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Hi, M2, Is the second show synched to music (via the timeline)? How are you adding the music to the second show? There are three ways: in "Project options", in "Customize slide", or via the "Sound" line on the main window. If the show is non-synched, and you are adding sound in Project options, it will cut off if you check "Play new background music" and do not add a sound file in the "Customize slide" dialogue box.

Hi, Olga, Are you and Oleg using a different coding in your Russian messages now? Some of the characters almost look like Mandarin, and I can no longer decode them in Socrat!?

Michel, I agree with Bob - this is a very innovative, well-seen and well-executed show. One of the things that impressed me, too, when I was in Boston a few years ago, was the tall glass buildings, and all the interesting geometrical designs and reflections one saw when looking skyward. You have captured all that, and put it into a beautiful and interesting show.

Skymot, You can check "Enable Personal Rights Management" in WMP "Options / CD Audio". However, as Ron says, it is preferrable to convert your music files to either .mp3 or .wav (.mp3 is more compact), rather than trying to use the windows media files directly. The new version of PTE is supposed to handle ".wma" files, but I have tried it without success. My pc locks up when I try to use a .wma file in PTE. PTE is unable to determine the length of the file for some reason. And, if I enable "error checking", it won't even get that far. One good free program for converting files is "Audacity" - it comes with a plugin now for converting .wma files, too. Hope this helps. Ron: How do you like the "new" Audition?

Hi, Skymot, I don't know if THIS is the link you saw, but it really refers only to protected WMA files, which are not used very often as music for PTE shows. Please give us some more specifics to go on. What type of files, are you having trouble with music for one of your own shows, can you hear the music on other shows, can you play an "mp3" file other than on a PTE show?

Hi, Vinnie, Welcome to the Forum! There is no direct way to do this in PTE, but, as Jim indicated, if you first set up a "template" image with the button you want in Object Editor, you can then copy this image as many times as you have images in your show, and then just change the image names one by one, on the main window opposite "Show image", to their correct names. It's a little tedious but may be easier than opening Object Editor for each slide. Also, if you are doing more than one show, and you want the same link on each image for the second show, too, you can save the first show as a "template" for the second and further shows.

Bonjour, Patrick, Welcome again to the Forum! (your English is fine, by the way - much better than my French! The method of "terminating" that you described is the same as what I use when I want to pause the show waiting for some action by the viewer. You could even add a couple of buttons - one to really end the show ("exit"), and one to take the viewer back to the beginning, and then there would be even less of a chance of a timeout. Of course buttons will only work on a non-synchronized show. (until Igor provides us with some other possibilities via a navigation bar for synched shows ) The "more sophisticated" way to do this would be to create three shows: a single-slide introduction show, a French version, and a separate English version. The last two could be selected via buttons on the introduction show. Then this would also work with synchronized shows.

Eric, One other factor in flickering is the range in brightness between the incoming and outgoing images. This is may be why you notice it more at the beginning where the first image is fading from black to a brighter image. One way to lessen this is to use a long lead-in fade to the first image, and long fades wherever there are large dark areas in a slide.

Igor, That is GREAT news! This is the kind of breakthrough we have been waiting for and it will greatly enhance PTE's ability to produce even more-professional shows, with better, tighter, faster-paced dissolves!!

Hi, Eric, Welcome to the Forum! Some other possible causes of flickering are: - Other programs running in the background - Trying to fade too fast (with images this size, especially on a "slow" pc, you may need fade transitions at least 2 seconds long - 3 to 5 seconds may even be required). - Your pc may be too slow (P3 or P4 recommended, if in the Intel family) - Images too close together in time (need approx 0.5 to 1 sec between transitions on the timeline if show is synched) - Inadequate video card Please give us more info on the system you are using.

Merlin, Just add a posting to the bottom of the old list, and it will reappear in whole at the top of the current page. This way we won't "lose" track of all the previous ideas, and start repeating them all over again.

Paul, Refresh is only "F5" in my Explorer 6.0, not "ctrl F5" (actually both seem to work the same). Also, I noticed you are using HTML to size the images. What happens if you remove the dimension specifications in the HTML, and resize the images themselves to the desired size instead?

Joanna and Stu, I just made a CD for a PTE demo to Camera Club members, and had an Intro show, with links to several other shows. Some of these shows were in separate folders, with direct pathnames set up as per the drive pattern on my desktop. However, since I put all linked shows in the same root directory on the CD as the Intro show, everything runs fine.

Hi, Gérard, This is a good point. Of course the same problem exists for the translated-text option. But it is not as serious since, as you pointed out, the English text is immediately above, making comparisons fairly easy. Too bad in the tutorial one can't just press a button and have everything in a different language as one can now with PTE, itself!

Hi, Chip, Thanks for the offer - I'm usually game for anything! By the way, what language did you have in mind? (It's already in English! This reminds me of when I was in Vietnam once. I told someone I didn't speak Vietnamese, and could he please try it in English. His reply was "I am speaking English!" ) Seriously, though, I guess we could try it in one or two different languages. Only trouble is, the whole show would have to be duplicated, and that's a lot of megabytes if we're dealing with several new translations. I wouldn't have room for it on my web site and I don't know if Bill (Cottage) would have room either. If someone were to do the sound-clips, and the names were kept the same, it wouldn't be hard to import them into the present show. The timing for each slide would have to be checked and some readjusted for the differing times it might take to say each one in different languages. The written narrative is already translated into French, thanks to Gerard. One other negative (and I hate to bring negatives to a "green-light" session), is that whenever Igor changes the program, all the other versions would have to be changed, too. This could get out of hand. Let me know what you think.

Ken is right - there are many different possible layouts and various members have submitted several excellent tutorials on this subject. My tutorial doesn't show how to set up a menu page - it just describes the use of the various buttons and text objects themselves, and where to find them.

Pushu, You are correct in that when you are printing, you have to consider dpi, and set it at whatever you need for your particular printer, depending, of course, on how large the image is in pixels, as this alone is what determines the practical limit for the dpi which can be used. However, when you are changing the dpi for a print, unless you also change the size in pixels of the image, you are not "interpolating". It won't matter what dpi you set the image at, until you go to print, and then, as Bill said, your printer software will do any necessary interpolating to achieve that size of print. But setting the dpi at 10 or 100, does not mean that the image will yield a poor print if someone else uses 200 dpi to print. Provided there are enough pixels in the image, (i.e. image size), someone else could change the dpi to 1000, and get an super print! Give it a try! Always think in terms of pixels, not dpi, unless you are scanning or actually printing. But you are not doing the printing in this case - your client is, so let him or her worry about the dpi. If you don't want your image to be stolen, keep the image size small (in pixels, that is), or use a low compression ratio, or apply some sort of watermark, or use any combination of the three.

I have been asked whether the background music can be turned off in the "PTE 101" tutorial. There is actually a built-in music eliminator in the show, and this is the procedure to follow to activate it: First of all, you can elect to turn off music on slide #17 on your way through the tutorial. This will route you to slide #202 which stops the music. Then you can return to "Getting Started", or some other topic, from the "Directory" menu on that slide. Alternatively, from anywhere later on in the show, click the "Home" button on the navigation bar, select "Skip Intro" and "References", and then advance one slide on the navigation bar. This will take you to slide #201 where you can select "Skip Intro", which will advance you to slide #202. This will stop the music, and from the "Directory" menu, you can go to the topic of your choice, or select "Home" again and start the tutorial all over, this time without the background music. It helps if you first temporarily select "Pause" on the nav bar so you can better control what is going on. It's amazing how you can use these little features in PTE to work around problems and achieve desired effects!

Pushu, If you were asking me for my opinion, I would have to say "no". First of all, images of only 500x350 pixels will not look their best in "fit to screen" mode on a monitor set at 1024x768. Secondly, you are still persisting with the "dpi" idea. If you resize your images to 500x350, it won't matter what your dpi is set at - anyone can change that to whatever they want (within reason, of course) once they have captured your images. The fact that you have resized to 500x350, itself, will limit them considerably in their ability to print, regardless of the "dpi" setting. They are somewhat inter-related, but it's not the "dpi" setting that makes the difference in printability. If you are going to consider dpi in an already-digitized image, then you also have to specify image size. You can easily set the dpi of your 500x350 pixel images to 1000, but the image size will only be a fraction of the size of a usable print. But if you set the dpi to 10, you will have quite a large print, albeit low-quality. The factor which determines the ability to produce a good print is the image size in pixels, not the dpi setting, since it can be changed by your client.

Hi, Mikey What you need to do is, after you have compiled your individual slidshows, make a new slide show consisting of only one slide (or two, depending on how you want it to open), and add buttons programmed to "run application or open file" (in "Object / button / properties / action on mouse click"). Browse to the name of the slide-show ".exe" file and use that as the name of the file to open. Do this for each button for each show you want to open. Then, after each show has run, you will be returned to the introduction show. My tutorial, "PTE 101", available on Beechbrook", will show you how to use the object editor. Hope this helps.

Rick, That's very good advice! I have to keep reminding myself of that all the time, too. You sure can't take them with you!

No, Pushu, you still haven't got it! When talking about images for the screen, you shouldn't use the term "inch" at all. Just the total number of pixels. Just think of how many pixels you would need to lay, side by side, on the screen, to make up an image. Once you have set the resolution of your monitor, the "distance between pixels" is fixed, so if you want a big picture, you need 1024 pixels, for example, and if you want a small picture, you might need only 400 pixels. Think of them as just building-blocks. The number of pixels in an inch ("ppi") doesn't matter here. So it's just "pixels".

Gérard, That's quite a handy summary of elementary digital theory.

As Bill says, you need only consider dpi if you are scanning or printing. Since your images are already in digital form, you only need to worry about dpi if you are getting them ready for printing. Since you are putting them into a digital show, you don't need to worry about dpi at all. You usually have two options for changing image dimensions: one in pixels (this is the one you want to use here), and one in dpi. They are related in the imaging program in that changing one could have an impact on the other, depending on the way it is used. However, the one and only criterion you need to deal with if you are resizing for viewing on a monitor is the one which changes the dimension in pixels. If your monitor is set at 1024 x 768 pixels, then to fill the screen, the image has to be 1024 x 768 pixels in size, regardless of what the number for dpi is set at. One other consideration in resizing: don't resize upwards in size unless there is no other option. Try to always use an original un-compressed tiff or bmp or psd file, larger than your desired image, as a starting point for editing. The next consideration is compression ratio for your final image - the lower the value the poorer will be the image, but the smaller the file, as well. It will also give a poorer print, but it's a tradeoff, as you probably want a fairly good image for your show. Note that setting the dpi will have no bearing on the quality of the print here, as it can always be reset higher by your client if the image is large enough in pixels. It's a "Catch 22" situation, unfortunately, so the only alternative worth considering, as Bill has said, is to add a watermark.

Pushu, You need only consider the screen size (in pixels). Don't worry about the "dpi" unless you are wanting to print. The best solution is to put all the verticals in one folder and the horizontals in another, and create 2 actions, one for each. If you use IrfanView to resize the photos, I believe you can indicate both a vertical size and a horizontal size, and IrfanView will apply the appropriate dimension keeping everything in proportion.