First impressions and suggestions from me too

[Bernie Ess]

Hello, I have downloaded 2 days ago and here are some ideas: First this seems like a program with a huge potential for the future, at this time it still seems - in certain respects - as a late beta or pre- release if I may say that.

Here are some observations:

1. Free more vertical space under 1024x768 res - as someone said the portrait mode pictures are too low, whereas the upper part of the frame is too big and not adjustable while not displaying very important information.

1b. (Sub)folders of the archive should always be accessible on the left collumn which actually only shows the archive name - wasted space isn´t it?

3. To edit (add or remove single files from the Archive and maybe change the Archive name) *after* "processing" without having to start all over again.
Sometimes the archive might be 1CD+ just a few MB and removing just 2 or 3 unimportant photos might be useful.

4. Very important: Store the index files on the Hard Drive! Otherwise it will still be necessary to index the so burned CDs with a tool like iMatch or Thumbs+ or whatever.

5. My impression is that the drive ejects the CD a bit often during the process. Before starting to burn, even when an empty CD is already in...

6. Burning with 700MB media set to 700MB seems unsecure and buggy: But 700 is about the only kind sold here in Germany, setting 700MB media to 650 in the dialogue seems to work better, but I´d like to use really 700MB - not essantial, but space gets precious these days :-)

7. Verify in the compare level takes almost 10minutes for 620MB - I imagine this for a 6 volume archive: Preparing, processing, burning and verifying will be something to spend hours upon. Wouldn´t this get faster? I mean if you will support DVDs in the future, time becomes an issue...

So all in all I am not totally convinced if I may say: The concept is great, just the ability to burn big folders on several CDs without having to calculate how to fill the CDs up is a great thing, just some issues are a bit disturbing for now:

For me these are: my impression that 700MB media are not well supported, and the lack of HD storage of the image files.

Anyway, thanks for your effort so far, and I wish you big success with this great product.

Greetings from Berlin,

Bernie

[MichaelT]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Bernie Ess
Hello, I have downloaded 2 days ago and here are some ideas: First this seems like a program with a huge potential for the future, at this time it still seems - in certain respects - as a late beta or pre- release if I may say that.

>>>>>>That is why we call it a pre-release version.

Here are some observations:

1. Free more vertical space under 1024x768 res - as someone said the portrait mode pictures are too low, whereas the upper part of the frame is too big and not adjustable while not displaying very important information.

>>>>>>>>>>>>Agreed.

1b. (Sub)folders of the archive should always be accessible on the left collumn which actually only shows the archive name - wasted space isn´t it?

>>>>>This is based on limitations of using pure HTML for compatablilty. Could change in the future though. Your point is taken.

3. To edit (add or remove single files from the Archive and maybe change the Archive name) *after* "processing" without having to start all over again.
Sometimes the archive might be 1CD+ just a few MB and removing just 2 or 3 unimportant photos might be useful.

>>>>>>>Always in the plan to be able to make some changes with minimnal re-processing. Image files will be reused. Most other processing must be redone, but is very quick. This just missed the cut but is in the top of the que.

4. Very important: Store the index files on the Hard Drive! Otherwise it will still be necessary to index the so burned CDs with a tool like iMatch or Thumbs+ or whatever.

>>>>>>Planned for the future. Right now you can manually take the TempIndex Folder and copy it anywhere and have the index. We also plan the provision to grab the index back from the CD when we add DB management to the program in the future. So we think that this can be recreated later, or you can do it manually now.

5. My impression is that the drive ejects the CD a bit often during the process. Before starting to burn, even when an empty CD is already in...

>>>We try to minimize this and will continue to examine, but some of this is requred in orfer to be compatable with ALL the dirves and SO that we have to support. Perhaps we can optimize in the future, but our first aim is to be as compatable as possible and as you can imagine it is very hard to make all SO and all drives work. So while we can streamline the process for some specific situstions, than others fail. This has been learned over months of alpha abd beta testing at a number of sites. it is actuall quite complex. We will try to optimize as we go along.

6. Burning with 700MB media set to 700MB seems unsecure and buggy: But 700 is about the only kind sold here in Germany, setting 700MB media to 650 in the dialogue seems to work better, but I´d like to use really 700MB - not essantial, but space gets precious these days :-)

>>>>>>>We agree that best burn is to 650 media. But even burning 650 on 700 media is more secure than 700 on 700. I recommend that 650 be the limt whether using 650 or 700 media. Reasons are several. I think it is in the help file..

7. Verify in the compare level takes almost 10minutes for 620MB - I imagine this for a 6 volume archive: Preparing, processing, burning and verifying will be something to spend hours upon. Wouldn´t this get faster? I mean if you will support DVDs in the future, time becomes an issue...

>>>>A slow verify generally means a marginal burn. The blocks are read more than one time to get it right and it tires over and over again. So if the verify is much longer than the burn then I suggest that there is a mismatch between the media and the drive. The verify routine itself is faster than the drive, but when the drive has to keep reading it gets long. If a block annot be read it will be caught, and it there is even 1 bit off, it will also be caught, but if the verify is long it means that there is generally a less than good burn. Different media works differently in each dirve and it is critical to pick not only good media but also media that "likes" to be burned in you particualr burner.

So all in all I am not totally convinced if I may say: The concept is great, just the ability to burn big folders on several CDs without having to calculate how to fill the CDs up is a great thing, just some issues are a bit disturbing for now:

>>>Thanks for your positive remarks and about the rest you make your own determination.

For me these are: my impression that 700MB media are not well supported, and the lack of HD storage of the image files.

>>>700 MB is always a compromise in my opinion. We stress things because we write 4X the number of files in the archive list and many small (HTML) files, bioth conditions that stress the drive and media. So things must be done right.

Anyway, thanks for your effort so far, and I wish you big success with this great product.

>>>>>Thanks you very much. Your comments and feedback are appreicated and will be part of our planning. Thanks for taking the time to write. It is appreciated..

Greetings from Berlin,

Bernie