animated a biiiig bg, without killing CPU

[drkknght]

got me a site, see?

http://www.phausenentertainment.com

the problem is, the animated background is KILLING cpu's (seems to always hit, and stay at, 100% usage)

thats rediculous, i can't keep it like that.

problem being -- i love the effect!!

in doing various tests, i've foudn that it doesnt even matter how detailed the moving BG is -- it could just be a simple vector gradient (from solid white to solid red, no alphas), and its still maxed at 100%, as long as its animating back and forth.

why???

is there any way around this, other than the obvious "dont do it"?

[juxtaman]

why aren't you using a preloaded?

[drkknght]

i could, but at this point, it doesnt really need one. the whole movie is only 20 or 25 kb.

even loading the movie off of my hard drive is showing the CPU usage at 100%.

[98lwatso]

hmm, i can think of two things

try and use the lowest possible image, and make it only what size you need it (dimensions)

Secondly, it might help to reduce the dimensions of the whole movie - reducing the image with it might reduce CPU usage. I was shocked to see my 1.9Ghz get stuck with that!!

I hate you!! lol, only jokin
Lee

[drkknght]

thanks for the response, lee...

i could try to shrink the movie a bit more, but in all of the tests i've run off my pc, that doesnt seem to help much.

as far as image quality goes, its already only a 17 kb image, compressed via flash to 50%. i could also reduce that more, but... even when i replaced it with just a simple, vector-based gradient, i got the same cpu maxing effect.

[98lwatso]

have you tried it on a lower spec PC? It may not be that much of an issue if you only have it as a splash page...
Other than this, I'm stuck!

Sorry

[drkknght]

heya lee

i've tried it on a few pcs -- the "worst" of which was a pIII 600. all of them showed noticeably slow animations, and all locked at around 100%.

i agree with you that it wouldnt be so bad for a startup page, but... if the viewer happens to have ANY other programs open at the same time, their whole PC will explode. cant have that

i gotta figure out a better way for that large of an animation.

i coulda sworn i've seen large bg animations before

[98lwatso]

right,

try this - make a vector graphic, but rather than have a symbol using motion tweens, make it a loose shape using a shape tween. I guess you know how to do that...

See what happens then. :-)

Lets hope you havent already done that!

[drkknght]

hmm... apparently, a majority of the problem wasnt the animation in the background, but rather the graphic that "floated" above it!

removing "phausen" from the picture set the cpu useage at around 60% -- i guess all the alpha gradients mess it up?

(doh!)

oh well... looks like this one needs to be rethunked

thanks for the help anyway, lee!

[beatle888]

Originally posted by drkknght
hmm... apparently, a majority of the problem wasnt the animation in the background, but rather the graphic that "floated" above it!

removing "phausen" from the picture set the cpu useage at around 60% -- i guess all the alpha gradients mess it up?

(doh!)

oh well... looks like this one needs to be rethunked

thanks for the help anyway, lee!

I was under the impression that if you use ActionScript to
animate instead of tweening the animation you get way
better results in performance.

[drkknght]

so was i!

it was scripted

[beatle888]

well now im curious. im sure theirs a solution.
i'm gonna keep an i on this thread. no advice...sorry.
but atleast your thread gets a bump