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NeoOffice :: View topic - Significant slideshow speed improvements
Significant slideshow speed improvements
 
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Mon Aug 04, 2008 8:45 pm    Post subject: Significant slideshow speed improvements

While running a slideshow with lots of transitions on my underpowered MacMini today, I was reminded that on older Macs, NeoOffice's slideshow speed definitely needed some improvements.

After looking at the code behind last year's slideshow speed improvements, I found a few more places where NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code does a lot of unnecessary work and have made changes to our code to detect and skip such unnecessary work.

With these changes, I have noticed significant speed improvements on both my MacMini Intel and my G5 PowerPC Macs. In particular, starting a presentation now only requires a few seconds to paint the first slide instead of the nearly 15 seconds that I experienced on my Mac Mini with a 21" monitor. Also, the hourglass appears on the screen only briefly for many of my slides and transitions and animations are noticeably less choppy.

You can test the slide show speed improvements by installing the following test patch:

Edit: for those of you who are not familiar with our test patch process, you can "deinstall" this test patch simply by reinstalling the official patch from the NeoOffice patch download page.

Intel:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-3-Test-3-Intel.dmg

PowerPC:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-3-Test-3-PowerPC.dmg

Please let us know if you see any speed improvements. If so, we will put the changes in NeoOffice 2.2.4 Patch 4 in a few weeks.

Patrick


Last edited by pluby on Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:54 pm; edited 1 time in total
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aussie149
The Merovingian


Joined: Feb 12, 2005
Posts: 607
Location: Australia

PostPosted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 1:05 am    Post subject: So far so good

Patrick.

FWIW, I tried this on my iMac Core 2 Duo, and there were appreciable speed improvements. I can't quantify them, but it certainly zips along much more quickly, and the hour glass I used to see in some presentations has all but disappeared.

Peter
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James3359
The Merovingian


Joined: Jul 05, 2005
Posts: 685
Location: North West England

PostPosted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 8:59 am    Post subject:

I've tried it on my iBook G4 and it seems to work at reasonable speed. I've not spotted any problems.

I don't/haven't use/d Impress very much though because it has been so painfully slow.
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K-9
The Merovingian


Joined: Mar 15, 2006
Posts: 571
Location: U.S.

PostPosted: Tue Aug 05, 2008 5:56 pm    Post subject:

Wow! Nice to hear. I have never dabbled in this feature of Neo - But that is great news. I also haven't snooped around here much either. Finding the link to this thread in another support post was well worth it. I will have to peruse what goes on in this category more. Thanks!
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rpatrick
Councilperson


Joined: Aug 29, 2007
Posts: 108

PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 4:00 pm    Post subject:

I found that presentations seemed to work pretty fast anyway even on my G4 iBook, but then mine tend to be very simple presentations (mostly text).

Having said that, I think there is an improvement with this patch. If I get my hands on some more complex presentations I'll provide an update!

Richard
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 4:50 pm    Post subject: Re: Significant slideshow speed improvements

Today I found a few more small improvements. They are not as big as the ones in the last test patch, but they help improve memory usage which may help some presentations.

I have included these memory improvements in the following test patch:

Intel:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-3-Test-4-Intel.dmg

PowerPC:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-3-Test-4-PowerPC.dmg

Please let us know if you see any speed improvements. If so, we will put the changes in NeoOffice 2.2.4 Patch 4 in a few weeks.

Patrick
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amayze
The Merovingian


Joined: Oct 24, 2005
Posts: 561
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

PostPosted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 2:37 am    Post subject:

I've installed Test 4 and the slide show transitions run very smoothly. However the preview displayed in the main window when choosing your transitions is very jerky and sometimes doesn't work at all - the editing pane goes black then the current slide re-appears after a couple of seconds.

Obviously this isn't as important as the actual slide show, but it would be nice if it was a bit more reliable.

Cheers,

Andy
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:19 am    Post subject:

amayze wrote:
I've installed Test 4 and the slide show transitions run very smoothly. However the preview displayed in the main window when choosing your transitions is very jerky and sometimes doesn't work at all - the editing pane goes black then the current slide re-appears after a couple of seconds.


I don't see this with any of my presentations. Can you file a bug so that I can reproduce this bug?

Edit: OK. I now see what you are talking about. The temporary switch to black is actually normally OpenOffice.org 2.2.1 behavior. Apparently, the setting to black is so tht you can see the transition more clearly.

The jerky transition part, however, has existed in NeoOffice for quite a while now and apparently my speed improvements have not fixed this so I will see if there is anything I can do to get the preview to speed up.

Patrick
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:56 am    Post subject: Re: Significant slideshow speed improvements

I have fixed the previewing of transitions in NeoOffice that amayze found in the following test patch. This does not change performance but makes the long broken previewing of transitions actually work:

I have included this fix in the following test patch:

Intel:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-3-Test-5-Intel.dmg

PowerPC:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-3-Test-5-PowerPC.dmg

Patrick
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amayze
The Merovingian


Joined: Oct 24, 2005
Posts: 561
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

PostPosted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:46 am    Post subject:

Thanks Patrick, what a difference!

Unfortunately your fix now reveals a few problems with some of the previews.
Specifically the following things are a bit wrong:

1. The Wipe Up, Down, Left Right, Box Out, Split Horizontal Out and Split Vertical Out effects all seem to preview only the top left hand 2/3rds of the slide.

2. Comb Horizontal & Vertical effects don't erase their trailing edge properly and leave artefacts. This problem also affects the slide show itself when the slide dimensions are smaller than the screen (ie a show created on a 4:3 monitor displayed on a wide screen monitor).

3. Split Horizontal In ends with a black line across the slide.

Everything else is spot on and far more usable.

Cheers,

Andy.
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:23 am    Post subject:

amayze wrote:
1. The Wipe Up, Down, Left Right, Box Out, Split Horizontal Out and Split Vertical Out effects all seem to preview only the top left hand 2/3rds of the slide.


I see this too and I will look at it.

amayze wrote:
2. Comb Horizontal & Vertical effects don't erase their trailing edge properly and leave artefacts. This problem also affects the slide show itself when the slide dimensions are smaller than the screen (ie a show created on a 4:3 monitor displayed on a wide screen monitor).

3. Split Horizontal In ends with a black line across the slide.


I don't see either of these on my machine. Do the artifacts go away if you resize the screen to be larger? I ask this because if it goes away, then the artifacts are likely the result in rounding to the nearest whole pixel when scaling.

Patrick
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amayze
The Merovingian


Joined: Oct 24, 2005
Posts: 561
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

PostPosted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 8:54 am    Post subject:

amayze wrote:
2. Comb Horizontal & Vertical effects don't erase their trailing edge properly and leave artefacts. This problem also affects the slide show itself when the slide dimensions are smaller than the screen (ie a show created on a 4:3 monitor displayed on a wide screen monitor).

These artefacts change when I resize the window, but they are always there in some shape or form.
amayze wrote:
3. Split Horizontal In ends with a black line across the slide.

These ones have gone altogether after a resize.
pluby wrote:
I don't see either of these on my machine. Do the artifacts go away if you resize the screen to be larger? I ask this because if it goes away, then the artifacts are likely the result in rounding to the nearest whole pixel when scaling.

Patrick

Sounds quite likely.

Andy
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:56 pm    Post subject: Re: Significant slideshow speed improvements

I have fixed the wipe, box out, etc. clipping problems that amayze reported in the following test patch. Please let me now if any of 3 problems that amayze reported are still not fixed in the following test patch:

Intel:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-3-Test-6-Intel.dmg

PowerPC:
http://jane.neooffice.org/test/NeoOffice-2.2.4-Patch-3-Test-6-PowerPC.dmg

Patrick
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amayze
The Merovingian


Joined: Oct 24, 2005
Posts: 561
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 2:34 am    Post subject:

That's great. Test 6 fixes the 2/3rds slide problem for me.

I still see the the other issues with artefacts, but if you can't that makes it a bit hard to fix. Maybe if I post a movie of my screen showing the problem, would that help?

Cheers,

Andy.
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pluby
The Architect
The Architect


Joined: Jun 16, 2003
Posts: 11949

PostPosted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:19 am    Post subject:

amayze wrote:
I still see the the other issues with artefacts, but if you can't that makes it a bit hard to fix. Maybe if I post a movie of my screen showing the problem, would that help?


I can now reproduce the problem. I found that if I switch my monitor size to 1600 x 1024 and use comb horizontal, I get artifacts on the right side of the screen. I'll look at this further.

Patrick
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