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sptroy
Known Participant
April 30, 2009
Question

Very slow load times, how to diagnose?

  • April 30, 2009
  • 4 replies
  • 4951 views

Hello, I've put together some Captivate presentations of under 20 screens that seem to take a very long time (>1 min) to initially load in a browser.  Since some of it is marketing material, this doesn't work; people just close the browser rather than wait.

What sort of things should I be looking at to diagnose where my problem may be?  I see rapidly loading flash presentations all the time, and I would expect that mine, which are only a few minutes long, shouldn't be taking 10-20x as long to load.

Thanks for any help!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    4 replies

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    sptroyAuthor
    Known Participant
    May 22, 2009

    After some changing a few things around and looking at their effects, the problem appears to be from my adding jpeg photographs onto various slides.  They show people working at desks, etc., very small (usually under 100k), but that seems sufficent to jack individual slides to 1.5-3.5MB depending on how many appear on the individual slide.

    Seems weird, but it became obvious once I removed other effects.  The slides with added photos are the problem.

    Any suggestions on getting around this issue?  Can I make the image part of the background?

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    May 23, 2009

    When inserting photos in CP, I will always use the PNG24-format, never JPG but of course this depends on the way you are retrieving the photos and if you are optimizing them yourself. I just tried to insert a PNG-image of about 500K in a CP-file (800x600) and it resulted in 752Kb for the CP. When merged into the background, it leaped up to 1752K. So merging do not seem to be a good option. Even after deleting the original image in the library the size of the CP-file did not change. I then inserted on another slide a small JPEG (72K) and the size of the CP jumped to almost 2Mb.

    It was more of an intuition but this seems to prove that CP manages PNG24 much better than JPEG.

    S
    sptroyAuthor
    Known Participant
    May 13, 2009

    Hello, I'm revisiting this issue after being pulled away for a couple weeks.  Here are some of the details of this particular project.

    There are 19 slides, the running time is under 5 minutes.
    The swf file comes out to be 14.5 MB.
    I originally used the default settings; 30fps, compress complied swf file, advanced project compression, etc.
    This project has a voiceover.

    I assume there is something obviously wrong if my project is so big, but I'm not sure what it could be.

    I am happy to use the daisy chaining, but will that be transparent to the user?  Do they have to click through from one project to the next, or will it appear seamless to them as if it's just a normal automatic slide change (no "loading 1%, 10%, etc.)?

    Lilybiri
    Lilybiri
    Legend
    May 1, 2009

    Is it possible to provide more information: file size (SWF), settings when publishing, what kind of presentation (imported from ppt? audio? images and which format?). Those 20 slides can have so much different content, so it is very difficult to make any suggestions. P.e. did you change a lot and didn't you forget to delete the unused items? I'm just trying to understand your problem. Lilybiri

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      sptroyAuthor
      Known Participant
      May 1, 2009

      Lilybiri,

      Yes, I did change a lot. I also tried cutting the frame rate in half but to

      no effect.

      Is deleting unused items (images and audio) and slides important? There are

      many of both. I assumed that whatever didn't show up in the preview would

      not be incorporated into the course. Is that wrong?

      Lilybiri
      Lilybiri
      Legend
      May 1, 2009

      I'm not an expert but read quite a few times that it is a good practice to delete unused items. Sometimes it really leads to smaller file sizes. What was the file size of the CP and the SWF? You did not specify it there was audio (which settings to compress), a lot of images (settings?), size in pixels of the CP etc.

      I often publish SWF, created by CP4 leading to about 3.5MB. They are published to a LMS, and at that size waiting problems of about a minute only happens when at least 20 students try to load the movie at the same time. But I do not know how 'big' you problem is, please give some more information.

      Kind greetings, Lilybiri

      Precious_Galaxy157F
      Precious_Galaxy157F
      Inspiring
      May 1, 2009

      Hi sptroy,

      Hello and if you separate in pieces and make a load at the end of each presentation as the command "Open other project" that reduces a personal project I did a job well and has good.

      Fabio Oliveira

      S
      sptroyAuthor
      Known Participant
      May 1, 2009

      Sorry, I'm not sure if I was clear.  Once the project is published to a website, it takes a very long time to load once the link is clicked on.

      If we're talking about the same thing, how do you go about this "separate pieces" step?

      S
      sptroyAuthor
      Known Participant
      May 21, 2009

      Hello, checking back in as I seem to be running out of options and I can't seem to see why the load times are so long.

      What should a 5 minute narration size be in terms of MB?   Is audio a likely culprit?


      It turns out that even chopped up, the first section of 6 slides is a 10 MB swf.  Obviously that's too big.

      Any info on where I might look to see where all that size is coming from would be very appreciated.

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