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Image download times

JT.

JT.

Site Supporter
Joined
Jul 24, 2011
Messages
2,962
Location
North West UK
Does anyone else find it really slow waiting for images to download on pinball info threads? Johnwhitfield's RFM pics take a few seconds to display on my screen whereas normally images display instantaneously (e.g. HD video streams for me in real-time from Youtube no probs). Pretty sure Paul will know exactly why its like this :) assuming its not just me who experiences this.
 
Occasionally yes and sometimes the 1st picture in a thread will stay in my cache and be the one loaded when clicking on the next pic
 
I dont see the issue, however i'm probably the worst person to ask as i spend a LOT of time on here, so most is cached.

Whilst i cant explain these specifics, we have a little problem anyhow....

So - Every single picture, in every single thread is held on the server. If they are copied from another site, the image is duplicated here, and loaded locally.

The reason i took this stance is because i HATE finding threads on a site, and then not being able to see the pics since they have been deleted/lost, so therefore you end up with a half baked job.

This creates an issue though. We currently have around 5Gb of pictures on the server.

I could lessen the size of these - optimise them. However they would loose some resolution. I could offload them onto Amazon S3 and these could be loaded from there, however that means that we rely one something out of our control. And i havent looked if there are any cost implications yet. However i do know it is possible.

To be honest, the pics are original camera size (3-4Mb each) and even on my 100meg+ connection they take 4-5 seconds each to load. which from clicking on a pic to it appearing i dont think too bad.... Maybe i'm lucky though...

Most pics i post are taken on my iphone, and uploaded in "medium" quality - meaning that the average pic is less then 100kb - and they take less than a second to download...and the quality is nearly as good!

So - Back to your question JT. It's probably just because of the size of the pics posted!!
 
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Recently I changed job location and travel on the trains and catch up using my mobile. My data allowance took a massive hit due to how big we take our shop log pictures. I understand the reason for it as we want to capture as much detail as possible but as general camera's get a higher definition, the sizes will only increase.
 
I'll take a look and see if i can use some image "optimisation" software to decrease the physical sizes somewhat, whilst keeping a good level of resolution...

Of course i could force a maximum image/attachment size, however i'm not sure that will help... (Well, not in a productive way!).. :D
 
I keep meaning to chat with the people who I know manage the BBC's mobile application. That can load images very quickly but I would expect they are not very large and very optimised.
Setting a size limit, or converting images to a set limit would lose some quality but I guess people can always ask for original high def pictures privately.
The number of images is in the nature of what we are trying to achieve and would just encourage people to multi-post or get annoyed. As you say, not productive to solve that (until we find a situation were we realise there is a limit).
 
Here's an example....

So - one of the pics in the RFM thread is 4.1Mb is size....

ORIGINAL IMAGE

2304 x 3072
4196 KB


www.imageoptimizer.net_Images_Optimizearrow.gif
(Optimized in 0.484 seconds)
OPTIMIZED

675 x 900
650 KB

Optimized-RFM.JPG

See if this loads any quicker... :D
 
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