goddi

============================= Greetings Mary, Thanks for the tip. I'll experiment. Gary

Greetings, Great! Glad you liked it. As far as mixing horizontals with verticals, in the 'old days', I was taught to include verticals so that the slide show would not get boring. (I think some in the Forum have said not to use verticals at all!) Putting a background with the vertical....hmmmmmm....I think it detracts from the vertical image. I see it as the eye not knowing exactly where to look. But that is my 'school of thought'. Maybe in some cases as I did with the bananas as a background in a few of the images in my "Close Encounter..." show, but not as a consistent thing to do. I also think it would be pretty hard pick out that many appropriate backgrounds that would fit that purpose. But, who knows,maybe I will be doing something along those lines in the future. Never say never. Interesting you mentioned a concern about bugs. I brought 2 full bottles of bug repellant expecting the worse and did not ever think of opening either one and never did. We were in Cambodia and Thailand for about 21 days and bugs were never a thought or a problem!!! In the treehouse, we were warned to keep windows shuttered when we were not there because the monkeys would come in and take anything not nailed down...but no problem there either. Thanks for the comments, Gary =============================================

======================== Greetings, The driving force to make the show the way I did was the music. The electric violin and the beat just grabbed my attention to contrast the techno sound with nature. And, because of the beat of the music, the fast pace of the transitions had to be where they are...I think. My wife gave it a thumbs down, too. Mostly for the music...and the subsequent fast pace. But, I had to do what I did. The videos have really been reduced in size. From the camera, they are in MOV format. I edited and reduced then down when I saved them as an AVI. I don't know if they can really be reduced in size any further without losing quality to the point of not being useful. I don't see any other attempts at using video in PTE yet, so maybe as time goes on, we will learn some tricks to help get the shows down in size as others try it. But, once I have started including video, it is sort of hard not to now. I like to include video because it brings some motion or life to the show. I am not a videographer but I like the results so far. Lot to learn, though. For example in the Ziplining show, I think the video added 'life' to the show...I hope. Wow, I can't imagine it taking 1 hr and 45 minutes to download the Khoa Sok show with a broadband connection, so I understand your reluctance. It took me only 56 seconds to download it with my broadband. I do try to get the file size down, but with video, it is a challenge. In case you do get to download the Khoa Sok show, it is a much calmer and quieter show. I hope you can. Thanks for your comments. I hope others will comment on how they feel about the addition of video in shows. Gary

===================== Lin, We sure did. We went to Seam Reap, Cambodia first and went through Angkor Wat and many other temples. And saw temples in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, too. It was an incredible trip. I have a few more slideshows to put together...takes time. Gary

The location of this show is at the Khoa Sok National Park, Thailand. It lasts about 6:20 minutes and is blend of still images and video, at 1920x1080. The Khoa Sok National Park is an amazing place. It is covered by the oldest evergreen rainforest in the world, huge limestone mountains shooting straight up in the air, deep valleys, breathtaking lakes, exciting caves, wild animals and much more. Still images were taken with a Nikon D7000; videos were taken with a Kodak PlaySport camera. I hope you are entertained by it. Comments and critiques are welcomed. http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/ Gary

Greetings, I have uploaded a new slide/video show to http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/ called Cheow Lan Lake. The location is at the Cheow Lan Lake in Thailand. This show last about 5 minutes and is a fast moving blend of still images and video, at 1920x1080. The music captured my imagination and I had to put some images and video with it. The Cheow Lan Lake is an incredibly beautiful place that I wanted to capture with this techno-electric-violin beat. Still images were taken with a Nikon D7000; videos were taken also with the D7000 and with a Kodak Play Sport camera. I hope you are entertained by it. Comments and critiques are welcomed. Gary

Peter, I was nodding my head 'yes' as I was reading your post until I got to "Its use should then result in the same time duration being applied to the start and end of ALL tracks (including a fade-in at the start of the first item and a fade-out at the end of the last item) ." It is my understanding that the definition of Crossfading is that it is to be applied ONLY to the end of the first audio clips and the beginning of the second audio clip, not the start and end of the pair. Will you clarify your position on this? Now, can I be so bold as to offer another suggestion? Lets assume that Crossfading overlaps two audio clips with fading-ins and fading-outs. I would like to have an option called Overlap. I'd like an easy way to be able to do Crossfading without the fades. So I think Overlap would be a good addition. With Overlap, you would highlight two adjacent audio clips and enter a negative value, in seconds, that would move the second audio clip to the left placing the beginning of the second clip over the ending of the first clip, without fades. This can be done with Offset but it not as easy to do, especially if you have more than 2 clips. This seems to be more intuitive than using Offset. Thoughts? Just my thoughts. Gary

============ Lin, I think we can agree to disagree with this one. Then to be consistent, a '5 sec' should be put in the Crossfading in the Audio Clip Properties, too? At least be consistent? But then, Unsharp Mask has a '0'. Not to mention Line Space and Sharper/Smoother. So it can be done. And I would think that if you don't have any Crossfading being used, zero makes sense to me. And aren't we most always being 'forced' to put in some value in most menus? As long as they fix the fade-in problem with Crossfading, it is no big deal now. Gary

============= Peter, Ok.....let's call it bugelogic? Sorry, I could not resist... Gary

========================= DG, It makes sense to me that if I have not added any Crossfading, I would not expect to see '5 secs'? What if someone clicked on the 'OK' in the little Crossfading Duration window that has the '5 secs'? It would input the 5 secs of Crossfacing by accident. If you put in 1 sec, it will input 1 sec., or if you chose 2 secs, it would input 2 secs. So why not start out with what it actually is and should be, which is Zero. It won't allow a negative value, so I don't see the resistant to Zero. Can you explain more why "0:00.000" should not be used? I don't see why '5 secs' helps. If that is Igor's 'suggested amount', then it should be put in text, as a suggestion. Gary ADDED LATER: If you change the '5 secs' to '0', and click on OK, nothing happens. Everything stays as it was, with no Crossfading. So why not start out with '0' instead of '5'?

Greetings, And, remove the 5 secs 'suggested value' that appears when you open Crossfading. If you have not added any seconds to the Crossfading, then it should show what it actually is, and that is '0'. Gary

========================= DG, Actually, the only time Crossfading works properly is when you are using the Audio Clip Properties/Crossfading radio button and you have selected the second of two audio clips (or any other audio clip except the first one, in that Track). If you selected the first audio clip, you only get it to fade-in. And if you select both audio clips, you can't make any adjustments to the seconds. I think it is a bug AND a logic problem. Gary

===================== Hi Gogs, I liked Jing too, but the big reason that I now prefer BBFE is that I can output the file as an AVI, and the highlighted cursor. And with AVI, you have more choices to play it back. Yes, the editing features are not available with BBFE version. But I just open the AVI with Freemake Video Converter and that allows me trim the beginning and end and cut out sections I don't want. And, I can then re-save the AVI as a smaller sized file by choosing lower bit rates, or no audio, etc., or in other formats. Really is a nice combination. Gary

Greetings Peter, et al., After looking at your two screen shots this morning, I now see why you were not seeing the fade-in of the first audio clip when you applied Crossfade. There are two ways to get into Crossfading. When you applied your Crossfading, you clicked on Customize which revealed the Audio Clip Properties. When this happens, you can actually select either of the two audio clips that you want to apply the Crossface. However, when I applied the Crossfading to my two audio clips, I just clicked on Crossfading button in the Music tab. (I did not get into the Customize window). When this is done, both audio clips are automatically highlighted. And we can get different results. I think the problem with all of this is the definition of Crossfading is not being followed. The definition that seems to be accepted, and is in Jeb's excellent Tutorial (page 10), is as follows: Crossfading is when the end of one clip and the beginning of the following clip are faded out and in respectively and the faded segments are overlapped and merged together. Note that this does not include the fading-in of the beginning of the first audio clip. When one uses the Customize/Audio Clip Properties/Crossfading approach, you can choose which audio clip you want to apply the 'Crossfading' to. If you select only the first audio clip, and apply 5s of Crossfading, what you actually get is only the fading-in of the first audio clip. This is really not Crossfading. The total length of the combined audio clips do not change. If, however, you select only the second audio clip, and apply 5 s of Crossfading, you do get the crossfading that you should expect. The ending of the first audio clip and the beginning of the second audio clip are crossfaded and the beginning of the first audio clip is not affected and the total length of the two audio clips is reduced by the 5s, as expected. Now, if you happen to select Crossfading in the Music tab, both audio clips are automatically highlighted and you get the Duration window that initially defaults to 5s. First of all, I think this should show Zero, not the suggest value of 5s. If you accept the 5s, or input your own number of seconds, the two audio clips do get crossfaded, but the first audio clip also get faded-in. This is not following the definition of Crossfading that is only supposed to affect the end of the first audio clip and the beginning of the second audio clip. I think the entire Crossfading menus need to be reworked so that Crossfading only allows the overlay of two consecutive audio clips at a time. Under the current system, if you have more than 2 audio clips, all of them are automatically selected when you choose the Crossfading in the Music tab. The Crossfading function should be changed so that you can only select two consecutive audio clips and apply the crossfading only to them (without affecting the beginning of the first audio clip). If you highlight the two audio clips in the Music tab and try to set the Crossfading seconds in the Customize/Audio Clips Properties window, it will not accept any seconds. Here is where I would expect to be able to do the crossfading of two selected audio clips, but you can't. Perhaps the Crossfading buttom in the Music tab should be removed and only allow for Crossfading in the Customize/Audio Clip Properties window, and only two consecutive audio clips can be highlighted and only those two audio clips are affected with Crossfading. Just my thoughts....Gary (rat terrier) ======================

Peter, This is very interesting. If I understood it correctly, I think that DG agreed that Crossfade produced a fade-in on the first mp3. So we need more 'rat terriers' to track down the rabbit!!! Every time I try it with different mp3s and different versions of PTE, it showed the same results. Even if I put in a single mp3, the beginning gets faded-in. Did you see my AVI? Did I do something wrong? I have Win7 Prof., 32-bit. Gary ADDED LATER: In his last post, I see DB gets the same results as I do. ADDED LATER: Peter, I assume you clicked OK to get the waveform to refresh after changing the Crossfade to 9s. ===========================

============================== DG, Thanks for addressing one of my original questions. I think it is illogical because you can apply your own fade to the beginning MP3 if you want to, whenever you want to. Using Crossfade as it is now, affects the beginning audio of the 1st MP3, and it should not. While you were making this posting, I created an AVI to demo my point, for others who might not see what I am trying to show. See the attached for the demo. Thanks, Gary CrossfadeTest -1.zip

=================== Peter, Yes. I have tried different versions of PTE (7.04 and 7.03), and different mp3s and even Lin's mp3s and each time the beginning mp3 is affected. I see it does affect where we expect, overlapping the two mp3s.I will try to make up an AVI that will demonstrate my point. Give me some time... Gary

Peter, Attached is what I see when I create a new slideshow and just open Crossfade for the first time. It shows 5s. Seems to me it should be Zero. I understand how Crossfade is supposed to work, overlapping the end of the 1st mp3 with the beginning of the 2nd mp3, and that you should apply it only to the 2nd mp3 (on the same Track). But, take a look at the beginning few seconds of your 1st mp3 and see that it too has been affected. Gary ===========================

Lin, I certainly didn't want to turn this into a dissertation. I am just trying to get answers to what I am seeing that does not make sense. You gave me an explanation but it seems that you are only talking about the effects between the 1st and 2nd mp3s. I understand where the Crossfade should happen. However, my question has to do with why is it affecting the beginning of the 1st mp3? I don't think you have responded to that. I tried using Crossfade on another show with 2 mp3s and, again, it affected to beginning of the 1st mp3. I don't think that is what it is supposed to happen. Greetings Lin, No, they are not 'eliminated'. But the beginning drum beats of the 1st mp3 are definitely reduced in sound level with your Crossfade of 10s. In the .gif I had attached, you can see that the waveform barely shows about 4 of the beats when your 10s of Crossfade is applied. If you bring Crossfade to 0s, there is an increase in the number of drum beats you can see in the waveform and you can actually hear the difference when played. I see all of this 'inside' PTE using its waveform in the Timeline. I still don't see why it should be affecting the 1st mp3. I gave you my explanation - I can do no more..... OK I have just noticed another problem with Crossfade. The default setting seems to be 5s. If you bring it down to 0s and then go back into Crossfade, the setting goes back to 5s. Should it not stay at the 0s you set it at? No, it should go to the default. Why would you expect to have Zero in a crossfade? Zero is "no crossfade" so you wouldn't check crossfade if you didn't want it. I would expect it to stay at what I set it at. If '0s' is 'no Crossfade', what is '5s'? If I can make a change from 5s to 0s, it should stay there. Does 5s = 0s? If it does, then it should not let me put in a Zero. Another problem with Crossfade: I am working on a new slideshow that has 2 mp3s. Both are in their own track so I can apply Offset to the 2nd mp3 to have the beginning of the 2nd mp3 overlay the end of the 1st mp3 for a few seconds. If I happen to change the Crossfade of the 2nd mp3 to any other setting than its default of 5, the 2nd mp3 disappears from the wave form and so does the Offset setting. I don't know why I would fiddle with the Crossfade in this instance but I did and it did something weird. Any you can't get it back to where it was unless you close PTE and reopen it without having save it. I don't know why you would fiddle with it either. Gary, you're like a rat terrier worrying a carcass. If you pull the sparkplug wire from a high performance engine while running it will foul the sparkplug. You're not "expected" to pull the sparkplug wire. Crossfade is designed to work with two song selections on the same track. You shouldn't use crossfade if you don't have both selections on the same track. Developers can't possibly account for all the exigencies which users "might" do. If you really think this is a "bug" then report it to Igor as such. Sometimes you just try out menu items to see what would happen. Things happen that aren't expected. I think that is why we have Beta versions. You need the 'rat terriers' to see what happens when developers don't account for what a user might do. The fact that I cannot undo the results of clicking on a menu item that I 'shouldn't' have makes me think the developers weren't good enough 'rat terriers'. I should have been able to put back the default and return it back to where it was. A fix would be, if there is not a second mp3 in that Track, then it should not allow an entry into Crossfade. Gary ('rat terrier'?-- I take that as a complement). This started as a question about how to do crossfade and is developing into a dissertation.... LOL Best regards, Lin Gary

Greetings Lin, No, they are not 'eliminated'. But the beginning drum beats of the 1st mp3 are definitely reduced in sound level with your Crossfade of 10s. In the .gif I had attached, you can see that the waveform barely shows about 4 of the beats when your 10s of Crossfade is applied. If you bring Crossfade to 0s, there is an increase in the number of drum beats you can see in the waveform and you can actually hear the difference when played. I see all of this 'inside' PTE using its waveform in the Timeline. I still don't see why it should be affecting the 1st mp3. I have just noticed another problem with Crossfade. The default setting seems to be 5s. If you bring it down to 0s and then go back into Crossfade, the setting goes back to 5s. Should it not stay at the 0s you set it at? Another problem with Crossfade: I am working on a new slideshow that has 2 mp3s. Both are in their own track so I can apply Offset to the 2nd mp3 to have the beginning of the 2nd mp3 overlay the end of the 1st mp3 for a few seconds. If I happen to change the Crossfade of the 2nd mp3 to any other setting than its default of 5, the 2nd mp3 disappears from the wave form and so does the Offset setting. I don't know why I would fiddle with the Crossfade in this instance but I did and it did something weird. Any you can't get it back to where it was unless you close PTE and reopen it without having save it. Gary =====================================================

DG, Exactly. Can I vote twice??? Gary ============================

Greetings Peter,

================= Lin, Take a look at the attached gif. If you look closely at the Timelines, you will see what I see. The Timeline without the Crossfade has more 'blips' at the beginning than the Timeline with Crossfade. Something is being removed. And I can hear the difference when I play each. This is in the new version 7.4. I think I understand what you are doing but I don't think you are actually laying the beginning portion of the 2nd mp3 over the ending portion of the 1st mp3. Maybe I am wrong but the fading of either end is taking out some of the music. I don't want to do that. I just want to blend the ending of the 1st mp3 with the beginning of the 2nd mp3. Gary

============================= Lin, I checked out your sample. Thanks for the quick reply. What I don't like about using Crossfade is that it affects the beginning of the 1st mp3. If you notice the beginning of the first mp3, it is not exactly like it sounds if you remove the Crossface. The Crossfade is affecting both the transition between the 1st and the 2nd mp3 AND the beginning of the 1st mp3. The Gerry and the Pacemaker's (G&P) mp3 is losing the very beginning drum section with the Crossfade. And, your sample is fading out in the middle of the G&P mp3. I don't want to fade out of my first mp3 because it is already fading out. That means I would be fading-out a fade-out. I just want to put the beginning music of my 2nd mp3 on top of the already fading-out end of my 1st mp3. So if you take out the Crossfade from your sample, it is just a fade-out and a fade-in, no overlapping, but at least you don't lose the beginning drum beats from G&P. So I think my method works a bit better to actually get the overlap between the two mp3s, without the deficiency that the Crossfade introduces. Do you notice what I mean about the Crossfade affecting the first mp3s music???? Is that a bug??? Gary

Greetings, I am trying to adjust two mp3 files so that they blend together as one ends and the other starts. I want the second mp3 to start playing while the first mp3 plays its last few seconds, or in other words, to overlap. I tried Crossfade, since that at least sounded like what I wanted to do. But it deals with getting the music to start playing gradually. Then I tried Offset (both mp3s in Track 1). But that made the second mp3 start only after the end of the first mp3 by the amount of time added to the Offset. Then I put the second mp3 in Track 2 and used its Offset setting so that it would start playing a few seconds before the first mp3 ended. If the first mp3 was 2:50, I put the Offset for the second mp3 to be 2:45 go get an overlap of 5 seconds. This got the beginning of the second mp3 to start and to play with the ending of the first mp3 for 5 seconds. Once I got the hang of it, it seems to be a workable solution. My question is, is this the only way to do this in PTE? I don't want to use Audacity to do this. I want to be able to make these adjustments with the audio as I do the editing of the show, within PTE. Wouldn't it be easier if we could just put both mp3s in Track 1 and be able to put in a negative value in for the Offset for the second mp3 to accomplish the overlapping of the mp3s? Gary