Ballooning file sizes

I've been looking through my Final Cut Events folders. trying to salvage some disc space.
I noticed one set were imported into FCPX, rather than referenced, and the file named "High Quality Media" inside "Transcoded media" (which not all my events have) is massive. It's multiplied the original media files by about five or six times the size!
An example, one clip, originally 331.7MB has grown to 1.95Gb!!
They are the same dimensions, but the smaller is H.264, AAC, total bitrate 23,881, and the biggie is Apple ProRes 422, Linera PCM, Timecode (?) total bitrate 140,708!
They look and sound exactly the same in Quicktime.... no wonder I'm running out of disc space, fast!
What did I do wrong?

You've done nothing wrong as such, but you need to know what's happening.
This is my pet simple explanation of ProRes 422.
If your native camera files play back and edit well with FCP X, strictly speaking, you don't have to to transcode to ProRes (but it helps - especially if you have multiple camera angles and effects, titles etc - and with colour correction).
If your playback is problematic, it's best to transcode the material. You can do this at any time. ProRes 422 is not so highly compressed as native camera footage, so it's far easier for your Mac to play it back (not so much unpacking to do). The downside is that it takes a lot more disk space.
If disk space is at a premium, use Proxy - this takes a fraction of the disk space but is much lower quality but this is fine for editing - just remember to choose High Quality when you export and all will be OK.
I use some XDCAM EX footage from a couple of Sony EX1 Rs and some H.264 from a Canon 5D mk2. Usually, I edit the XDCAM footage natively but I transcode the H.264. I find this works well for my setup.
I sincerely hope your Projects, Events and Media are on a fast (Firewire 800) external HD (Formatted OS Extended). Keeping them on your system drive makes it difficult for your Mac to operate.
Andy

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File sizes - Click through selection

How bout looking at the ballooning file sizes?
I just got pissed off at how slow illustrator was (using the new cs4 version and "mistakenly" left a couple layers pallet open) and did a copy-paste into Freehand and finished the job.
When done the freehand EPS file was 52k.
Illustrator's file size for the same project? 1.1 MB
Good Lord! import that into an InDesign file . . .
Click through -
If they could use a "click through" model to access items beneath layers like in inDesign and Freehand they wouldn't need to have all these layers and tiny layer previews for every tiny little piece of art on the page.
Maybe that would save some space. Sure hard drives are getting cheaper all the time, but why are these files becoming so huge?

Kirby,
are you recommending to downgrade the original image files, even if the JPEGs in question are the only copies? JPEG compression is lossy and creates horrible artfacts, if it is applied too heavily. But even with only a sllght JPEG compression applied, it is difficult, to apply any adjustments, like sharpening, after the compression.
My iPhone photos are 8MP in size and the average file size is 3MB. I am quite happy with that amount of storage and would not compress the originals further.
As a test:
To the left, the original JPEG with 3.85 MB and to the right a compressed version with 598 KB.
Looking at the pixels (the sun hat at the bottom of the picture) : the stronger compression hides the details:
Or the pine cones:
I don't apply any JPEG compression to original files, beyond what the camera does anyway.

When converting a .pptx file of 6MB to .pdf, the file size ballooned to 25MB. The original file was created on a PC. What happened? Why? How to fix? Thx.

When converting a .pptx file of 6MB to .pdf, the file size ballooned to 25MB. The original file was created on a PC. What happened? Why? How to fix? Thx.

gssharpe wrote:
What happened?
Nothing much. Different formats.
How to fix?
Try editing the original file. Resample pics to a lower resolution, check out other graphics, check table borders (eliminate any dotted lines or borders), check font usage. When generating PDF, try Save As (instead of Print > Save As), although I don't expect that'll make much difference.
Next, open the PDF in Preview, choose File > Save As, choose Format: PDF, Quartz Filterz: Reduce File Size. If that isn't enough, you can use ColorSync Utility to duplicate the Reduce File Size filter, and then edit it for a more aggressive size reduction. But keep in mind that size reduction means lower quality.

File size balloons up after annotation

Hi. I've been creating OCR pdfs of scanned books and the resulting files are very reasonable 2-4 mb. However, as soon as I add an annotation such as highlighting, the file balloons up by 10X, 20-40mb. Can someone help me understand why this happens and what I can do about it. I've searched google and this forum but can't seem to find an answer.
Thanks!

Thanks, I'm an avid Acrobat user, there is no problem with file size no matter how I save. But both Adobe Acrobat and Reader are unusably slow when scrolling through entire books. So I use Preview or other highlighting programs. However, as soon as I have to save the pdf with any edit the file size jumps 10 fold.
I need a workaround so MacOSX pdf readers don't increase the size.
Or, a way to get Adobe Acrobat/Reader to scroll properly in MacOSX.
Thanks!

Premiere CS6 Save Files Ballooning in Size

Opened up a verison of a CS6 project I have been working on for a while, changed absolutely nothing after opening it, and did a "save as." The save-as project goes from the original 75mb to over 1gb - after touching nothing in the project! What's going on with this?
It actually happened on a previous project too, except I did a normal save and it ballooned in size, and I had to go back to a previous auto-save, losing some work I had done so I had a manageble project to work with (saving/opening takes forever on the big projects).
Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!
sam

Ok, very strange development - left the project to export some things overnight, project still at 3+ GB at the time. This morning, exports complete, I cringe as I hit save, prepared to wait 20minutes. But it saves super quick, and project is now 80MB. Totally unexpected, but I'll take it!
No idea why - I didn't add or delete anything since last night's edit, all I did was export a queue from AME6. I also turned auto-save off overnight - could that have anything to do with it?
-sam

Having problems reducing PDF file size.

Really frustrated...
Mac 10.6.8
Acrobat Pro X 10.1.4
I do not have access to the originating files for the PDF in question. Original file is 268MB.
6.25" x 10.25" document size.
I have used Save As Reduced file size. Increased file to 312MB.
I have Save As Optimized PDF with smallest file size. and got the file down to 247MB.
I printed out to a .ps file and ran it through Distiller with a custom Smaller File size taking it down to 72dpi (.ps file was 2.6GB) and got the file to 216MB.
I did another Optimize of the 216MB file clicking everything [flattening, fonts, images, etc.] and the file came out to 530MB. (Really?!?!)
[This also took 3.5 hours.]
Ok, content stream at 97%. I don't know what that is or how to reduce it.
I'd love to get this below 100MB and below 50MB would be great.
Any help / hints / tricks / tips are greatly apprectiated.

I'm not sure that printing to a new PDF is the answer. When I print to a PDF, my pdf size balloons (often by 3x the original size). I've checked the settings in the print profile (verifying I'm printing to black and white, and lowering the DPI from 1200 to 300) but even at that, the finished product is often 2.5x the original. (Background on the document ... it was paper, I scanned it at 400 dpi. The file size was around 3 MB. I added a footer and then printed to pdf. The finished product was 9 MB.) Any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Acrobat 9 Typewriter increasing file size

I have scanned forms that I need to edit with the Typewriter tool in Acrobat 9 Pro - basically I just need to add a date to the form and then e-mail it. Evidently I have accidentally clicked some box that I did not want to click, because now when I edit the one-page form (about 70k before editing) and type in any data whatsoever using the Typewriter tool, then save the form, the file balloons to anywhere from 0.6 to 0.9 MB. Which is crazy, and too large for me to submit.
Right now what I'm having to do is edit the form, save it, print it, and re-scan it. This is making me nuts. Does anyone have any suggestions?
I have tried Reduce File Size, the Optimizer, and downsampling, but nothing has worked. I can't make the file small enough to make a difference.
Thanks,
Beth

Base - 14 fonts
Standard Type 1 Fonts (Standard 14 Fonts)
Fourteen typefaces—known as the standard 14 fonts—have a special significance in PDF documents:
Times (v3) (in regular, italic, bold, and bold italic)
Courier (in regular, oblique, bold and bold oblique)
Helvetica (v3) (in regular, oblique, bold and bold oblique)
Symbol
Zapf Dingbats
These fonts are sometimes called the base fourteen fonts.[34] These fonts, or suitable substitute fonts with the same metrics, must always be available in all PDF readers and so need not be embedded in a PDF.[35] PDF viewers must know about the metrics of these fonts. Other fonts may be substituted if they are not embedded in a PDF.
Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Linotype. Arial was Monotype's attempt to make a font that looked like Helvetica (but without paying licensing fees) and was designed in 1982.
Microsoft didn't want to pay Linotype licensing fees to use Helvetica so it went instead with the cheaper Arial.
Arial is held in disregard by many professional typographers and type enthusiasts, for reasons relating to its similarity to other typefaces and the involvement of Microsoft in its development and distribution.[7] It is reinforced by Arial's apparent status as a de facto Helvetica stand-in, but without paying royalties, or credit, to Helvetica. Arial's glyph widths are nearly identical to those of Helvetica,[7][26] rather than Monotype Grotesque, on which Arial is otherwise based.[7] "But to an experienced designer," writes typographer Mark Simonson, using Arial "was like asking for Jimmy Stewart and getting Rich Little."

Acrobat 7.0.9: Optimizing PDF increases file size?

Audit Space Usage in the Optimize dialog shows "Color Spaces" ballooning from 0.8 MB to 22 MB when a PDF is optimized (goes from 3% of the file size to 58%). File size increases from 23.8 MB to 35.6 MB.
What exactly is happening, and how can I fix it?
Thanks for any info.

Hey, Jon
Interesting...
Original file (300 dpi CMYK images) 23.8 MB
Images 19 MB
Color Spaces 0.8 MB
Optimize with flattening (72 dpi images, low quality) 68.7 MB
Images 49 MB
Color Spaces 18 MB
Optimize without flattening (72 dpi images, low quality) 68.2 MB
Images 48 MB
Color Spaces 18 MB
Not sure why color spaces are down to 18 MB from 22 MB, I used a preset that I THOUGHT was the same one I used yesterday. Regardless, it's bizarre that both images and color spaces are getting huge when optimized.
I used Create PDF from Multiple Files to bring in a bunch of pages, but I'm reasonably sure that all those files were already flattened before I brought them in.
I'll file that transparency tip for next time though, you never know when it might come up.
Thanks.

HUGE file size for Pages (iWork '06) documents

I'm in the process of evaluating Pages in the hopes of dumping the last of my Microsoft programs (ie, Word.) I'm impressed with the ease of use; especially when it comes to being a little creative.
My great concern is the file size. I created a Pages document of 6 pages. It had text, images and tables. This relatively small document is a whopping 17.7MB. When I export this document to a Word doc and open it, it looks identical. The file size of the Word doc is only 1.4 MB. A HUGE difference. Is this a known issue or is there some sort of compression setting I'm missing?
I typically work with large docs and I don't want Pages files hogging all of my drive space.

The package shows image1.tif, which I added on the
first page. There's also an image1_filtered-9.tiff
which is HUGE. It's about 3MB larger than the
original file. It looks like Pages possibly makes a
copy of an image when you apply an effect like a drop
shadow?
So if you don't want huge files, I guess you have to
stay away from the image effects...which is actually
what made Pages interesting.
It is the adjustment tool which is causing the ballooning of your files.
If you use the levels adjustement, you will end up with an image which is labelled ~levelled.tiff. If you use the various other parts of the adjustment screen you will get files which are labelled ~-filtered.tiff, with or without version numbers.
There is no optimization of the various files as they are saved, and no user control over their generation. It would be much nicer if the adjustments weere done on the fly, or at least if a size-specific thumbnail were made for on-screen representation.
For now, however, if you are concerned with the size of your files in pages (and keynote, since it also happens there) then do the adjustments elsewhere. I suggest iPhoto, if that is where you have stored your items. You can always make your placed photo an image placeholder and replace it with alternative adjustments later.
(I tested this with a 4k file made for Livejournal, saved as a jpg. The resultant filtered and levelled tiffs were 40k. A considerable increase.)

How to view file size of imported photo

i plan to import a number of large photos from iphoto. i hesitate because each photo is between 20 and 50 MB. Will iweb scale this file down while importing? How can i find out about it? I did not find file information on the imported photo nor do i know the file location of the website project on my mac harddisk.
Do I have to use third party software like Photoshop to scale the size down and afterwards import them into iphoto and iweb?
Thank You,
Harpo

I think you should DEFINITELY scale your images down before importing them or dragging and dropping them into iWeb! If your images are in iPhoto, then you can use the "Export" command in iPhoto to export your images and specify what resolution they should be scaled to.
One of the issues I have with the iPhoto export function is that you have no control over the amount of JPG compression in the exported photos, which has a direct relationship to the resulting file size. So I like to use a program called "Downsize" http://www.stuntsoftware.com/Downsize/ which will allow you to specify maximum image dimensions as well as JPG compression. You will also then be able to check how large the resulting files are in the Finder before using them in iWeb.
Whenever you are scaling photos for use in iWeb, it's important to realize that any additional changes that you make to the photos in iWeb will cause the image to be converted from jpg to png. This may impinge on your ability to control the filesizes directly. The way to get around this is to scale your photos to exactly the size you want and then after dragging them into iWeb, click on the "Use original size" button in the Inspector Metrics tab. Also, don't apply any other effects to your images like rotation, frames, drop shadows... If you want these, you should do these in external applications as well. These are my recommendations only if you want to have complete control over your filesizes. It's certainly not required.
But as far as your 50mb images go, definitely scale them down before bringing them into iWeb. Otherwise, iWeb will rescale the images for you, but it will ALSO throw a copy of your 50mb file into your Domain file to refer to in publishing. This would cause your Domain file to balloon in size quite rapidly. To put things into perspective for you on this, the Domain file for my entire site is only 80mb.

IPhone backup file size

When I look at the size of the files in my backup folder nothing is larger than 300mb yet I have a 16gb iPhone. Is it actually doing incremental backups? I was concened about a bunch of 16gb backups piling up on my harddrive but it doesn't look like that's what's happening. Am I not getting full backups?

I have a similar question (and the previous reply, though well-intended, doesn't answer it).
I need to restore my iPhone from an older backup (to retrieve some older data), then restore it again to today's configuration. So, I'm making extra sure to have a very current backup.
Each of the six, older backups is over 3gb. But the folder containing this afternoon's full backup was only about 900mb, which was disturbing. I believed it should have been bigger. So, I ran the backup a 2nd time, just to be sure -- and got the same results. So I kept the newest one of the two.
Then I did other things for a few hours -- including installing a couple of apps, as well as syncing to the phone a number of photo albums that weren't present at the time of this afternoon's backup. So, I decided to backup again, this evening. But after doing so, I looked in the Backup folder and noticed that the backup from this afternoon (that was 900mb) had since ballooned to 3.2gb -- which is more in line with the backups from previous months.
I have no idea how or why the backup tripled in size -- yet I was relieved that it did, because I'm now more confident that it contains the "correct" amount of data.
I've searched in vain for an explanation for the ballooning folders. I'll attempt to monitor this newest backup to see if it, too, balloons in size.
(It just occurred to me that perhaps, each time a new backup is created, additional files are added, for some reason, to the previous backup. I'm eager to figure this out...)

Pages file sizes in Lion

Anyone have any idea how big files will get using AutoSave/Versions in Lion or if there are any safeguards to prevent the file size from spiraling out of control?
For example, I write short stories and novels with Pages (I used to use Word 2004 pre-Lion, but that's a Rosetta app), and the files I deal with are just text and formatting. I have one .DOC file from before my Pages adoption that is only 120K, and I have a .pages file that is much shorter in word count than the 120K .DOC file, but as I've been working on it for the past two weeks, that .pages file has grown to 236K, nearly twice the size of its longer .DOC counterpart.
What worries me is when I end up working on the same file for a couple of years (think 150,000 words or more), how big is it going to be then? Does AutoSave/Versions act like Time Machine and only keep the most recent X months' worth of edits to keep the file at a reasonable size? Or am I going to end up with a text file that has ballooned up to 20 or 30 MB in size because of the several years' worth of versions it has kept that whole time?

Hi Matt,
the problem is that a pages 'file' isn't a file at all: it's a folder full of smaller files. Your finder is probably set up NOT to display folder sizes (I believe this is the default since it uses up system resources/CPU calculating them all).
Go to Finder>View>Show View Options then check the box at the bottom: 'calculate all sizes'. If your pages docs are all in one folder, then you can limit this preference to 'this window only' and save the system calculating folder sizes everywhere. The finder will now display your pages 'file' sizes (you may need to close the finder window and reopen it).
Hope this makes your yinyang feel better.

Expanding files sizes

Hi everyone. I'm fairly new to Aperture. I notice that when i export files they seem to grow in size. In teh inspector in Aperture, the file size says 8.7mb. when i export it as a .tiff it come out as 31mb.
Excuse my ignorance but why is this happening?
Many Thanx
Mark

Hi and thanx for your help.
I need to do two things with the images:
1) produce slideshows of the various albums onto a dvd
2) produce a DVD of full res images that people can take to their local lab and get printed.
I'm guessing that a high res jpeg will be ok for (2). I was then going to import them into iPhoto to save as a slideshow with image numbers then to iDVD.
I'm just confused about why the image after Aperture is over 3 times the size? Sure some space for layers etc i understand but does it really add over 300% to the file size?
As for the original camera, it was actually an EOS1Ds, 11Megapixels apparently! i think i left out the 's' before.
I believe that they were taken into Photoshop, saved as 8 Bit tiff's then given to me on the dvd. Most of the images are around 8Mb when seen in Aperture or anywhere else but still when exported they balloon to over 30Mb.
Thanx
Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz, 1Gb Ram, Superdrive Mac OS X (10.4.6)

H.264 file size

I have an Aiptek GoHD camcorder. (I thought I would work with this first before jumping into a HDD 1080 camcorder later this year) The quality of the video is remarkably good given the price of the device. The compression format is H.264 MPEG-4 at 1280 by 720. The file sizes are surprisingly svelte at about 25Mbyte per minute. I can take the SD card out of the camera, place it in my card reader and transfer it to my mac pro as .mov files that I can then import into iMovie08 without a problem. It converts them to Appple Intermediat Codec for editing purposes which of course balloons the file size. When I export the movie using quicktime, I am using the following settings:
Size: 1280x720
Compression type: H.264
Frame rate: Current
Key frames: Every 24 (Frame reordering check box selected)
Compressor quality : Medium (Faster encode check box selected)
Data Rate:: Automatic
This results in final file sizes that remain in the range of 100Mbytes per minute (or larger!)in spite of using the "medium" quality. I am not adding any effects except for a few titles. I am pretty frugal about what I want to record with the camcorder. All I really want to do is import 5-10 clips (of about 1-3 minutes in duration each) into iMovie, chain them together beginning to end and export it back to the hard drive as one movie in the same format in which the .mov files were originally recorded. My questions are:
Is the inefficent encoding a result of some setting that I have chosen incorrectly?
Is the inefficient encoding just a limitation of iMovie and would I get more efficient encoding if I went to FCE4? (I would rather not have to pony up for the pro version of Final Cut to get the "compressor" function but would consider it if I knew it would do the trick)
Would I be better off getting a hardware based encoder for the Mac (if such a creature exists) since the hardware based encoder for the Aiptek does such a nice job?
I appreciate any help!
Tom

Is the inefficent encoding a result of some setting that I have chosen incorrectly?
If by your question you are referring the the difference between source data rate and final target data rate, the you problem is in your settings. File size s directly proportional to your total combined data rate per unit of time. Selecting an "Automatic" video data rate tells QT to use as high a data rate as is it thinks is necessary. You can, instead, simply limit your final total combined data rate (i.e., Audio + Video) to that of your source or approximately 25 MB/M.

Smallest file size for talking head, MPEG1?

Hey friends, back again, still using PRE8.
I have to encode a talking head into a watchable quality for a podcast. Prefer between 320x240 and 640x480, prefer the later. I inadvertently tried some combination of VCD 352x240 and got an amazingly small file size that looked tollerable....and no audio (that part not so good). I cannot figure out what I did, though I probably started out with VCD setting and modified one of the video or audio characteristics, multiplexer (who knows).
The file output was a m1v and was under 99MB for an hour and a half. Other formats have all been a gig or so.
Sure, no audio is a lot smallar (don't think I disabled audio, smarter than THAT) but I can't seem to get any kind of m1v file again, pref with the audio.
Any thoughts?
While this will be viewed on a PC, we don't have a lot of bandwidth or storage space available currently. Fortunately, only graphics are at the start and end and don't have to be sharp, there is no whiteboard or other hard to encode detail.
Thanks a lot
Don

Yup Steve, for the web.
I have tried everything twice by now, and can't seem to get it to produce a m1v file again............
You know what? Think I just figured it out.
I did a search of files with my working file name after creating an mpg (which is all I seem to be able to get, even with VCD settings. Anyway, I picked up the m1v file from who knows what directory. It MAY be that the m1v file is created by PRE8 in the process of creating the mpg, and left in one of its working directories, for re-use later. PRE8 probably never intended that to be used, because it's a video-only WORKING file...Make sense?
It's hard to believe, a working video file for a 800meg mpg is 99meg. and looks pretty good. Add audio and it balloons to 800 meg? Makes no sense.
The best I can do is around 500 meg for a mpeg, and in generating a mp4, PRE8 does not change the predicted file size when you change the frame rate and hardly at all with the resolution. In mpeg 1 there is a big difference, as expected.
Unfortunately cant use flash either.
It would be nice if there was a chart someplace that gave you file size comparrisons for the various encoders and options!
Don

Ballooning file sizes

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