Sound sync issues

[Eyes]

I have two sound issues.

1. In a 5 minutes slideshow I am syncing parts of the background music with animations i certain slides. In the stationary Vista computer where I produce the show it works ok. In another stationary computer with XP it also works rather ok. But in my XP laptop the music and slides slowly get more and more out of sync. After 4 minutes the music is as much as half a second ahead of the animations. The music is one mp3 file (though the problem is the same with a wav file) that is added in the Project Options' Music tab. "Don't interrupt sound comment" is checked. I have tried with "Synchronize music and slides" both checked and unchecked with the same result. I tried it in 5.0 with the same result. What can I do?

2. When I pause a slideshow with the space bar the background music continues to play. That means that the whole slideshow gets out of sync with the music. Is this intentional? I would think that when I pause a show the music should stop too.

[xahu34]

Issue 1 sounds like a performance problem. Do the animations run smooth on your laptop? Did you resize your images?

Issue 2 should not happen if "Synchronize music and slides" is checked!

Regards,

Xaver

Munich

[Eyes]

Issue 1 sounds like a performance problem. Do the animations run smooth on your laptop? Did you resize your images?

Issue 2 should not happen if "Synchronize music and slides" is checked!

Thank you, Xaver!

1. Really very smooth. No problems there. I have checked "Fixed size on slides" and the images are not resized. And I agree, it sounds like a performance issue. But I don't understand how performance could make the one thing go slower than the other when they are synced. Do they run in seperate threads or something? And furthermore, the laptop is a Dell Latitude with a dual core cpu on 2.4 GHz plus 4 GB RAM. Shouldn't that power be enough to sync background music with animations?

2. Thanks, I didn't know that.

[Ken Cox]

ARE YOU RUNNIN'

from a cd or the program proper

likely the laptop onboard graphics card is not got the power to run show

ken

[Eyes]

I'm running the exe from the hard drive.

I made a test show with the same results. It is 4 minutes long with 4 second slides. It's 800x600 and all slides are 600 wide, no size change. There is a rectangle popping up as an animation every 30 seconds with which I have synchronized the music (using Adobe Audition). The time between sound and animation gets a fraction longer each time. But it sounds to me one shouldn't need much of a graphics card to run it, but if that's the case I guess there is nothing to do.

[xahu34]

Eyes,

Can you upload a zip-backup of your project somewhere (e.g. Mediafire)? Some experienced users may have a look at it.

Regards,

Xaver

[Eyes]

I have tested it on one of my clients computers and the delay effect is even worse there. It certainly is no gamer puter, but still, the show is not that heavy.

I will upload my test show later today. I very much appreciate your help.

Edit: I guess from Colin's answer below that you were right, Xaver, so I won't upload the show. Thanks anyway.

[cjdnzl]

PTE, along with other modern graphics-intensive programs makes much use of the graphics processor, the GPU, as distinct from the CPU. While your laptop may have a fast CPU, the Latitude series of Dells in my experience do not have dedicated graphics processors. The GPU functions are handled on the main board, typically with chip sets that are ok for general use, and probably DVD video, but they fall short with programs like PTE.

The effect of this is to slow the rendition of graphics, 'losing time' with each transition, slowly causing loss of sync between sound and video.

If this is the case with your laptop, the sad story is you can do nothing about it, other than buying a laptop with a dedicated GPU with at least 256 MB of memory, and preferably 512 MB - basically you need a gaming computer. Most desk-top machines have much better GPU performance than most laotops.

There is an earlier version of PTE, 4.49 I think which, while it doesn't support panning and zooming of images, has much less demand on the GPU. PTE 4.49-based programs will run on practically anything. If you don't need PZR capability, 4.49 could be your answer.

You can download it from wnsoft, and it uses the same activation key as 5.n, so there is no further expense.

Colin

[Ken Cox]

4.49 here

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....amp;#entry48272

4.49 will not open a 5 series show

but

5 series is backward compatible -- JUST REMEMBER TO SAVE THE PTE AS A DIFFERENT NAME WHEN YOU OPEN A PRE 5 SERIES WITH A 5 SERIES

ken

[Eyes]

Thanks for the answer, Colin, though it wasn't quite the one I hoped for. I'm sure you're right. Upgrading computers is not an option though, my client is a company where there will be a number of different computers where the show will be run. And downgrading doesn't sound that funny. I've learned to take another approach to the problem.

I've had a hard time learning how to work with sound in PTE. I wrote down my experiences in order not to forget. Would people here in the community consider browsing through the doc for errors if I uploaded it somewhere convenient? I know it's a friendly community, but perhaps it's too much to ask?

[xahu34]

... I wrote down my experiences in order not to forget. Would people here in the community consider browsing through the doc for errors if I uploaded it somewhere convenient? I know it's a friendly community, but perhaps it's too much to ask?

I hope that it is just a document, and not a book

Regards,

Xaver

[Eyes]

I hope that it is just a document, and not a book

It's three pages. Could be considered a very thin book

I'll give it a go tomorrow, it would be really good to know if I have mistaken anything.

[jfa]

...I've had a hard time learning how to work with sound in PTE.

The audio side of PTE has been the topic of some discussion here as the implantation leaves something to be desired, many suggestions have been made on how to make it more user friendly and efficient but as of yet nothing has happened, maybe one-day.

If you post you document I'm sure someone will look it over for you.