Managing memory space....

[jessleonard]

Hi Im new and this might be addressed already.. and if so sorry... I am wondering ... I was on like on pg 29 and had a pop up sign come up and say my virtual memory was low..... so I guess my question is.... once I publish my pages..... should I erase them from the scrapbookmax area, and just keep them saved as the jpeg files??? I have been using memory sticks to backup all my photos and thought that might work as well.... any ideas???

[PatH]

Me too

I've gotten the same message, too. Is SBM a large program or does it use a lot of resources? I've also noticed that it is very slow when I resize items. Can anything be done about that? My computer is only a year old and we bought it with a fair amount of "energy under the hood," so it shouldn't be my computer.

Any ideas?

[Marnie]

I am likely not the best person to answer your concerns fully. One of the tech guys will likely fill in any of my "gaps" tomorrow morning.

But my suggestion is to NOT delete your scrapbooks from your computer and save only the jpg images. I say this because I have only experienced the "low virtual memory" message when I have worked on a really large scrapbook (i.e., 29 pages). I admit that I have mostly worked with smaller albums and then "pasted" them together by saving those images to a CD. (I did this when I was giving several of my albums as a gift for example.)

So, it's not that your computer hard-drive is "bogged down" with scrapbooks. I believe things get a bit slower only when working with large SB, and that this is the case because everything in SBMAX is such high-resolution, high-quality (done so that the pages look great if you wish to print them).

Check out the following thread which describes ways to make SBMAX as fast as possible!!! http://www.scrapbookmax.com/forums/showthread.php?t=463

Good luck, and please stop by if you have more questions or concerns!

I hope that helped!

[Marion]

Memory problems

I have a very good and fast computer with 1GB ram memory etc. and when accessing my embellishments folders it takes for ever too. Especcially now that the folders are growing in size. What I have been doing is, made a shortcut to the gallery on my desktop and then access the folders from there by drag and dropping into my templates, rather than going through the icons in the program. Much much faster response time that way.

Hope this suggestion helps, sure made a difference to me.

Marion

[Granny]

You all probably know this already, but just as a reminder.... One thing that slows down computers a lot is defragmenting. The more stuff you have on the computer, and the more files you install and erase, the more defragmented it gets. It's a good idea maybe once a week, to run the defrag program under utilities. It takes a while, so maybe you can do it before going out shopping, or putting the kids in the washer machine, or vacumming the dog. And if you are using a background image that has a repeat pattern, it's best to import a tile and then let the program tile it for you.

Clear as mud? It's Greek to me too.

Granny

[jessleonard]

Thank you....

all for your help.... IM not actually having any problems, with speed, or anything else... I was just wondering if there was a trick to managing space..... Based on all your answers, I will just do it how I have been... backing up everything on a memory stick, and then saving it to jpeg to print and share.... I do run the defrag about once a month and will try that more often to see what diff that makes...... again thank you all!!

[MaggieMae]

What is a tile?

You all probably know this already, but just as a reminder.... One thing that slows down computers a lot is defragmenting. The more stuff you have on the computer, and the more files you install and erase, the more defragmented it gets. It's a good idea maybe once a week, to run the defrag program under utilities. It takes a while, so maybe you can do it before going out shopping, or putting the kids in the washer machine, or vacumming the dog. And if you are using a background image that has a repeat pattern, it's best to import a tile and then let the program tile it for you.

Clear as mud? It's Greek to me too.

Granny

Hi Granny,

I was reading this thread and wondered what you meant by a tile. I did see it somewhere but it looked like it changed the background images to huge ones. Does it change back again to the repeat pattern? Hope you see this!

[queenofdreamsz]

Uploading Pages as Webpage ?? Please Help me...

Sorry for posting this under this thread but I'm hoping to get an answer since members are active right now.

I haven't purchased the program yet. still have a few questions.

Can I upload a page to my website? The page would have to be saved with a .htm or .html extention. Also, if you can upload a page to a website (according to what the description of the program says) then can I add hyperlinks in my scrapbook pages? If the page will save as a .htm or .html file then I could add hyperlinks by opening the page in my Frontpage program and then add them.

Not trying to get too technical but need to know what the flexibility of the program really is. I'm not interested in uploading pages to an online album.

I'm only interested in being able to upload to my website so if anyone out there knows these details please let me know. I don't make much hardcopy of scrapbook pages.

I'm mainly interested in the different graphics and embellishments to print out as enclosure cards, tags, and export and save to be able to use in other programs if needed.

Also, Are the file formats standard (JPG,JPEG,BMP, etc) or are they program exclusive?

Thanks in advance, Stephanie

[Lorne]

Can I upload a page to my website? The page would have to be saved with a .htm or .html extention. Also, if you can upload a page to a website (according to what the description of the program says) then can I add hyperlinks in my scrapbook pages? If the page will save as a .htm or .html file then I could add hyperlinks by opening the page in my Frontpage program and then add them.

Yep, you can output your pages to standard HTML. It will even create navigation hyperlinks to go back and forth between the pages. It's 100% standard HTML though, so you can go in and edit it any way you want.

You can also output to standard JPEG images and then incorporate those images into your site on your own if you want.

Not trying to get too technical but need to know what the flexibility of the program really is. I'm not interested in uploading pages to an online album.

The output options are totally flexible. You can control the JPEG quality, the size, all of that good stuff. You can even output to PDF if you want.

Also, Are the file formats standard (JPG,JPEG,BMP, etc) or are they program exclusive?

The file formats are standard. Even PNG32 is supported (PNG files with a full alpha channel, for transparency/translucency).

[Lorne]

To respond to the original post about virtual memory...

When that happens, save your work, close Scrapbook MAX, and then open it again. Make sure you aren't running a lot of other programs in the background - every program uses a bit of memory and it all adds up. If it happens a lot, consider buying more RAM for your computer.

"Virtual memory" is a way that modern operating systems (like Windows XP) make use of the RAM and hard drive in the computer. It's an abstraction that allows each program to think it has its own big chunk of memory, all to itself -- even if the computer doesn't actually have that much memory installed.

The operating system accomplishes this by using the hard drive to make the actual memory (RAM) seem larger than it is, if it needs to.

There are generally two kinds of storage space, or "memory" on your computer:

• RAM (Random Access Memory) - temporary storage space, which is directly accessible by your computer's CPU chip...picture this as electricity inside your computer...when you turn the power off, everything "stored" in it disappears. This is what people refer to when they talk about a computer's "memory."
• hard drive space - permanent storage space, kind of like a big warehouse for things you could place into RAM. Each hard drive actually has a magnetic disc spinning inside it, like a cross between a cassette tape and an old vinyl album. Hard drives are MUCH, MUCH slower than RAM, but they generally have a lot more room for information, and it doesn't disappear when you turn the power off.

The important point is just that the hard drive is used for long term storage, and the memory (RAM) is used temporarily by programs when they're running.

Now, different computers have different amounts of RAM. What if you need to run a program that needs more RAM than you have? Or what if you want to run 10 programs at the same time?

Virtual memory lets the computer pretend there's more RAM memory in the computer than there actually is, by temporarily moving stuff back and forth between the RAM and the hard drive. The operating system moves stuff into memory in little pieces as they're needed, and moves them back to the hard drive when it runs out of room in RAM and it needs to move in something else.

On Windows XP, the most memory a program can be given is 2 gigabytes. Every program running on Windows actually thinks it has a full 2 gigabytes of memory to itself - even if your computer only has 1 gigabyte installed, or 512 megabytes installed. That's why it's called "virtual memory" - even if there isn't actually enough to go around, the computer will simulate it by moving stuff back and forth between the memory and the hard drive.

This is all highly technical stuff - in fact many programmers are even confused about it.

The virtual memory error occurs when a program runs out of room in its big 2 GB chunk of simulated memory. This is usually because it is trying to fit a bunch of very big things into its 2 gigabytes, and it just runs out of room.

It can also happen over time as it uses the space to hold things of different sizes, which can lead to the virtual memory becoming "fragmented" as the remaining space is split up into a lot of little pieces instead of just being in one big chunk. Some things need to be stored all together in memory, and if there isn't a single chunk big enough, you get an "out of virtual memory" error.

This is kind of like how a hard drive gets fragmented, but it has a different effect. When hard drives get fragmented, they slow down because the magnetic sensors have to move around more to read the different parts. When virtual memory gets fragmented, it doesn't slow anything down...it just increases the chance of having nowhere to put something big.

The only way to remedy the situation is to close the program and restart it, so that it gets to start filling its 2 GB of simulated memory from scratch again. Although you can defragment a hard drive, you can't defragment RAM - for technical reasons it's completely impossible. And unfortunately you can't defragment the virtual memory in Windows, either.

(Some programs claim to be able to defragment memory, but it's impossible...in fact, when you understand how memory actually works, it doesn't even make sense. Those programs are the computer equivalent of snake oil.)

So, once again the best you can do is: save your work, close Scrapbook MAX, and then open it again. Make sure you aren't running a lot of other programs in the background, and consider buying more RAM for your computer.

[Sandy]

Thank you for the excellent description!

[Granny]

MaggieMae....

I was talking about small repeated tiles. I have a program that makes seamless tiles, and there are many filters out there that will do it if you have PaintShopPro. Let's say you have a tube or image or a pretty rose, and you would like to make that your background. By using a filter, you can make the rose repeat itself in such a way that it appears there are no seams, just the same flower repeated endlessly on your canvass. I find that for a page 1600x1600 pixels, or 8x8 inches, a tile size of 200x200 will give you a nice repeated background. If you were to make that background in an image editor, the size of the file would he hughe, probably from 1 to 7 mgs. But if you bring the tile into Max, and tile it (Page, Settings, Background, Image, Tile), you get a small size file.

Maybe one of the gurus can explain it better. I have attached one tile here for you to try it out. Let me know if you need more help.

Granny

ps: Click on the image, then right click and save as a jpg.

[MaggieMae]

Thanks, Granny!

I think I understand - I'm going to try it. Thanks for the quick response!