jevans

Sorry to add my comments to the thread and I fully understand that this is a beta version. Downloaded the zip file and installed in a SEPARATE directory. So I still have previous version. Can run program, but as soon as I try to use the new visual editor, the program tries to access the web and loacks up. Can exit via usual CTRL + ALT + DEL but unable to try any of new features. Jeff

Thanks Ken, I have just updated to Direct X Version 9.0c following a post by Al Robinson but had forgotten where the diagnostic tool was located. The comments on graphics cards etc in the post on PTE Version 5.0 leads me to ask the question - what is the inter-relationship between processor speed, memory and the graphics card as far as PTE Version 5.0 is concerned. Igor has only asked about graphics cards which suggests that this is the most important factor. I have a Raedon 9200, and, although the PTE demos are pretty good, there is still signs of small pauses in the first demo and in the fractals demo. I wonder whether improving processor speed or memory would have any benefit or whether it is just a question of graphic card speed and memory. Jeff

To answer Ken's comment, I have tried the fractal example. It runs ok but there is a definite pause between each new image position. The graphics card is a Raedon 9200, AMD 2.8GHz processor and 1GB memory. In considering the potential performance of PTE V5.0, what are the implications of the performance of the various computer parameters, e.g. processor speed, buss speed, amount of memory, type of graphics etc. Is the graphics card performance the most significant isssue? Jeff

Hi Igor, The first show has slight jerks when panning down, but is smooth when zooming in. The second (flowers) is very smooth. My graphics card is a Radeon 9200 series. Looking forward to trying version 5. Thanks for all your hard work. It must have been very difficult. PTE is THE program of choice for slide show presentations. Jeff

Also try Sy(p), a fee excellent utlilty from this location : www.diapovision.com/articles/syp.zip This is an excellent program for merging PTE projects. Jeff

Hi Lumenlux, I have checked your process and get exactly the same result. Slides 1 to 10 when pasted at the end of the show are reversed in order. I wondered whether it had anything to do with the original filename used to make the first slide, but the file name does not change. So I am as baffled as you. Maybe its a feature !!! Jeff

There are various answers to this question depending on what you are trying to achieve. The first requirement is to insert all three songs into a sound editor and arrange them so that they play as one continuous sound track. The free sound editor Audacity can be used to do this. Basically you load each song in turn to a separate track in the editor, arrange their order so that they play in sucession and then export a merged down version as a sound file which you insert into PTE using the Project Options, Music tab. Then add all your slides, click on the Timeline button and select "Timed Points", "Arrange All Points". This will set your slides to equal time intervals so that they exactly match then length of the music file you have created. There is a guide to using the timeline called "PTE Timeline Guide" which you can find here : http://www.bishopthorpe-camera-club.com/Re...s/resources.htm There are lots of other ways to achieve synchronisation but it is difficult to cover them in this quick reply. Hope this will give you a few idead to get you started. Jeff

Enjoyed your presentation. Nice to see some novel ideas for shows as a change from straightforward "scenic" versions. Thought the sound levels could maybe be improved a little. Was your background music recorded all at the same level. If so, perhaps you could think of using a sound editor to increase and decrease the background music level to match the speech. Jeff

Tony, I am fairly sure that there is no way to save timeline changes except to press the "OK" button to return to the main PTE screen. As long as you do not press OK, you can exit the timeline window by clicking on the Cancel button and any changes you have made whilst you have been in the window are lost. So if you have made a mistake and not exited the window, press cancel and start again. Jeff

John, If you are just clicking the second radio button at the left hand side of the Timeline window, then nothing will happen. If you want to synchronise all your slides to have equal intervals over a piece of music which you have added, then click the "Timed Points" button and select "Arrange All Points". I have written a tutorial which is hosted on the web. The URL is here; http://www.bishopthorpe-camera-club.com/Re...s/resources.htm Jeff

Steve, A brilliant show. What an original idea and the final result was very realistic. Ever since a guy in our club did a very humerous show based on the operation of a simulated piece of sofware designed to improve your appearance, I have been trying to think of similar ideas. A nice change from the "standard" picture show. Jeff

This is a well known issue with PTE. The size of the gap you have to leave between sucessive slides is governed by the perfomance of your computer. If you search the forum you will find other threads which cover this. On my computer which has a 2.8GHz processor and 1G RAM, I have to leave a gap of about 0.5s between slides. Also I have noticed that sometimes slides which are too close together will play correctly when viewed with the timeline window open but repeat when viewed in the normal preview mode. Just widen the slide gaps and you will obtain a satisfactory result. Jeff

Well TR, I am not sure that I fully understand your problem, but here goes for an attempt at a reply. Firstly PTE works very well if used properly so there is no problem with the program. Converting a slide show to video is a little more difficult but you can do it if you follow the rules. Regarding silence at the beginning of your show, you need a sound editor such as Adobe Audition or the free one Audacity. I use Audition and I make my commentary (or music) for the first slide and then use the command "generate silence" to add some silence at the beginning. I don't think you can do this in Audacity, but you can start recording and wait a short time to produce silence and then start the voice or music signal. To produce video, there are many threads on the video forum which will help you. But just a short explanation may help. Click on the "video" button in PTE. Produce a temporary AVI file. Import this file into a DVD authoring program such as Ulead Movie Factory (the recommended one) or Nero Vision Express. Create your menus and then burn to your DVD. If you have trouble, just email me and I will try to give you more detailed instructions. Jeff

I have noticed that, when replying to a particular post, that it does not seem to matter whether the "toggle multi-quote" button is clicked or not. I always seem to get the full contents of the post I am replying to at the beginning of my reply. Is this what is supposed to happen? Jeff

No I think you have misundertood my post. Ulead will of course burn the project to a DVD. However you were having problems using Ulead, so I was just suggesting an alternative method. I have had several abortive attempts to burn large projects directly to disc using Ulead so I now always create a DVD folder on my hard drive as I described, get Ulead to burn the video files to this directory and THEN use any DVD burdning software to burn the DVD. I use Nero 6 as that is my standard DVD burning software. Incidently if you have a copy of Nero 6, it includes a program called Nero Vision Express which does the same job as Ulead MF 4, i.e. it has DVD authoring facilities to creat menus etc. Jeff

ryt, You would be better to post this query on the video forum rather than here. However here are a few comments which might help. I use Ulead MF 2 and have had similar problems from time to time. Firstly you should ensure when you create the video file from PTE, that the radio button " For Ulead Movie Factory" is ticked. This will produce an AVI with the extension .ptev. Also use the DVD video option and not the Custom Video option. Then when you get to the Ulead page for burning to a DVD, instead of burning directly to a DVD disc, choose the option to create DVD folders. Select the directory for the files to be created in and click "output". Six video files will be created in the selected directory. Then use any DVD burning software (e.g. Nero) to burn the video files to a DVD. I attach two screen shots to show details of the relevant pages. In Ulead when burning directly to disc, you have the option of burning the project file to the disc as well as creating the video files (see the advanced options). If this is selected and the temporary video file is in the project directory, you will get an error when the program tries to burn the project file as the temporary AVI file from PTE is still open. Hope this helps Jeff

The most likely reason is that you have placed images too close together. The minimum gap between images is dependent on computer available resources. On my system, I need to leave a gap of atleast 0.5 secs between shots. Jeff

I am sure that all you "regulars" will know this, but a friend of mine who has been using PTE for much longer than me pointed out that if you use the "file menu" and use "create show as" option, you can change the .exe file name. So use this instead of the "create" button. This gets round the problem. Jeff

Downloaded your show this afternoon. Thoroughly enjoyed it and the music fits the images perfectly. Great photos also. Regarding long transitions, I think that maybe they were a little long for me. It all depends whether you are attempting to provide a "mood" or "artistic" show - in which case long transitions are very useful, or whether the actual images themselves are the main issue - which which case maybe a shorter transition time might give more of the image to view. Obviously everyone is going to have a different opinion. Anyway, as a relative newcomer to PTE, I would have been very pleased if this had been my effort. Jeff

I have just noticed that if a create an exe file from a PTE show then "save as" to change the PTE file to another name, that clicking on the "create" button, results in the original exe file being overwritten. I would have thought that, having changed the basic PTE file, a new exe file with the same changed name would result. I am using version 4.43.

This is a follow up to the posting on video codecs in the main PTE forum. I hope it may be useful but apologise if it is "old hat" to forum members. I have undertaken further experiments with PTE video output in an attempt to produce a permanent AVI file so that multiple shows can be burned to a DVD without opening multiple copies of PTE. I know that there are other methods including the use of third party coding software. But, looking at the dropdown list of alternative codecs in PTE, I wondered whether any of these could be used. The results of these tests show that the only codec that produces satisfactory results is the Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V2. If this is selected via the "Custom" option in PTE, then a permanent AVI file results. Running this AVI file in Windows Media Player results in an acceptable video presentation. However, if the AVI file is imported into Nero Vision Express so that menus etc. can be added, the resultant video files do not work correctly. The synchronisation between pictures and sound is lost and the pictures finish well before the sound. If however the AVI file is imported into Ulead Movie Factory and burned to a DVD disk, the correct video result is achieved. Another interesting point is that the standard PTE temporary AVI file (using the standard PTE codec) produces a more stable video image when processed by Nero than by Ulead Movie Factory. In the former program, there are no "flickers" on the TV screen, whereas with Ulead, these can be clearly seen. I tried to attach a copy of my test results to this post but apparently am not allowed to attached Excel files. However I will email the file to anyone who may be interested. To summarise, if you want a permanent AVI file from a PTE show, use the "custom" option with the Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec V2 and import the resultant AVI file into Ulead Movie Factory. Jeff Evans

Ken and Al, Yes Ken I agree that keeping a record of the tests is important. Also I have two widescreen TVs and two DVD players, so I can try the results on both systems. As I use PAL, my results may not be too useful to you guys, but for what they are worth, here are the latest results. First of all Al, using the "create custom AVI video file" option in PTE with width/height settings of, firstly a setting of 768 x 576 secondly a setting of 1366 x 768 gives identical size temporary PTE AVI files (40,637KB) for my test show. The second settings are the pixel dimensions of my wide screen LCD TV. The PTE exe file is 28,884KB. The codec is the standard PTE version. So I have produced two versions of my test show with the dimensions above using Nero Vision Express to produce the video files. When I play these show on my DVD, the first show (768 x 576) completely fills the TV screen when set to Wide Screen. The pictures look excellent and, if there is any distortion, it is not easy to see. The second version (1366 x 768) produces a typical wide screen image with black borders at the top and bottom. To fill the screen, I have to set the TV to the zoom mode and then the picture looks the same as the first show. Incidently whilst assembling the second show in Vision Express, Nero told me that the aspect ratio was 4:3 although the final result was 16:9, due I believe to the width height settings I applied to the temporary PTE AVI file. CONCLUSIONS : On my system, there is no need to do anything special to achieve an excellent image fully filling the screen of a wide screen LCD TV. Just use the default settings of PTE and use Nero to provide the video files and required menus. Jeff

Gentlemen, This is an interesting thread since I too have been trying to make DVD's for a wide screen TV. I am light years behind you all in understanding the various technical details, but I thought I would just post here what I am doing and perhaps ask a question. My camera images have a 4:3 aspect ratio. I crop these for PTE shows to 1280 x 960 as my monitor is a 19 inch LCD with a screen ratio of 1280 x 1024 so 1280 x 960 is the nearest crop size to fill the screen and maintain the original image aspect ratio. I output the standard AVI file from PTE using the PTE codec and the box for Movie Factory ticked (plus interlace and sharpness of course). I import this temporary AVI file directly into Movie Factory (or Vision Express), make any menu selections I want and then burn the video files to my hard disc. The burn process produces 6 video files, 3 Video_TS.* files and 3 VTS_01* files. I then burn these files to a DVD-R disc plus all the associated files used to make the PTE show. The resultant disc autoruns on my DVD player and also contains a backup of all my project files. I have a 28 inch LCD TV (PAL) which is "HD Ready", whatever that means. Its pixel dimentions are 1366 x 768, i.e. an aspect ratio of 1.77, (wide screen 16:9 ?). The DVD shows are great on this TV but not quite so good on another standard wide screen CRT TV that I also have. There is perhaps a little distortion when viewing in wide screen, but it is not sufficient to be distracting. There is a slight improvement if the TV is set to 4:3 which I guess is to be expected. Now for the question. When creating the temporary AVI file from PTE, the default PAL settings are 768 x 576, i.e. a ratio of 1.33. Can you manually change these values to say 1366 x 768 ( my TV screen pixel ratio) and then process the AVI file as above to produce a 16:9 aspect ratio output? I notice from the Video codec thread in the main forum that the PTE teporary AVI file can be imported into Vision Express and then exported as a 16:9 mpeg file and this presumably another way. But it is more long winded and produces much bigger files. Jeff

Gentlemen, This is my last post here. I can take the hint as well as the next man. I only continued posting in this thread as this is where the topic started. I did not want to continue in the DVD forum as I do not know how to post a link to another part of the forum so that the topic could be cross-referenced. Anyway, I have the answers I originally set out to get - thanks to all your contributions. I shall now perhaps tidy up the loose ends by emailing stonemason and Ken Cox separately if necessary, rather than continuing in the forum. Thanks again for your help. Jeff

The available know how and response in this forum never ceases to amaze me. The best thing I ever did was to join. Ken : Thanks for the link to solving the multiple show problem. That's all clear Stonemason : I have downloaded a copy of TMPGEnc and tried it out on one of may PTE shows. Created a temporary AVI file from PTE and loaded this into TMPG for encoding. The result is two files : a .m2v file which is the encoded MPEG file a .wav file which is the associated sound file. I can import the MPEG file into a DVD authoring program in order to produce DVD video files, but I have to also import the .wav file or there is no sound. Not sure what the point of this process is when I can produce a permanent AVI file using the PTE video coding MPEG4 Codec V2 as described in my previous post. I am afraid that I am not very well up on video coding and file formats. Incidently the .AVI file using the PTE encoding is much smaller than the MPEG file produced using TMPG. Jeff