST viewers and don't worry about someone who has a less than adaquate computer. Those folks know they can't view most of the eye candy available so they won't get mad at you because they don't even try to view presentations like you have done.

[Trausti Hraunfjord]

I also told this web designer........


That's the way to do it!

I don't agree with "the customer is always right" concept. If the customer is wrong, I say it as it is. If that results in a lost client, then I at least come out of the deal with my dignity intact.

Clearly I am not very good material for a diplomat, but fortunately I never felt like going onto the champagne sipping path, wearing butterflies around my neck and such.

Indeed the panoramas ARE a visual experience, and to limit the user from accessing a full screen, when the image quality can supply it... is simply plain wrong.

Glad to hear that the company agrees with you!

[gordee]

Good for you anne! the web guy sounds like a dinosaur who is sick of his job and jealous of yours!