Anyone else notice how slow some pictures load in the posts?

rbranstner · May 30, 2010

I did a little test to cure my curiosity and found some interesting results. Anyone else having troubles look at some posts and they take forever to load the pics and then some load just fine? I know I have. Well I did a test in the "Test Forum" and found that when you upload your pics from photobucket the pictures will load much faster when someone looks at the post. I made three separate posts 1 was uploading the pic directly from my PC, 2 was uploading the pic to my albums in SMF then uploading the link to the post and 3 was uploading the pic to photo bucket and posting the direct link in the post. If you look at the three posts you will see that the photo bucket post loads the pic much faster. At least it does here. I am guessing that photo bucket has a bigger Upload connection or that so many people are loading to SMF that it is slowing down the connection. Either way I think I will continue to use photobucket just so my pics load faster in my posts. Just wanted to bring this up as I was getting frustrated with how slow the pictures would load.

treegje · May 30, 2010

yes some photograph are large

rbranstner · May 30, 2010

Plus I suppose photobucket is downsizing the photo size etc. as well which would make it load faster.

ronp · May 30, 2010

rbranstner said:
I did a little test to cure my curiosity and found some interesting results. Anyone else having troubles look at some posts and they take forever to load the pics and then some load just fine? I know I have. Well I did a test in the "Test Forum" and found that when you upload your pics from photobucket the pictures will load much faster when someone looks at the post. I made three separate posts 1 was uploading the pic directly from my PC, 2 was uploading the pic to my albums in SMF then uploading the link to the post and 3 was uploading the pic to photo bucket and posting the direct link in the post. If you look at the three posts you will see that the photo bucket post loads the pic much faster. At least it does here. I am guessing that photo bucket has a bigger Upload connection or that so many people are loading to SMF that it is slowing down the connection. Either way I think I will continue to use photobucket just so my pics load faster in my posts. Just wanted to bring this up as I was getting frustrated with how slow the pictures would load.

I have noticed the same thing.

flash · May 30, 2010

treegje said:
yes some photograph are large

Some photos are WAY too large. As megapixel camera grow in size, so do the uploaded photos. Be nice if members would downsize them to 10 or 11 inches wide tops. It would help.

matts · May 30, 2010

Having the albums set up the way they are here will be a problem for SMF in the future. It will turn out that most the money spent to keep this forum alive is spent on the storage space. The albums are great, but they cost a lot of money and that bill will continue to get higher and higher. I have worked and help build a few forums and most of them these days are going away from the ability to upload photos directly to the site because of the major costs involved. SMF may have it set up different for this new one, I don't know.

I haven't noticed, but is there a size limit on the photos that get uploaded here. That may help a lot. I noticed some of the pics are pretty big compared to others. There needs to be a file and photo size limit.

rbranstner · Jun 1, 2010

Yep even at work the pictures that I loaded onto SMF then onto my post load slow and we have a really fast upload & download internet connection here since we are a internet service provider. I am going to continue to use photo bucket so it will resize my photo's before I post them and things will be much faster.

Bearcarver · Jun 1, 2010

Hmm, interesting,

I hope this doesn't mean in the future they will have to delete older pics in the storage. Nothing I hate worse than going to an older thread, and finding the pictures not available any longer.

Bearcarver

pineywoods · Jun 1, 2010

Bearcarver said:
Hmm, interesting,

I hope this doesn't mean in the future they will have to delete older pics in the storage. Nothing I hate worse than going to an older thread, and finding the pictures not available any longer.

Bearcarver

I don't think they will do that I think they just need a little time to tweak things and get everything set up to run properly

smokey paul · Jun 1, 2010

Just my $.02, I believe the problem is not the size but the resolution of the picture. If i remember right Photo gave the option of "size" in pixel. We used 648x480 or something like that.When i upload from my computer i do not downsize the res and so it could be up to 1900x1080 GREAT pictures if you wanted to copy and print but take forever to load... I will try to down size the res. next time...

And yes hope Jeff has a boat load of extra HD space because he will need it... maybe there is a script that could run to reduce the res. before posting??? Huuuu

matts · Jun 1, 2010

I have been going thru and checking the properties on a lot of uploaded pictures that are stored on this site. It doesn't seem there is no limit on file size, which will be an issue. I found pics from 100k all the way up the 4 meg (4,000k). That 4meg pic took forever to load even at my works HIGH speed net. There needs to be a file size set for all pics uploaded to this site.

dasmoker · Jun 1, 2010

Well just put a max size on pics and make them where they will actually fit in the area provided and not have to scroll down for 10 pics to get to the side scroller, then scroll back up to see the next portion of the picture, then down again to side scroll, then up again to look. its actually rahter pitiful.

And if the cause of this is uploading to albums hosted here, then put an auto resizer on them so all pics come out the same size.

I have never been to a forum where pics are so horrible to look at. There are absolutely htings that can be done to resolve this. Hell I would rather all of us go back to hosting and posting out own, at least I could view the pictures then.

old poi dog · Jun 1, 2010

I like the idea of a resizer on SMF that will automatically fit pictures to a default size so all pictures are of a standard size. Neater for the site.

TulsaJeff · Jun 1, 2010

The software does indeed shrink the picture to fit the post as far as measurements go but the actual uploaded picture is not resized in any way.

This seems to be what is causing the slowness that everyone is experiencing.

They are working on a fix for this as we speak and will hopefully see some type of initial resolution within the next couple of weeks.

I would say that the quickest way to see a change is for everyone to resize their own pics to around 800x600 and i think this will make a dramatic difference until the software is working properly to do this for us.

If anyone knows of a good way for computer challenged folks to do this easily let me know.. other than photobucket or some other image hosting program.

rbranstner · Jun 1, 2010

Sounds good Jeff. Good to hear.

mrsb · Jun 1, 2010

See, I knew I wasn't crazy (well not in regard to this anyway). The large pics are frustrating, but very gald to know that will be taken care of.

matts · Jun 1, 2010

The easiest way to shrink the file size down from really big to really small is paint brush. You can open a 4meg photo, do something to it in PaintBrush like make a pin dot somewhere and save it. That 4meg file will instantly drop down to under 1meg. Thats if you don't change the picture size. You shrink it down in PaintBrush and that 4meg photo can drop down to under a 100k easily.

One major thing is everyone sets their cameras to the maximum setting. If you set your digital camera to a low setting, the file sizes will be a lot smaller and your picture quality is the same as the max setting. Helpful hint, when taking pics for posting on forums, set the camera to the 640x480 setting (usually 3megapix) and everything and everyone will be happy. The picture quality will be the same as your max setting, just a smaller size.

dasmoker · Jun 2, 2010

There is a great free picture viewer called Irfanview. Its totally free. Resizing a picture is as easy as opening the pic, going to the "Image" drop down menu, choosing "Resize/Resample" and downsizing either by choosing a percentage to shrink it, or in pixels.

For my phone pics I open, choose resize, and downsize it by 40%. For me, that always gives me a pic small enough to post on a forum, and very small in size. It takes my pics from 1 meg or 2, down under 100K.

You can get it here.

http://www.irfanview.com/

smokey paul · Jun 2, 2010

See http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/forum/thread/94958/beer-can-chicken-for-day-before post I re did the first 4 pictures with the program suggested above hope it changed the load time of the pictures. This program does a great job of re sizing and is easy and fast. Just remember to save it re-sized picture with a different name like adding res to the name so you can keep the original picture it tact.

indyadmin1974 · Jun 2, 2010

I can create a wiki on how to do it through Picasa.

I use Picasa for all of my picture management.

It's faster from the other sites because those pics are normally compressed.

Irfanview is another good program too.

I prefer Picasa because it manages my photos the way I like.

Anyone else notice how slow some pictures load in the posts?

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