So I've been using Videoscribe over a year now and its frustrating the amount of workarounds we have to do to get scribes to work properly....

One of my biggest frustrations is that when importing images after a few are imported they start morphing and also disappearing...

I usually pan back to view the whole scribe at the end to give a kind of summary so doing multiple short scribes isn't possible in this case (and I believe having just around 5-10 images with some text shouldn't exactly be pushing the limits so much).

1. Is this mainly due to the memory limit set by the software or something else? (please don't answer by telling me to scale down the image quality etc).

2. If this is the case are you guys ever planning to expand the memory limit?

"My wallet will not hold $100 in pennies.
Is this mainly due to the limited space in the wallet or something else?
(Please don't tell me I should exchange my pennies for paper currency)"

Dude...

I think they managed to increase the memory limit in version 3.
You should still learn to optimize your images.

-Sarcastic but loving Mike

 

Your sarcasm has been noted but not appreciated...

No need to be a jerk dude

I know our complaining is annoying for you guys to read all day but so is the fact we have to do twice the work all the time because of software bugs and limitations...and after reading other community posts from years ago that had the same problem it seems the progress to fix these is either too slow or not enough.

I do love this program but it does get extremely frustrating to use everyday...

Jonathan I do not work for videoscribe or sparkol. I just use the program like you.

In this case, the solution that you don't want to hear (optimizing) is probably the most effective and direct solution to your problem. I hoped my metaphor would help clarify that for you. I included a few words that i thought would make my post more humorous but they fell flat. Apologies.

-Mike (overzealous videoscribe user)

Thanks for your apology Mike, sorry for my nagging.

My biggest problem is that i want to use high image quality but if i do i must cut my scribes up a lot to prevent crashing as well as pictures and .svgs from morphing and disappearing. 

My scribes all follow the same basic format, that is, I have a scene with a few pics and text presented (usually just to teach the meaning of a word) and then I pan to the next scene to teach the next word etc. If I set the image quality really low it will usually run better but I don't want to compromise on this which means i must cut scribes up a lot and then use my video editing program to put it all back together. However at the end of the video I also pan way back to give an overview of the whole lesson as a summary and for this part I have no choice to set image quality super low to stop it from crashing during the render process and stop the pictures from morphing.

Originally i thought that the problem was my graphics card not being able to handle a lot of images on the screen at once but after reading through the videoscribe help forums I believe (although I may of course still be wrong) that the actual problem lies with the memory limit not so much a poor quality graphics card (Please correct me if I'm wrong).

My complaint is i would prefer to be able to make one long scribe (up to 10 minutes) without having to compromise on picture quality and cut up every scribe so much because it makes the process drag on and on.

1. Would a new graphics card actually improve this image morphing and disappearing problem?

2. Would an improved memory limit actually make any difference to this specific image problem?

I'm not an IT expert so my assumptions may be completely off the mark of course.

My dream is to make only one scribe once and have it render properly without needing to cut it up.

John

I think your assumptions are pretty good. 

1) I think that a new graphics card probably would not affect your editing process or the video rendering process, but might make the preview mode play your preview more smoothly. I don't think it would be worth replacing the video card unless it is terribly underpowered. Support may be able to provide better information about that.
2) The higher memory limit in version 3 should help reduce slowdowns and freezing in cases of higher memory usage. But it is just a little more leeway


Keep in mind that for some images you might see a noticeable improvement increasing the quality setting from 1000 to 2000 (example number chosen more or less randomly) and then you might not see any more improvement at any setting higher than that, even though more memory is required to process them at higher settings.

 It's possible to make two projects in which the images look just as good when rendered to video, but one of the projects renders quickly and the other crashes the program because of file sizes, image sizes, camera setting, quality settings, arrangement of elements on the canvas, zoom percentages or other things.

As Jonny suggested, you could save your project to the cloud folder and raise a ticket if you want suggestions that are specific to your project and your images.  Or you can save your work  as a .scribe file and upload it here if you want help from videoscribe users.

Good luck!
-Mike (videoscribe user)

 

Jonathan,

From our side VideoScribe works best when fed SVG images (bit like Popeye with Spinach!). We use the vector paths to guide the hand when animating your images and because they scale you do not need a large file size to get a good quality image. Most of the images in our Library are under 100KB in size and if you take a look at the new Currency images we added last week the biggest image in that set is 61KB and if you look at the quality that they come in with even when you are in close you still get a good image (example I have used is 33KB). 

Now we understand that even with approaching 4000 images in the Library we do not have all bases covered (which is why we are always adding more) and people will always want to bring in their own photos and other images found elsewhere. But if you are bringing in a JPG/PNG/GIF image at 1.7MB in size (about average for an iPhone 5s photo) for example that's the equivalent of over 50 of the image I have included a screen shot of below. So just a few simple photos can burn through similar resources to hundreds of well prepared SVG images. 

SVG Images are actually fairly easy to create and you can just find an image you like and trace it if you like. You may find our Create your own images page useful I would highly recommend this YouTube video which one of our customers has created to walk you through image creation. One of our regular (sarcastic) customers also has a forum post on tips and settings needed with SVGs to make them draw well in the application.

As Mike said though feel free to raise a ticket and upload your scribe online if you would like some specific advice on your scribe.

Just realised I should have used the 5 cents image to enable a joke about 'That's my 5 cents on the issue'

Better late that never!