I'm in process of animating a portion of my devce selections and I've started to become concerned about the physical size limitations of the .xcf file for the 9600. Anyone run into this limt yet and, if so, what was the size of your file?

It's not the size of the XCF - it's the size of the binary representation that is downloaded to your 9600.

The XCF format is pretty much the same as the PCF format and it is the download size that matters. The only way to know this size is to look in the DATA folder where the editor is installed during a download. Specifically, look for a .bin or .dat file.

If you want more information on this topic, it was discussed in the NG forum extensively in the past 2-3 years. I posted alot of the information so you should be able to search for my name and +download +size and find hits.

Here are a couple that will shed some light on this subject:

[Link: remotecentral.com]

[Link: remotecentral.com]

As far as how much of the 64MB of memory is useable, I don't have an exact answer on that. If you are approaching 64MB, it is likely due to the fact that you are using .BMP or .JPG images. If you are, PLEASE, convert them to .PNG and if they are rectangular and are fully opaque, turn off image transparency. The reason for this is that the 9400/9600 use a PNG image engine and can make full use of the compression. JPG and .BMP are stored in your configuration as 24-bit images (yes, JPG files are converted to .BMP once you load them in the editor). End result, lots of wasted memory.

If you have an image editor that can do dithering, note that many jacket pics look just fine in 256 colors. If you dither down to this, .PNG file sizes will decrease dramatically (8 bit vs 24 bits per pixel) as you will be using PNG-8 format vs PNG format.

Does your head hurt yet? I hope not. I still suggest reading up on this topic in the NG forum as you can squeeze lots of memory from the remote if you prepare your images properly.

Lyndel

Lyndel,

I enjoyed going back through much of the information in the NG forum as you suggested.

Fortunately, I picked up this Forum's recommendation to use exclusively .png files long before I even contemplated adding animation to my setup, so I am in good shape there. My caution arises out of my projection of total pages approaching 750. I’ve converted each of the many, many “transition” pages to single .png files to help limit memory absorption due to button and layer information. So I think I have done all that I can and will just have to see how this plays out.

Why so many pages? Doing animations or using something like LowPro's DVD Lobby.

I've been hanging on for dear life to the 1% memory I have left in my TSU9600 for some time now. Considering the number of images in my current configuration file I guess I should consider myself lucky. :-P If you'd like to see a XCF pushing it to the limit feel free to check out my TSU9600 PackAndGo file. Once downloaded to the remote it will be showing either 1% free memory or perhaps even 0% free. Somehow I keep finding ways to hold on to that last 1%. Would have been awesome if the TSU9600 came equipped with a memory card slot. Guess my only option at this point is to learn javascript. Probably wouldn't be a bad thing. So I've been told anyway. :-)

Mostly due to animations.

I bet you are doing animations with Page Jumps? Yes? That being the case, you could likely save some space by doing ProntoScript and simply changing out images as need be. For example, consider you have a 640x400 image where only one thing is changing. Using PNG transparencies, you could have a single background image then place things on top via ProntoScript.

I do realize that doing it the old way is rather easy, however, please consider the approach I suggest as an option. ProntoScript is NOT always the best way to go but in cases where there are lots of common pieces in the frames of animation you are doing, there may be ways to "layer" images such that you can also minimize footprint. Also look @ dithering where you can.

As an example, look @ what I did with Daniel's Galaxy game that did nothing more than emulate a 3x3 matrix using Page Jumps. Using ProntoScript, I managed to decrease the memory footprint of his game considerably. Both versions are available in the files section. You may want to have a look at the script I did to get that going.

Lyndel

I don't know exactly what you are doing, but using ProntoScript, you could pull images from the network as required.

Great advice! I admittedly have not explored all the possibilities that ProntoScript brings to the process. Your Galaxy example makes it obvious that there are significant advantages to using ProntoScript. Particularly where there is only a single graphic changing. Making this change looks to be a fun weekend project (maybe that should be "weekends").

Could be. However, I put Galaxy together for Daniel in about 4.5 hours, reworking graphics, testing, and all.