alrobin

bjf123, The most reliable way to do this is to copy the songs into a wave editor such as Cool Edit 2000, Acoustica, Cubase VST, Creative Labs wave editor, etc., and "mix" them down into one file, after setting the desired interval between the two. Or, you could edit each song separately in the way described above, and cut off some of the dead space which must exist at the beginning or ending of one or more of the songs, and save them back as separate files.

Version 3.00 of "PTE Adjustor" is now official. You can download it here: Adjustor 3.00 . It includes the "Dark-Table", useful for rearranging images in a format directly compatible with PicturesToExe, without having to re-number them. Now I can go on holiday!

Tripstrilles, This would be a useful feature to build into the "Adjustor" model. Maybe when I return from vacation???

Tripstrilles, If you have MS Excel 97 or 2000, you can download my Adjustor spreadsheet model, and use it to make multiple changes to the timing in a single operation. Adjustor exposes all of the timing parameters in the .pte file. You can then change any of the times, unless they are set to "default", in which case you can only change the "default" time until it is first set up as "customized" in PTE.

Christopher, I tried your cursing technique, but it didn't work at all. Just helped me release a bit of steam. Please provide more details.

Good luck with the show, rwav! Going before a live audience is always a good test for the technology, as well as one's nerves! By the way, do you have a CD burner with your pc? If so, try ripping the tracks with it, at 44.1 khz, and see if that makes a difference.

I'll be more of an authority on that when I return from holidays!

Harold, I agree with your suggestion. This is exactly why, IMHO, most conflicts occur - when the maker goes by the book, watches the grey lines, and still the show acts up. I always set up a show on my slower pc and then run it on the laptop for audiences. However, on the latest show I made, I thought I had left plenty of space after each dissolve (approx .5 sec), and still there were timing glitches. My suggestion to Igor on this would be that if these differing pc time constraints can't be designed around, then PTE should be made less sensitive to them. For example, when a conflict occurs, the program should be designed to jump to the end of the transition, and then carry on with the next transition. As it is now, some funny things happen, such as a slide suddenly going black, and then starting to dissolve again. Just jumping to the end of that transition, and then carrying on would be less noticeable, and more acceptable. This is how the electromechanical system I designed once worked.

Yes, Harold and Jim, I agree with you 100% about the priorities here. (I only reiterated the previous request to Igor to do something about the confusion around Project Name because this thread started out with a complaint related to project name, and Igor agreed to fix it). I thought that while he was at it he could fix the ambiguity around "project" and "file" names. Glad we're on the same wave-length!

Maybe in other parts of the world you use different terminology, and different conventions. I can only speak from what I'm used to, so please take this in consideration when you read my ideas on this. IMHO, (the H stands for "humble", not "honest" ), when I say "save", I am asking the pc to save a file. (It could care less what the project is. Unless, of course, it is saving a "workbook" or "project" under that name.) However, with PTE, there is no "project" file (e.g. a ".prj" file, as there is in Visual Basic, or Visual C++, or Excel, etc., unless I'm missing something). There is just a file name (a ".pte" file). Of course it's the latest representative of that project, but the file itself is just a .pte file, not a .prj file, and may be different from the name of the file under which that project was saved originally. So, it's important to know that, and which file it is, when you go to re-save your "project".

Thanks, Bob (and you're welcome, too! ) Actually, the holiday is on hold at the moment, waiting for the new grandchild to come along. So, I'm taking advantage of the delay to get my input in to the forum before we hit the road! Wish it would hurry up, though - it's coooooooold up here! Coldest March 3rd on record yesterday! (-30 deg C).

Barb, If it's still a problem and if you email me the ".pte" file, I will have a look at and see if anything looks out of place. (Don't need the music or images.)

Did you change the default transition timing by any chance to "no transition" ("cut")? If you want to email me your ".pte" file (without any images or music), I can have a look at it in "Adjustor" and see what is going on.

Igor, While you're at it, how about adding the name of the file, too. To me, this would be the most important information.

Igor, Any chance of getting this patched up in the next beta version?

I would be interested in hearing more details on how you did this.

I have tried to use MusicMatch JukeBox to rip CD's, but can't even get it to detect the fact that there is a music CD on-board. There is no problem with either AudioGrabber, Roxio (CD writer, "CD Direct"), or Windows Media Player (records in WMA format, unfortunately).

Colin, Welcome to the Forum!! You should find lots of interesting chat here, as well as answers to your most burning questions about PTE and digital AV in general. To understand your problem, you should be aware that due to overhead in handling the transitions at the same time as the music, etc., and the fact that some pc's do this more quickly than others (faster processors, more video RAM, etc,) the image times could easily be out of sync with the music on different pc's. The music is sacrosanct - no variations in speed, or delays in running, are allowed. Hence, if something has to give, the video suffers. You can see this effect when you run a video clip from the internet on a slow pc - the video can become quite jerky. (actually the sound can suffer, too, but this usually means that something is really missing! ) With PTE, the only way to attempt to make the images and sound coincide is to use synchronization, either automatic, or programmed, using the timeline. Even here, however, problems sometimes arise when the processor can't show the images in time to keep up with the sound. In this case you will observe some wierd effects, such as some images "blinking", or the sound refusing to play, etc. My laptop is the opposite to yours - it has more resources than my desktop, so shows run much better on it than on the other pc. Hope this helps.

cc, I looked at your GIF's, and even if you make only the true white portion transparent, it will still not look right on a dark background (it's ok on white). I had the same problem importing the GIF for a website link I wanted to add, and it looked good on white, but terrible on a dark web page (ken, no comments, please!! ) For it to look good on dark, you have to draw the graphic without smoothing effects. In other words, use hard edges between the colours so there won't be any distracting "off-whites" (or "off-darks", if you are using a dark image on a white background, but they don't look as bad as off-whites on a dark background.) Kapiche?

It's too awkward and cumbersome! Typical MS - they jam so many features into a program it becomes non-user-friendly (could be a lesson here for PTE ) I became so thoroughly confused with the status of my files, and not knowing which was the most recent, etc, that I gave up on it.

Manny, I think you will find CoolEdit 2000 will do everything that Audacity will do, and much more. It certainly meets all of my requirements for sound recording, editing, conversions, etc.

That's great, Igor! Will we have a chance to vote on the category names first, or at least express our views?

Thanks for the upgrades, Igor. However, there is still a bug in the "save file" procedure. This was pointed out several weeks ago. When you "save as", you are prompted with the name of the project, not the name of the file you are saving, so you always have to type in the name of the file, or get it from the list of potential files, before continuing to save. If we were saving "projects" this would make sense, but we are not. We are saving "files" (under the same project name, perhaps) so we should see the name of the "file" when we "save as". At the moment, I don't really know whether the file would save as the project name or the file name if I were to just "save" the file, so I never take a chance.

No, Adjustor just sets the times and order of the slides. Maybe I'll add the other parameters someday, too.

rwav, Glad you got your show to run OK. "16-bit" is the one to use when ripping cd's - with a sampling rate of 44.1 khz, as Guido mentioned.