PP 2000, minimum specs to run a presentation?

[Melissa]

We'll be running a presentation of about 120 slides, with an embedded WAV
file to play the duration of the show. We've been working on the show on an
XP 1.4 system with 512 mb and a 40 gig drive.

When I put the file on my portable system, a PIII 600 with 128mb, 10gig hard
drive, running Win98se, the timings aren't quite right. They seem just a tad
slugglish. I can upgrade my memory if it would help, to a total of 288.
There are occasional lags in transitions as well.

If need be, we'll take the tower system to the reception to run the show,
but obviously taking the portable system will be easier. It's a Gateway
Solo, 9300 btw.

So...what is the minimum system needed to run a PP presentation that won't
result in lagged timings and sluggish transitions? Timing is important on a
few key slides, and the last thing we want is to have it go badly on the
"big day".

Will adding ram and shutting off any background programs, combined with a
well tuned 600 system be enough?

Does it matter where the file resides on the hard drive? Will running it
through once help "buffer" it for a smoother running show?

TIA, once again.

Melissa

 

[Bill Dilworth]

Hi Melissa,

Ummm... How about if I answer the question behind the question first. Yes,
it will help the presentation to run 'better' if you ...

....have more RAM
....have less CPU demand
....have a less segmented hard drive
....have the show 'buffered'

but, this does not mean that the sound/slide timing will be maintained.
PowerPoint makes no promises of quality synchronization between sound and
slides in a presentation for a very good reason: it can't.

Here's why:
PowerPoint does not play the sound, it just sends a message to the Operating
System (OS) to begin playing the sound file. The OS then looks at the
registry to find out what player and settings are used to play that type of
sound file, and relays the message to the listed player. The player gets
the message and starts to play the sound. Unfortunately, PowerPoint does
not get any feedback information from the sound player that it could use for
'sync points' or places where it could make sure that both the slides and
the sound file are advancing at the same rate. The sound player does it's
thing; PowerPoint does it's. They work alongside each other, but do not
talk to each other.

Add into this that PowerPoint is very CPU intensive. It is doing a lot of
video rendering real-time to achieve the transitions and animations. So it
may become bogged down if another program is using CPU cycles it needs to
render the next frame. It will be delayed for a fraction of a second while
the CPU takes care of another task. These fractions add up. The
accumulation of these delays causes a sync drift and the two (sound/slides)
begin to drift apart. A sync drift of a just one second is 2 beats of a
normal tempo song. Very large/long PowerPoint presentations may sync drift
by minutes.

To make it a little worse, it does not just vary from machine to machine, it
varies on the same machine from run to run. Depending on what background
tasks you have running, the type of media the presentation is stored on (HDD
is the only good media for PowerPoint), the fragmentation of the HDD (even
if the presentation is on a CD), the number of tmp files, and well, just
about anything.

Solutions:
If, you are building a presentation that is just for this purpose (a
synchronized slide/sound show), then frankly, you are using the wrong tool.
Trust me, this is difficult for a PowerPoint advocate, like myself, to say.
You will have better results by using Windows Movie Maker 2. WMM2 has
transitions that will make slide changes like PowerPoint, but slide
animations are not available. It will not work on your Win 98SE system
(only Win XP and higher are supported), so you will need to take the tower.
The download is free and the picture/sound sync will be solid and assured in
the file it generates.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker/downloads/moviemaker2.asp


However:
If sync is not that critical, then you can look at ways within PowerPoint to
reduce the sync drift. On both systems (creation system and playback
system)
1 - defrag the hdd
2 - increase RAM*
3 - decrease CPU usage (kill non-essential programs)
4 - pre-run the show
5 - current drivers/versions video/sound/DirectX
6 - faster CPU*
7 - add user sync points
8 - PPT file on HDD
9 - Display on primary monitor
* = if possible

To expound on item 7, if you have a place in the music where there can be a
second or two of silence, then you can use a sound editor to break the sound
file into 2 separate files. By adding the second sound starting point you
will make at least 2 places in the presentation where the sound is timed
right and it will erase and reset the accumulated sync drift. These moments
of silence between the end of one sound file and the beginning of the next
will act as an accordion pleat to absorb the variations between systems or
presentation runs. More sync points is better, naturally.

Having said all that, the answer to the question that you first asked, can
be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/Office/previous/2000/sysreq2000.asp

I know, TMI.

--
Bill Dilworth, Microsoft PPT MVP
===============
Please spend a few minutes checking vestprog2@
out www.pptfaq.com This link will yahoo.
answer most of our questions, before com
you think to ask them.

Change org to com to defuse anti-spam,
ant-virus, anti-nuisance misdirection.
..
..