🚀 go-pugleaf

 pai-lin chen <chenp@silver.ucs.indiana.edu> writes:
> Dear netters,
> 	First, I reduced the image size, resolution, so that each image will
> take about 450 K. Then I used QuickTime utility to compress the image, so...
> the size of each image is about 45K...However, when I imported
> the image into MicroMind Dir. 3.1, the size of image turned back to 450K.
> 	It seemed that Director 3.1 decompressed the image; however, this is
> somewhat strange.  If MMD is QuickTime ready, it should be able to read the 
> file in JPEG format with original size.  Could someone out there give me a
> clue?  Thanks in advance.

I hope you don't get flamed too much, Pai-lin Chen, but it's kind of obvious
that you're missing something in the process here.  That is, that you have
compressed the IMAGE AS SAVED.  When the little bugger displays, it's still
going to be the same (+- x%) size it was originally, because you can't compress
the screen image.  At least not without some glass breakage.  Quicktime pro-
duces smaller file sizes for the SAVED image when it's a still, and ONLY the
saved image.  When it's a series of frames, the savings are realized by the
elimination of redundant background components -- in other words, if the 
foreground is all that changes (a person, a car, whatever is "moving") there
is no reason to save the unchanging background (mountain, parking lot, etc.)
for each frame, nor to clear the screen in that area only to re-display the
same image over again.  Make sense?  If not, drop me a line.  Too bad it
doesn't work the way you suggest, that would REALLY be something!  I think
you will find that the images are slightly less, btw, than they would be
without having first performed some sort of JPEG on them.

db

Dave Barnhill
Computing Services
University Of Kansas
Barnhill@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu

> 
> Pai-lin Chen
> chenp@ucs.indiana.edu

In article <BuF73L.FMq@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, chenp@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (pai-lin chen) writes:
> Dear netters,
> 	I have a project which requires heavy use of still video in MicroMind
> Director.  To save the memory space that the color images may take, I took
> the folowing steps:
> 	First, I reduced the image size, resolution, so that each image will
> take about 450 K. Then I used QuickTime utility to compress the image, so that
> the size of each image is about 45K.  So far so good.  However, when I imported
> the image into MicroMind Dir. 3.1, the size of image turned back to 450K.
> 	It seemed that Director 3.1 decompressed the image; however, this is
> somewhat strange.  If MMD is QuickTime ready, it should be able to read the 
> file in JPEG format with original size.  Could someone out there give me a
> clue?  Thanks in advance.
> 
> Pai-lin Chen
> chenp@ucs.indiana.edu

What's happening here is this: You do an "Import" command on the tiny
jpeg file, Director reads it in as a PICT file (it gets automatically
decompressed by QuickTime) and Director stores the bitmap in it's own
format (the 450k size). One way around this is to use the "Link To File"
command, which will cause Director to read the picture in on demand. The
big drawback to using "Link to" is that it builds in hard pathnames and
so when you install your software on someone else's machine it tends not
to work right. In general, I've been fairly disappointed wiuth
Director's support of QuickTime, and the still compression in
particular, and for our project I'm writing a series of XObjects that
overcome Director 3.1's poor implementation of QuickTime.

Scott

-------------------------------------------------
Scott Kelley, sakelley@ucsd.edu, (619) 534-8560
Multimedia Interactive Learning Laboratory (MILL)
Department of Biology, UC San Diego
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