LumenLux

Roger, I have visited it today. When I post a message, it gives an error message that makes the poster think it has not posted. However, if you "back up" or go to the forum, you see that the message has posted ok. Desert Dave is "working on" the apparently erroneous error message. Hope to see you there! **************************** After posting the above, I tried to go to the site. I only reached a message page (of the web host?) saying the domain had expired two days ago. Probably, Dave is also trying to solve that. But, I'm not sure how quickly you can retrieve and operate when the domain has expired. Maybe someone else can help us on this?

Nathan, I have just sent an email to you. Respond to it and I will get the Maddingly show to you in .exe form instead of the zipped version.

Thanks Ken for sharing this. I too found myself interested - especially when the thumbnails are expanded.

I have now used the bundled, Shobiz DVD 2, which I think is what you are using. My brief experience gave me mixed results which may or may not be of any help to you. The problems you encountered did not appear in the DVD's I was able to burn of the PTE produced shows. When I played the DVD on my TV with a normal set-top DVD player, all looks perfect. Not as good as .EXE on PC monitor, but VERY good, as with Ulead, Roxio, etc. As Michel pointed out, you must actually view your DVD on a TV, not just with DVD software on the PC monitor. Often, the home-made DVD will look rotten on the PC monitor but look fine on the TV. The problems I ran into were that not all the test shows I was making could be accepted by Shobiz ! But then I realized the same shows from PTE could also not be played by Windows Media Player ! some of the problems seemed to involve the use of sound in the PTE show. I tried various changes in the # of slides, length of sound, no sound, etc. and still could not isolate what PTE shows would work and which ones would not. We may need some help from Igor on this situation. Have you already addressed an email to Igor in case he has not read this thread? He is so busy with development, I am surprised how often he does pick up problems we write about here. Good eyes and or good staff/help I guess.

Mikes, from time-to-time, especially in "early days", I have had lots of problems going PTE to DVD. Ultimately in all cases, the problems seemed to be in the recipient program of the PTE-produced avi. Sometimes Igor was able to change something in PTE to accomodate the problem in the recipient program. The chances of you or I getting any other program than PTE to make a responsive change is minimal! For several months now, I have had very good success in burning to DVD the same shows of PTE. I think maybe some of the problems I had in the past are not an issue when I am using a more powerful media-oriented PC. I currently use Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2, Roxio Video Wav 7 Pro, and possibly others. I have used your cited, bundled, Shobiz DVD 2 to burn DVD's from mini DV tape input, but I have not tried it on a PTE sequence. I will attempt to try a short test tonight to see if I too find "created" defects as it seems you are getting.

Welcome Ted, I can not voice on the projector, but I think many would be interested in viewing your slide shows. I presume you are aware of Beechbrook.com where Bill hosts shows or links to your shows?

Michel, thank you for your interest. Congratulations to you for your winning presenentation, North Sea Jazz. It is superb. At this moment, I can think of no criticism or suggestion. I just simply enjoyed your presentation because it is so well done. As you know, most my sequences are very different than your artistry. Yes, I try to improve them, and use sometimes new techniques, but mostly my sequences are intended first as a nice way for people to view the photos. I agree with your comments about plain white sky in landscape photos. Recognizing the bland sky as I shot photos that afternoon, I tried to include less sky in each photo unless the sky had some interesting character. I think there were maybe only 2 or 3 photos that had interesting sky. This is why my angles tried to include more at the flowers with the horizon only showing near the top of the frame. Yes, I should have considered more close-ups perhaps. I guess the water lily was the only close-up. Usually, the close-ups of wild flowers is what I do. We do not often have the large fields of color. If you have seen my Angels Landing and The Subway, I try there to make better use of flower close-ups. In your comment (quoted above) how do you mean I could use the close-ups? Do you mean to make some blended photos in Photo Shop to put the flower colors into the same slide with bland, white/gray sky? Or do you mean just to have additional slides showing some flower close-ups?

Hi Ian. Thanks for the useful information on your club website. It's a nice concise view of some possibilities and I always like the personal reference from a PTE user. For the sake of discussion, on your comment there: Not so long ago, showing a sequence involved setting up lots of heavy equipment in a darkened room. Now, you can simply hand someone a palm-sized player and ask them what they think!!! That being true, I'm sure none of you (true "AVists") will ever want to give up the big screen. And as for me, likeing gadgets as much as I do, it would be my preference to have the real projectors drop in price to where non-club members like myself could justify going larger rather than smaller.

As test, try totally different MP3's. Hay que probrar MP3's completamente diferentes. Tambien, trate de usar MP3's mas cortitas.

1024x768 has been my normal 1280x960 now using on trial basis (since recent topics here)

Hi Bethan - You have a tastefully done website - I visited while looking for your music downloads. Then I re-read your post and found the proper link. I have not listened yet but want to let you know that your "Melodic Groove" could not be found, ie only an error message appears. The other three files dl'd fine. Thank you

Of course Harry! You've got my prayer, and blessing if you will. Even if you did qualify for the "*>#?" description, this forum full of such nice people would probably never notice. You've always been a courageous person with your PTE and photographic efforts. I see no reason why you won't be the same with this unwanted challenge. And I'm sure you've got your family standing close and firm with you. Carry on!

Thanks Ken. What software or set up do you use for writing all your "log" entries on various activities - such as this "test" and your many DVD burns etc.? You are probably right about simplifying a test. In this case, the presentation was largely underway when the resolution topic tweaked my interest to use this show as a test medium. As for the colorful vistas - The overall scenes are always beautiful, any season. But the flowers this year are more abundant than I can remember and were probably a month later than usual because of the heavy snowpack of last winter. We were still getting new ski-able snow in June. Now, a month after the flower pix we have a mild touch of fall in the air. Did you also evaluate the two shows on your personally preferred 800x600?

The old PC: P3 776 mz has graphic card: NVIDiA GeForce2 MX/MX400 I don't know how much memory on it. The newer PC: P4 540 3.2 Ghz has graphic card: ATI Radeon 600 Pro PCI-E, 256 mb DDR video memory, TV out, DVI I am not currently very knowledgeable about these cards.

Thanks Lin, it was a hasty oversight on my part when I looked first time at your linked .jpg. Indeed, the quality of the two text versions is easily distinguished.

Just posted on Beechbrook, my Afternoon Journey is a pleasant 3 minute view I think. The two versions (for screen size 1280x960 and 1024x768) relate to the topic Screen resolution discussion Please comment on both the screen size issue and the presentation itself.

The declaration from Igor regarding 1280x960 size slides. The endorsement by Patrick. The urging by Michel. The useful comments by several others. To help me understand and to see what my own eyes could see, I made a short presentation both at 1280x960 and at 1024x768 (my "normal" resolution on both my 17" CRT and my 19" LCD. Anyone that would like to also compare, can download on Beechbrook (thanks Bill ) at Afternoon Journey (two sizes) Now, from the comments of this and related threads, and from viewing the two cited presentations, my observations follow. 1. The main advantage of making a show at 1280x960 is for those viewers who like to use their screen at 1280x960. 2. If a viewer's screen is at 1024x768, the 1280x960 show looks just as good as the 1024x768 version of show, but no better. 3. On my own 19" LCD, I'm not sure I can see a difference between viewing the 1280x960 on the 1280x960 screen vs. the 1024x768 show on the 1024x768 screen. 4. On my old 750 mhz PC (17" CRT) the larger file sizes of the 1280x768 slides, makes the transitions in Afternoon Journey un-smooth and sporadically uncertain. It seems to me, that items #1 and #2 above, make a good case to use the 1280x960. Items #3 and #4 provide little incentive and at least some dis-incentive. I would be interested in your experience with the two posted versions and in my observations above.

Your "discovery" is interesting to me, but also easily solved I think. Possibly Igor has built in a further "check" that is necessary for creating the temp avi file that is not necessary for the .exe presentation. I made a quick test: With an existing PTE project, I made a ten-second video preview. The preview (video) ran fine. I then went into the timeline view and removed two or three transition points. Then I again made a ten-second video preview. This time the video would not run and gave me the error message you described. I went back into the timeline and inserted three transition points (anywhere) on the timeline. Clicked on "update", then returned to main screen. Made again ten-second video preview which ran just fine. Looks like you should be able to fix your show that way.

I am interested in your experience Lin, but is the link as you intended? The link is only to your screenshot .jpg as best I can tell. My original use of PTE, and still main benefit, is the best presentation of good still photography. I have never liked the "video" approach to presentation of stills on a computer. I think that is why I dismissed Media@ and several other programs when I started using PTE. Some months ago, I needed to make a presentation combining digital stills and miniDV video. After much exploring, and some discussion here in this forum, I concluded to use a "video" program to carry the stills instead of PTE to carry the substantial video segments. I liked the results of combining the stills and movie segments. But, big BUT, the stills suffered vs. the PTE quality to which we are accustomed. It would be nice if someday Igor could bring in video as you suggest. I am not aware that this capability is expected in his current redo of his PTE engine. I would want the video incorporation only if the presentation of your still photography would not be compromised. I am also confident that Igor would agree. I think you agree also? It may be however, that the video handling of text could be inserted much easier than quality rendering of regular digital video?

I think what you need to do is resize your background slide before using it in PTE. Resize it to the dimensions of the largest expected monitor size, ie the cited 1290x800 you mentioned would solve it for up to that size screen.

That solves it here.

Yes, Barry, what you describe is how PTE behaves on this PC. I made a test show of files on a CD and save the project file. If I then start PTE without the CD, the (2-part) pop-up box says it can't find the files. I click "OK", and the box closes with no error message. I can then go to File/New or File/Open recent project, or anything else and all work fine. I don't know why Speedy2 is getting different results or whether somehow the communication here is not clear. Hopefully, Speedy2 can see if there is something he is doing different than what I just tested. If he is doing the exact same thing, maybe Igor can determine why he can't get back into PTE to make even a New show.

Just trying here Brian about the clock. I want to see how the time posts with this message. Editing here now to say, that the message post time shows as 3:14 vs my PC clock time of 4:14. But I have not paid close attention recently to know whether it is always that way as I am on Daylight Savings Time (which could be the difference, if the Invision clock stays at Standard time.)

Mysty, if you are using Windows XP, the easiest way to make a zip file is: Find your PTE show such as MyShow.exe. Right click on the .exe file, choose "Send to", Compressed (Zipped) file. When you or a recipient "unzips" the .zip file, you will find the exe file of your show. Double click on the .exe file and your show will run. You will be elated!

Yes, your results are very good Lin. Thanks for sharing. Can you, or someone, tell me how the use of such on-line shows compares to downloading the same shows, as to bandwidth or any other potential limitations of any web host?