mhwarner

Hi Andrew, I uploaded the zip file to a directory on my web server, then clicked the little link icon which appears above here when you are responding (next to the smilie face) to add the URL and text. You just need to have the ability to upload files somewhere on a server. Is this what you are asking?

We had almost record amounts of snow (and rain) here in Northern Arizona during the past week. This is a short show (with no fancy effects except one pano) which I put together to share some of my snow images with my friends on Facebook. I created an MP4 to post on FB, but this is an .EXE file. I hope you enjoy it. Snow is over ... (for now) And yes, I did forget to hide the cursor but by the time I noticed it I had already done the upload and didn't feel like redoing it.

Maureen, Absolutely stunning photographs! You've captured some amazing light. As others have said the show was well put together and the music most appropriate (of course, I am a big Enya fan anyway). I agree that you should definitely include your name in the credits. When you have a minute, I would love to hear a little about the actual location of the photos. Is this where you live? Or near where you live? In any case, it's a beautiful place. Thank you for sharing this show. And I look forward to the next one. It seems each one you post is better than the last!

Peter, Not sure whether this actually works but if you create a DVD from PTE, once you have entered tne Video Builder window you click can the "Project Options" button to display the options dialog. On the first tab you have "Menu Aspect Ratio" and "TV Screen Aspect Ratio". Try selecting 16:9 in both of those places and burning a DVD. If that doesn't give you want you are looking for, then I guess you would need a bluray burner to create HD video. I haven't actually done this myself so I could be wrong, but I believe from PTE you would burn an HD (H.264) video and transfer that to a disc to play on the blu ray player. You would need software to transfer the HD.264 video to the bluray disk -- probably something like Nero. From what I have read in some of the Panasonic photography forums regarding HD movies, it may be possible to just copy the file onto a bluray disc and play it but I couldn't say from experience. I usually hook my computer directly to my TV, but that obviously doesn't work if you want to send the show to others who may not have that sort of connectivity option.

Colin, Thanks for the look back at 2009. Nicely put together although I might have restricted the size of the show (virtual size of slide) as some of the full-screen pictures were quite pixelated on my 1920 x 1200 monitor. The smaller ones which were shown with text looked fine. What was the name of the main music piece which played throughout the show? I liked it and I think it was well chosen.

I'm sure you must have spent a great deal of time on this endeavor. Just putting together the blended family pictures must have been quite an undertaking. Thank you for sharing this piece. It's given me some ideas for a small project I'm thinking of putting together since I have recently connected with quite a number of young relatives on Facebook.

Posted by Francis Demange on the French Diapositif.net forum. http://diapositif.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33988 (click the "Telecharger" button for the download) This is one of the most incredible PTE slideshows I have ever seen. If possible, listen to it with headphones on to get the full effect of the stereo sound.

Paul, I did not see the original, but this version is excellent! From the photography to the sound effects to the sepia/old paper treatment it is beautifully done. I felt as if I were transported in time back to WWI for a few minutes there. Thank you for sharing this.

Happy New Year to all my fellow forum members! We had a beautiful sunset on the last day of the decade. I made it into a little panorama show which I hope you all enjoy. Last Sunset of the Decade

Mark, So sorry to hear about your stolen laptop, but I'm glad you've got some backups. I very much enjoyed watching this show. You've got some lovely images, nicely blended together and the music was well selected. Your narration was tastefully done (and just the right amount). Thank you for sharing this show with us!

I guess to each his own, but it is totally unnecessary to copy the dvd if I already have the ISO file stored on a backup drive. With my method, it is a one step process. (1) Locate the ISO file (2) Burn it to DVD For a 35 minute slideshow takes about 7 minutes to burn the ISO to DVD. I'm guessing it would take at least that much time to copy the contents of a "Master DVD" to temporary storage on my hard drive first before the new copies can be burned. If I want to burn 6 copies, I can use Roxio or InfraRecord or some other "authoring" program to specify the number of copies and it will keep spitting them out as long as I feed in blank disks. I am aware of all that. I just personally prefer to keep all my backups in one place rather than having to sort through a box/file/whatever of DVDs to find the master. I have all of my backup drives cataloged and it's very easy to find an ISO file. I also keep all my DVD "labels" which I have created in the Epson CD program so when I have completed burning the DVDs, I can then print my labels directly on the DVDs and away I go.

I don't have time to experiment at the moment, but I can't imagine that it isn't significantly faster (for me at least) to simply burn the ISO file to a DVD. Since I have a single DVD drive, if I want to make a copy of a DVD, I assume that the process would be to insert my "Master DVD" into the DVD drive, copy the contents of the DVD onto my computer, remove the master and then insert a new DVD and then burn the files onto the new DVD. To make an additional copy from the ISO, now that I know the easy way to do it, I simply insert the new DVD, load PTE, select File\Burn ISO to DVD (now that I know how to easily do it), locate the xxx.ISO file on my hard drives or one of my backup drives, and burn to DVD. What could be easier?

Duh! Because I never had found that menu option. I had always thought it might be easier to just burn the ISO from Video Builder but I never thought of looking in the dropdown menu. Thanks for that tip, Limey! You have saved me some time and steps! Dave: I save only an .ISO file on my backup drive. Now, thanks to Limey, I have an even easier way to burn that ISO to an actual DVD if I need to in the future. Perhaps I am missing something as I don't know what you mean by a "DVD Master Copy".

I typically use PTE Video Builder to create only an ISO file. Then I use this free, open-source software to actually burn the DVDs. http://infrarecorder.org/ I do have Roxio Easy Media 8 software and have previously used it, but the free InfraRecorder program seems to be a lot easier to use and is more trouble-free. I then store the ISO file on a backup disk and can burn additional DVDs anytime I need to.

Hi Tony, When you are creating a DVD with Video Builder, after you have specified the .pte file to be used and clicked the "Next" button, there is a the second screen which allows you to specify the Project Name and types of files (MPEG2, ISO, etc.)you want. On that screen there is a checkbox next to "Include Additional folders and files to disk". You could check the box and specify your previously created .EXE to be added there. You might have to instruct the user how to manually run the .EXE by selecting it in the Windows Explorer listing as I think that the DVD would be the thing that actually "autoruns" when the disk is loaded on the computer.

Maureen, Nicely done! The photography is beautiful and you've really captured some fantastic light. The music fits nicely as well. Thank you for sharing this slideshow.

Assuming you have a "PC input" connector on your TV, you can do it with a regular video cable (typically called a 15-Pin HD D-Sub Cable (HD15) ) that looks like this: I hooked my laptop to my TV (I just used the cable that goes between my PC and my 24" Samsung SyncMaster 245BW monitor) and had 1920 x 1080 resolution. It looked just as good as my monitor (only bigger). Beats the heck out of having to deal with the time and trouble of burning disks. Although I purchased a WD TV appliance about a year ago to use with my old TV, I also have discovered that I can connect a USB drive (my WD Passport for instance) directly to the TV and do "straight" photo slideshows and listen to MP3 music from it as well. The TV is Samsung Series 5 540 (which Costco has had on sale recently for about $700 if you're in the US).

Postings have been a little slow around here so I have been looking at some of the French PTE sites I'd visited before and sort of forgotten about. I don't speak, read or understand French, but it's pretty easy to figure out the subject of the slideshows anyway. I obviously do not have any slideshows out there myself or any connection with the site (JPD does, of course). There are some really well done shows posted that I thought others might enjoy watching as much as I have. Here's the link (no password or joining is required to download): http://diapositif.net/

Thanks. I knew I could do that as well, but it just seemed easier to edit the registry directly. Not for the faint of heart, of course, but I'm used to doing it.

As always, Lin, thanks for sharing your wonderful imagination with us! Clever animation and lovely pictures. Makes me want to go into the living room and sit by the fire. I look forward to your tutorial. Thanks again for the time you put in here!

Just a heads up to Igor and the team that there still seems to be problems with the registration / upgrade process. The other day I realized that my license to the Deluxe version of PTE had expired. I re-registered and shortly received the confirmation email from WnSoft. However, the email mentioned that the key was contained in an attached file and it went on to give instructions for saving the file and using the "Load a Key" button within PTE to update the registration. There was no attached file. Instead, the information which presumably should have been included in the file appeared at the bottom of the email. I recognized it as information to update the Windows registry, and since I am comfortable editing the registry manually, I did so and all is well with my license now updated. However, I'm sure that there are many users who would not have a clue what the information was or how to update their license. Perhaps a bit of work is needed. This may be what happened to another poster here recently. I chose to start a new topic because I thought his title was a bit rude for this forum.

Not sure if this is a bug or whether it has worked this way for a long time and I just never noticed (it did NOT always work this way as I recall). Anyway, I wanted to create a couple of templates in directories other than the one I normally store my templates in. So I went into "File\Templates\Manage Templates" and attempted to change the directory to a different directory than I normally use (which is not PTEs default). When I change the name, PTE immediately begins copying all of the templates I already have from the old directory to the new directory. WHY? If I wanted to move them, I would do so myself. And I would certainly expect at the very least the program to tell me that it is going to copy or move my existing templates. Actually it would be better if when I selected "Create Template from this Show" the program just asked me where I wanted the template in the first place, with the default being whatever directory I had previously set up. What I am actually trying to do here is create a PTE file with some relatively clean file paths inside so that I can edit the darn thing in my text file and do some easy find and replace work to substitute files. I finally ended up zipping the entire show, unzipping it into the new directory, then doing a "Save As" on the PTE file to get rid of all the extraneous file paths. That part wasn't that big a deal, but I found the issue of moving the files mentioned above was disconcerting and appeared to lock up PTE while it was trying to copy the templates. I finally just Ctrl-Alt-Deleted PTE to stop the activity. At the very least, it would be good to have a warning that the templates are going to be moved or copied or whatever and the ability to opt out.

So I'm assuming these are not your pictures? Are they public domain photos or photos you downloaded from somebody's website? It does seem like it would have been polite and correct to give credit to the original photographer(s), although I have to admit that I find it troubling that you would make a show like this without some sort of explicit disclaimer that the photos are not yours but you are using them with permission. I certainly would not want anybody downloading my pictures and using them in a show. If I have misunderstood and they are in fact your photos, then my apologies and my compliments on some absolutely fantastic pictures.

Maurizio, Thank you for the EXE file! The show is even better at almost full screen on a large monitor. I envy your trip to that amazing place!

Kieron, There are some amazing photos on your site, both in terms of technical quality and subject matter. Looking through the photos was very educational and it is good that you have documented these cultures as it is likely that as the world "shrinks" many of them will disappear completely. Photographically, I especially enjoyed the photos of the fishermen. Thank you for providing the link to your site.