jevans

Tom, I have added a section to the online help document in the "Techniques and How to" section called "Basic AV creation". In that section I describe how a provide my narration. The technique is very similar to the one described by Peter above. although it is certainly possible to create narration directly in PTE, I never would do it that way. Again the reasons for this have been mentioned previously in this post. Have a look at the article under "Commentary". Jeff

PTE users (particularly new users)may be interested to know that a section has been added to the PTE "Techniques and How To" section of the online user guide dealing with some of the basic principles of preparing a show using the deluxe version of PTE. This has been added as a result of the suggestion in the original post of this thread. It is based on my own techniques and I hope that it may be of some use. However it should be clearly understaood that it is NOT a definitive method for preparing a show but memrely one of many different techniques, some of which may well be much superior.

Thanks for your comments Mickp. I agree that there are too many church images and some of the circle transitions are quick. But the av was specially done for a club project where you select a piece of music and match this with appropriate images. So the sharp transitions were deliberate to match the tempo and I ran out of sunset images for the ending.

Hi Eric, Thanks for your kind comments. I live about half a mile away from the beach and it is a favourite place for me as the conditions are always changing. Usually I prefer to make av's with a story but this is for our club night when we have to produce "pictures to music" and the pictures and changes are supposed to fit the music selected. Generally I find that this is the hardest bit of making a show : finding suitable music. Regards Jeff

Just added a slideshow to the Slideshowclub.com site. It consists of images from my local area at Tynemouth and Cullercoats on the Northumberland coast taken over a period of time and under various different wether and time conditions. http://www.slideshowclub.com/files/file/50-moods-of-the-coast/ "Moods of the Coast"

Gary, I think when you copy an object and add it as a child of another oject, it takes the parameters of the parent and resizes it in proportion as you have found. i don't think there is any way around this. It is just the logical way you would expect it to happen. However Lin Evans may have another answer.

Peter, Thanks. This of course works correctly. The reason I did not use this initially was that perviously I have prepared a show menu file in which the various exe files were called up from their respective directories and thus required the file path information. My memory tells me that this worked in previous versions but I cannot be sure. Putting all the called-up exe files into one directory together with the menu exe file is of course the obvious answer. Thanks again. This issue (for me anyway) is solved. Regards Jeff

jt, Thanks you have got the answer. If you try to run the menu PTW in the preview mode without creating an exe file, it does not work. However if you create an exe file, it works however the path is defined. Thanks again. This might be a change that has come into being as a result of changes in 8.1 Regards Jeff

David, I accept that you must have tried this method and that it works but I am not entirely sure I follow the logic. Why you should create exe in template folders. What difference does that make. If I understand correctly you are suggesting creating an exe files in the templates directory for each show you want to include in the menu. I have tried my method and it works "as long as you keep the exe files and the menu exe on a flash drive attached to the new computer. as soon as you download the folder onto the new computer, the path information is lost. Don't think this used to happen in Version 6.5. Jeff

Hi Eric, Thanks for your reply but if you look carefully you will see that my test used a show which was created in Version 8.1. I was aware that you could not call up previous version's shows and have to use the "run application..." command. However that does not work either. The problem is that when you move the folder to another computer, the file path information seems to be retained from the original machine. I am sure that did not happen before as I have prepared show menus in the past. Regards Jeff

In previous versions of PTE, I have set up a show project menu with a single slide having a series of button to call up various shows. If I created this project on my desktop and then transferred the whole folder with the PTE show slide application together with exe copies of all the shows called up, the path reference for each button had to have its drive letter removed in order to work on another computer. For example a button may call up a show called "Lanercost" and the path reference on the original computer might be ; "C:\PTE Shows\Main Menu\lanercost.exe" and to ensure that this would still run on a second computer I would remove the drive letter reference so that the path reference becomes ; "\PTE Shows\Main Menu\lanercost.exe" This does not seem to work with Version 8.1. In specifying the button operation, I am using the action "Run Slideshow with return" and the show I am calling up was created in Version 8.1. Does anyone have any ideas how to make this work? Regards Jeff

Hi John, Thanks for the explanation which is clear. It's interesting that hearing how others construct their sequences gives one a fresh view on one's own techniques. One final point. You mentiond that you're do not link audio clips to imges. But no doubt you have noticed that, even if you link a clip, you can still move the audio clip relative to the start of the associated image whilst still maintaining the link. Regards Jeff

John, I am interested in your remarks below and I do not follow the last sentence. Does this imply that you do all of the audio work in Audacity and then export a complete single file into PTE? That is the method I used before Version 8. However with a single audio file, you can only link it to one image. Of course you can add duplicate copies on another track, but this seems rather clumsy. Since using Version 8, I split up my original audio track into separate file segments and then add them to a single "commentary" track. This means that I can link each segment to its associated image(s). Now at any stage I can move the image/commentary without messing up the rest of the timeline. Of particular benefit is to be able to either, move an individual slide or to move a group of slides. Regards Jeff "My present method is much more flexible. I use Audacity to record my V/O from a script that I have previously read out loud to myself while running the PTE sequence, noting where the major silences are. Then when making the recording on Audacity I tend to make individual clips based on the identified gaps. If I make an error I pause and start again just before the error. I will then mostly delete the offending segment while still in Audacity. I mostly use the "multiple version" option of a clip in PTE to eliminate undetected errors or when I make a last minute adjustment to the image content and find I need a silent segment I hadn't anticipated. Very useful!"

I support this ideal also.

Hi Barry, Just downloaded and watched your show. I live by the coast in the North East of England and spend a great deal of time photographing the sea and sea shore so your show really appeals to me and the combination of music and images is excellent. You have some fabulous images. A really excellent show. Regards Jeff

Thanks Guys for your comments. Pleased that the post resulted in some responses. DG : David I do not think your suggestion would work to add the commentary file multiple times. When you record the commentary from the script file, invariably you make mistakes. Rather than start again, I just say "correction" and then re-record that bit of commentary. So there is some editing to do before it is suitable for adding to PTE. Also the commentary duration is generally the total length of the show. So it would be difficult to add multiple times on a single track. Putting the file into Audition and then cutting out each track is fairly quick, but I might experiment with actually stopping the recorder between segments and saving each as a separate file to remove the requirement to cut up the whole file in Audition. My recorder is an HS2 and records in wav and mp3. I just use mp3 for the voice recording. As all my sound files are put into PTE as mp3 files, I do not think there is any saving to be made is using the "convert to mp3" function. Gogs: Your method is almost exactly the same as mine and I also agree with your comment on sound level meters. That is a facility I miss in PTE 8 as, previously, the music and voice files were all in Audition and my standard approach was to make sure that the music level was -20db below the voice level. Getting the right levels between the two is critical and now in Verion 8 is much much easier to achieve as you can fiddle about with both the voice and music clips on an individual basis. This is a HUGE improvement. Yaghtsman1 : Again you method mirrors mine. However I have seen a number of comments about the need for absolute accuracy in the forum and I just don't get it. Maybe it is the type of show that I do but I find that I can position image or sound files where I want them. I suppose if you are doing a show which requires image or key frame positions to be exactly in line with the audio file then maybe there might be a problem. But I have done a short show where I wanted each image to change exactly on the beat and found it very easy to do. After all the end result is being judged by ear and absolute millisecond accuracy seems unnecessary. However maybe you can convince me. Regards all Jeff

A recent comment by DG that, with the availability of Version 8, he could abandon his audio editor, suggested to me that there might be some interest in various methods forum members use to create a show which includes commentary : something most of my shows tend to include. With previous versions of PTE, my method has been to write out the commentary and then record it in a single pass so that the resultant audio file contains the entire commentary. I then insert this file into my audio editor and insert silence sections between each individual commentary section to match the images to which the commetary referred. (I appreciate that inserting total silence sections can be distracting but generally these are disguided by the accompanying music). For example I might have a 15 second commentary on the first 3 images. Then 2 images without commentary. Then a commentary section for the next image. So I insert a length of silence equal to the desired time to show 2 images after the first 15 seconds. Whilst this has worked well for a long time, it is rather inflexible if you want to make timing changes later on, as you have to alter images timing in PTE and then correct the composite commentary file in the audio editor, then re-export the alterd commentary file. Now with Version 8, all this difficulty has disappeared. I still record the overall commentary in one pass and insert the resultant file into my audio editor. However now I cut out each commentary section and save it as a separate file which can be inserted into PTE and associated (linked) to a specific image(s). The flexibility this gives is wonderful as it allows timing changes to be made at any time in a very simple manner. Also being able to change volume levels and introduce fades on the fly is a huge advantage. So my audio editor is not quite redundant yet (it can be used remove unwanted sounds from oriinal site recordings - I recently removed a baby's cry which was messing up some recorded speech) but is just used to cut up the originally recorded clips. I would be interested in amyone else's experience and methodolgy in making PTE presentations with commentary.

Here is another show about a visit to Heimay, which is the only inhabitied island in the Westmann Islands group off the south west coast of Iceland. The images were taken during the same cruise around Iceland as those in my Iceland AV. The file is here : http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/

steven, I have added a comment against this thread also. Jeff

Also added my comments today

Thanks for your kind comments. Regarding the wonky horizons, I must be slipping as I tend to spend quite a long time editing individual images before starting on the actual PTE show. I have also been told off for the overall large exe file size and will ensure this is smaller in the future. regards Jeff

Lin, I have a Pansonic G3 with a video function that prduces AVCHD format files having an extension of .MTS. Version 8.1 accepts these files and will either convert them to an .avi format or use the original file. i think that Version 7.5 did not do this but am not sure. Regards Jeff

Thanks for your kind comments folks. we really enjoyed the trip and Iceland is a fantastic place for photography. It took a long time to make the show but I am very very impressed with Version 8.1, a huge improvement over the previous versions. Jim ; The ship we were on was the Discovery. Regards Jeff

Hi Ray, Just downloaded and viewed your show. Really enjoyed the music, poetry and music. Thought it all matched very well and made a very watchable av. Only small comment is that I would have liked the music to fade out a little longer at the end. It seemed to stop rather suddenly.

Here is a show I have just completed arising from a fantastic cruise around the coast of Iceland. I used version 8.1 which is a huge improvement over previous versions, particularly if you are adding commentary. The show is on Breechbrook at : http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/