thanks, and a thought about netbooks

[J_ph]

Avast antivirus became too vigilant yesterday and indicated a bunch of malware that were just false positives. Oh well it effected a bunch of people and I was one.

Instead of trying to figure out what it did, I re-installed the default setup and erased all apps to start from scratch. Fortunately it was just my netbook that I use for Breeze software and the internet. But it was a pleasure to know that when it came around to re-loading in DSlrRemote and BBPro, it was simple and my camera launched and loaded with no problems.... so thanks again.

But while thinking about netbooks, I was wondering how many people are using BBPro as just a viewer when on location and editing is not required. If there is a bunch of us, are there any tweaks that can be done within the cache setups or other preferences that would be good when the only task is viewing?

Also, any thoughts of a netbook layout for BBPro to optimize "tiny" screens? Maybe an alternate Viewer app just for this use? If the DSlrRemote could show thumbnails and allow for viewing images other than the most current it may be enough for this purpose.

oh well, nothing urgent just some ideas and I realize that I may not be the normal user by sticking BBPro on a netbook.

best regards and thanks again for making clean and lean applications that do what they are intended to do.

j

[Chris Breeze]

If speed is a problem you could try reducing the size of the image cache in the Image Display tab of BBPro's preferences. I find it runs fine on my Samsung N140 netbook but is obviously not as fast as my quad core desktop PC.

BTW I've tweaked the main screen layout for DSLR Remote Pro for Windows in the next release to make it fit better on netbooks with 1024x600 displays.

[TonyGamble]

Count me in.

I shoot tethered to a Samsung Q1 Ultra.

Snag with DSLR Remote is that it creates a scroll bar and I lose the histogram. That means I am tempted to judge exposure by the image when I really should be looking at the graph.

And yes, I also call up BB when I want to scroll through the images taken so far and find the back/forward buttons on D Remote too slow.

Not sure whether your layout change is going to help me Chris, but fingers crossed.

Tony

[J_ph]

After a quick search on other browser/photo sites there is some interest in lean browsers for netbooks ( glad to know that I'm not alone). But there aren't any products that are specifically tweaked for this purpose. So it appears that in most cases people are just settling.

But, with that said BBPro really does work quite well on my netbook!

So the question might be, what would be the wishlist for BBPro to work even better on a netbook, or is it already the best product for the purpose. It's easy for me to say make it better, but I haven't given any specifics areas of improvement. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

If there were some new Netbook specific features it might be interesting enough for a press release and get the attention of folks using other products...... : )

[J_ph]

I was on location today and had a chance to think about BBPro, and if really does fit well on a netbook.

A couple things that I noticed:

I use the Filmstrip view almost primarily, with the double-click set to turn the magnifier on/off, this speeds up the main image redraw to only use the magnifier when needed.

The other thing is that if I uncheck join RAW+Jpg, the main image redraws the CR2 (5DM2) faster than the JPG when clicking on the thumbnail for the raw than when clicking on the JPG thumbnail, it's roughly twice as fast. I would have guessed that the JPG would render faster in the main window.

If I'm not shooting from the Netbook I don't need to have DSLr on top so BBPro fills the screen nicely. The only design tweak that I could see would be to add the Histogram below the thumbs but I think we discussed this and it wasn't feasible.

Otherwise BBPro really is already NetBook tweaked.

Do the Cache numbers relate directly to the number of images cached?

thanks, j

[Chris Breeze]

The preview JPEG stored in the raw file is heavily compressed and is faster to read than the less heavily JPEGs from the camera. BBPro always reads the associated JPEG when displaying raw+JPEG images because raw files from some cameras don't contain JPEG previews.

The number of cached images is the number of display sized images stored in the cache. If you resize the main window or change the display settings (e.g. toggle HQ sharpening or B&W display) this counts as another image in the cache. Most netbooks have 1024x600 displays and so each image in the cache should take up no more than 1.8Mb (1024 x 600 x 3).

[J_ph]

The preview JPEG stored in the raw file is heavily compressed and is faster to read than the less heavily JPEGs from the camera. BBPro always reads the associated JPEG when displaying raw+JPEG images because raw files from some cameras don't contain JPEG previews

would the option to read the Raw previews be a difficult option to include in the JPG+RAW options?

thanks

j

[Chris Breeze]

It might be better just to shoot in raw only. If you need a quick JPEG for proofing you can always extract the embedded JPEG in the raw file and use that.

[J_ph]

I think you may be right, I got into the habit of "uber" redundancy in the studio, shooting to both PC/Camera + JPG RAW, it doesn't really slow things down on the studio computer..... but your logic sounds appropriate and may speed along the whole process not just the image redraw.

I'll give it a try.

thanks again.