goddi

Thanks, Dick and Lin... Here are two links to 2 test files: Test 1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/l8xae2 Test 2: http://www.sendspace.com/file/n3hyia Here is my Hardware setup: Operating System: Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (build 2600) Processor Main Circuit Board: 3.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4 8 kilobyte primary memory cache 512 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. P4P800 Rev 1.xx Bus Clock: 200 megahertz BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 1021.006 08/15/2005 Memory Modules: 2048 Megabytes Installed Memory Display: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 256 mb video memory 52 GB free on drive. My slideshow is only 30 slides and I use 320 x ??. I hope you can see what is going one here. I tried Winamp and Windows Media Player. Same problem. Thanks... Gary ===============================

Ray... After reading our post, I thought that the large files I had might be causing the problem with creating an AVI file. I was using my original images' size that is approximately 3.6MB each. PTE has no problem with this size for slide shows but maybe the AVI creator was. So I reduced the images down to about 100 kb each. Recreated the AVIs but it did not help. For any codec I have tried, the AVI stops at the 4th slide (but the music continues to play). Then it skips some images and shows another, but freezes and skips and freezes some more. With the smaller file size, I did not get the "image load error" message. What a disappointment. I wonder why the AVI creation works fine for some people but I can not seem to find any way to make it work. Gary

Greetings, Piece of cake??? Not for me. I have the latest version of PTE. I have made many DVDs from PTE. But when it comes to making an AVI...next to impossible. I have tried before and the frustration of doing it has kept me away from further attempts. However, having read this thread, I tried it again. No luck. I tried the Xvid and DivX6.8 codes mentioned here. Sometimes I get only sound, no images. With another codec, as the music played, I got "Image Load error:" as it cycled showing each image's path, but not the image. When I do get what looks like is going to be a good AVI, it plays about 4 slides then the images freeze (while the music plays) and then skips some images and is very rough and bounces around to different images. Why is it so difficult to just make a simple AVI? Some can do it...but some (me) can not. Can anyone just give the steps to do to make it work? I love PTE when it comes to making a slide show...but when it comes to making an AVI, it is totally frustrating. I have tried many different codecs but just get a mess. What am I missing??????????????? Thanks... Gary

Thanks, Lin. Great explanation. Now I only have to put them into some practical exercises. Sincerely, Gary

Lin, I have tried to find the distinction/definition between linear and non-linear as it relates to PTE, but I can not. Can you give me a "Linear for Dummies" explaination??? Thanks...Gary

Jeff... Super...I'll be looking for it. Thanks... Gary

Lin... Ran the show and had no problems. All smooth. NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 256mb Gary

Jeff... "Simple"??? Easy for you to say! I can sorta kinda see what you are talking about. I played with the Timeline and I can see what you mean about moving slides around to match commentary, etc. What I am not clear about is when/why to use some of the menu items. With 4.48, to spread the slides over the length of the music, all you had to do was click on "Synchronize music and slides." Now you have to go into the Timeline and make additional selections. The confusing menu items, for me, seems to be "Synchronize music and slides (SMS)," "Auto spread slides along music (ASSAM)," and "Arrange all points (AAP)." Say I pull in a group of slides that I want to to play exactly with the length of the music. I would click on SMS. If I click on ASSAM, the only thing I see happen is the Timeline goes a bit grey. Then I would click on AAP. The slides are now spread all the way to the end of the music. But now I can go in and move a slide or group of slides to tweak the slide to match any commentary or music. So I am not sure what effect the ASSAM selection has on the Timeline. It would be very helpful if there were explanations given when you move your mouse over each choice or selection so you understand better why and when you would want to make a selection. I love the program but I feel that a true understanding of when/why to choose some of these items is sort of a black box...at least to me. If you can shine anymore light on my confusion, I'd appreciate it. Thanks... Gary

I brought up this question in another topic listing. I think it got buried and I did not get a response. So let me try again: I ran into this 'problem' early in the beta testing trials, as others seem to have. When you select 'Synchronize Music & Slides' (SMS), you also must select 'Add arranged points' in the Time Line to have the slides spread all the way to the end of the music. I would like to know why one would select (SMS) without also selecting the 'Add arranged points' option. I am not trying to fight the issue but I just want to understand why you would want to choose SMS and NOT have the slides automatically spread along the entire music's length with this one selection (so the slides match up with the end of the music). It seems to me that logically when you click on the SMS, this would automatically spread out the music without needing an extra step. I'm not sure if I am making myself clear. But basically, I'd like to know what is the advantage or usefulness in NOT using the second step, 'Auto spread slides' after you select SMS? If I remember right, in 4.48, you did not need a second step. Thanks... Gary

Got it!!!! I fiddled with what you said..."to change the global setting for slides to be added from now on." If I changed the Screen % (and not click on 'Set for existing slides') nothing changes. However, I see that it will change only the next added slides. Also, if I already have some in the Slide List and want to change only some of the slide's Screen %, I had to take them out and bring them back into the Slide List, after first changing the setting in Project Options. Thanks for setting me straight. Lots of possibilities here that are 'hidden'....at least for me!!! Thanks... Gary

Greetings... I also ran into this 'problem' early in the beta testing trials. But, I would like to know why one would select 'Synchronize Music & Sides' (SMS) without also selecting the 'Add arranged points' option. I am not trying to fight the issue but I just want to understand why you would want to choose SMS and NOT have the music automatically spread along the entire music selection with this one selection. It seems to me that logically when you click on the SMS, this would automatically spread out the music without needing an extra step. I'm not sure if I am making myself clear. But basically, I'd like to know what is the advantage or usefulness in NOT using the second step, 'Auto spread slides' after you select SMS? If I remember right, in 4.48, you did not need a second step. Thanks... Gary PS. I also have a similar question about having to make a second step and have to select "Set for existing slides". It seems that when you are making the selections in Project Options, you would want that to be done automatically for all the slides, without having a second step. Am I missing something here? Why would I NOT want to select "Set for existing slides" when I make a selection in Project Options???

Bravo, Tom. Exactly right. I just switched it and it cleaned everything up. When I was looking at it earlier today, it was at 16 and when I tried to change it to 32, I got a strange looking screen, so I left it at 16. Now when I switched to 32, it really came back to a great looking background gradient. Not sure what was going on, but THANK YOU for the hint!!!!!! Gary

Greetings, I was messing with my graphics card color settings and I seemed to have messed it up. Before, the background colors I set as a gradient were smooth, from top to bottom. Now I see them as horizontal lines. Can anyone tell me what I can do to get the gradient colors back to being smooth so I don't see these lines??? I attached a file in Word that I hope will show up so you can see what I mean. Thanks... Gary PS And there are 'rings' around the text. image.doc

Lin... I have an Audigy2 soundcard also and have been experiencing some strange behavior, too. I created a new show in Beta 12. Many times, when I start the shown from "Start show from the current slide", the show would basically freeze. Usually, I would get frustrated and hit the left or right arrow keys in the keypad and the show would immediately start. I was wondering if you have experienced this with Beta 12. I have been working with Igor to see if he can resolve this problem and I just sent him your paragraph where you indicate your problem with the Audigy SoundBlaster card. Do you think it might be the sound card that is causing my "delay" problem??? Thanks... Gary

Thanks, Lin. I've got it working now. Thanks for the demo. Gary

Thanks, Lin, for the info. I do read the Forums every day in great anticipation of the next version. Hard to keep track of what's happening but I know lots are happening. It's a great program and I guess I am just sitting at the edge of my seat waiting for the whole enchalata to be released!!! Thanks for the clarification. Gary

About 8 days ago, I put up a concern in the Bug Report Forum that I could not get the Nav Bar to work in the new Beta 5.9. I have been frantically trying all kinds of ways to see if I could get it to work, since no one chimed in to tell me otherwise. Finally someone else came up with the same problem in the regular Forum. So it seems, if I am not mistaken, the Nav Bar does NOT work yet in the latest Beta...??? To me, it is a very critical and useful function. I hope I got it right now... Gary

Greetings, In addition to not seeing the Nav Bar or the 5% screen that I have mentioned in a previous topic, I am now having a problem trying to burn a PTE show to a DVD. I went through the process of Beta9's burning a DVD but I have made 2 coasters so far. The burning process went well until the point it actually tries to burn the DVD. When it starts the actual burn process, I get the following messages (including the bad spelling): "The error have apeear while DVD disc burning. To fix this error please try to burn another disk and decrease burning speed. Please use only high quality DVD media. If this error will reapeat you can create ISO image and burn this by using another software." Then down below in the list of process steps, it says: "Command-WRITE (10), Status-Check Condition Sense Key-Invalid Field in CDB." I am using Memorex DVD-R disks. I don't know if the error messages are coming from PTE or from Windows. I'd appreciate any insight into this problem. Thanks... Gary

Nick... Gee...I missed the Scroll Down thing. BUT, I see that it was already set to "95%" but I don't see the Nav Bar and I don't get the 5% frame. But be something else going on??? Thanks.. Gary

Greetings, Just opened a slideshow that was made in 4.48 in the new Beta9. I usually have the Nav Bar showing and I have the "% of the screen to show slide image" set to 95%. So when I previewed this show in Beta9, the Nav Bar did not show up. After thinking about this for a minute, I noticed that the Beta9 did not have the 5% boarder showing, therefore not allowing the Nav Bar to show. My problem is that I can not figure out where the "% of the screen..." function is in Beta9. I'd like to have my slideshows to appear with this 95% screen function in Beta9 with the Nav Bar showing. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks... Gary PS Or is there some other reason the Nav Bar does not show up?

Thanks, thedom, Conflow and Alrobin, Good news and bad news. The good news is that I was fiddling with the file and fixed it. The bad news is I don't know why it was fixed. I got it to play just fine before I got your suggestions so I could not experiment with your fixes. I was having the problem with the slideshow that I created with the large jpgs (each file was about 8mb after Photoshop tweaks). Usually I reduce the file size for the final show but at this point I had not. So I then ran my large files through my NetGraphics Optimizer to reduce the size of each file down to about 122kb per file. Then the slideshow ran as it should. The music played all the way to the end of the slideshow. Not sure why this "fixed" the problem. I wish I had waited to try your suggestions but it seems to work fine now. I uploaded the short show onto the Beechbrock Cottage site. Thanks again for offering suggestions. Gary PS Yes it was synched to music and I used the fade transition.

I have made many shows but this one does not seem to want to work correctly. This is a short slideshow with only 26 frames. The music duration is only 1:01 minutes. The problem is that when I run the show, the normal ending of the music stops at frame 21. If I start the slideshow at, say, 19, the normal ending of the music does play all the way to the end of the slideshow. The music file is an MP3. I am not sure how to diagnose this problem. (I did edit out any silence in the music file with Audacity). Can anyone tell me why this might be happening??? Thanks... Gary

Ok... I did not have the "Fit to Screen" checked. I figured using "100%" would have done the trick. However, only the left and right edges go all the way to the left and right. This must be happening because the images were scanned from slides and the aspect ratio is not 'right'. No problem. At least now I understand it takes "Fit to Screen" and "100%" to make it work. Not sure why Ken's arrows work fine and mine do not. I remove the Help and Print buttons and the functions of my arrows get reversed.... Al seems to have found a similar problem with the Nav Bar buttons. Thanks all for the Help... Gary

I am still using 4.48. One thing that has me baffled every time I use the Nav Bar is that the arrows for 'Next Slide' and 'Previous Slide' seem to be reversed. The arrow that points to the left is labeled as 'Next' when I think it should be 'Previous'; the arrow that points to the right is labeled as 'Previous' when I think it should be labeled as 'Next'. Are these labeled backwards or is it is just me??? My next question has to do with '% of the screen to show slide images'. While I normally put this at 95%, I recently have tried using 100%. However, I can't get the show to take up the full screen. It always has a boarder around the image (the Full Screen mode is checked) and I have it at 100%. Can anyone tell me what I might be doing wrong? Thanks... Gary

Thanks, Lin... I'll give it a try. Gary