speed of slide change v quality of image

[Phil1]

I'm doing a big PPT presentation on an organisation's system as part of a much larger exhibition which will be done professionally.

One question is what resolution is needed for optimum display quality? Too large a pixel count and the change over will be sluggish, too small and the IQ will suffer. I guess the display IQ also depends on the monitor's spec. Are there any other factors to consider and any general advice please?

Many thanks

Phil

 

[a_c_skinner]

Find out the resolution of the projector and size the images to that. 4000pix along the long edge is likely to be the biggest resolution you need and that only if it is a very costly display.

 

[Gato Amarillo]

Check for the resolution needed, as per the above.

But file size is more important than resolution for slide changes, so consider the compression settings on your JPEGs. If the organization has tech people maybe they can help you.

Gato

 

[s_grins]

If you run your presentation on large TV screen, you need HD resolution min (1080 px vertical), or 4K resolution (2160 px vertical). You have to know display specs.

Things are different if you have a projector and screen.

 

[Blindingly]

Speaking as someone who has done many (hundreds of) presentations to small in-house groups to large scale groups of technical professionals I can agree what's been said so far. It's all about what you are showing on - screens or projectors. You need to find out what it will be shown on.

You won't go wrong if you choose HD resolution, it will cater for full screen images and the, more likely, images within a border, not at full screen resolution.

Sluggishness doesn't really come into the equation - the image will appear, to all intents, instantaneously no matter the resolution.

 

[graybalanced]

As others said the main driver is the size of the projector or TV screen when measured in pixels. If they have a 2K HD projector then 1920 x 1280 is the size. If they have a 4K projector than 3840 x 2160 is the size. If the slides are sluggish, you can probably just make it a 1920 x 1080 frame size and it will look good even on a 4K projector because 1080p HD is enough resolution that most people will not be able to notice pixels unless they are close to the screen and if it is the sharpest kind of screen.

Use JPEG images in your PowerPoints because everybody is used to it in every common office building in the world, the computer hardware is optimized to decompress it. If you use an image format like TIFF Uncompressed the file sizes will be gargantuan and might take longer to appear on screen. Use JPEG with at least 70% quality because lower than that it might start to show JPEG artifacts on screen.

The other factor is the speed of the computer that is connected to the projector/TV. A recently released laptop should have no problem playing a 4K PowerPoint slide show with images. A laptop more than 5 years old might have a slightly longer slide display delay time if a single slide is loaded up with a lot of images.

 

[Abbott Schindler]

It looks to me like everyone’s assuming that the photo fills the slide.Is that the case, or is it an insert? If an insert, you may want to scale appropriately… or trust the computer drivers to do their job (possibly at minor loss of detail that may not be noticed).

 

[Blindingly]

post deleted: response not needed

 

[Phil1]

Its full scale photos as I'll not be using inserts, but thanks for pointing this out as it could be useful on other occasions.

Phil

 

[Phil1]

Many thanks!

I'm not planning to project at this stage but may do so in the future. I'll be using large high res jpgs with an appropriate compression factor. Your point about the laptop is telling as I imagine that some of the machines they use are - how shall I say - not exactly brand new so I'll try to get the latest they have.

Thanks again

Phil

 

[Phil1]

Good point. - thank you! I work for them regularly and will be able to do a test run and make adjustments before the exhibition starts if i get the file size wrong.

Phil

 

[Phil1]

Thanks. I'll be sure to make enquiries as to which monitors are available.

Phil

 

[Phil1]

Thank you for your excellent advice!

Phil