Upper Limit on Number of Slides

Russ_Croucher

I'm loading folders of slides into Photostage and there seems to be an upper limit on to the number of slides before the program becomes too slow. I found that 225 slides or less works great. Somewhere around 300 slides is a problem. Does anybody know what the limit is where it slows down incredibly too slow?

At this point I'm going to write my own code to convert 200 slides at a time. I have some folders that have over 1000 slides. I like the idea that Photostage adds the file name to the slides scrolling on the bottom. I will then use video pad to merge all the MP4 files into one final product.

I would automate this entirely since I could start this procedure on a computer in the background. What you think?

JanP

Hello Russ,

I would recommend reaching out to NCH Support team regarding this on this link: https://www.nch.com.au/support/index.html

As a suggestion, you may divide your projects into 3 or more projects and then just combine them as one after export.

Russ_Croucher

JanP,

Thanks for the heads up I met she working on procedure right now that will take several hundred slides in chunks export the file to an MP4 and then use video pad to combine them into one export. That way the procedure to run off in the background when nobody's looking. I was just looking for the upper number and I'm going to try today. This get an idea of the size. I will submit a request because it seems to have good effect.

Once I have a working procedure I will make the post public and you can download it because it's just batch file stuff.

[deleted]

Sounds good. At this time, this is the best approach to project sizes but NCH Software is always interested in improving existing programs and developing new ones.

If you have an idea you'd like to share, please submit your suggestion here: https://www.nch.com.au/suggestions/

Russ_Croucher

I just verified with 559 slides copied into the program to do an export it never finished. The program loaded fine but the export seem to be the problem. I also noticed he was only using 1 of the 6 threads in the workstation. So that just convinces me for going ahead and do one 200 slides a time which seems to work fine. Then I will use video pad to merge all the MPEG-4's together.

[deleted]

Appreciate the update!

nzot

I'm not sure about the current version but in 9.33 I was able to do a 45-minute project with over 2000 pics and clips...in spite of issues it had with rebuilding the cache on every undo and green screens on project exports that i could only solve by reinstalling. I get the impression there's no hard and fast limit, but the bigger the project the more crashes and bugs you'll run into. So since then I've been splitting chronologically by month or whatever makes sense. Usually that's in the 50-200 range.

What would really help is being able to open photostage projects in videopad.

Russ_Croucher

I did use this the version because I need the filename scrolling on the bottom. I just noticed that it becomes unusable after about 300 slides. I have a business(centralvirginiavideo) of converting videos and slides for the future generations. So I have a procedure that takes the descriptions of the slide and applies it to the name of the slide. Then all those slides are put into a movie using photo stage so the kids don't have to click at all the slides.

Since I was in software 40 years, I am working on a procedure that takes 200 slides at a time and creates a photo stage project that creates a MP4 of all the slides and then uses video pad to merge all the MP4's together. I have several customers with over a thousand slides in each folder because that's what they use for their documentation. When I get this procedure completed I will post it on here so that you can download it using the latest version of photo stage and video pad.

I do all these procedures in a program that's all batch level written that Microsoft abandoned command line 25 years ago with NT. They never added new features. Then a company called 4DOS came out and took it to the next level. This continued for many years until finally it was sold to another company, JP software, Inc. These guys have a free runnable license that you can install to run all their procedures you only need to pay for a license if you want to write your own software. I specifically use these guys because it's easy to look through the procedure yourself and decide if you want to tweak it. I have all kinds of procedures that is written over top of video pad using this concept. It even has the concept of waiting for the video pad processors execution to be completed before it stuffs more keys in the process. This is because the brilliance of some of the software guys they would clear the keyboard buffer before doing a new operation. But I have many computers that do automation. Some folders might take 10 hours to do all their operations that video pad is running.

Russ_Croucher

I think I figured out the problem with photo stage and the upper limit of JPEG's. There is an option that I use that is causing a memory problem. It's located in options under other and there's a checkbox "Include Filename as text overlay". If this box is turned off I can easy import well over 1100 JPEG's which is the largest I have. With that box checked. I have issues once it hits about 250. It goes through crashing process.

My suggestion is if the user checks that box have the program give the operator some indication this is going to use a lot of memory and increase the available runtime memory by at least 5X. This would easily solve the problem without making any software changes. I know my case I have 32 gigs of RAM and everyone my workstations.