Must be a better more efficient way

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Does anyone agree with my query ?

Yes
2
33%
No
4
67%
 
Total votes: 6

Grant W. Bannakin
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:13 pm
Location: Manly Vale,Sydney, N.S.W.

Must be a better more efficient way

Post by Grant W. Bannakin »

Yesterday I viewed 200 Movies and found that I had entirely used up 200MB of download/upload capacity. Can you not find a more efficient way of doing this as it uses up very rapidly a persons ISP account. Can the movies not be Zipped and downloaded in packs and sent back the same way? This would minimize the UL/DL traffic for those of us on smaller ISP accounts. Personally I have upgraded my account which will come into effect on May 5th. But this may not be a solution for everyone.
the moon
Posts: 177
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 12:34 am

Post by the moon »

If anything they should increase the size of the movies. Often I can't make a decision on a possible track because either the quality of the movie is too low to make out small features, or because there aren't enough frames and the focus stops too high up.

Zipping the images wouldn't help, they're already compressed. There's plenty of dusters that have unlimited ISPs so it's not really a problem for the project.
DustSabre
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 09, 2006 4:51 pm

Post by DustSabre »

Yes; I think most people have unlimited ISPs.
DustBuster
DustMod
Posts: 694
Joined: Wed May 17, 2006 8:12 pm
Location: Horsetown, USA

Post by DustBuster »

Greetings Grant.

Though your idea could benefit heavy duty dusters, I believe there are a few reasons why the files are not compressed and sent in batches as you mentioned;

Firstly, the individual frames are only about 10k on average (though at 40 frames per movie, that can add up quickly!)- but any smaller and we'd loose some of the resolution that the moon is referring to. In addition, JPEG files are already compressed and I don't know how much additional compression could be achieved.

Secondly, adding a compression/decompression function would increase the possibity for problems and then require support to correct on a per-user basis.

Lastly, the original thought was that each user would spend about 10 minutes per week using the VM, which wouldn't put as much drain on a user's ISP account traffic stats.

I think you found the best solution... MORE BANDWIDTH!
PovAddict
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Jul 31, 2006 9:28 pm
Location: Sitting at the computer, as always!

Post by PovAddict »

Have you also noticed the INSANE CPU usage while moving focus? How can somebody run both SETI and Stardust together, if Stardust uses so much CPU time? One would think that Stardust uses your brain, and SETI uses your CPU, but with such an inefficient virtual microscope, there isn't much CPU left for SETI (or any other distributed computing project).

Web-based apps will never be efficient. We need a standalone application that downloads the movies and shows them. It could keep the current movie uncompressed in RAM = less CPU usage as it doesn't have to decode the JPEG in realtime while you move focus. It could download a few dozen movies, for people to be able to search tracks while offline, then send results when they re-connect (don't say people don't have dialup anymore; searching interstellar dust from a laptop during a flight seems fun).

It could also use a different way to compress the images that takes advantage of the low difference between images; that is, like any video codec does. Independent JPEG images is much bigger than a real video where you only store what changed from one frame to the next.

I'm also trying to convince people of not making web-based the only option for BOSSA.
Jwb52z
Posts: 61
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 5:05 am

Post by Jwb52z »

I can't imagine why anyone would willingly have a limited ISP in this day and age of multi-gigabyte files and streaming media. As for CPU usage, you might just have an old computer that can't handle things well for the project if that's an issue for you.
PovAddict
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Jul 31, 2006 9:28 pm
Location: Sitting at the computer, as always!

Post by PovAddict »

Jwb52z wrote:I can't imagine why anyone would willingly have a limited ISP in this day and age of multi-gigabyte files and streaming media.
Agreed. Any kind of limit with respect to amount of data downloaded is stupid. My ISP plan has low bandwidth, but I'd rather have low KB/s than ANY GB/month limit.
As for CPU usage, you might just have an old computer that can't handle things well for the project if that's an issue for you.
I have a dual core AMD 4200+ (and my previous computer was Pentium IV 3.0GHz), but I also run BOINC. If using stardust means my BOINC performance will go down by a whole 20%, then no thanks. See my first paragraph.
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