jevans

Melle 79, I have just had a request from a club member who has bought a Mac desktop about running PTE on his Mac. Can you give me some information how to go about the process of modifying the Mac to be able to run PTE?

Melle 79, You should be able to download the program from the wnsoft web site at www.wnsoft.com. Alternatively, open the pinned topic at the top of the pictures to exe forum and click on the link to the latest version of the program.

I am experiencing a problem with V 5.6. I have a number of shows created in previous versions of PTE, including some shows created in Version 4.48. The "exe" files of these shows run correctly (as you would expect) when run as separate files. However if you create a menu using Version 5.6 which calls up these old version shows, they sometimes do not run correctly. The most usual error is that the sound track plays but there are no images. Unfortunatley the problem is rather random. Sometimes the shows plays correctly and other times there is an error. To overcome the problem I have had to create a menu using Version 5.5.

I think this point may have been posted before, but just in case it has not, here is a comment about running old shows using Version 5.6. I have just made up a new show menu using Version 5.6 and have imported some of my old shows, created using various previous versions. I have found that the panning/zooming on these old shows can be jerky unless they are re-saved using Version 5.6. Also, an old show created with Version 4.48, ran but did not display in front of the menu slide. Again I had to re-save the original show in 5.6 before it would run properly. It is reasonable that shows created in older versions of PTE may not run properly on a newer version. But this is just a small warning in case it catches anyone out.

Jean-Pierre, Your mask effects are terrific and must have taken a lot of work. I downloaded Catalogue 1 and ran it to the end when a link appeared. However it was only visible for a very short time and there is no way to recover it without running the whole catalogue again. Could you give us the links in a post in this thread rather than in the Catalogue shows please?

Dave/Lin, Thanks for your contributions which have certainly helped me to get my head around this topic. Dave I had already answered your email before reading your latest post. Lin, Dave is correct. My Pioneer will only play recordings from the internal hard disk and also play a DVD disk inserted into the disk tray. You can copy files from the hard drive onto a DVD in the tray but there is no connection available for a computer. Thus I would need to burn a DVD on my computer in the DVD drive and then try to play this in the Pioneer. Dave has suggested that this might work and, when I have time, I will give it a try and post the result here. Dave : Are DviX files the same as MP4 files? In other words, if you produce a mp4 file from PTE, will that be recognized as a DviX compatible file? Regards Jeff

Hi Dave, My Pioneer unit is a DVR-550HX-S and you are right, it only provides 1080p scaling although it was quite difficult to find this information. Thus going to all the bother of converting mp4 files seems a waste of time at the moment. Just to widen the topic a little bit. Most of my PTE shows are projected. But I occasionally convert a show to a DVD format to show directly on a TV (mainly shows for the family). I have been using the PTE DVD facility and it produces really good results. However looking at the facilities in PTE 5.6, I thought I would try some of the other options. I suppose I can see the point of the option to produce "HD video for PCs and Macs" on the basis that you cannot run an exe file on a Mac and, by making an mp4 file, you can play the show using other players than just using the exe file. But why would I want to create an HD mp4 file to play on a PC if I can just run the exe file. Do I get a better quality image. I cannot tell the difference on my monitor, and if I want to show a PTE show on a TV, I will just burn a DVD copy. The whole topic of high definition seem to be a bit of a con in some ways. I know I can see HD content via my TV if I have access to cable, Sky or Freesat TV and the quality is definitely better. But I cannot record it despite being persuaded to purchase a "1080p ready" DVD hard disk recorder. Regards

Hi Lin, Thanks for your reply. I find the whole topic of high definition very confusing. I bought a flat screen TV about 2 years ago which was mared "HD Ready". Later on I realized that it was not full HD, i.e. 1080p. I now have a new set which is full 1080p and an associated Pioneer hard disk DVD recoder and player which is also supposed to be 1080p. However there are no HDMI inputs in the recorder only a single HDMI output to the TV. Thus the only way you can get HD is if you put an HD DVD disk in the recorder/player. If I make an mp4 file from PTE and then burn it to a standard DVD disk, will it be high definition? I would be surprised if the answer was "yes". best regards Jeff

Using the latest version of PTE you can create a high definition .mp4 file and play this on the computer using various players. I have a Pioneer hard disk DVD recorder/player that is supposed to be HD compatible, i.e. 1080p and a TV which is also 1080p. Is it possible to burn the .mp4 file to a high definition DVD disk and what equipment do you need to do this?, e.g. an HD I thought that manufacture of HD disks was coming to an end. Do the DVD disks need to be special HD versions?

I apologise if this is a very basic question to which I should know the answer. I do not use PTE to produce video files very often but have experimented with the latest beta 15. I have used the "create" function to produce both a video output for 1. "HV Video for PC and Mac" and 2. "Video for Iphone" In Case 1, I get two files, an .mp4 file and an .mpg file. The .mpg file is twice the size of the .mp4 file. Both look exactly the same when played using VLC media player, although the quality is much better using the .mp4 file. In Case 2, I only get an .mp4 file which is much smaller than the previous .mp4 file. I assume this case uses a much smaller picture size and perhaps more compression. Another query I have is that the DVD files produced using the Beta 15 DVD creation software (i.e. producing DVD folders, not burning to disk) seem to be of a lower quality than ones I have produced using previous versions by creating an avi file and then using separete software to produce the dvd files. I am using XP Home, SP2 and Widows Memdia Player, Version 11 to play the DVD files. I have checked my codecs and seem to have the same list as I have had for a long time.

Hi Dom, This is a great effect. Might you be producing a template that we can all use?

Igor, Thanks for reply. I see now what your idea is and agree. But could we could set the whole slide show to have either a default of "fit to slide" or "cover slide" as a choice to avoid having to alter each image individually. Jeff

Not sure whether this is a bug or just my lack of understanding. If I add an image of say 3872 x 2592 (e.g. 3:2 aspect ratio) to Version 5 with monitor of 1280 x 1024, the default setting for the image is "fit to slide" and there is black lines at the top and bottom of the screen. If now I change the settings in "project options" to define a fixed pixel size of 1280 x 1024 and then add the same image, the PTE setting of "fit to slide" is used rather than the defined pixel size and again I get black lines at the top and bottom. If you click the size/position in pixels button, the box shows 1280 x 856.859, position 0 x 83.570, i.e. the "fit to slide" option has overridden then defined pixel size in "project options". I cannot therefor see the point of being able to define the pixel size in "project options" if it is just going to be overridden by the default setting.

Just for general interest, here is a link with comments about the advisability or otherwise of installing Windows XP Service pack 3. I am afraid it is not too specific one way or another about whether to go ahead or not. On balance, I am going to wait a bit before upgrading. There seems to be too many caveats. http://WindowsSecrets.com/comp/080911

Hi Peter, Very good. Photographer, PTE guru and poet as well. Very impressive. I think it would make a good introduction to a menu slide for all your shows. Jeff

David, Snodge's Edge is a location in Durham which hosts the RPS Northern AV Group's meetings twice a year, generally October and March. There are presentations of PTE showsby members and generally two or more excellent speakers. If you are near enough to come it is a very good day out. Here is the flyer for the meeting which was held in October last year. Ian__s_flyer_v2.doc

Dave, Your idea was great as long as I only run the show on my monitor. However I took a show to the club this evening and all the images were oversise. This is obviously why Igor puts a note against "disable scaling" to indicate that it is not recommended. When you have an image which is set to 5:4 and then run the exe file on a projector set to 4:3, then with scaling disabled, you get too large an image. So it's back to the drawing board. I shall have another go at getting Igor to include the ability to set all the slides to a particular scaling in one go.

Yes but that means an operation on each individual image, whereas if you resize, you can use a batch process which is much quicker and easier.

Thanks guys for your helpful suggestions. Peter : Hope to see you at Snods Edge but it depends on the date whether I will get there as we are at a National Print final at Connahs Quay on 25th which is usually the date for Snods Edge. Barry/Peter : Using a mask is a good idea which I had not thought of and this would solve the problem. However asthetically I am not a great lover of masks unless they relate to the images being shown. Of course this is obviously just a personal view. Sometimes a mask definately enhances an image but I am not sure I would want to use one permanently. At our member's nights there is often a mix of AVs with and without masks or borders and I prefer shows without. However thanks for the idea which I might use sometimes. DaveG : Never thought of disabling the scaling Dave and this is a very simple solution. Cannot see that this has any downside, despite Igor's note that this is not recommended. Peter : Interested in your comment about making shows for projection based on 1024 x 768 images. Since getting my Nikon D80, I now just resize to 1530 x 1024, create a PTE show on my 1280 x 1024 monitor and then just letting the projector (1024 x 768) do a final rescale. This seems to work fine and I have not seen any significant deterioration in the projected images. Obviously if I am submitting images for a digital image competition, then I crop to 1024 x 768 and observe the file size limitations as specified in the competition rules. Regards Jeff

I posted a request in the "Ideas for new versions" forum some considerable time ago about the need to be able to change the default setting of PTE from "fit to slide" to "cover slide". There were no responses to this post and I wonder whether anyone else has the same problem as myself and if so, what do they do. The issue is this : My Nikon D80 provides a 3872 x 2592 image - aspect ratio 3:2 My monitor is 1280 x 1024 - aspect ratio 5:4 My projector is 1024 x 768 - aspect ratio 4:3 I auto-resize the original images to 1530 x 1024 to maintain their original aspect ratio and then use"cover slide" in PTE so that the image fills the full height of my monitor. However I have to set each slide to "cover slide" manually as it is not possible to change the default setting of PTE from "fit to slide". Al Robinson's "PTE Adjuster" used to be able to make a global change, but the latest version seems to have dropped this function. Of course, using this process, I lose some of both sides of the original image. But I prefer to do this rather than have the image showing on my monitor with a black line at the top and bottom of the screen. This is what happens if you keep the original image's aspect ratio and use "fit to slide". Another possible tack is to crop each image. But this is much more time consuming than just resizing images using a batch process. I would be interested in any views on this topic. Jeff

Al, In browsing the forum I noticed that your PTE Adjuster had cropped up again with reference to using it with Version 5.5. One of the most useful tools in Adjuster was the ability to make a global change to the slide "fit", e.g. "fit to window" or "cover window". Using a Nikon D80 mt images are 3:2 and I change all slides from the default "fit" to "cover". Having downloaded Adjuster from the latest link I can find, this facility seems to have been removed. Is this correct, and if so, can you add it back in again? Regards Jeff

Hi Dom, I use a Nikon D80. I bought an SLR because : 1. I want to use different lens,e.g. macro 2. I take all pictures in RAW and use Nikon's Capture NX for RAW processing and conversion - it is an excellent bit of software 3. I print images in A3 for competition work and, although many of the bridge and compact cameras have sufficient pixel resolution for A3, the sensors are rather small. However i am sure that you will get excellent pictures from your chosen camera and will have the advantage of no having to carry a heavy load of camera and supplementary lenses around.

Thank you all gentlemen for your answers and comments. Lin - I guess we missed this out of the guide!

I recently was caught out by using a new font in a show which was not present on our club's computer. Because of the nature of the new font, when projected at the club, the resultant text was out of focus and too large. Afterwards I realised what the problem was and that I should have rasterized the font before completing the show. I have never had to do this before and so looked at the rasterize command (which incidentally I forgot to describe in the user guide). If you select the text object and then click on the rasterize button, you have to save the result as a ".png" file. The question is - Do you then replace the existing text with the .png file version? I cannot test this as I need another computer to check the result.

Lin, Brian, Thanks for comments and advice. I agree with you Lin and from now on will switch of automatic updates completely as you have suggested in another thread. Jeff