jevans

Ray, Re your question of synchronising music and slides, there are several ways to do it. But try this as the difference between your total slide duration and the music is quite small. Make sure that the slide show runs as you expect it to do before attaching the music. So the duration of the show is 5 min 39 secs. Now attach the music track on the Project Options, Music tab. Now open the timeline and make sure that you can see the waveform for the music (click on the "waveform" button). Now scroll to the end of the timeline so that you can see the last few slides and the end of the music track. Now you can drag the last few images along the timeline so that the last image finishes just after the end of the music waveform. I usually have a black slide as my last slide so that I can just fade away the last proper image as the music ends. So you could add a black slide to your show and make its duration 5 min 46 sec - 5 min 39 sec = 7 secs (say 8 secs) or you can adjust the last few slide positions to give you a shorter last black slide time. There are other ways of getting the same result such as editing the music track etc but they are more complicated and require you to use a sound editor.

Ray, There is a bug in PTE. Please see Page 20 of the User Guide. The Hold Timed Points function does not work correctly if the "auto adding of new transition points for new slides" feature is checked in the Timeline - View window. Jeff

Hi Tony, If the first slide in the show is an actual image and you give it a transition, say fade in, then when you run the show, you should get a black screen which then fades into the first image. Mind I have no wallpaper or screen saver on my computer which might change things a bit.

Hi Gilbert, When converting to jpg, Adobe RAW probably had the compression set to minimum. Import your files back into CS3 and then save them as "Save for web".

This thread sums up what is so good about this forum - an interesting and relevant topic with a wide range of disparate views. The subject has been occupying my mind also in creating recent shows since Version 5 was finished. The facilities available are great but deciding when to use them is much more difficult. I particularly support Lin's view that the content should dictate what facilities you apply.

Andrew, Interested in your post as I had a good work flow method established for Version 4.48 but am finding it a little harder in Version 5. How you arrange your work flow depends largely on the type of show you are preparing. Most of my shows have some commentary and my method is as follows : Assuming I have taken a number of photos of a particular topic and am trying to make these up into a show, I process the images and sort them into an initial order. I often rename them at this stage. Next I write and record the commentary. I record the commentary in a single pass and import the resultant file into Audition where I can split it up into the various sections. This gives me a timebase for the slides. Now I open PTE, set the general project options and insert the first title slide. Now I tend to add slides only from the timeline, using the insert slide function. Slides are inserted to match their associated commentary lengths. In this way, I do not tend to use the slide list or slide list window to add or sort slides. Finally I add the background music into Audition, check and adjust all sound levels and then export the composite sound track into PTE. The difficulty comes when you add any pzr actions to individual slides. This was obviously not a consideration for Version 4.48. But in Version 5, you have to decide which slides you wish to animate and, more importantly, for how long the animation needs to last. For many animations, my default slide duration of 7 secs is not long enough. Thus you increase a slide duration to cater for the animation and this puts your timeline timing off.

Bill, This is not a normal action of PTE so there is something unusual with your music track. Is it an mp3 file and have you carefully looked at it in an editor such as Audacity or Adobe Audition. I have never had a music track whose length is different in PTE than Audition. If you have just determined the track length from some information on a CD or from Windows Media Player, then you might get an incorrect answer. Now if the music track is longer than the duration of the last slide, the music track will be cut off before it ends. Look in the Timeline and show the music waveform. See when the last slide ends and make sure that it ends slightly longer than the music track. Then it should work ok.

Mario, Another way to do this is to go to the Project Options - Screen tab and add a background image which you have previously prepared in Photoshop which includes your show title. This will remain on the screen for the duration of your show. Now you can add each individual slide into the slide list and adjust the PZR effect in the O&A window. Jeff

Hi Mario, Think I forgot to put that in the guide. Anyway, click on the slide whose time points you have determined and copy the slide. Then click in the slide list and paste the slide. You will of course get two identical copies. Now open the O&A window and click on the image properties tab. In the picture dialog box, click on the little icon to the right and select a new image file. This image will replace the original and you will have a new slide with the same key points. In other words, just copy the slide and replace the attached images with new ones. Jeff

Hi Guys, Our new User Guide will be out very soon with (hopefully) all the answers to questions like this. The Path and Name of Sound Editor allows you to enter the location and name of your favourite sound editor. This feature only works if you have added a sound file to an individual slide. Jeff

Hi Al, Thank goodness you have confirmed my results. I was beginning to think that I was missing something obvious. There is a flaw in the program somewhere but there are work around ways of solving it. My example was a new show that I was adding to an exiting library with the new show having three parts, all called up separately from a single opening page. However I have incorporated the starting show into my library directly and this has solved the problem. Thanks for your assistance. Jeff

Al, That is exactly how Show2 is configured. Also with a button to return to Show1. Still does not work properly. Jeff

Hi Nobeefstuu, Thanks again for response but don't think your suggestion is the answer. Just to say I have found a work around to my problem and now it is just a matter of interest that PTE does not work as I think it should. To try to explain further. Show1.exe has 1 slide. On this slide there is a button whose action is to run Show2.exe. If you try this, when Show2.exe ends, it returns to the Show1.exe slide whose button called it up. So far so good. Now add a button to the slide in Show2.exe. This button action calls up Show3.exe. Now when Show3.exe runs and completes, it should return to Show2.exe. However it does not, it returns to Show1.exe, Slide 1. I am sure that this action is not correct. Jeff

Hi Nobeefstu, Thanks for reply but the problem is not with the file names. I was only using "Show 1", "Show 2" etc. as an illustration. The actual file names are conventional standard file names. Jeff

I use Firefox but do not use Thuderbird as I extensively use the "categories" function in Outlook 2000. This feature was not available in Thuderbird last time I looked. If it was, I would certainly use it. Jeff

Al, The chaining of exe shows still does not seem to work, even if I use your suggestion. I have created three one slide shows. Show 1 calls up Show 2 which calls up Show 3 using buttons on the screen. Shows 1 and 2 have their transitions turned off. When you run Show 1, you get a slide with a button saying "Go to Show 2". Click on this and Show 2 slide appears. This has a button saying "Go to Show 3". Click on this and Show 3 runs. When it is finished it returns to Show 1, not Show 2. Then the buttons and slides seem to get in a complete mixup. The slides for Shows 1 and 2 are set to "keep last slide on screen when show ends", whereas Show 3 has "close show after last slide" I have overcome my own problem another way, but this seems as if it is a fault in PTE and that you should be able to chain more than two shows together. Jeff

I have a standard Version 5 Master show. This consists of a set of slides which call up various PTE shows. Each slide calls up a show group, e.g. UK shows, French shows, German Shows etc. Each show is called up via a button which runs the particular show. All this works well with no problems. When a show finishes it returns to the menu page which called it and you can continue with another show. Recently I have completed a further show which is in three parts. There is a master show which has its own menu and this menu calls up each part of the show in turn, again using buttons to run application". By itself, this new show works fine. Now I insert the new show into my overall master show. On the relevant slide, I call up the menu show of the latest new show (the one with three parts). Again this works fine. However, when the sub show finishes it does not return to its own menu slide, but to the main menu slide. This is incorrect. In other words it is not returning to the slide which called it up. Has anyone experienced this action, and if so, did you find an answer? I attach a small jpg file which might help to explain this problem. In this last line, the return is going back to the main slide page and not the sub menu. Jeff

Igor, When writing up the user guide, I have found a possible error in the operation of the "Hold Points" check box . Assume that the "Auto adding of new transition points for new slides" is not selected in the "Timeline" window. Now check the "Hold Points" check box and insert a slide into the "Slide List". The slide is not inserted when you look in the "Timeline" window. Now select "Auto adding of new transition points for new slides" and, with the "Hold Points" box checked, add a slide into the "Slide List". The slide will now appear in the "Timeline" window and the subsequent slides will be moved along the timeline to make room for the new slide. This is an incorrect operation as the new slide should be inserted without the subsequent slide positions changing. This anomaly probably arises from your changes in Version 5 to always add slides to the timeline when adding them to the slide list. I mentioned that the "Auto adding of new transition points for new slides" function was redundant but it obviously still operates under this condition. Regards Jeff

Barry, I am very interested in your comments and there is much in what you say that I agree with. However I have always been a person who, when getting any new device or software, wants to read the manual. My friends who know me well say that my epitaph should be "Can't go now, haven't read the manual". Although I find video tutorials very helpful ( and I have bought several of your excellent examples) I like to have a reference document that I can look up a question if I get stuck. Now Lin and myself are writing a detailed tutorial for PTE in pdf format. It is intended to be more of a reference document than a 2How TO" guide, although we have tried to explain all the functions as simply and in as much detail as we are able. When it becomes generally available, I would be most interested in your views about its usefulness as a general guide. I don't know about Lin, but I have spent about 60 hours so far on writing my sections. I have enjoyed doing it and it certainly was a challenge. But I would hate to think it was a waste of time and no use the forum members. Regards Jeff

Mario, As mentioned elsewhere in the forum, a comprehensive tutorial in pdf form will be available for PTE shortly. This covers the timeline functions among many other functions of PTE. However to explain a little further about synchronisation. Suppose you have a slide show of 30 slides, all about the same topic. Now you want to show each slide for about 7 secs say. Thus your total show time is 7 x 30 = 210 secs. Now you look for a piece of music to act as background for the show. You find the right piece and it is 240 secs long. You add it to the project via the Project Options, Music tab and then in the timeline, you spread your 30 slides equally along the music track. So now each slide lasts for 240/30 = 8 secs. That is an example of simple synchronisation. Now look at another example. This time you have 30 slides, but the first 10 slides are about one topic, the next 10 are about another topic and the last ten are about a third topic. But the three topics are related. Say an introduction a main theme and a conclusion. An example of this is a show I have done recently about an ruined abbey. I started with a short section about the history then followed by a section showing the current ruins and ended by describing how the abbey church was still used today. So I had three sections and I wanted three different types of music for each section. What I did was to create the slides for each section and see how long the sections were. Then I selected my three pieces of music and imported them into my sound editor so that I could make a single track of the three music items. Now I attached this composite music file to my PTE project and adjusted where necessary the slide positions in the timeline window so that they matched the music. There you go. easy isn't it. Jeff

Annette, Not sure I can answer the question about whether the show will fit on a CD, but do you mean just the final EXE file, or all the files associated with the project? If it will not fit on a CD you could always use a DVD. You will have to creat the project and see how big it is first. Regarding the synchronising issue. This is what you do. Select the slides you want to show and divide them up into sections. Add them to your project so that you can look at them on the timeline. Now you can see the various lengths of music you need. Lets say you have three sections and decide that you want three different pieces of music for each section. Now choose your music and use a sound editor (Audacity is a fairly good one and it is free). Import you music into the editor and edit each section so that is the required length. The editor will allow you to export a composite music track with the three bits of music on and you can attach this to your PTE project. Now you can see the slides and music in the timeline and can mannually adjust the position of individual slides so that they match the music. If you have a piece of music that you want to use and you want a slide to occur at a particular point, then you import the music and adjust the slide position to match the particular point you require. Maybe this all sounds a bit complicated but, if you have a go, you will soon get the idea. If you have any problems, then just post another query. Jeff

Ron, You have got the answer. Generally RAW convertors are set by default to produce 16 bit files. When you save as a TIF and import into Photoshop, you have to go to Image - Mode - and select 8 bit. Then you will be able to save as a jpg. JPG files do not support 16 bit images. Jeff

Hi Brian, Sorry to misunderstand you. Your comments on setting the grey scale and using a colour card, just made me think that you were not in favour of using devices like Spyder2, just when I thought I had got some really good practical advice from Ed. I have been mulling over the whole topic of colour management for ages. Read the books, (sometimes twice) but, until now, have been short on real practical application methods. Calibrating/profiling monitors has been tried in our club before with poor results. Thus there is strong resistance to going down that route which I need to overcome by demonstrating that it really works and is essential if we are to have consistent presentations. Anyway Brian, thanks as always for your excellent contributions and help you have given me generally. This is a great forum. Jeff

Just when I thought I had this subject sorted, more posts arrive to (apparently) confuse the issue. First to say to JohnB that I purchased the book he recommends ("Real World Colour Management" by Fraser, Murphy and Bunting) a while ago and have read it from cover to cover. It is an excellent book, very strong on the theory but perhaps a little short on detailed practical advice. Now to Brian Conflow's latest contribution. You know Brian that I have the utmost respect for your forum contributions and the help you have given me in the past. However I am confused by your latest comments. Following communications with Ed Overstreet, I had come to the conclusion that I could purchase a colourimeter kit such as SpyderPro and use this to calibrate and provide a profile for my LCD monitor and also use the same process to calibrate/profile the club's projector. The blurb for SpyderPro mentions specifically that it can be used for projectors. Your post emphasises that it is essential to do a grey scale test first and, by mentioning the Nokia Test Card program, implies that this is all that is required, i.e. no colourimeter required. So are you saying - "Don't buy SpyderPro but get the Nokia Test Card program instead? If so, does this depend on adjusting your monitor visually? Because, if so, I have tried that and it is a very subjective adjustment which I was not satisfied with. Also it will not deal with the projector problem. What guys like me are looking for is a straightforward set of instructions (with the associated kit recommendation) to calibrate/profile our home monitor to a repeatable standard, and do the same with the club projector in such a way that what you see on your monitor at home is (reasonably) the same as what you see when you project. The replies I have had from Ed seem to give me these answers but, knowing your expertise Brian, I am now not so sure!! Jeff

Hi Ed, Thanks for your very comprehensive reply which is of great help. Our photo club is gradually moving into the digital world and we are having more competitions with digital images instead of slides. For these competitions and for the occasional PTE show/competition, the issue of a correctly calibrated projector is very important. so far we have had a number of comments from judges about the difference in picture quality between their viewing at home and at the club. So I have got a good idea now how to tackle the problem. Regards Jeff