Hi Max,
Sorry for the "large" file sizes, but they are basically necessary in order to store all of the advanced content that we have with the LD2000 system. We have done our best to have the most compact file sizes possible, and fastest frame load times. As far as I know, we have succeeded in this task.
Note that with LD2000, all files are encrypted. This is for the protection of the artists and to prevent piracy of frames and shows, etc. I believe that this encryption has been very successful at preventing piracy, BUT encrypted data is inherently difficult to compress. Surely you are correct if you see only about a 3% compression ratio on our frames and shows.
You can sort of "get around this" by saving the frame files in ILDA format (which is not compressed) instead of LDS format (which is compressed). ILDA format can be compressed by a factor of three or four, which is good. The bad news is ILDA format does not contain all of the advanced data that our LDS format does and so you will lose scan rate, zone, color, and other information. So the choice is yours -- compressible data but with some "data loss", or not really compressible data with no data loss.
I guess that with the large periperation of DSL, Cable modems, ISDN, etc. along with 120GB hard disk drives being the norm, data of all programs has had a tendency to increase in size. We are currently in the architecture stage of the next generation system and, file sizes will be substantially larger, but the system will also do substantially more. Our goal then is to maintain a good cost-to-benefit ratio for things like file size, etc.
Bill