Understanding Music

When I placed a 48 MB MP3 (45 minutes worth) in one of the 6 folders I
had on my VCD configuration it fills up my disk at 11 GBytes during
slide creation. Before adding music the slides show (including the PC
.EXE file) already used 589 MB.

What format is the sound converted to? How can I calculate how much
sound + pictures I could fit on a VCD? (already calculate that my
cameras stills come out to around 1700 pictures per CD at 4 seconds per
slide).

Thanks,
D.

[info_xatcom]

Hello

1700 pictures will fit without sound.

But with sound 1700 pics at 4 seconds = 113 mins which won't fit.

You can only fit about 60 mins on a CD.

Chris.

>When I placed a 48 MB MP3 (45 minutes worth) in one of the 6 folders I
>had on my VCD configuration it fills up my disk at 11 GBytes during
>slide creation. Before adding music the slides show (including the PC
>.EXE file) already used 589 MB.
>
>What format is the sound converted to? How can I calculate how much
>sound + pictures I could fit on a VCD? (already calculate that my
>cameras stills come out to around 1700 pictures per CD at 4 seconds per
>slide).
>
>Thanks,
>D.

OK,
I still need a little help understanding here. It is the length of the
slide show that will drive the additional size create by the sound then?
If I did 1700 pics at 2 second each it would be 56 minutes. If I add
then add MP3 file that is exactly 56 minutes long - should this fit on
one disk? Or is there an overhead to adding the music? I am not a VCD
expert, but it seems like it shouldn't add any overhead if it is VCD -
SVCD has variable bit rate which might make a difference when adding
music.

It would be great if XATSHOW would show a real time graph of my
remaining space so that as I add elements, I could see what was
happening (and for it to account for the PC slide shows also being on
the disk). This would allow me to know when to move one or two months
worth of photos to the next VCD.

Thanks much,
D.

_________________________________
Darwin Sanoy
Principal Consultant / Instructor
DesktopEngineer.com
WindowsInstallerTraining.com




Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 3:19 AM

Hello

1700 pictures will fit without sound.

But with sound 1700 pics at 4 seconds = 113 mins which won't fit.

You can only fit about 60 mins on a CD.

Chris.

>When I placed a 48 MB MP3 (45 minutes worth) in one of the 6 folders I
>had on my VCD configuration it fills up my disk at 11 GBytes during
>slide creation. Before adding music the slides show (including the PC
>.EXE file) already used 589 MB.
>
>What format is the sound converted to? How can I calculate how much
>sound + pictures I could fit on a VCD? (already calculate that my
>cameras stills come out to around 1700 pictures per CD at 4 seconds per
>slide).
>
>Thanks,
>D.

If you make a show that has 1700 slides and is 56 minutes long not only will this make a HUGE file on your machine, but your viewers will likely die a horrible death from "slideshow overdose." What is it you are doing that requires a 1700 slide show??

[info_xatcom]

Hello Darwin

>It is the length of the
>slide show that will drive the additional size create by the sound then?
Yes.

>If I did 1700 pics at 2 second each it would be 56 minutes. If I add
>then add MP3 file that is exactly 56 minutes long - should this fit on
>one disk?
Yes as long as you don't include a PC slideshow too.

>It would be great if XATSHOW would show a real time graph of my
>remaining space so that as I add elements, I could see what was
>happening (and for it to account for the PC slide shows also being on
>the disk). This would allow me to know when to move one or two months
>worth of photos to the next VCD.

Yes this is on the future features list.

Chris.

How would I calculate the PC slide show into the equation (since I am
using it) ?

I guess what I am driving to a formula that I can calculate how many
pictures with music and with a PC slide show can I fit onto a disk. I
can do the calculations, if I know the relationship between the sound
file and the size of the disk. It sounds like it is zero overhead to the
VCD - but what overhead does it add to the PC slide show?

Thanks,
D.

_________________________________
Darwin Sanoy
Principal Consultant / Instructor
DesktopEngineer.com
WindowsInstallerTraining.com




Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 12:34 PM

Hello Darwin

>It is the length of the
>slide show that will drive the additional size create by the sound
then?
Yes.

>If I did 1700 pics at 2 second each it would be 56 minutes. If I add
>then add MP3 file that is exactly 56 minutes long - should this fit on
>one disk?
Yes as long as you don't include a PC slideshow too.

>It would be great if XATSHOW would show a real time graph of my
>remaining space so that as I add elements, I could see what was
>happening (and for it to account for the PC slide shows also being on
>the disk). This would allow me to know when to move one or two months
>worth of photos to the next VCD.

Yes this is on the future features list.

Chris.

[info_xatcom]

Hello Darwin

>How would I calculate the PC slide show into the equation (since I am
>using it) ?

Its not 100% predictable (becasue JPEG compression isn't) and depends on image
size and quality.

xatshow should warn you if the CD will be too big.

Chris.

Yes I understand this - but I can easily calculate the average for my
camera and photo types by building a 1700 or 1200 slide disk and divide
by the total CD size (even with the PC slide show included it would
average out). I am not even looking for the total, just tell me what
overhead is added to the VCD and the PC slide show by the music, I can
calculate my own averages for the entire composition.

The results I am getting from our last conversation are confusing me - I
have a VCD that is much less than an hour and added a 45 minute music
file:

1) I put together a disk with 6 shows, total of 1200 slides with a PC
slide show included, the image file comes out to 415 MB.
2) I edit the same XATSHOW config and add a 45 Minute MP3 (48 MB) to the
menu root, deconfigure the PC slideshow and I get a warning that the
disk will be 2000 MB.
3) When I move the same music file to one of the slide show directories
I get no error, but XAT fills my harddrive up building the disk.

I guess I can't understand from the results how sound is supposed to
work and the help documentation does not explain it. So I can't even
get to any type of reasonable estimate of whether cutting my 1200
picture disk down to 600, 400, 100 pictures would give room for the
sound.

Thanks,
D.

PS - A couple follow up questions:
*) If I add sound that is shorter than the slides, does the sound file
get repeated, or does it just end?
*) Is there a way to add a sound file that applies to the entire disk
that has more than one slide show on it?

_________________________________
Darwin Sanoy
Principal Consultant / Instructor
DesktopEngineer.com
WindowsInstallerTraining.com




Sent: Monday, February 10, 2003 5:17 PM

Hello Darwin

>How would I calculate the PC slide show into the equation (since I am
>using it) ?

Its not 100% predictable (becasue JPEG compression isn't) and depends on
image
size and quality.

xatshow should warn you if the CD will be too big.

Chris.

[info_xatcom]

Hello
Let me answer these first:

>PS - A couple follow up questions:
>*) If I add sound that is shorter than the slides, does the sound file
>get repeated, or does it just end?

It gets repeated.

>*) Is there a way to add a sound file that applies to the entire disk
>that has more than one slide show on it?
No.

In your post you haven't given the delay between images. This is a critical
factor.

Chris.

The delay is 4 seconds, but I'm not sure you are understanding my
question.

Here is a follow up question - when a song repeats, do the bits for the
song get duplicated on the CD, or are they just referencing the same
copy within the structure of the VCD? Does the PCSLIDE Show act the
same (duplicating song bits versus referencing existing ones?).

I have started my own experimentation to determine the numbers for my
situation.
I am finding sound dramatically increases size:

A 345 Slide CD:
- 137 MB VCD with no sound
- 365 MB with sound (unique songs for each minute of VCD)
- 16 MB PCSLIDE show without sound
- 36 MB PCSLIDE show with sound

PC slide show amounts can simply be added together to get the numbers
for a VCD that has both on it.

I would like to suggest a feature that predicts how many photos could be
placed on a VCD. I could envision it using the following techniques /
algorithms:

*) Ask me to have a certain number of sample images for my average
composition (assumes that many users will be using the same camera and
similar picture types - but averaged across enough photos this should be
able to be relatively accurate.
*) Perform benchmarking of those images (most likely creating sample
temporary shows and tracking the time and size).
*) Report the approximate number of pictures per disk for the following
composition scenarios:
- VCD slide show(s) only
- VCD Slide shows w/ sound
- VCD slide show(s) only w/ PCSLIDE show
- VCD slide show(s) w/ sound and w/ PCSLIDE show
- PC slide show only
- PC slide show w/ Sound

You could output it as a slider scale in MB that shows each of the above
on the slider and then shows the capacity of 650 MB CD, 700 MB CD, 2.4
GB DVD

I would be great to let it do the calculations and then let me
dynamically change the following items and it could change the graph:
- number of slides
- length of delay
- with or without music
- with or without PC slide show
- with or without full archive copy (when the feature becomes available)

Optionally this procedure could predict how long it will take to build a
show on a given PC since you could benchmark the time as well.

*) Also a pie in the sky feature idea - what about building a plug-in
for Canto Cumulus - now that would sell like hotcakes - especially if
all the above prediction algorithms were built in so I could have
XATSHOW build a full archiving system that included musicfied VCDs with
canto cataloged images.

Anyway, please drop a line on the issue of whether song bits are
duplicated - which would mean there is no benefit to purposely
configuring shorter, repeating songs - or whether repeating songs cause
the same song bits to be referenced multiple times.

D.

_________________________________
Darwin Sanoy
Principal Consultant / Instructor
DesktopEngineer.com
WindowsInstallerTraining.com




Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 6:26 AM

Hello
Let me answer these first:

>PS - A couple follow up questions:
>*) If I add sound that is shorter than the slides, does the sound file
>get repeated, or does it just end?

It gets repeated.

>*) Is there a way to add a sound file that applies to the entire disk
>that has more than one slide show on it?
No.

In your post you haven't given the delay between images. This is a
critical
factor.

Chris.