B10-01   How can I optimize memory usage?

1. Don't learn a signal more than once -- even through the Pronto stores internal aliases to identical hex codes, learned signals rarely learn exactly the same twice. Instead, store only a single instance of a signal and alias all others to it. This is especially helpful when creating favorite channel macros, as described above.

2. Ensure all learned IR codes are clean -- this is hard to ensure for some devices, however any hex code that is very long or is longer than others for a particular device is most likely not a clean learn. Also, if the last four digits (for example say 03f7) are duplicated elsewhere in the code chances are it is not clean. For more details, view the specific FAQ for this in section B2.

3. Standardize on one button style -- using a different button style for each device results in high memory usage with no gains. Instead, settle on a single design and limit the number of button shapes/sizes as much as possible.

4. Don't use separate "selected" button icons -- that doubles the memory occupied by a button style. Instead, have only the font color change when the button is selected.

5. Remove inactive button icon assignments -- don't store a separate button style for inactive buttons -- if you are using ProntoEdit they will never be used. You may instead assign the "active" button style, or for further memory savings completely delete them.

6. Reduce the number of separate panels -- just creating a blank panel uses up a moderate amount of memory. Keep the number of "waste" panels to a minimum. Don't store panels you don't need in your CCF file. If you are trying to put a 300 disc CD collection in your remote, try to keep usage to one panel per disc. Finally, keeping separate panels with codes to alias your real buttons to may make for good design, however it is not memory efficient.

7. Don't use full-screen bitmaps -- a single 240x219 full-screen bitmap requires a lot of memory. If you're running low, keep these to a minimum. Background with large solid color areas can be memory optimized by saving only the portion of the bitmap that has data into separate frames (left, top, right, bottom) and then creating a regular frame to fill in the center.

8. Delete template devices -- if you started with the default CCF from the stock Pronto, there are a number of devices at the end of the device list with names in square brackets. These are template devices and may be deleted to save memory. Remember, you may always access them again from the sample CCF as included with ProntoEdit.
   

Aliases allow you to refer to an action list that has already been defined elsewhere in the remote. For example, if you wanted to create a few buttons that went directly to favorite stations using your DSS receiver (see question below) you would otherwise have to store the actual IR codes multiple times for each macro. This would be both slow and a waste of valuable memory.

Instead, using aliases you merely store pointers to a single numeric keypad. In effect, an alias is a placeholder that allows you to say "use that command from over there". But why would you want to?

a) It saves memory. An alias is more compact than an entire action list or even just one learned IR code. Although ProntoEdit will detect and compact identical hex codes, codes are rarely learned exactly the same twice in a row. That means all would be stored separately.

b) If you want to share a CCF, using aliases -- rather than storing the same IR codes multiple times -- makes it much easier for other people to adopt your setup. In the DSS example, if channel buttons use aliases and someone has an RCA receiver rather than a Sony, all they would need to do is learn the Sony codes on the numeric pad and all channel buttons would work without further effort.

To create an alias, click on the ALIAS button under a button's Action list, then navigate the panel tree and select the button to alias to. All commands under that button will be referenced except for the page jump. Aliasing to a device will reference that device's action list (for instance switching receiver inputs each time it is selected).

Tip 1) Label your learned IR codes if you have several in an activity list. Just double click on the Learned item and then click on the text in the lower left of the "IR Sequence Edit Box", standard keyboard pops up.

Tip 2) Those with Pioneer DVD players may have stumbled into this one: the player wants an "Are You Sure" confirmation whenever you hit stop. So, you have to hit stop twice. But if you have a power down macro the power off wants a stop confirmation as well. So, add a STOP followed by Power toggle for power off and it works very nicely.

Tip 3) If you start a new Home Panel and are using the auto-home panel generation feature, the order of how buttons are drawn is the order they will be mapped to devices. You can change this order with the "Move to Back" and "Move to Front" commands. If you don't want a device to show up on the home panel, drag the device to the bottom of the list and don't provide enough buttons to reach it.

Tip 4) If you rename panels/buttons/devices/macros all references to the item are kept intact. If you drag a panel from one device or macro to another, references are also kept intact. If you cut and paste it to a different panel/device/macro the references are destroyed.

Tip 5) When using full screen backgrounds you may encounter a problem where once you select the background you can't select anything else on the panel. There is a shortcut key for "Next Sibling" which is simply a period (.). You can also use the tab key for selecting the next button/frame, while hitting ESC will unselect the current selection and allow you to click on other buttons.

Tip 6) When adding a panel, the default layout that appears is stored in the file device.ccf. Similar defaults are stored in home.ccf, macro.ccf and gallery.ccf. Any changes to these files will be reflected each time you add a new panel. To ignore these settings and add a blank panel hold down the SHIFT key.

The Pronto supports two kinds of bitmaps: normal, and compressed. Normally, ProntoEdit will not compress any of a CCF's bitmaps. With "CCF Optimizer", you can compress each and every bitmap in your file. While this has the benefit of increasing available free memory, the downside is that it takes longer for the Pronto to decompress the images before displaying them, adding noticable delays to each page switch.