goddi

===================== Xaver and Denwell, I was curious about your recommendations for creating the H.264 files. I usually just use the defaults settings, so I created a duplicate of a show with your settings (only changed your settings to 16:9 and 1920x1080, to match how I made my default show). I played both, back and forth, over and over. But I could not detect any improvements. So I am wondering what do you see as the advantage of using your settings. I do see the disadvantage of creating a much larger file size with your settings. What am I missing? I have a Samsung UN40B600 LED, I think similar to yours. One other observation. When I was trying out these 2 shows, but using my WD Media Player, the sound became 'unsynced' with the images. I figured out that when I tried to 'rewind' the MP4 show using the Player's remote, I noticed the point at which the 2nd music selection should have started, actually started a second or so after when it should have. This did not happen when the show was played on a thumb drive in the Samsung's USB port. I am curious how this can technically happen when using the WD Media Player. Any ideas? Thanks... Gary

Greetings, I took to heart many of the comments from my last shows. I hope it shows some improvements. On our trip through Croatia, we visited several hill-towns in the Istrian Peninsula of Croatia. Here are 4 of the towns. The show is 16x9; 46Mb; NAV bar is active; 7:08 in length. The show is hosted at Beechbrook: http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/downloadfile.asp?id=1881 Comments, critiques welcomed. Gary

Barry, Thanks for the comments. My replies are below in blue. ================

==================== David, Thanks... Yes, the Plitvice park is just waterfalls after waterfalls and lakes after lakes. The water is crystal clear. Truly a wonderful nature spot! This entire trip had so many great places, I have had to break them up into sections or I'd have to call it a 'movie' . Now, I am working on the hill-towns in Istria, Croatia, trying to be 'less-is-more'. And, then, the beautiful Slovenia. I am be huge fan of travel and just hope to inspire others to go see the rest of the world. Gary

================= Almark, I just went back and changed the title page with green as the main color and white as the shadow line, and enlarged the text. It does look better. I also moved the overlay text to the bottom as just 2 lines with a white rectangle background and it is easier to read. Thanks for the ideas. They bothered me in the back of my mind but I think I was just too drained from getting it this far... And another reason I had the route continue past the Park's location toward Slovenia is that at the end of the show I stated that the trip continued onto Slovenia. I guess that did not come across as I expected. Improvements made... Gary

================== Mickp... I can't disagree with you about being more ruthless. I have tweeked and tweeked and re-tweeked the images in the slideshow. It really is a hard thing to do. I get to a point and then surrender! But you are right. I started out with almost 200 images for this show and got it down to about 80. I don't like to see shows that have long views per slide (with no user controls) so I tend to put more images in and activate the NAV bar so people can zoom or pause through them as they like. My wife would prefer to not be in so many images, too. But I like to have a body in some pictures to give a better perspective/scale and she is more available than a stranger... . Thanks for the comments. Gary

Replies below in bold: ======================================

Greetings, I have uploaded a new show to Beechbrook. This is a show of our walk in the Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. It is on the World Heritage list. The show is 16x9; 45 Mb; NAV bar is active; 7:06 in length. Comments, critiques welcomed. http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/downloadfile.asp?id=1879

================ Greetings thedom, Thanks for taking a look at it. I spent almost a year in Can Tho. I was a 2nd Lt. trained in the 8 inch howitzer (most accurate at the time). My specialty was the assembly of the 8" nuclear round. When we went for training, we could not take any notes or have anything to study from. So when my orders came through for Vietnam, with Top Secret clearance, I thought to myself...are we going to be firing nuclear artillery??? Scared the pants off of me. Normally I would have been assigned as an artillery forward observer (whose life expectancy was measured in day) with the South Vietnamese. But my accounting degree got me stationed in Can Tho to replace 3 officers who had been running the Officers Club. I think that job was worse than being a forward observer (...not really, but it was a pain--another story). Thankfully, I was quickly reassigned to a searchlight battery. On red alerts, we were the first ones out there shinning our lights down the runway to catch any sappers who were trying to destroy the aircraft on the runway. I also had an anti-personnel radar detachment on the Cambodian border and an anti-mortar radar detachment at the airfield. Anyway, no, I have never found anyone who was in my unit. I have hardly met anyone else who has even been in Vietnam. So the slideshow is somewhat of the only reminder of those days for me. I probably wouldn't believe it unless was able to put together the PTE show and watch it every so often...Then, I say to myself, I really was there! Gary

================================== bbdigital, Thanks for the explanation. I see what you are doing. I didn't understand fully that you were doing this 'on the fly'. My suggestion was to solve a similar problem when you were doing the New Transition not 'on the fly'. When this is done this way, you hear only the remaining portion of the Sound Comment after the end of the transition period, so you miss the first 1500ms (if that is the transition length) unless you manually reset the vertical blue line back to the beginning position of the slide. It would be nice if your problem can be fixed to work as you have suggested. I'd like my suggestion to be implemented, too, if possible. Gary

============= nobeefstu... Wow...I learn something every day!!!! There are so many 'hidden' things in PTE. I am starting to use the Timeline more now so this will come in handy. Super thanks... Gary

================ Xaver... Programming is something I know nothing about. I marvel at what these guys do. They program in things I didn't know I actually wanted! However, a good program, to me, has to be intuitive and easy to use. I love PTE, though it is not as intuitive as it could be. The two features I would like are really already there. Igor already has the guide line feature in the new audio feature. And clicking on the vertical line is already there. All I am asking is to make it easier to click on it by putting in a little icon to click on. Well, thanks for the discussion and teaching me a new trick. Gary

================ Xaver, Thank you very much for teaching me something that I had not really played around with too much. I tried it again with your directions, and it worked just fine. Yes, this is a good way to shift a slide or groups of slides. However...I would still want to be able to input a guide line as a reference point. So I could do the math as you suggest, or I could just drag the slide over to the reference point (a guide line), with no math involved. I'd prefer the 'guide line + drag' approach. Is this not a reasonable approach??? And to get the correct start time of the slide in the miniplayer, you have to manually drag the solid blue vertical line from the end of the transition to the beginning of the transition. This is why I suggested to put a small icon at the bottom of this solid blue vertical line so all you need is a click and it is accurately positioned onto the slide to the correct millisecond. Yes, you can also click on the dashed vertical blue line that on the slide but you might be off a millisecond. It would be easier to have a bit larger target to click on. So we would be able to choose to do the math, or drag. Gary

============================ Xaver, Yes, I see that you can do this and it is a neat feature. However, it is difficult to read the little milliseconds bars and add them up and eyeball the exact position. There is no way to put a marker where you want the shift to go to. I think if we can place a marker (guide line) where we eventually want the shift to go to, it would make this process much easier. I would like to be able to place a marker (guide line)at the point of a music beat while the music is playing. Then I would be able to just drag the slide or group of slides over to that marker (guide line). Those little milliseconds bars get to be a bit blurry after a while of looking at them and having a marker (guide line) to guide you would be a little bit of help. Or just being able to put markers on the Timeline as points of reference would be helpful. Gary

=================== Ok... Here's is how I see the problem. Maybe it is not what you are talking about but this is the way I have interpreted it. You are in the Timeline. You click on a slide. You add the sound comment. You want to hear it from that point but the start point of the playback is at the solid vertical blue line (the end of the transition), not at the dashed vertical blue line (where the sound comment should start). So my point was to put a little round icon at the bottom of the dashed vertical blue line that will allow you to just click on that icon to start the playback of your sound comment without you having to reposition the cursor manually. If I am in playback and I hit New Transition, the sound comment stays with its slide and plays with that slide. Maybe you are talking about something else. So please let me know how exactly are you want this function to work. Gary

============== Sure. We don't all work the same way so maybe you just have not had a similar problem that I have had. Let's say you have put in a lot of slides that are positioned to appear at the beat of the music or just spaced exactly as you want them. Then you add/delete a slide or even delete a section of the beginning part the the music. Now the group slides that were just right, are now off the beat or just not right. You then want to reposition this group of slides exactly as they are, all at once. If you highlight the first slide and then click on end, all the slides in the group are highlighted but now your view is at the end of the group of slides. You then have to drag the Timeline back to where you were and find the exact spot of the beat you want to drag this group of slides to. If you do anything besides drag them, you lose the highlighted group. So what I am saying is that it would be nice to be able to preposition a guideline at the exact spot you want to move something to, in this case a large group of slides, prior to highlighting the group of the slides. I had over 100 slides that I wanted to move all at once, without changing their spacing, up to a new point in the Timeline. If I were able to preposition a guideline at that point, it would have been much easier. I hope this is clear. Maybe there is a way to do this but I have not found it. What would also be nice is to be able to insert a guide line in the Timeline to the beat of the music as it is being played, like New Transition, but nothing would get moved yet. Basically, all I am asking is that Igor put the Guide Line function in the Timeline as he did in the new 'Wave Form and Envelope Tool'. It would be helpful. Gary

================ Peter, Yes, I see what you mean. You can now go to the actual start of the transition for a particular slide, but, as you said, it actually would show the previous slide. And this entails being very precise on where you click on the Timeline. Suggestion: Maybe a little round circle can be placed at the bottom of the dashed vertical blue line, just below the wave form, where one can click on and go to the precise beginning of that slide. This would give the user the ability to move the cursor quickly and easily to play from that precise location. You can then get to the start of the transition of a slide with only one precise click instead of two clicks (and the second click might not be too exact). Gary

==================== I was playing around with this question and it seems that the problem is that when you click on a slide, the vertical blue arrow returns to the end of the transition period, not to the actual beginning of the transition period. I added a Sound Comment to a slide, then dragged the vertical blue arrow back to the beginning of the transition (or start of the slide) and the Sound Comment played. So perhaps, if I understand the question, PTE should have the vertical blue arrow re-positioned at the beginning of the transition when you click on a slide or add a new transition to have the Sound Comment play as you want it to. I noticed this behavior when I click on slide #1 in the Timeline and want to play it from the start. It actually starts at the end of the transition period. So I have to go up to the mini-player and then drag the (what do you call it?) 'little blue knob' to the left to reposition it to the actual start of the show. Is there a reason for the vertical blue arrow to be positioned at the end of the transition period as opposed to the beginning of the slide??? Gary

=============== Peter... Ah....I didn't think of doing it backwards!!! Ok, that works to be in a better position to drag the block of slides. However, I still want to be able to preposition a guideline so I know exactly where to drag the group to (for example, the beat the music). I think this would be a good thing for Igor to add. Since he has it for the new Audio customization window, I hope he could add it to the Timeline. How about this idea??? Gary

Greetings, Thanks, Patrick and Snapcam... Talk about emotional attachment to pictures.... At first, I had put more images in the show but they might have needed some explanation or maybe they would not have an impact that I would want. So this time, less was more. Glad you enjoyed it. It is more of a cathartic experience for me. Gary

Greetings, I am now using the Timeline more frequently. First I use the Autospread function to arrange the images equally across the selected music. Then I want to be able to move a selected group of slides. However, when I do a Shift-End to select the slides, the screen shifts to the end of the Timeline and I visually lose the point where I want to shift the group of slides to. What I would like is to be able to do first is to input a guideline (like in the new Wave Form and Envelop Tool) at the point where I eventually want to shift the selected group of slides to. For example, say I want to move the group of slides to a specific point where a beat of the music is at. Is there anyway to put in a mark or a guideline in the Timeline before I do the Shift-End so I know exactly where I want to come back to??? Thanks... Gary

=================== Rick... The slides are about 40 years old. Had lots of dust and stuff. You should have seen the 'noise' on them before I spent hours and hours and hours just getting them to this point. I finally gave up and let them just look 'old'. Also, to get the file size down, I had to reduce them twice. Maybe this is the 'noise' you are talking about. But thanks for the comment. I know they were not sharp/clear as I'd like them to be but back then, I was a real novice in photography. Gary

===================== Igor, Will we get a PTE slideshow with voiceover of your speech??? :D I hope... Gary

================== Mary, Thanks for the comments. 62 and counting... Long time ago but sometimes seems like yesterday. We really had some great music back then. I think I got carried away with this font program!!! I wanted something different but maybe it was too different. Just experimenting. Thanks for the 'welcome home' Didn't get too many back then... Gary

Greetings, This is a slideshow of some slides I recently re-scanned of my time in Vietnam in 1971. Pardon the dust and scratch marks. I have already spent hours/days trying to clean it up. Just gave up. Anyway, also pardon this self-indulgent ‘it’s-all-about-me’ show. This was my first PTE slideshow years ago and I have learned much since and wanted to make it a bit better. It is long, but shorter than when I started. I tried to be brutal with the editing. For me, it contains the some of the best music of that time. 'I am still a boy and a man, I’m 18 and I don’t know what I’m talking about…got a baby’s brain and an old man’s heart…'. It really fit the experience. And caution, it contains a couple Playboy centerfold pin-ups in the background. 6:48; 48 Mb; 16x9; Nav Bar active. Comments/critiques welcomed. On Beechbrook: http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/downloadfile.asp?id=1877 Thanks... Gary