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This indicates that your graphics system is in a state known as “texture
thrashing.” It means within the slow frames, you are trying to put more on the
screen than your graphics subsystem can hold in its available memory. There are
several things you can do, however, to allow your show run just fine
on your existing hardware. Here are some things to try and check, in the
recommended order:
a.) Verify that your timing settings don’t have an
unusually high number of images on screen at one time. For example, if you have
defined placement positions for 3 images, having 9 images on screen won’t make
much sense, since you likely have images stacked up under each other. In the
detailed settings of the Styles panel, select the Timing tab. Near the bottom of
the timing panel you will see Maximum Images On-Screen, which is computed from
your timing settings. This number can be lowered by increasing the Appearance
Interval, and by lowering the “Number of images each interval.” Make sure you
don’t have more images on screen at once than your show really needs.
b.)
If you are running with a background image, try using a lower resolution image.
(You can still stretch a lower resolution image to cover the entire background.)
Tiling a smaller image is also a good way to get a nice background that doesn’t
consume too much of your graphics memory. (A tiled image only consumes as much
graphics memory as one of the tiles. It can be repeated across the background
without consuming more graphics memory.)
c.) Limit the size of images in
the show to maximum width, height (or both) to 500 pixels. This can be done
without modifying any of your images. In the detailed settings of the Styles
panel, select the On Screen tab. In the Stationary Image Size area, select
“Scale down to specified size,” and choose 500 for one or both of the values.
(Limiting both width and height to 500 will have a greater impact.)
d.)
Change the video mode of the show (not your desktop Display Settings). To do
this, select the Performance button on the toolbar, and try using a lower video
mode. You can try lowering the resolution (ex: 1280x1024 down to 1024x768),
lowering the number of colors (ex: 32-bit down to 16-bit), or both. Very often,
lowering to a 16-bit color mode is enough to make the difference, and the show
quality will seem very close to that of 32-bit mode (to most people). When
running in 16-bit mode, Bravo!
Show Creator requires half the graphics memory it does
as compared to 32-bit mode. So a 32 Mb graphics card running in 16-bit mode can
achieve frame rates comparable to what a 64 Mb graphics code would get in 32-bit
mode by using this approach.
e.) Reduce the number of images that are on
screen at any one time. Go back to (a.) above for a description of how to do
this. If you are running with a 32 Mb graphics card (or less), you may simply
not be able to run with the number of images on screen at once that you really
want to.
f.) Lower the image quality. Again, select the Performance tab.
Move the Image Quality slider to the left. The further the slider is moved to
the left, the grainier images will become. Larger images will be affected more
so than smaller images.
g.) Lower the animation quality. Select the
Performance tab, and move the Target Animation Quality to the left. This reduces
the number of frames that Bravo!
Show Creator will attempt to render each second. This
can result in a “jumpy” look to the movement of images if set too low, but it
also can make the movement consistent between heavily loaded portions of the
show and the rest of the show.
h.) If all else fails, and you really,
really want a show with 8 or 10 images on screen at once in full resolution and
color depth, consider upgrading your graphics hardware. The key factor that will
affect performance of Bravo!
Show Creator is the amount of texture memory on the card.
32 Mb is fair, 64 Mb will be very good, and 128 Mb will be smokin’!
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