dagrace

Go to Fred Miranda's site http://www.fredmiranda.com and poke around there, maybe in the Equipment Forum, the reviews, or just do a search for Alien Bees. There are probably hundreds (literally) of people who have them who will tell you everything you want to know and more. I don't have any, but from what I've read on the forum, most people seem to like them. Fred's is a great photo site and nearly as friendly people as here on PTE

I agree with Gerard. As a matter of fact, while I have only made one "real" show myself, as I look at other shows, it seems that there are several different "styles" out there that are all effective. Some show the entire screen filled (as in 1024 x 768), while others have a border (which actually "counts" in the pixel dimensions, of course, but the image itself is somewhat smaller) and still others have a smaller image (which PTE centers) on a black background. Parhaps this is a good topic for the "techniques" forum mentioned in the last week or two. In any case, count the pixels. I have the luxury of having Photoshop, and it's very easy in that program to re-size to specific pixels. I would think that other editors could do the same.

I had the same trouble when I downloaded it. The help files aren't very. I had a little bit of background in sound programs, so I just "fiddled with it" a bit and got it to do what I wanted. I'm no expert, but I can get by now. I think I can answer your 2 specific questions. (I'm not at the computer that has Audacity on it, so I'm going sort of from memory...) 1) To add silence to the front of your show, I think you can just slide/shift the sound part to the right. On the left, click on the icon that has the double arrow <-->, then click on the left section of track(s) you want to move (to select them) then just drag the whole thing to the right. You could also probably insert silence, then cut out the bits you don't want. Oh, I think I remember having to click on an icon to select, THEN click on the <--> to shift it. Sorry. It's so easy to show someone, but so hard to describe it! 2) The fade in and out are under the Effects menu. You have to have something selected first, then you apply an effect. To select part of a track (unlike #1 above), you click and drag over the part you want. It will turn dark(er), then you select "Fade in" or whatever. There is an undo feature, so you can try it and change your mind. I found a tutorial on the audacity site. Try this: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/tutorials.php It isn't great, but it might get you started. Hope this helps.

Conflow, I couldn't find it, but I did find http://www.sysdesk.de/ Hope that's the right place. I found one site that said it only supported 95 and 98, but others seem to think it's fully compatible with XP et al. To be honest, I wasn't really enamored with dbpoweramp so I may give this a try. Thanks!

There are many programs that will convert CDs to mp3s. There are also many sites from which you can download mp3s, some of them free, some of them legal (remember all the Napster troubles? Those were mp3s ) Audacity is a great free program that converts many formats to many other formats, but I don't know if you can read a CD with it. There are numerous references to it in this forum. Here's the web site: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about.php A program that converts a CD to mp3 or wav is called a "ripper". Here is one that's also free and mentioned elsewhere on this forum: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm So that's a pretty long answer. Sorry! The short answer is: you make them yourself for the most part.

I have neither file either on XP Home. Hope you find it soon! It's very annoying.

Nice job, Ken. Cute kids, good presentation. I saw some techniques I want to try! Thanks for sharing.

I'm pretty new to this, and I'm sure an expert will know exactly what to do, but in the mean time, I think I read something in these topics about bundling the stuff in the same folder. For example, if master.exe is the main show that has the button on it, and if you press the button to start sub.exe, the path to sub.exe might say what it was on your source computer. If those 2 are not in the same folder, then when you get to the destination computer and click on the button, it might start looking for sub.exe's folder (on the source computer) which may not be there. So the advice was when you package it for CD or zip or whatever, put everything for this show in the same folder on the source computer, or delete the path references from the button links. As long as everything is in the same folder on the destination computer (or CD), sub.exe will be found, even without the full path name. Wow! I just re-read that and I'm not sure I understand it. Hope this helps. Or ignore this and wait for an expert... one will be with you in a few moments...

What a great analogy! It is quite like that, even down to when it's not quite finished, and you haven't quite made up your mind, and there is still might even be some consideration of other alternatives, but deep down, you know this one is right. You made me smile, LumenLux.

Interesting question Jeanie... There's probably another entire topic here, like "How do you get creative?" or something inexhaustible like that. As I mentioned earlier, I had tried one song and it was lovely, but it wasn't right. It was a slow tune, so I let the pendulum swing and tried some up tunes. The first one was the right direction, but not the right song. I knew I wanted to use this group, so I went through all my CDs of theirs, looking for up tunes. I'm pretty familiar with all their work, so just reading titles reminded me of the songs. I made a list of candidates. Since I knew the show was going to be more than 3 minutes or so, I started mentally piecing different ones together. "Oh, this one starts slow, but there is a fast section. I could pull that out and it's sort of the same style as this one here..." I did end up changing my mind 3 or 4 times, but eventually it just felt right. I guess I sort of limited myself because I knew I wanted to use a particular group. If I had not done that, it probably would have been a longer process. I still believe that the creative spirit in us that begs for expression is a good friend. Don't "settle" for something. You'll know it when it's right! Now, will you share it when you get it done? I'm fascinated to see what you end up with.

While I won't be there to share the pint, I'll add my 2 cents' worth (that seems funny, talking about $ 0.02 US to a Canadian and an Irishman I just did a show that had some things different from any other show I've seen (I haven't seen that many, admittedly): upbeat music, and music with lyrics. I was a bit nervous about this, but the audience was limited and specific. The event was my son's college graduation, and the audience is my immediate family and his friends (all featured in the slide show). The music was from the college choir, of which he and several of his friends were members. I originally started with a slow tune, but decided I wanted the atmosphere more upbeat. So I changed tunes and I was amazed at how different the same slides looked when set to different music. (I have just violated Alan's Rule #1 and verified #2.) One thing that became very apparent to me is that I "had to" change slides to the rhythm of the music. (Violating Rule #4.) I used a half-second fade on most, and tried it both ways before deciding to end the fade on the downbeat rather than starting the fade on the downbeat. I will admit here that I am probably more a musician than I am a photographer, so I am very aware at several levels of the music and the beat. I can imagine on a slow, lyric-less, landscape show (like Al's show from the US Canyonlands) that it would be less important, but for this show it seemed right. I didn't change every downbeat, or every 2 measures, etc., but when I did a change, it was on a beat. Let's see... I've violated more rules than I've verified so far. Rule #3, did you mean don't choose a song with words if you intend to talk, or did you mean don't have any music at all. If the former, I can easily concur. If the latter, I'm not so eager to agree yet. #5 and #6, absolutely. I had 3 pieces, and my wife both talked me out of the slow piece and suggested 1 of the fast ones. #7 - I have no experience and therefore no comment. Back to the lyrics - I wanted the words to say something about the photos. I had a basic flow in mind, but I tweaked a slide here and there to make this photo line up with these words. So the show has musical jokes, political comment, inside jokes, touching memories, etc. for this very specific audience. Perhaps that's not the intended use of PTE, but the kids enjoyed it and I verified Rule #8. Final tally: Rules broken: 2 Rules verified: 4 Jury still out: 2 Not a bad showing, I suppose. My personal addition to the list is: 9. Don't underestimate the power the music has over the overall effect. Try different things. Get it right. You'll know it when you do. Jeanie, hope this helps!

Chris, Absolutely stunning! If this is your first show, I'm not going to post for a while! The music was perfect. I liked the tension that built with your use of the quick transitions in the middle. I guess I agree with d67's comment about the white transitions. It was effective on the shot that ended up with lots of clouds and a few animals low in the picture (3rd or 4th shot I think), but I didn't understand the motivation or your intent with the others. The photos themselves are wonderful. I'm curious what lens you were using. Some super long Canon "L" glass, I'll bet! Even the ones that I suspect were cropped and enlarged are crystal clear. Great job. I'm also interested in the effect you used at the very beginning and the very end. It that the mosaic with a million squares or something else? I liked it! Outstanding job, Chris.

First off, welcome to the forum, Julia! You can use the Search function in this forum or read all the posts in this forum. I did that when I first joined and there is a welath of information here just from reading other folks' questions and the replies. If you have some music in mind, and you have it on CD, there are free programs out there that convert CD files to mp3 files. If you already have them on the computer, in nearly any form, then there are free programs (Audacity being one mentioned a lot in this forum) that will let you edit them for time, fade in and out, put several pieces of music together, etc. and then save the result as an mp3. PTE will accept several different formats of sound, but from reading this forum, it seems that mp3 is a common format for slide shows. After you have the music in some form you want to use, there is a Music tab in the Project Options where you can include one or more files to play. Again, the wisdom from this forum seems to be to have one file that plays, rather than let PTE piece it together. Give this a try post back if you have more questions.

A few of these posts got buried in another thread. I thought I'd pull them out so they have their own topic. Any other opinions? How do we make it happen? I would really like to pick others' brains and see how some of these awesome effects happen.

I for one would read (and contribute to?) such topics with gusto. While I agree with Al and others that it is very subjective, we can still discuss technique and decide choose that for this particular show, I might want something different, but for that place in that show, it's perfect. Organizationally, I think it would be good to make it 1) clear that a topic is of this genre and 2) easy to find such topics. Let's try.

I read an article comparing some and they liked Spywaret Search and Destroy the best. I run it once in a while, but not daily or something. I can't imagine that more than one would hurt, but I don't know how much it would help either. Oops. I just did a search and the name is Spybot, not Spyware. Search for Spybot Search & Destroy 1.3 on the internet and there are many many places to get it for free. Download.com or tucows.com are a couple.

I'm pretty new to this software, but here's what I've found. The experts can correct me. Sync'ing to music and having controls on the show are independent things. You can have either one or both. If you have both (I just tried this yesterday), there will be a little "nav bar" placed somewhere on the screen (you can choose from several positions). So the show starts, and the music starts. If I click on the "next slide" button, it jumps to the next slide and the music skips too. If I click on "pause", the music stops and the slide stays on the screen until "play" is clicked. So the music is always sync'ed to the slides. You can control what buttons are on the Nav Bar, so you can let them pause, for example, but not go backward, or go to the first slide, and go forward, and backward, but not exit the show. One other "gotcha" I noticed you can hide the cursor independent of showing or hiding the nav bar. So if you show the nav bar but hide the cursor, they won't be able to click on things. Plus if you don't have the "permit control of show" checked (mentioned in other replies) you won't see the nav bar. So there are several things that all have to be coordinated to make it work. It sounds complicated, but I would recommend just playing with it a little. You can see what the result will be by setting it some way and clicking on the "Preview" button. The show will play just like it will for your client. You don't have to save it or save it as an exe while you're trying different combinations. Just be sure to save when you get something you like. Give it a try and if you have more questions, post here or PM me.

I just ran into the same thing. I'm not at a computer right now that has PTE on it, so I'm trying to remember. On one screen in project options (the second tab, maybe "Advanced" or something?) there are several options to control the navigation bar, add or subtract items from it, control the cursor, leave the last slide up after the show ends, etc. But unless you check the box that says "Permit control of show" (on the Main tab) as ContaxMan suggests, none of that works. That stumped me just yesterday for a while. I'm curious that you said "I want the client to have full control over the slideshow AFTER it has played out." My experience is that if the navigation bar is there, they have control of it any time, so they could theoretically take control before they've seen the whole show once. As a viewer of a new show, I would never do this. I'd watch it once, then decide how to proceed. But I don't think you can prevent them. Maybe there's a clever way to link a show without control to a show with control, so they can't mess with it the first time through. That might be overkill.

As another relatively newcomer, I can vouch for the friendliness of the folks here on the forum and for the ease of use of PTE. I second the suggestion to get Al's PTE101 tutorial and look for other goodies at: http://www.alrobinson.com/pte_items.htm Also, I just read many of the topics in this forum and learned a lot. And of course, pick a small project (a dozen slides or so), grad some music, and try stuff! It's really pretty friendly software. Then don't hesitate to ask about the stuff you don't understand. Welcome!

Even though this is supposed to be a "future feature" thread, I have learned a lot from the responses to some of my earlier ideas. Thanks for all the suggestions. In particular, I see how the "real time sync" works and that's fine. Igor, I remember reading a thread (maybe here, maybe in another topic) about a few "little things" that were either bugs, annoyances, or easy things to fix. I'd like to nominate a couple more. I think it has already been mentioned that the buttons on the main window could be improved (Add right next to Remove, next to Clear List; Remove not having any protection on it, etc.) I agree. In addition, I'd like to have a warning message come up when you press the "Set Defaults" button. I haven't clicked it more than once because I'm afraid of it. I've made so many changes to the project options, I don't want to have to put them all back. I think I hit it once when I was first playing. Having a warning like "Are you sure you want to replace all the project options with the defaults?" would be handy. Or have it replace only the options on that tab, or make the button smaller or harder to click by mistake. Looking forward to seeing the new features you're working on. This is a great program. Thanks!

Granot, I just got to try the "new and improved" AutoRes utililty. For the things I tested, it works great! This machine is running XP Professional. I tried several different screen resolutions, and also tried both running the show all the way through and stopping in the middle (using <esc>). All worked fine. Thanks much. I will use this and think others will find it helpful too. It takes away the guess work of predicting what screen resolution the recipients will be using. It's particularly useful where the technical savvy is low or unknown. For example, if I told my parents to change the screen resolution before running my slide show, they would be lost. This does it all for them. Now, coupling this with an autorun utility will be tops, especially when distributing the shows on CD. I haven't ever done the autorun thing yet, but I suspect I can figure it out. One other thing I thought of which I can't easily test: are there some smaller / older monitors / drivers that cannot "do" certain resolutions? For example, if I set this utility to run at 1024 x 768 and the monitor won't handle that, what happens? Just a thought. Maybe it's not an issue or a very low probability. Thanks again.

One more thing on www.dropload.com... You have to register, but the recipient does not. Pretty handy.

You have to go to www.dropload.com and register (free). Then you log on as you, and pick the choice to drop a file for someone. You enter the email address of the recipient, choose the file, and go for it. That uploads the file to their server, notifies the recipient that they have 48 hours to claim it. When they claim it, you get an email saying it's done. In either case (claim it or not), it gets deleted in 48 hours.

Basically, that's right. However: 1) I would not name it grad.pte, as "pte" is a valid file extension for the PTE files. If the recipient happens to have PTE, this will mess him up if he's not careful. In another thread, it seems that "p2e" used to be used for this. Any extension that is not likely to be used will work. So I wouldn't pick "doc" or "xls" or "mus". That's why I used "xyz" in my example. 2) I'm really new to this forum, so perhaps a veteran would like to comment. Keep in mind there might be another issue that has to do with PTE itself, but I am not smart enough to know that. 3) If I understand the problem correctly, this has nothing to do with PTE really. It's an issue of size and/or isp restrictions. IF the issue is size, try dropload.com. IF the issue is that the receiving isp doesn't like ".exe"s then you can use this renaming scheme to trick it. You might have to do some experiments with the recipient, like send a very small file named "FromHarry.exe" (so the recipient knows it's not a virus) and see if he can receive it. If so, then it's likely not an "exe" problem. Then create a very small (1 slide) show and save it as gradtest.exe and send it to him. If he gets that, then it might be the size issue. Or send a 5MB or 10MB file that's not an exe and see if he can receive it. Unfortunately, different isp's may have different rules. So maybe dropload.com is the best bet. I'm working on a grad.exe myself. When we're both done, wanna trade? Please post here if/when you get it figured out!

You can do it anywhere, like in Explorer, or right click on the file name and there should be a "Rename" option. It will give you some sort of warning saying that renaming it will dis-associate it with the current progam or something like that. That's OK. The recipient will rename it back (and get the same message) and then it will run. This is all assuming you have a Windows machine. I forget how to do it on Macs.