alrobin

Oleg and Olga, Oleg, that explains the flashing light at the beginning of the show, and Olga, I thought I noticed some similarities in your beautiful graphics to some internal body cavities. Congratulations, Olga, for a show well done, and the music was well chosen, too! Those graphic images were very effective.

Bill, Here's my beef with the taskbar and current Windows' utilization of it. Open up 7 or 8 separate appearances of MS Excel, for instance, each with a different spreadsheet, and all you will see on the taskbar, if you are lucky not to have a bunch of other programs open, too, unless you are working in 1600 x 1200 resolution, is 7 or 8 blocks, each one showing "Microsoft ...". If you open up only 4 or 5 appearances of Excel, you will probably see 4 or 5 blocks reading "Microsoft Excel -..." Now, we all know that Excel is a Microsoft product, and we also know that the little "X" icon before the name stands for Excel. So, why in blazes do we have to be told first and foremost that it is a "Microsoft Excel" program before we are given any indication as to which spreadsheet is represented by which block? How would anyone, let alone a novice, know which block to click on to find a particular spreadsheet??? This is just an exampe, but it serves to suggest, particularly to Igor, that there is a better way to do things than the way MS chooses to do them. Now, as to what to put on the taskbar, and what to use for a window title, I feel that someone (including a novice) who wishes to know which bar on the taskbar represents the slideshow he just clicked on and to which he wants to give focus would want to see the name of the show first and foremost. And, someone looking at the window in windowed mode already knows it is a PTE show, and probably already knows the name of the file, but would probably most like to know what the author chose to title it (not necessarily the same as the .exe file name). He or she certainly won't be using it to find the show as in the case of the taskbar. Pure and simple!!! By the way, for my own personal needs, I don't really care that much about it as I can find these things in the dark, and I don't really care that much what the title of a show is - I just want to watch the show. But we're talking about philosophy here, and "right" vs. "wrong", and how many angels we can put on the head of a pin, etc. It does depress me, though, when I see MS bunging things up so much.

Bill, See my comments after "--" in quoted posting. ( Your comments indicated by ">". ) Just my thoughts - on most of these "issues" we seem to be in agreement. I'd still like to see the "exe" name on the toolbar, though. Igor, you be the judge!

Stu, I agree with you but for one minor point - now when you blank out the "Caption Of Window" setting, the taskbar also blanks out, which defeats the point of the taskbar. Not a big deal, though, as I am sure everyone would know which of the items on the taskbar applies to the finished, and playing, show. However, it could get confusing if one also had PTE open as one of the items on the taskbar.

This time of the year you should be out hiking, anyway!! I've been to the Purcell Lodge a couple of times - some pics on my web site. Great place!! I envy you! Looking forward to seeing one of your shows.

Igor, You posted again before I released my previous reply. Yes, you can see the taskbar if you press "Alt - tab". I feel it is simpler if the taskbar always shows the name of the "exe" file, and the window (if used) shows either the "exe" file name or the "Caption of window" entry (if different from the "exe" file name).

Igor, It will do this only if the default "project name" is used for the ".exe" name. If "Caption of window" is blank, the taskbar will be blank too. In my beta #10, both "Project Options / Screen / Caption of window" and the taskbar display the "project name" if nothing is input to change this. If one changes the ".exe" file name when saving, the taskbar still shows the "project name", which is no longer relevant. However, if one changes the ".exe" file name to something different from the default "project name" both the taskbar and "Caption of window" should show this ".exe" file name unless the creator has selected a different name or no name at all in "Project Options / Screen / Caption of window". In this latter case, I would prefer to see no name in the Windowed-mode caption, and the ".exe" name in the taskbar. Also, I agree with Bill that it should be possible to change this name in the case of full-screen shows as well. Hope this hasn't made things more confusing!

Welcome to the Forum! By the way, is that a reference to the beautiful ski town in the interior of BC? If so, you're lucky to live in such a nice place! You will probably hear from WnSoft on Monday, as they are usually off weekends. Are you sure there was no attachment to the email? Sometimes attachments also show up at the bottom of an email, but you have to click on the actual file attached. Just a thought. WnSoft Support are always good at following up on these requests, though, once they check their records.

Igor, You have been busy! Thanks very much!!!

Amen, brother!

Yes, Igor. Thanks very much! I left the files up in case someone wants to do some experimenting for themselves.

Alan, You could always add some music and then just turn the volume down until you are ready to choose the piece you really want. (suggestion from another "oldie".

Hi, Sal, Glad you found the information useful. No, there is no way of incorporating animation into the show as you describe it - however, there are utilities on Boxig's site which will run PTE and then a Flash animation in sequence. Also, you could try running Flash as an "external application" at the end of a PTE show.

Hi, Roger, Welcome to the Forum! This is one area that had me confused too the first time I went to save a PTE file. Igor has promised to look into it, and possibly change this procedure make it more intuitive. At least when you go to "save as", you should see a file name, not the project name, listed as the default.

Hi, Fred, Sorry, I missed the part about playing music on the introductory page. You're right, the only way to stop the music is to exit, in which case you have lost your introductory page. I agree with you that more work needs to be done on the logic around the control of music in PTE. Maybe now that Igor has the internal player functioning satisfactorily, he will be able to devote some time to the whole area of control of the music under different scenarios.

Hi, Fred, If you are in the second show and hit "Esc", you will return to the first menu page (provided you have set "Project Options / Show settings" to "when show ends, keep last slide on screen").

Igor and Aleksey, Thank-you so much for the new beta release - it works perfectly now with my test files (available for anyone who wants to test for his or her self at this Page .) I have another request for the next beta, similar to Harold's. Could you please make the transition to image #1 changeable from the timeline, too, just as you did for images #2 and higher? Harold, I support you on your two requests. I have encountered many times the same problem as your second one. I once also encountered one other strange effect when clicking on and moving images around in these two windows. I couldn't even get PTE to recognize that I wanted a new file dragged and dropped into the second slide-show window - it kept repeating the image I had already dropped, so that I ended up with 3 or 4 copies of the same one. I had to exit from PTE in order to clear the problem. It's only happened once, though. Harold and Bill, Thank-you both for all your work in making constructive suggestions and beta-testing to solve the timing problems.

I haven't heard of anyone trying it, but you could give it a try, and let us know how it works. You can use the free trial version to try it out if you haven't purchased it already. However, you can accomplish at least part of this objective within PTE itself, using an introductory show consisting of one image, and add hyperlinks, control buttons, images, and text objects. These can, in turn, be used to start up other shows, etc. The main problem with objects in PTE at the moment is that they are not scaled to the size of the screen. This may or may not be a problem for your application. These can then all be put into a cd with auto-start capabilities. Let us know if you need more information on how to do this.

Thanks very much, Oleg, for your comments and the feedback. I think the main problem with the older pc's is the size of the images. There are six images over 200 k: 280k, 268k, 233k, 229k, 220k, and 212k. Seven other images are over 150 k. 22 others are over 100 k. The rest, 71 in all, are under 100 k. I kept the times between most transitions greater than 1 second, because of the large image sizes, but I guess that still wasn't good enough. Only 12 of the transitions are less than 1 second apart, though, and all of these are over 1/2 sec apart. The show played on my limited Win 2000 system, so I thought I was OK on size. I'll know better next time. Thanks again for your analysis!

Hi, saleeltambe Welcome to the forum. No, it's not practical yet to adapt PTE to HTML for web use as the file sizes are just too large. You'll have to stick to "Flash" or similar programs for web animations. It should be possible to mix animations and PTE now that we have the option of starting another application at the end of a PTE show, although I haven't tried it yet. Boxig has some utilities on his web site which facilitate this as well. You can find a link to these utilities HERE .

Igor, I have sent you some files I have been using lately in testing Cool Edit, and the different PTE versions. For anyone else interested in making some tests of your own, or seeing the results of my own tests on PTE timing, and the effects of converting to MP3 in Cool Edit, I have included them as downloads on my Web Page. The first zipped file includes two mp3 files from the same wave file, but one using 44100 Hz sampling and the other 22050 Hz sampling. The original wave file has short tone bursts at 3.000 sec, and then every 1.0 second afterward. However, the MP3 files show different times, as silence is added to the 44100 Hz file and deducted from the 22050 Hz file. The original wave file is included in the second zipped file on the web page for anyone who wishes to explore things further. It is around 2.6 Mb in size, though. Also included are two PTE files using each of the above-mentioned mp3 music files to test whether the apparent difference in timing affects the way they play back in PTE. If you unzip and load everything into the same folder, the PTE files should play OK, except that you may have to change the address for the music files. I would appreciate any feedback you may have, and your thoughts on whether there is any difference in the synchronization results in PTE when previewed in different versions.

Thanks, Igor, Could you please email me this file as I may have deleted the version I sent you. I have one, but it does not seem to match the parameters you mentioned (e.g. the music doesn't start until 4.73 sec., and I don't see a "click" at 1.7 sec.). It's recorded as 16-bit, CBR 96 kbps, sample-rate 22050 Hz, by the way. Meanwhile, I'll email you a better file for measuring timing. I'll also send you one recorded as a 44100 Hz mp3 file for comparison. If you have time, could you please tell me where the first tone appears in both Nero and both old and new PTE versions? The first tone will be at 3 sec in the wave file, but at slightly different times in the mp3 files due to ISO padding. However, they should both look the same in PTE. If not, please let me know. Thanks very much. By the way, I've found that Cool Edit does truncate the silence in Win Me, after all, if you save a wave file to .mp3 as CBR 96 kbps, and waveform 22050 Hz. For example, 3 sec of silence at the beginning of a piece ends up as 1.775 sec.

Thanks, Bob, for your kind words. The show doesn't do justice to the area (it never could), but this is the way I remember the trip - a mix of breathtaking scenery, exciting adventure, and enjoyable times with good friends. I'm not 100% happy with it, but I worked on it to the point where I had to declare a cutoff and just put it up for people to see. We had a mix of good and bad weather, and some of the bad weather came when we were among the mountains decked with fall colours, so they do appear a bit drab. Disappointing, but c'est la vie! Reason for a second trip! I did manipulate two or three of the images for effect, to better portray the play of light on the hillsides. The sign near the beginning of the show was the only other digitally-manipulated image. I'm amazed at the skill of the authors of some of the other shows presently posted on Beechbrook in creating special effects - some of them are very effective. I didn't play around with fancy borders, and frames within frames, etc., in this show, but maybe in a future one. I have mixed feelings about some of the "gimmicks" used, but they're OK if done tastefully and if they add to the images. I've always felt that the images should speak for themselves, but then everyone's tastes are different. I could have used some of the other transitions to some advantage in a couple of places, I guess, but I prefer to keep these limited to very few in number. Give me a good dissolve and I'm quite happy. We didn't see a lot of wildlife - the highlight was the start of the caribou migration at the border between the Yukon and the NWT, but we were there a little too early to see the main herd. And, we kept a lookout for grizzly bears, but didn't spot any. In one of the campgrounds we were advised to be careful as one had been spotted earlier, but we didn't see it. The highway from Dawson to Inuvik is about 700 km. in length. All together, from Ottawa and back, we put on about 12,000 km., including a short tour through Alaska.

Hi, Bob, That was a short holiday! Hope you caught some fish! Speaking of which, I enjoyed your latest show - it brought back a lot of memories, most of which were not about fish, either. Fishing must a little bit like golf if it's not about fish! Glad you were able to get Adjustor working satisfactorily.

Hi, Dave, If you can arrange all the verticals in one folder and all the horizontals in another, you can create two "actions" in Photoshop, one which resizes to the desired size for verticals and the other for horizontals. Then you can use the "batch" process to automatically operate on each folder, using the appropriate new "actions". (Maybe someone more conversant with Photoshop automation will have a better suggestion that will apply to both verticals and horizontals). The other solution is to use a freeware program called IrfanView. With this program you can set both the desired maximum height, and the maximum desired width, and both verticals and horizontals can be batch-resized within these criteria, while retaining their proportionality. Hope this helps. If not, please feel free to ask for more-detailed assistance.