Why Is Keynote So slow?

Question

Level 1

5 points

Why Is Keynote So slow?

Running Keynote 4.0.2 on Leopard 10.5.2 with graphics update. I open a presentation. Press play. It takes 72 seconds for the presentation to appear on the screen. I have minor animations on some of the slides and it takes an inordinate amount of time for them to execute when triggered. Keynote just seems so sluggish as to be nearly unusable. I thought this was supposed to be fixed in 4.0.2?

MacBook Pro Core Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.1), 10.5.2 with graphics update

Posted on Feb 12, 2008 3:46 AM

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Answer 1

Kyn Drake

Level 7

21,627 points

Feb 12, 2008 4:50 AM in response to PediCard

How much memory do you have in your machine and after you run through it once, does it run better on subsequent runs? Also, how many megabytes is your presentation? Keynote CAN be sluggish at times, but I think 72 seconds for the presentation to appear is a bit much.

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Answer 2

PediCard Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 12, 2008 6:54 AM in response to Kyn Drake

Upon further experimentation, it appears to be related to embedded charts. I created a title slide with a second slide, added a graphic to the second slide and saved it. When I press play, both slides play normally. I then added a ten year, three series 3-D bar chart to the second slide and saved the presentation. When I press play, the title slide pops right up. When I click, it now takes 18 seconds for the chart slide to appear. This two slide presentation is 6.5 MB in size.

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Answer 3

PediCard Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 12, 2008 8:30 AM in response to Kyn Drake

If I go back to editing, and then press play again, it does take 18 seconds for the chart slide to appear. The theme is a custom one - nothing extraordinary. I've place a zipped copy in my .mac public folder (dave-dot-melvin-at-mac-dot-com) if you want to have a look. I'd appreciate any insight you may be able to offer. Interestingly, the presentations worked fine in previous versions of Keynote.

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Answer 4

PediCard Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 12, 2008 5:12 PM in response to Kyn Drake

I've traced the issue to the "Scale slides up to fit display" settings in the Slideshow tab of preferences. If this setting is checked, the long delays appear. If the setting is unchecked, the slideshow works normally.
Must be a bug of some kind.

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Answer 5

Kyn Drake

Level 7

21,627 points

Feb 13, 2008 2:18 AM in response to PediCard

OK, I grabbed your file and when I "Scale slides" I don't have the same problem, the second slide appears (with your transition) almost immediately.

Try creating a new user on your system to see if this new user also has a problem scaling your slides. Also, is this just on your laptop screen or are you connecting to an external projector?

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Answer 6

PediCard Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 13, 2008 5:02 AM in response to Kyn Drake

Kyn,
This not only happens on my laptop, but it happened on my iMac as well when I tested it last night. This is occurring while just working on and previewing the presentation on either machine, not connected to a projector. The only thing I can think of is that they were both upgraded from previous versions without removing the previous versions first. I wouldn't think this would make a difference...

Thanks for your help!

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Answer 7

Kyn Drake

Level 7

21,627 points

Feb 13, 2008 7:33 AM in response to PediCard

Mine was upgraded and I still have version '06 still hanging around as well. Did you try a new user on either machine? Can't think of what other difference there would be between my Core Duo and yours (mine's the 2.16 first run).

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Answer 8

PediCard Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 13, 2008 9:00 AM in response to Kyn Drake

I tried it under a different user and the behavior was much better. Only 5 to 6 seconds between pressing the Play button and the appearance of the first slide. The transition to the second slide was much smoother also. Any ideas what's going on with my account that would cause this?

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Answer 9

Kyn Drake

Level 7

21,627 points

Feb 13, 2008 9:20 AM in response to PediCard

Not sure what it is, but that's been one of the steps I use to try to troubleshoot problems on my own computer. After verifying that, then I try to look at everything at a user level that might be different (Library folders, application support, etc.) Some have had success with deleting Keynote preferences, but without having more of an idea what's wrong, I'm not sure that would be a solution for you (especially since it "appears" to be a system level problem that's alleviated by this user level change).

I just shut down Keynote. Then, I double-clicked on your file you provided. After opening, I click on slide one then click to play. I'm not even getting a 5 second delay. When I play I immediately see the first screen and there may be a delay of half a second or so after I click for the transition to the slide with the chart to begin. Does this other user also show improved performance if you turn off the Scaling feature?

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Answer 10

tkw04

Level 1

0 points

Mar 24, 2008 3:16 PM in response to PediCard

This is exactly what happened with mine. I have a macbook pro with 1.5 GB of RAM and running OS 10.4.11. When I have that box checked (scale slides to fit display), it runs super slow, but if it's unchecked, it's really fast.

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Answer 11

PediCard Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 12, 2008 6:10 AM in response to Kyn Drake

I have 1.5 GB of memory in my MacBook Pro 2 GHz Core Duo, the presentation is 21.1 MB in size.

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Answer 12

Kyn Drake

Level 7

21,627 points

Feb 12, 2008 7:45 AM in response to PediCard

And does it still take 18 seconds if you restart the presentation? Which theme are you using? I'll try to reproduce here OR you can upload the zipped .key file somewhere to be downloaded.

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