alrobin

This is a great loss to the PTE community and the AV community as a whole! Maureen was a skilled photographer and AV producer, and did much to encourage others, including myself, in this field, not only in the UK, but other countries as well. My wife and I also stayed with Maureen and Robert while on a visit to the Cotswolds, and the AV Festival at Cirencester, and they couldn't have been more hospitable. Maureen will be greatly missed by all who knew her. ..........Al

Thanks, Jill! It's hard for us "old folks" to keep up with all these changes (improvements?) in technology! ...........Al

Thanks Dave for your reply. However, I should have mentioned that the first key frame is a "mask container". When I click on the mask container icon and select "Add mask template", a key frame is added with all animation options checked, including "Opacity = 100". Next I click on "Mask Content" in the list of keyframes on the right hand side, and hit the "Add Image" button. At this point the key frame animation options are still all checked. Finally, I clone this key frame (using the "+" button) and all the clones are added without any animation options checked so that I have to go over all of the key frames in turn, selecting the animation options I want, for each one. .............Al

This apparent bug in version 9 is not critical, but annoying, nevertheless. I have a map in a travel show where I have a little car running around on the highways. When the car comes to a particular town, I flash the name of the town as well as a representative image from that location, superimposed on the map. To accomplish this, I generally use four key frames for each town, with opacity zero for the first and last of the four frames, and 100% for the second and third. After positioning the frames, I find that the "opacity" option in the "Animation" menu is not checked, and no value is set in the little associated boxes. However, the default opacity is, in reality, 100%, for each of the four key frames. The next step is to set the opacity of the first key frame to zero. To do this, I check the "opacity" box, and set the value to zero. When I move to each of the following key frames, lo and behold, their values are now set to zero too, but their opacity boxes are unchecked. But I want key frames 2 and 3 to remain at 100 %, so I have go to each of them in turn and reset them to their proper value. This is not a big deal, but I'm using a lot of key frames for that image of the map, and it gets a little tedious. Thanks for listening, ..........Al R

Dave & Lin, I enjoyed your examples of pseudo 3-d motion in your AV shows. Here is another example in a show I put together some time ago after a trip to the southern USA. I used this technique several times in the show, and IMHO, it adds a bit of variety to what would have been an otherwise more boring presentation. (by the way, it's 63 Mb in size). http://www.alrobinson.com/BigBend.zip Igor, I love the new Forum! ..........Al

HI, Lin, Still the master of special effects, I see - cool! Merry Christmas to you too! ...........Al

I'm OK with it. I prefer HD mode (16:9) anyway, as a rule, but I rarely use "cover mode" as it could necessitate cutting off part of an image. However it is easy to reset all slides to "fit to slide" if required. .........Al

Interesting slideshow, Mark, and congratulations on the win.You captured those waterfalls very well! And your synching was spot on! My wife and I were in Iceland last May, and again the end of January. Very picturesque place! I love the lights of the cities and towns this time of the year too.My only regret was that we weren't able to get closer to the waterfalls, but the colours in the water, and in the ice were very delicate and subtle.By the way, what was the background music used in the AV? Just curious. I'm having trouble finding suitable for a show of my own. (However, I wouldn't think of copying the one you used! :)Can someone please tell me what I did wrong here? 

Wow!! This video speaks for itself, and for PTE! Bravo, Barry!

Jim & Gwen, Very interesting and informative as usual! Excellent photography too! It's like "old home week" back here on the Forum!

Charlie, That was a wonderful production! A perfect example of the benefits of mixing stills and video in an AV. I had seen examples of interspersing video clips between still images in AV productions before, but somehow they never impressed me much. Now with PTE's flexibile video capabilities it is possible to mix the two media tastefully and effectively, as your two AV's, "Fashion Show" and "Jazz", so cleverly illustrate. Hope to see more of your work in future!

DaveG wrote: Yes, I'm starting to see some of the complexities. Especially when multiple sound sources are involved and need to be controlled. Perhaps, although from what I've seen so far, PTE handles the mixing of stills and video quite well.

Ken, being a "newbie" at this video stuff, I don't even take myself seriously! Please don't dare ask me to update "Adjustor" for video situations!

Thanks, Peter - I'm starting to get the hang of it. However, in my tests, using only 3 images, with KFSD checked, rearranging the 3 images inadvertently added 2 seconds to the total length of my test show, which, since I was using a single common sound track, meant that the sound cut out 2 seconds before where I wanted it to. In a larger show, one should be aware that rearranging a lot of slides in the show could add a significant amount of time to the total length. This time does not correct itself if the slides are put back in their original order, either! I suspect most of my work will be with video as an object, as I still can't quite get my mind around PTE as a video producer, any more than I would consider using it as a video or image editor. However, it's nice to have the option of using video clips along with stills. I can probably live with some of the idiosyncrasies. I'm still a newbie at this video stuff, and I see I have a lot to learn.

Thanks for the heads-up. As I understand the problem, it occurs only when moving slides around in the presentation. In my example, KFSD unchecked gave the preferred result after switching two slides.. Any option which results in a change to the total duration of an AV is not acceptable to me, and this is what happens when I check "KFSD" in my example. . "KFSD" only makes sense if there is a solid definition of "slide duration". It appears that some users consider it to mean the time from the start of an incoming transition to the end of the transition into the following slide. Back in the old days, the common definition was "the time from the start of one transition to the start of the next." To me this makes the most sense because at the start of the "outgoing" transition one is really saying "I've had enough of this slide, so let's get on with the next one". The fade-out transition then is really not part of the duration of that slide, although technically, remnants from that slide are still partially on the screen. At the start of a transition, one is full of anticipation for what is coming next, and really not interested any more in the slide currently fading out. I, personally, do not see any need in my own presentations to check the KFSD box, even if I were rearranging slides. I am willing to go back and tweak duration and/or transition times if rearranging slides upsets the aesthetic flow within the presentation. For my needs, it is important to keep the start of a slide's transition (or that of it's replacement) at exactly the same place in time when rearranging slides as otherwise all the synchronization to the music would have to be redone. Possibly because of my background, the total slide "duration times" (plus the time of the last transition in the AV before final cut-off) should equal the total time of the show. If we count the overlaps twice, this will not be the case. One could solve the matter by prorating the total dissolve times according to the intensity of the incoming and outgoing slides on the screen at any given time, but this would get to be a tad ridiculous, as one would have to call on a mathematician to apply principles of elementary calculus to the problem in the case of non-linear transitions. So for my purposes, slide duration will always mean the time from the start of a transition to the start of the next. Perhaps someone can enlighten me about the possible implications this interpretation might have, specifically to the application of video objects.