Digital Workshop

I am having difficulty getting my head round this, I can pre load images but not video, does anyone have any ideas please

This would be helpful to know..

I know you can preload individual objects when the page loads under the resource tab in the object properties.. but can you preload on a previous page?

Do you add the file to the additional resources tab for the page? Can you prelaod there.. and then it's ready to go when the you go to the page it's needed on??

Hi,

Thank you for your enquiry.

Image files must be loaded completely into memory before they can be displayed. It therefore makes sense to provide a 'Preload' option so that this loading can take place before the file is required. Without this option, you might experience noticeable delays when showing very large image files.

However, video files do not have to loaded completely into memory and can be 'streamed' from the CD (or hard disk, depending on the location of the publication). A 'Preload Video' option is therefore redundant as this preloading is part and parcel of the streaming process.

If you are noticing a delay between a Play Video action being issued and the video appearing on-screen, I suspect that you have set the Video mode to 'On Top'. As you may be aware, this video mode must establish a channel of communication with the Media Player engine before the video can be processed, resulting in a small delay (although the length of this delay obviously depends on the processor speed and current CPU/memory usage).

If you are using Opus Presenter, Opus Pro or Opus Pro XE 2.81, try disabling the On Top setting in the Video properties and check to see if this eliminates the delay. If you are using Opus Presenter 04, Opus Pro 04 or Opus Pro XE 04, try setting the video mode to Chroma Key or Rendered and test to see if the problem is addressed.

I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,

I didn't know that...

It's just that I'm using several video files at once on the page, several with effects and one as a background..

I thought maybe preload would speed things up a little! obviously I was wrong..

THANKS

Craig --

As computers get more powerful each day, it becomes more attractive to try fancier effects like simultaneously running multiple videos on one Page. This may work OK on your development computer, but if your Publication will ultimately run from a CD-ROM, on a lesser computer, then you are asking from trouble.

The reading speed of new CD-ROMs can be incredibly fast, but there are still many many computers with much slower read speeds, to the point it takes a couple of seconds to run even one large video, and that one may stutter, rather than running smoothly. Older computers with low amounts of Available Memory can even have problems running pre-loaded background applications, plus your OPUS Pub and videos.

In order to be safe, I'd suggest you think about your target audience's computers, and whether your Pub will be running directly from a CD-ROM drive, then go with "simple" rather than "whiz bang, gee whiz, watch me do this!" You might be able to combine videos on screen in your video editor, to create a single video file with multiple moving images playing at once as a work around.

I am speaking from experience in trying to get a Pub to be "over the top" and then having complaints that it doesn't run properly. I'm trying to spare you the problems I have gone through. This is not an OPUS issue, but rather a very possible computer resource problem.

Someone told me "a wise man learns from his own mistakes." I've found a truly wise man actually learns from the mistakes of others...

Yup

I know all that..but thanks anyway it helps those that don't

The presentation was running on a constant loop on the same machine it was developed on anyway so wasn't much of an issue in this instance. I just didn't realise that Opus handled video like that and was looking for clarity for future use. We mainly use it for live presentation on high end machines anyway...