jevans

I am very interested in the discussions in this post, particularly with reference to using the object editor. I have had some email discussions with Jean-Pierre Dollangere and have downloaded and looked at his tutorial which is exellent. However I still have a few problems with some of the location parameters and wonder if there is any tutorial or help information on using the object editor. For example, in Jean-Pierre's tutorial, it appears to show that clicking the "set position" arrows will move an object by one pixel, whereas it seems to move the object to the extremities of the screen. jevans

Hi All, Just noticed the post on computer security. There is some up to date advice at this location which may be of interest. http://windowssecrets.com/comp/050127/

Jim and Al, Yes I agree with you both. Just had not looked at it that way before. And yes Jim, you cannot hear the commentary attached to a slide unless you use "Preview". Two further comments. The reason I have been using the technique I described is becaause I have the slides first and then decide what commentary (if any), I am going to add. Having chosen default times for slide and transitions, I add the commentary as required and adjust individual slide lengths to match. Finally I may alter a few transitions and add titles and section titles. Now I need to know how long the whole show is. So I add a short length of blank music and get the total length from the timeline information. Now I edit the music to match and replace the blank music with the actual music track. This is where things started to go wrong. I think this technique is based on my extensive use of Ulead Studio 8 software to produce DVD shows, where you can see the slides, commentary and music all on one screen simulutaneously. Having digested your comments, I think I may use an alternative approach. Put all the slides in at a default time. Create an AVI file and import this into Adobe Audition. Then you can see each slide and add commentary on separate tracks, leaving a small gap (say 1 sec) between commentary on adjacent slides. Being able to see the slides (althouhj of course you cannot adjust their duration), assists in decidding what commentary is required. Finally add a music track. The various audio tracks are now mixed down to a single track, the avi file is closed and the music track added to PTE. The slide are now manually adjusted to match the audio track in the PTE timeline view which is the composite commentary and music track. Incidently Jim this means that you will hear the commentary when you prese the Play button in the timeline view. Anyway guys, thatnks for your responses which were very helpful. Jeff

Jim, Thanks for your reply. Try this. Start a new PTE project. Set the default slide length to say 5 secs and the effect length to 1 sec. Add two slides. Now add any blank music file in the "Music" tab. Once the music is added you can look at the timeline and will see two slides of duration 5 secs with the gray effect block at 1 sec. Now change the first slide duration to 10 secs by using "Customise Slide" - "Main" - "Use Own Time Preference" and "Display Slide for (secs)" set to 10. Look at the timeline and you will see that there has been no change to the slide or effect durations. Now repeat the whole process from the beginning of a new show, except customise the first slide BEFORE you add the music. Now you will see in the timeline that the first slide has a duration fo 10 secs and the same effect time of 1 sec. So you can conclude that : a) customising the slide does actually change its duration you cannot customise a slide duration AFTER you have attached a music file. None of the above solves my problem but I agree that manual adjustment is a way to solve it. However I think the program has a bug. Jeff

Further to my post. Although this does not answer my query, I note that when background music is added to a show, the timeline reflects the actual timing of each slide. If subsequently the duration of a slide is changed (customise slide), the timeline display does not change to reflect the change. Is this correct or is there a way of refreshing the timeline display?

I am using PTE Version 4.41 beta #4 and am experiencing the following problem. I have prepared a show with 40 slides. The default duration is 7 secs per slide with a 3 second fade. I have added commentary to some slides using the "sound" dialog box in the preview window. I have clicked "Don't interrupt sound comment when next slide appears" in the "Music" tab. But as there are some adjacent slides with comments, I have extended the indivual slide time to allow the comment to finish. All this works ok. By adding a blank bit of music, I can determine the total show time (e.g. 5 min 27 Sec) and then edit some background music to exactly this length. (I use Adobe Audition 1.5 by the way). Now I add the music to the slide show. Initially looking at the timeline, the "Not synchronised" box is checked. However the music and slides are not synchronised in this case for some reason. So I check the "Customise sysnchronisation" box. This does not seem to alter any of the slide time positions on the timeline. However there is some change taking place because where there are adjacent slides with commentary, the first slide commentary is cut off too soon. I can manually correct this problem in the timeline view by moving slides around. However, as I selected the music to be exactly the correct length for the show, I do not see whwy I should have to do this. Anyone any ideas.

Soryy if this question is very basic. If I create a video file from PTE using the "Video" button, the file type I get if I choose the AVI out put type is of course a *.avi file. IF I choose the DVD video disc output option, I get a *.ptev file. Both these files load into Ulead Movie factory and can be burnt to a DVD disk. What is the difference between the file types and is it important to choose one or the other? A supplementary question. I use Adobe Audition 1.5 for sound editing. Audition will import the *.avi file produced by PTE and thus additional sound editing can be done e.g. to lower the music level if a slide has an attached speech file. However Audition will not import a *.ptev file. So there must be some difference between the file types. Thanks for any help anyone can give.

googa, another suggestion id to try a shareware program called " My Album" at http://pmeindre.free.fr/MyAlbum.html . This enables you to show multiple pictures on the screen and each picture can be annotated with the file name.

DaveG Thanks for your reply. As far as I am aware, SYP needs an update to work properly with PTE Vertion 4.4 and the copy I have does not show the correct slide timing. Adding blank music is a good idea and I will try that. However my tests show that if you add music to a show, the show length just increases to match the music length, even when not synchronised. This means that the last slide just stays on the sreen until the music stops. I will do some more tests to chekc this. The problem I had arose from determining a show length, then editing music to match. Adding the msuic and finding that the music finished before the slide show. As my last few slides were on screen for a very short time, it was difficult to move these accurately.

I am also having some problems with music synchronisation. I am using the latest version 4.4 of PTE. If I first make up a slide show using a number of slides with custom settings of time and transition, I need to know what the approximate total duration of the show is so that I can edit a piece of music to fit. It is difficult to work out the show duration as the slide and timing transitions are not all the same. So I add a short piece of music to the show so that I can see the total duration in the timeline window. ( Note : when the music is added, the status bar at the bottom of the synchronisation window states the music duration, but if the music duration is shorter that the total show duration, then the value shown is the show duration and NOT the music duration). Now I know how long the show is and can edit a piece of music to a suitable duration. Suppose the edited music is just a little longer than the show duration. The when I remove the initial test music and replace it with the correct music, the show duration will extend to match the music duration, EVEN if I have automatic synchronisation switched off. I know that I can move the slide points in the timeline window to match the music. However I do not want to do this as I have carefully selected slide and transition durations and do not want to change these. I believe that if automatic synchronisation is NOT selected, then itshould be possible to add music whose duration is longer than the show duration without changing the show duration. Any comments would be welcome.

Two points on this post. Firstly I guess Powerpoint is being used as it has a number of facilities which PTE does not have, such as animation. It is alos easier for text based presentations. Second point is, how to you run a PTE show manually? I have not found a control which allows this.

I note the comments on this post. I am using beta version #7. I have done the same experiment as you have with 3 slides at 10 sec and 1 sec transitions. The total show length is 30 secs ( non-synchronised) but sy(p) (the version I have anyway) gives 33 secs, i.e. 3 x 10 secs plus 3 x 1 sec (transitions). However in beta #7, the transition times are part of the slide time and not additional. I note that sy(p) requires a rewrite and maybe this will solve the problem. By the way, I was using sy(p) to determine the length of a slide show with many slides having different durations and different transition durations before I added the music. sy(p) gave me the totla show length and thus I could edit the music to suite, rather than synchronising the show to fit the music and finding that my carefully prepared slide durations had all changed.

I am trying out the new beta version 4.4. I note that now transition times are included within a slide time, whereas with the previous version of PTE the transition times were in addition to the slide time. Thus in the new version with 3 slides having a 4 sec show time and a 1 sec transition, the total show length would be 12 secs, in the previous PTE version the show time would be 15 secs. This change is not a problem. HOWEVER the version of sy(P) which I use to determine the total show length still assumes the transition times are additive to the slide time and not included. Thus using sy(P) to determine the total show time will not give the correct answer with version 4.4.

I use Thumbs Plus Version 7 which is brilliant.

Hi mhwarner, I am also interested in this topic since, before finding out about PTE, I was using Ulead Video studio 8 to prepare slide shows and burn them to a DVD disk. The problem I have with PTE is that I like to add commentary to some slides and when you add the music as a final step, it is sometime difficult to get the respective volumes of speech and music correct. so I prepare my show in Studio 8 first as this enables you to separately adjust the speech and music levels at any point in the show. Then I export the sound file and add this to the slide in PTE. This way I get a sound file which matches my slides and has the correct relative levels of speech and music.

A query about sycnronising music to slides. If I add a number of slides into PTE with a fixed view length and standard fixed length transitions (say 10 slides at 5 secs each plus 1second transitions), I get a known total length for the show (say in this case 10 slides at 5 secs plus 9 x 1sec transitions = 59 secs). If I now edit some music so that its length is 59 Secs exactlly and add this to the show and then synchronise the slides and music (Project Options - synchronise slideshow to music duration - customise synchronisation), the slide durations are slightly altered, even although the total show length and music duration are the same. Does anyone know why this happens. The reason for asking this question is that I try to edit the msuic length so it just finishes exactly at the end of the last slide. However I alway seem to have to go and manually adjust the last few slide durations to get the correct end timing. Is it not possible to add the music and then manually adjust slide position points without the program automatically adjusting slide durations to match the music.