Digital Workshop

Just after an opinion really, my publication has 244 pages, most of which use PNGs taken from screenshots. There is a fair amount of audio in there as well in OGG format.

My question is, is an hour to publish 244 pages on a machine with specs below, unreasonable? Is that what others are getting?

I notice when publishing, the dialogue box hangs on each PNG for about ten seconds.

I use PNGs for accurate rendering of screen shots, is this the right choice?

Opinions most welcome, thanks in advance Buns.

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Opus Pro 6.01
XP SP2
1GB
Pent 4
Mobility Radeon 7500

What's the clock speed of your P4? My desktop is 3.2 GHz. A 30 page marketing pub with enbedded video, audio, and 100 JPEG files (each of which was sized in Paint Shop Pro to the needed dimensions) will take less than 3 minutes the first time I Publish. I use "Incremental" so the next time I Pub it goes even faster (a few seconds).

I use PNG files when I need the Transparency feature. GIFs work also for Transparency. Are you using "Fixed" for the size of each screen grab, or are you asking OPUS to "Fit to size?" That would really slow the Publication.

How much available hard drive space do you have? Have you done a de-frag lately? I have my OPUS files on a separate HD other than my C:\ drive.

OPUS tells you the time for each Pub. As a test, on 10 Pages, correctly size your PNG images, then save them as JPGs. See if your Pub time is reduced.

Thanks demofred, my P4 is a 1.5GHz Mobile, I know - I'm desparately trying to convince my boss I need a grown up desktop.

I use incremental, my PNGs are about 30K each, and yes I use 'Fixed'.
My HDD is regular defrag'd, I do use a network drive, but ours is quite fast, and as a test I copied all the resources locally with no appreciable increase in speed.

I'm loath to use JPEGs as the publication is software simulation, so I cant have artefacting.
Could be I just need desktop horsepower plain and simple.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Regards, Buns
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Opus Pro 6.01
XP SP2
1GB
Pent 4 M 1.5GHz
Mobility Radeon 7500

I have a kooky feeling that the published version converts certain media types anyway and PNGs without transparency are converted to JPG.

Mack

Mack is right. OPUS defaults to compressing everything and converting files to JPEG. Take a look at the Publish -> Options settings. You can change these, but the size of your Pub will be much larger.

Cheers, I already have that setting unticked, was toying with converting them all to BMPs after the project is finished, just to see if it makes a difference.

At the sacrifice of server space..

Regards, buns

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Opus Pro 6.01
XP SP2
1GB
Pent 4
Mobility Radeon 7500

Just for a test, untick "Enable File Compression." The "Note" specially indicates the greater the Compression Level, the longer the publishing process time. If you are running your Pub from a hard drive rather than from a CD-ROM, you shouldn't care about the final size (within reason).

Me right? It must be a Friday

If you can zip and upload the file (you might need to use something like SaveFile) I'll have it run on one of our grown-up desktops to give you a speed comparison.

Mack

Bingo! That would appear to be the reason for long build times.

It finished in ten minutes, however my publication ballooned from 20MB to 500MB

As I need this to be a web download, I guess I'll set it to build each night as I go home...

Many thanks for your help guys, at least I know what the problem is now, I'll stick with small file/long build times for this project at least.

Regards, Buns

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Opus Pro 6.01
XP SP2
1GB
Pent 4
Mobility Radeon 7500