LumenLux

Bubba, my current opinion: My earlier experience was that SVCD was much better than VCD which I found to be totally unacceptable if photography was your underlying purpose. Still, SVCD was noticeably much worse on my old TV's compared to my old computer monitors. When Igor brought out the Beta with avi, I was astounded how much it improved the SVCD output for PTE. Still, I concluded that SVCD is a bridge that everyone eventually will want to finish going across. That is, DVD is where all of us will find the best picture quality if we can afford the $ and the learning time and the still-there incompatabilities and variables! DVD picture of PTE shows is better than SVCD of PTE shows. But Igor did such a great job for SVCD that the difference is not as great as I expected. (At least not on my tv's. My biggest disappointment is how long the rendering, or encoding takes prior the actual DVD burn. So I think the advancing speed of DVD burners is less importance thann more PC processing power or more efficient software for that process. (Boy did I get value in this keyboard - It now produces many more "n" 's per touch than any keyboard I have ever had. Had to strip about a dozen out of this paragraph!)

Always new excitement. Even if one did not deem "necessary." Thanks again Igor. I have only played briefly. On my 750 mhz PC, the Slide effect is much smoother than the Push effect. Even at 5000ms transition, the Push is too jerky to be useable. Is anyone else seeing this? Is this simply a function of not enough processing power? (I have only tried in Preview, not Created a show.)

Isabel, re your Santa Cruz sound quality. I use that card and find the sound very good for a in-computer card. If you have not already done so, try a couple of simple test programs that are available for your card. If you don't have them already installed, you can find them at the web site - Turtle Beach or Voyetra? (Whoever has the Santa Cruz rights now.) The program, and there are at least 2 versions is simply "Sound Check." That might help narrow down your playback problem.

Mark, welcome to the forum, of course. Thank you already for your contributions. Now, ps take this off list if necessary - Please don't. Almost everything, if left on this congenial forum, helps a great many more of us than just the original questioner and responder.

John, I certainly appreciate your frustrations and I conclude you are a patient, persistant man. A couple of thoughts for you - When PTE Beta first came out with the DVD capability, I had quite good success with Movie Factory 2 Trial. I wrote in this forum a step by step process that worked for me. But when you started relating your problems I have not found time to try to help. I have now recently installed the Movie Factory 2 trial on a different machine. I have also (after reading your postings) dl'd the Movie Factory 3 that I think you are using. I have been working with both in a few minutes here and there. I find, even with my previous success with Video Factory 2, I still have frequent problems with both Versions 2 & 3. But they do both work for me on some projects. There are soooo many variables out there it can drive almost anyone crazy. There is the rendering or processing that the Ulead programs do, the burning process of the drive and the compatability of the DVD player! In the last few days, I have realized that many of my DVD's will play with a software DVD player on both my computers but will not play on my stand-alone DVD player. But I do still burn some that will play on the stand-alone.! What makes it difficult to trouble shoot is the very very long processing time before the main burn takes place. I had a 15 or 19 minute PTE show that I was processing in both Video Factory 2 and 3. Video Factory 2 on the slower machine took 3+ hours before it failed. Video Factory 3, on a faster machine was going at a rate that would have taken 4+ hours had it not also failed after 3 or so hours! I then tried a new PTE show of about 3 minutes and was successful with both versions. In trying to possibly solve my problem and yours I was reading around in the Ulead site. There I found that there is a size limit of the sound file that can be included. I'm sorry, I'd have to try to trace down that limit again. Whatever the limit, I am normally under that, but in that PTE show, my mp3 sound file was 29 minutes long and exceded the Ulead size limit! I don't know how PTE incorporates the mp3 file, as to whether Ulead would fail on the mp3 file withing PTE, but I know I was able to do a shorter show with a more normal (3mb) mp3 file. I think, with sufficient time, you and I could both succeed. But time? I hope to keep trying to eliminate the questions so the process can be reliable. I really like the Version 2 interface and ease versus some other programs. Also, I think the picture quality of PTE shows is generally at it's best with Factory2. So, if you do keep trying, don't tire of sharing here. Many of us may eventually benefit. Meanwhile, if you want to try the Version 2 trial, I or someone might be able to find the dl'd file on our hard drive and snail mail it to you? Or, as Techman suggested, you can buy the Movie Factory 2 on Ebay for under $15 including shipping. I just bought it yesterday for $12. Someone said they could not find it on Ebay, but they probably searched for Video Factory 2 when it should be Movie Factory 2. As you see, I have erroneously used both names interchangeably in this lengthy message! (I hope the above makes sense. It is so long that even I don't want to re-read it.)

Thank you Mike, I will not format the drive. I have more info now which may help you or another member solve this. Ken - About first thing I tried was the System Restore feature in XP. I chose the most recent "check point" to restore to. (The time of the "check point" appears to be about when the problem may have occurred.) When I click to "Restore", a message comes up that changes to Drive F will not be restored because F Drive had been removed, or turned off, or excluded from monitoring. I tried the restore anyway, but no help done for F drive. Scan Disk will not run on this F partition now. When I use explorer, the "properties" tag does not even come up on F (just message that drive is not formatted.) If instead, I try Scan Disk from My Computer, the Scan Disk window comes up, but nothing happerns when I push the scan button. Now, new info that may help. I think the "drive is not formatted" is not an accurate diagnosis. I now find that all drives and all partitions and even my floppy drive A are showing some problems. But the "problems" may also just be bad error messages from XP. For example: I have Irfanview set as my "default" to open any graphic file I click on. When I now click on any grapic on any drive (including Drive A), I get message: The volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted. But the graphic file will open from same place if I tell it to Open with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. So I concluded Irfanview is trying to run from Drive F and the message about "not a recognized file system" is misleading? When I installed the new C drive and XP on it a couple of weeks ago, I set C drive to be NTFS file system. I think I left the other two Hard Drives as Fat32. I hope some of the above will help diagnose and come up with a solution.

Recently installed new C drive and full clean install of XP Home. Two other hard drives in the machine. The 2nd drive (Primary slave, 30 gig) has been working, partitioned as Drive F and Drive H. This evening I noticed a desktop shortcut to my latest PTE Show would not work. The shortcut would not work because the PTE show was on Drive F. When I look in Explorer all my drives still "show up", but F Drive, which used to have a name, is now called "Local Drive" and if I right click it, properties, I get message that the drive is not formatted and do I want to format it now?! The other partition "H" on the same physical drive is working fine. Where am I? Is there a way to emerge from this bad dream?

Ken, related to what you are saying, (DVD player dependent) I stumbled on what to me was new info/behavior. After shooting some photos with a friend yesterday, I dl'd photos from both his camera and mine onto my PC. After including both in a quick PTE presentation, I realized he has only a new Mac in his home and no PC. So I figured I would also just put all the pix as .jpg on a CD to be played in his DVD/TV. Before giving the CD to him, I watched it on my own TV and was startled to see that his photo files (.jpg average size 245K) were nicely filling the tv screen, but when my photos came on TV screen, they were much smaller area of screen. I thought that strange because my .jpg files (as the came from the camera) were average size 2000k. Apparently, my DVD player is programmed to reduce the display size when it determines that the file's natural size is too large for the screen. The 245K files 1280x960 were thus filling the screen but my 2000k files 2592x1944 were being displayed as much smaller pictures! Then on my PC, I resized the 2592x1944 pix to 1024x768 and made a new cd. My DVD player then presented the now-smaller pictures to nicely fill the entire screen.

Maybe Igor is in close enough contact with Ulead to fill in some gaps here for us?

I am a little amazed how some very good presentations don't garner any comments from our friendly, active PTE forum. Is it because there are so many creations worthy of comment that we are all too busy to voice appreciation or opinions? I don't comment on all I would like to either, so I do understand some of the possible reasons - but I for one would really enjoy hearing more comments. Maybe there are many comments to the "author" that don't come through this forum. If so, there are many more who could benefit from the comments if they are posted here. It was my viewing just now of Terry's Lakeland Fells that brings this to mind. Beechbrook shows it has been downloaded some 200+ times - without a single comment that I have seen. I like the presentation Terry. I like the drama of the light that was present in many of your shots. I must admit, for much of maybe the first half, of the show, I was bothered or perhaps distracted (?) by the music. What I might call the Euro-Techno paced sound did not seem to fit my viewing. Then when you brought in the broader orchestration and slowed for effect, nicely timed with your transitions and photo choices, I began to understand. I also began to realize you had probably composed and played (?) the music yourself. From there I not only appreciated your talent but found myself liking the earlier part better once I experienced it as part of the bigger picture, ie., the whole show. Finally, the written explanation at the end is worthwhile. Thanks, hope we will see more.

Welcome Stan to this forum of life, love and the pursuit of happiness - all through the successful use of PTE. You can indeed take music from a CD and use it in PTE. Copyright and usage privilege is an issue of it's own. What you need to do is use any of a number of commercial or free programs to extract or "rip" a track from the CD. The extracted track is usually either a .wav file or an .mp3 file. Most PTE users find it best to use .mp3 files as your background music in PTE. If you are not already "into" the audio part of things, it may take a bit of learning on your part but it is now pretty simple in this day and age. Enjoy!

Michel, you continue to produce very nice art stories. Simple theme, great photos, well done, success! Thank you.

Sandra, Pete's advice is of course good and should be a solution for you. Out of curiosity though, you may want to add a few slides temporarily to test your theory of the recycling slides being a factor in confusing the expected music flow.

Yes Roger, there are numerous ways to print even with PTE print feature disabled. Important to note that this "condition" is not a fault of PTE. As far as I know, no software has the ability to stop external methods of printing whatever shows on the screen. There are numerous threads covering this subject if you need more details. It all boils down to compromises and preferences.

This strikes me as so incredible - the wide - yet growing-closer world we live in! When I first wished Merry Christmas to everyone, (via this thread) I logged in from my home in Utah, USA. Now at this moment I am reading the wonderful messages from all around the world. And I am doing it from an Internet "Cafe" in Cusco, Peru! So now from this other hemispere I add my greeting to you all for a joyful, meaningful, blessed new year! I still find this so amazing. Earlier today I have been "working" in an area that is truly third world. Now a few hours later, I am in a very old city (Inca city) but with internet technology to tune in and read from PTE friends around the world. Now I am going to download PTE and try to put together a slide show for a gathering on New Years Eve. The only catch - I don´t know how to get my PTE key from home. I also am not sure if I can reach Igor in time to see if he could send me a copy to a special email for this purpose only. If Igor can do this or if any of you have another idea, I could retrieve a key from khinaqueen@networld.com. I will try to log in here again tomorrow night. Once again, thanks to everyone who has responded to this thread around the world.

Yes, DustyDesert Cindy, it does sound we are possibly neighbors. I am here is Salt Lake City, amid desert and mountains. I say we are neighbors, but if you were in northern Idaho and if I were in Southern Utah - that could be the equivalent of being across a couple of countries where some of our friends across the ocean are. There are probably more users of PTE around here, but I am only aware of one other user in Utah (Park City) and two others who in the past voiced in from Idaho. Maybe this topic will bring others to our awareness. Mean while we can consider ourselves special in this world-wide neighborhood. We have great neighbors don't we?

I'm just going to jump back in to say I am loving this - hearing from so many - especially those of you that we usually don't hear from! It really helps the Christmas spirit too.

I was thinking today of some of our old friends who haven't voiced in for a while - Guru (Italy), Ernst (Chile, I think), Hans (Scandanavia), ??? (Lithuania), Casey (Japan? Poland? Indiana?) think(box)bill (Boston) Then I was thinking of all the new friends that have become active in this forum. It has always fascinated me the way this PTE software has such a world-wide community - originating from Igor's homeland. I think it might be fun, especially at Christmas, with thoughts of peace and brotherhood, to see just how widely spread and how concentrated PTE forum members are throughout the world. So if anyone else is interested, I suggest we can just carry this thread for a while and see what we see. I'll start by telling you I am here in Utah in the Rocky Mountains of the United States of America. From me to you, Merry Christmas where ever you are.

I agree totally with this. And I hope, fromatoz, you realize your ideas are indeed welcome. Keep up the good work and sharing. Thats what makes this forum very worthwhile. I for one am always interested in seeing what others are doing and hearing what they would like to do.

PTE has likely provided more satisfaction to me than any other software I have ever used. Part of that satisfaction has come from the paths carefully chosen by Igor from the many flurries of ideas that have from time to time come from this forum. On the other hand - if Igor chose to implement every idea that is ever proposed, he would by now be competing with not only other slide show programs, but also with Oracle, Word, Quicken and MTV! Not to detract from anyone's input of what they feel is important, today, I would just like to express gratitude for this great product, thank Igor, and thank the rest of you for sharing many constructive thoughts on many subjects. Merry Christmas to everyone! Probably the one feature of this forum I would enjoy more of, would be discussion of the actual shows - beyond the tech and mechanical. Of course I am sure Igot could build a feature into PTE for feedback from the viewer. In fact this could be great survey software which could be implemented at exit polls at elections around the world.

Welcome terabyte. Friday-Saturday is sometimes rather quiet in the forum. Hopefully someone else will check in and help you more precisely than I. I would expect that Windows XP would have everything you need, but I do believe old or missing Active X updates have been the cause of some problems in the past. (Maybe the culprit with Windows98 but not in XP?) If you have not already, you should go to Microsoft website and let it install the suggested XP updates. Also, make sure you get the updates to Windows Media Player. Does the new computer seem to handle mp3 files and play your jpgs when they are not in the exe show? Probably by the time you even read this, your son will have it figured out and working.

Tried it just enough to expect it is working fine. Having it available is nice. Thank you.

Now that we have a few weeks under our belts with the PTE-avi beta, I am wondering if some conclusions have been drawn on a few aspects. I know there are several, perhaps many, who have been successful. My questions - (I think these apply equally to DVD and SVCD, correct me on that if I am wrong.) If I want my entire photo to show on the TV (without losing edges of photo and max use of TV screen) - 1. What is the best photo dimension? 1024x768 ? 800x600? 2. Optimum PTE settings as to fit to screen, windowed mode or not, etc. 3. PTE setting to 80% of screen, or 90% etc.? 4. When the "perfect" combination is determined for the TV I am using, how much variation will there be on other TV's that recipients of the show may be using?

It sounds like then it becomes a curiosity and an annoyance rather than a serious obstacle for you, right? So you can just take a screen capture of any video scene you want and insert it into the thumbnail area. Or, if you are working with a PTE show, you already have any photo already as a jpg. which you can insert. Or, is there other drawbacks or deficiencies that I am not recognizing?

When using DVD RW (rewriteable), can we expect what works on the RW will indeed work with +R and -R ?