[Rayan]

Hi, I recently bought the Roxio 2009 spcl edition. I am trying to create a slide show using the Videowave and I find the tool is in general very slow. It particularly takes a long time to start the application, open projects previously created, to save and close the application etc. The first slide show project I have created has these features:

About 175 photos
I am using pan & zoom on all
I have only about 10 or so special transitions in the entire slideshow; I am not using special transitions between every photo
I have background audio files

My PC is 3.2 GHz P4, 1GB RAm, Radeon X800 video card, SATA 7200 RPM

My goal is to add video etc, but I am disappointed with the slowness. Is this the general experience with this product or all other media production tools?

Thanks for suggestions.

[Jim_Hardin]

Your PC looks pretty good, probably state of art package several years ago…

I suggest the first thing you try is in MyDVD or VideoWave, go to Tools – Options – Render and set it to Software.

Slow is a pretty relative term. It can be seen readily in comparing warming water to make tea – electric range vs gas range vs microwave…

But not so much in comparing paint drying times

[grandpabruce]

Hi, I recently bought the Roxio 2009 spcl edition. I am trying to create a slide show using the Videowave and I find the tool is in general very slow. It particularly takes a long time to start the application, open projects previously created, to save and close the application etc. The first slide show project I have created has these features:

About 175 photos
I am using pan & zoom on all
I have only about 10 or so special transitions in the entire slideshow; I am not using special transitions between every photo
I have background audio files

My PC is 3.2 GHz P4, 1GB RAm, Radeon X800 video card, SATA 7200 RPM

My goal is to add video etc, but I am disappointed with the slowness. Is this the general experience with this product or all other media production tools?

Thanks for suggestions.

There seems to be a problem with that video card/chip.

http://forums.support.roxio.com/index.php?showtopic=55487

[Rayan]

Re: There seems to be a problem with that video card/chip.

I checked out the forum you suggested. It looks like a scary wild ride to me. But I will explore.

One key difference in what is reported on the X800 thread vs my situation is, everything works on my pc i.e., no blank window or crashes etc, except it is awfully slow as I said. I just wonder about the Roxio SW itself.

Thanks for good suggestions.

[sknis]

Hi, I recently bought the Roxio 2009 spcl edition. I am trying to create a slide show using the Videowave and I find the tool is in general very slow. It particularly takes a long time to start the application, open projects previously created, to save and close the application etc. The first slide show project I have created has these features:

Thanks for suggestions.

Slow to start, save and close may not be a video card issue. Here are a couple of questions and suggestions.

Do you have any other programs that are slow to open? I'm sure that you have an anti-virus program; can you set that to NOT scan items that are already on your computer? That should speed up things. When did you last defrag your hard drive? Try the free and fast Auslogics Defraggmenter. How large a hard drive do you have and how much free space?

Go into Windows>Start>Run and type in msconfig>OK. Go to the start up tab and uncheck everything that you don't need to start when you boot up your computer. If in doubt, leave it checked or go on-line to get more information on that choice. You will than have to reboot, acknowledge that you made changes and tell it not to bug you again about the changes.

If this is a new installation, perhaps Roxio's Media Manager is running to catalog all the image, video and music files on your hard drive. You can go into Media Manager and turn that off if you don't want it. You could also just let it do its things and it will be faster the next time.

If you open Video Wave and look at Windows Task Manager, what is using the high CPU time (processes)?

[Rayan]

I want to give you some updates to this issue:

I have tried setting SW rendering....it seems to help a little bit.

I do not believe the video card is the problem, atleast mine. I run lots of heavy applications and it has never been an issue.

There was one application running in the background- and HP utility, which seemed to slow down things a little, because it is checking the ink levels all the time. I turned it off and that improved the video wve start time.

The main issue may be the resolution of the pictures itself. Some of the pics I am using are very high res which is not needed for the slide show. Ideally I should select all the pics I want to put in the slide show, reduce the resolution on theme and then insert into the slide show track. Well, that takes lot of work, so I was doing by brute force. That is probably one reason for the slowness.

I still have problem with this Roxio application though. Even inserting text, editing them takes a long time.

In the long run, I think I am going to explore some other programs.

Thanks for ur help!!

[myguggi]

I want to give you some updates to this issue:

I have tried setting SW rendering....it seems to help a little bit.

I do not believe the video card is the problem, atleast mine. I run lots of heavy applications and it has never been an issue.

There was one application running in the background- and HP utility, which seemed to slow down things a little, because it is checking the ink levels all the time. I turned it off and that improved the video wve start time.

The main issue may be the resolution of the pictures itself. Some of the pics I am using are very high res which is not needed for the slide show. Ideally I should select all the pics I want to put in the slide show, reduce the resolution on theme and then insert into the slide show track. Well, that takes lot of work, so I was doing by brute force. That is probably one reason for the slowness.

I still have problem with this Roxio application though. Even inserting text, editing them takes a long time.

In the long run, I think I am going to explore some other programs.

Thanks for ur help!!

Do any of your "heavy applications" involve video? If not then that comment means nothing. Video work is slow and requires heavy CPU usage and that is why you should have no other apps running while doing video.

All photos gat reduced to the same resolution no matter what the source resolution is. There is nothing gained by doing any reduction before hand.

I have a slow machine compared to yours and I have no "slow" problems.

[Jim_Hardin]

Resolution of the pictures has never been an issue… Many users ‘think’ it is but it has proven unfounded.

[Rayan]

It is interesting to know that you both are saying the resolution of pics do not matter in terms of speed. My project has about 300 slides, no video. Every time I open the project or save it, the hour glass sits for 10 mins. If the resolution is automatically reduced, I do not know why it would take that long. Also where is Videowave saving these low resolution files? Because I see the size of my .dmsm file is only 3.4 MB and the .dat file is only 4 MB. Even at a low res of 640x480, i should see somewhere Roxio creating 90MB file for 300 pics. So I am lost on this resolution topic.
Thanks.

[myguggi]

It is interesting to know that you both are saying the resolution of pics do not matter in terms of speed. My project has about 300 slides, no video. Every time I open the project or save it, the hour glass sits for 10 mins. If the resolution is automatically reduced, I do not know why it would take that long. Also where is Videowave saving these low resolution files? Because I see the size of my .dmsm file is only 3.4 MB and the .dat file is only 4 MB. Even at a low res of 640x480, i should see somewhere Roxio creating 90MB file for 300 pics. So I am lost on this resolution topic.
Thanks.

The actual reduction is most likely not done until you output. The program does not really need the reduced image until rendering.
VW does not create any video output until you Output to a video file. The dmsm file does not contain any video and the dat files propably contain the thumbnail images

[grandpabruce]

It is interesting to know that you both are saying the resolution of pics do not matter in terms of speed. My project has about 300 slides, no video. Every time I open the project or save it, the hour glass sits for 10 mins. If the resolution is automatically reduced, I do not know why it would take that long. Also where is Videowave saving these low resolution files? Because I see the size of my .dmsm file is only 3.4 MB and the .dat file is only 4 MB. Even at a low res of 640x480, i should see somewhere Roxio creating 90MB file for 300 pics. So I am lost on this resolution topic.
Thanks.

A 3.4MB .dmsm file is huge, since there is no video or audio in that file. It is a set of instructions on what you have told the software to do with the files that you fed it.

Your video card/chip IS the problem, IMHO. Either that, or you have a lot of junk in the trunk, on your computer, and all of it is running while you are doing video work.

This post has been edited by grandpabruce: 29 September 2009 - 06:34 PM