Consistently poor Impress performance in Mac OS X

users
#1

Hello,

This is a question I asked in ask.libreoffice.org, but did not get a useful
reply:

I've got the latest Impress running on my MacBook Pro with Mac OS X 10.6.8.
(but this problem existed in previous versions, too)

For the past few months I tried really really hard to make all my
presentations with Impress. The big problem is that it's performance is the
exact opposite of snappy. (what is a good antonym for snappy?)

After adding images (they are each just 500-800kb JPGs) to, say, 20 slides,
Impress grinds almost to a halt. Things respond 1-2 seconds after the mouse
click.

This is especially frustrating when clicking, holding, the dragging, because
there is always a 1-2 second lag between each step. For instance, if I click
and drag the corner of an image to resize it, the motion is not smooth, but
rather occurs in "jumps". Another instance would be when I click on a slide
to select/show it in the main window. If I move the mouse cursor away after
clicking on a slide, the lag makes Impress think I am dragging and
re-ordering the slide! And of course there is a few seconds delay here as
well.

So my question is: What's wrong that's making Impress perform so poorly?? My
Mac has a Intel Core i7 2.66 gHz CPU, advanced Nvidia GT 330M graphics, and
8.0 GB of memory, it should be overkill for something like this! I tried
tweaking the number of objects kept in memory, size of objects, etc. to no
avail.

Is it just because Impress has poor performance? (in which case I think it
really need to be improved) Or am I doing something wrong??? M$ PowerPoint
and Apple Keynote works beautifully and snappily, but I wish I could use
Impress!

Thanks!

#2

Hi :slight_smile:
Impress is not brilliant.  It's getting there but i think most of the work went into Writer and Calc.  There are alternatives that each have slightly different aims.

However, 500-800Kb images are quite large.  If you open one of the images with Gimp (or something) you could resize the image down to something smaller than bill-board sized.

Since the issue is possibly more important for websites it is easier to find a "How To" such as these 
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Lite_Quickies/
http://kerryshamblin.com/index.php?page=tutorial-web-images-gimp
http://www.ahotw.com/2008/08/09/gimp-image-cropping-for-web/
http://www.geekazine.com/guests/basic-gimp-preparing-pictures-for-the-web

I guess "Ponderous" is an antonym of "snappy" but it doesn't quite convey the frustration quite as well as the way you used.  Plus it's waaay outside the vocabulary range of most native-English speakers.  Apparently the average is around 100-250 words (depending on which study you read).

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#3

Hi,

I would try downsizing the pictures such as Tom suggested. I don't do much work in Impress, and I run Ubuntu. I upgraded my brother's laptop on Monday to Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 2. The computer is 4 years old, and has a minimal dual core processor and 3 gigs of memory. I installed LibreOffice 3.5.2 direct from the Document foundation site. He does a lot of work with power point shows, many of which are sent to him created in Microsoft. I wanted to make sure they were working. All were in Microsoft format, several with the pptx format. I tested about 7 of them, and all worked fine without any lag whatsoever. I do not know how big the picture sizes were, but with the high end hardware you have, I am surprised you are having an issue. Picture size is the only thing I can think of.

Don

#4

Hello,

Thanks for your quick replies!

I really don't think my pictures are too big at all! I've made slideshows
with Apple Keynote or Micro$oft Powerpoint with almost a hundred slides,
that were very multimedia heavy (including videos, high resolution images in
MBs each, etc.), and they run *flawlessly* with transitions, etc.

I also tried installing LibreOffice on other Macs, and get the same problem.
In all cases they grind to a halt as soon as I begin adding things other
than pure text/bullet points to the slides...

Sounds like this is an issue specific to LibreOffice Impress running on the
Mac??? Am I the only person experiencing these performance issues? But if
so, why did the other Macs I tried this on also have the problem?

I think LibreOffice should be built so that it can handle multimedia rich
presentations in Impress!

I would really like to find a solution to this, but otherwise I guess I need
to stick with Apple Keynote for the foreseeable future... :frowning:

#5

Hi :slight_smile:
You are welcome.  I think i would move in 3 directions at roughly the same time.  Hmmm, well maybe i wouldn't go for the 3rd option as my coding is probably fairly lousy
1.  Keep using the one that does work, ie Apple Keynote but still use Writer and Calc etc, just not Impress except for just playing around
2.  Test the idea about shrinking some of the images (byte-wise not in physical size) using Gimp (which is free and OpenSource
3.  Join the Devs Team for a little while and maybe try working on an Easy Hack or 2 and see if i could build-up to working on Impress to improve it.  Even if you don't get that far it might free-up some time for other devs to look into Impress more. 
4.  Get a couple of mates to join in with the coding idea as a race to see who gets the furthest fastest, perhaps make it part of Google's Summer of Code or a college project or something.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#6

OK, I will try 1. and 2.. In fact, I realised only now that I can also test a
couple of my multimedia intensive Impress files on my Linux and Windows
virtual machines. If the problem really is Mac specific, then performance
should improve, even in a virtual machine. This possible "workaround" will
help narrow down this performance bug(s), but is probably too cumbersome for
day to day use.

As for joining the Devs Team, I only wish I could code! Is there a place to
suggest priorities for development, or submit ideas for Google Summer of
Code?

Thanks!

#7

Hi :slight_smile:
I think if you can find an individual bug-report or two then you could add a comment or try to raise their importance level but the chances are that they would get reset.  Stuill a comment might be good even if the devs hate that sort of thing.

The Gnu&Linux version is probably extremely similar to the Mac one.  Both Mac (a version of Bsd) and Gnu&Linux are Unix-based platforms so most of the code is identical.  Allegedly a lot of devs are not aware of the subtle differences in Bsd and so they end up making the code a little less likely to work quite so well on a Bsd platform such as Mac.  The Windows version is very different apparently.

I have no idea how GSoC works.  Perhaps google it?  (sorry!)
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#8

Hi avamk,

So my question is: What's wrong that's making Impress perform so poorly?? My
Mac has a Intel Core i7 2.66 gHz CPU, advanced Nvidia GT 330M graphics, and
8.0 GB of memory, it should be overkill for something like this! I tried
tweaking the number of objects kept in memory, size of objects, etc. to no
avail.

Have you tried turning off the "Hardware acceleration" option in
LibreOffice > Preferences > Display to see if that makes a difference ?

Alex

#9

Hi,

I use Impress quite a lot (Mac OS 10,5,8, LO 3,4,2), and I don't have a noticeable slowdown for that sort of sized file. I just checked on a couple of my files, 10Mb with a dozen images, no slow down on resizing images. 30Mb, 100 slides, 40 + images, no slow down on image resizing...

(I think sluggish is the word you are looking for)

However, I do get a delayed response with the unfriendly one-click-ha-I'll-move-your-textboxes-without-asking-you that I don't know how to (un)activate and always wakes up at the worst possible time...) but rarely more than 1 second. (although lot's of 1 seconds back to back can be frustrating)

Melodie

#10

Thanks for your replies.

I do get the "one-click-ha-I'll-move-your-textboxes-without-asking-you"
problem, and I am still trying to figure out what's with my slides that's
making Impress seize up. At least this may not be a problem with everyone?

As for hardware acceleration, the check box is greyed out for me (and
unchecked). What does it do??

Thanks.