Anthraquinone

hank you for that. In the original post I was wondering if the default could be changed but your way works just as well AQ

I want to add a text title to over 100 slides to use in an illustrated talk. The text is just the scientific name of various insects When I add a text box I have to adjust the zoom in the Animation tab which is set to 15 by default. I want it to be 4 by default. Is it possible to change the default. I also use a custom drop shadow so the text stands out no matter the image below. What would be ideal is after I have set the size and the drop shadow for the first text box is to save it as the default for all the following ones. .

Thank you for that. I had obviously not understood the use of templeates correctly. I will have a look at them in more detail.

Thanks for the template suggestions. Unfortunately it does not do what I want. The .pte file in the template still points to the original location of the images and as I said originally these can be scattered over various folders. I am thinking of this work flow as a possibility but have not yet tried it. 1) copy all the files I may need onto an external drive (from 2 weeks in Tanzania there are many thousands in folders allocated to different days) 2) build the show - until I start doing this I do not know what slides I will eventually need - as I said I will use up to 300 or so 3) save a zip or template 4) copy this to my main hard drive in an appropriate folder 5) disconnect the external drive 6) run the .pte file and then point it to the new folder - hopefully that will rebuild the show with all the rsources collected neatly together in one folder. I can then alter the originalls if I need to without creating any problems. I wonder how hard this would be to build into PTE. Once the template is created all that is necessary is to point the .pte file to read the images from the template folder not the original locations. Having said that I am not or ever have been a programmer. Looking at the .pte file which is just a plain text file the path to a typical image is ImageName=G:\! PTE AV Studio\Shows\Falkland Islands\Resources\Images\Assencion Island.jpg it would have to be changed to something like ImageName=THIS FOLDER\Assencion Island.jpg with PTE being able to interpret THIS FOLDER. The new folder with all the resources could then be moved anywhere AQ

I have been using Proshow for a long while but it is getting old and Photopia is much too expensive in the long run. I have looked at PTE but have a problem. My shows are used to give illustrated talks and can contain up to 250 images. With Proshow I added the images from folders on my hard drive and, at first, the Proshow files points to these individual folders BUT the if I use "collect" function the program puts all the files into one folder but IMPORTANTLY changes the pointers in the new .psh file to point to the new location leaving the originals in their original place. It seems PTE has a similar function in the zip backup which collects all the files together but this does NOT update the pointers to these files when they are extracted to a new folder. The only way round this I have found is to temporally re-name my main "Photographs" folder to say, "Photographs-xyz". Then when PTE cannot load the images I can tell it to look in the new folder extracted from the backup zip file. Then I have to change "Photographs-xyz" back to "Photographs". This is cumbersome, to say the least and something I really do not like doing. An alternative may be to first collect the images into a new folder but that is also cumbersome for the number of images I want to use. It also assumes that I know at the start what images I want which is not usually true and may change as the talk developes. To put it simply (I hope) I want to pick images from across my comutter (using PTE's file tree) to create a talk and then be able automatically collect them into one folder together with a new .pte file. This .pte file will then use the images from the new folder leaving the originals in place. ie duplicate the "collect" function in Proshow. Have I missed something. John

What you say is more or less what I do. I also frequently save my working file with an incremented number that at the end of a session I save as the original file name and deletete all the working files.

I like the Autosave option but I do not like how it works as it overwrites the original file I started editing. I would prefer it if the Autosave addred a suffix to the file name say "auto" plus an incrementing number so I can go back to an earlier file in that session. This increment could be reset for each editing session. As I work round I now open the file to work on and immediately save it as working.pte - That is if I remember. It would be better if I did not have to do this. The option to switch this behaviour would be need if you were short of disk space.

Thanks Jill - not quite what I was hoping for but it sounds a possible work tound. Thanks AQ

I give talkes based on nature photography. With Proshow it was possible to hide a slide in the middle of a presentation. I found it very useful to leave reminders to myself of what to say during the shown when I rehersed it but then did not display during the talk. I cannot se ho to do this in PTE. Is it possible ?. AQ

I should have said - at the moment I am copying and pasting the text from one slide to the next and then changing the name. Is there a better way? AQ

I am creating a simple show consisting of some 300+ images from a safari. Each image is a still and has a caption that identifes the bird or animal. So nothing fancy and it is just for my wife and myself. Not your standard AV but memories for us. I want the caption to appear in the same position and at the same zoom on each slide with the same custom colour and drop shadow. This text fades to zero opacity 3 second into the slide. Is it possible to create a style that will easily apply this to each slide without me having to enter all the parameters for each one? As I said the main image is just a still. AQ

I have been using Proshow until now but as they have moved to a subscription model I am looking at alternatives. One of the features I really liked in Proshow was the ability to collect all the project images, sounds videos etc into a separate folder and then automatically use that folder to create the AV from. See image This just movers all the AV resources into one folder. When I added more images to the AV from anywhere on my drives I could then use the same command again to copy all the new files to the "collected" folder and continue working from there. These collected files were then safe from any changes I made to the original names or even if I deleted the originals. From the frequently asked questions forum I found this from 2009 If you haven't worked this way but feel that you want to adopt this way of working proceed as follows (assumes you are using PTE v5.0 or higher): create a new folder for each of your sequences open each sequence into PTE do File...Create backup in Zip locate and open the Zip file and export its contents into your new folder File...Open the project file from within the new folder File...Save the project file Is this the still only way to get all project resources into one folder ? The Proshow "collect Resources " command sounds much neater for the end user. Can I just move a .pte into that folder and will it then read the files from there or is the absolute file structure save in the .pte file AQ

I am becoming dissapointed with Proshow as it keeps crashing and I have not had much help as to possible causes. So I an trying P2E. One of the features of PS I really liked was the ability to collect all the slides, video and audio used into one location where I also keep the final shows. This is very useful as it protects the files if I rename or change any of them in their original locations scattered through several hard drives. I have yet to find a way to do this in P2E. Is it possible ? AQ