Startup Movie

[PaulW]

My project has a startup movie. It is an mpeg with a data rate of about 1300kbs. I have tested the project on an old PC and the startup movie played back very jumpy. I just wondered whether this could be caused by slower CD drives which have not had the chance to spin up to full speed when the application starts.

Could this be the reason for the jumpy playback. If so, would it be better for the startup movie to be on the first page of my project with a delay, allowing slower cd-rom drives to spin up.

I could be barking up the wrong tree here but I found that the other mpeg on the disc with the same data rate played back ok from the same drive.

Is there any way to make the startup movie play smoother?

[Corey]

I might be wrong but that data rate sounds a bit high, i.e. I keep my vids to around 250 K/sec or so... What happens when you play it in a standalone player?

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software (http://www.indigorose.com)

[PaulW]

Hi Corey. I need the mpeg file to be very good quality for full screen playback. Therefore, my minimum system requirements will probably include 10 x CD-ROM drive.

I just found it strange that the drive that I tested on played the 2nd mpeg fine but struggled with the startup movie.

I think I'll need to do some more testing. I need to get constant access to a slower drive. I didn't try playing the first mpeg in a standalone player so that could be a good start point.

[eric_darling]

Corey,

I think he mean 1300 kbps, not 1300 KBps.

FWIW, that rate (the kbps one) should be just fine, and well within spec for even the slowest CD-ROM drives. 1300 kbps = 162.5 KBytes. So, that probably isn't the problem.

Here are a couple of tips that you might not have considered, however.

1) DO NOT use VBR for your MPEG-1 encodes. It will make them look nicer, but it will require a faster computer to decode.

2) Using Nero or other burning software (I use Nero), make sure you set the MPEG file's priority to "high," which ensures that that particular file will be placed toward the outer tracks on a CD-ROM disc, where the disc is able to spin at higher speeds.

3) You may want to "fake" your startup movie, since other stuff might be initializing from the CD at the same time. Try not using the startup movie option, instead putting the same file on a first page, that is set to jump on the end of the movie to the real beginning of your project on another page.

[PaulW]

Yes your right Eric, sorry, I did mean 1300 kbps. I also use Nero and I have been setting the priority of my mpegs to high.

I have disabled my startup movie as you suggested and have added my splash movie to the first page with a page.jump on finish. I'm hoping this will be better because the application will have time to get started before the movie plays.

I will also take a look my compression settings. I will check but I'm sure I did not use VBR.

Thanks for your suggestions Eric.

Just a final question. Does anyone no of a way to simulate a slow CD drive or to slow a CD drive down? Is there a program out there? Or maybe I just need to buy an old pc for testing.

[Corey]

A testing emulator would make a great plug-in/add-on. Something with an attractive but simple GUI (like Sorenson Squeeze) which offers a variety of throttles via some buttons such as, "16X Win98SE 256RAM" or "12X WinXP 128RAM" or even allows you to set those factors manually via pull downs so you can freely combine element values (ile. CD Drive speed, HD speed, CPU speed, OS, etc.) to create custom emulation profiles on the fly. Even if it was only about 70-80% accurate it would be an awesome tool.

A "test all" feature would be great too, to automatically generate a report of your project across all possible emulation combinations.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software (http://www.indigorose.com)

[PaulW]

That's a great idea Corey. I'm sure everyone would find that extremely useful. Would be good to hear from some of the plug-in experts out there. Would this be easy to create?