alrobin

Igor, The new pre-release version still doesn't come anywhere close to the ability of v 4.48 in handling close transitions. I created an animated 3-d text consisting of 400 images, and set each duration equal to 10 ms. In version 4.48 it spins around 360 degrees in 40 seconds (showing each one of these images, at a rate of .1 sec per image), and is very smooth. I numbered them so I could tell how many images I was actually seeing. (The show was non-synched, and no music is involved.) Then I imported the same demo into v 5, set the duration to 10 ms, disabled hardware acceleration, and made each slide a "cut" (or quick transition). When this version spins I see only about every 5th image and the motion is very jerky. However, it takes only 20 seconds for a complete revolution. Here's another interesting comparison: the EXE file for the v.4.48 demo is 12.6 Mb, while the file for the v.5 demo (same 400 image files) is 32.5 Mb. Maybe this additional overhead is bogging it down?? Also, disabling "hardware acceleration" doesn't seem to make any difference to the performance in the v.5 demo. The images are all 1280x768 GIF files, around 35 kb each. No additional objects are used in either version.

Precisely! I used exactly the same height for each title file, and exactly the same font. The lengths were different because there were more letters in some titles than in others. Importing these into O&A produced some wildly different results due to the "fit to screen" option. If I had made each file the same length as well, all results would have been consistent - consistently too large for them all to fit on the screen. However, choosing "original" mode solves the problem.

Igor, would you please make up your mind - I remember one time you recommending that I use "GIF's" instead of jpegs for my PTE tutorial - now you're recommending "PNG's" instead! But, all kidding aside, you are right, as usual - I should have saved them as "PNG" files, as that way I would have avoided all the little bits of fluff on the edges. However, in my actual application I had a very light background, which blended in with most of the light artifacts. And, I also wanted to keep the file sizes small and still be able to use my preferred fonts and blending options.

Not quite - only if you choose the "original" mode - otherwise the size of the text is affected by the size of the image, which may not be the same for all labels being added. Of course if you keep the image size the same when you are adding text and saving the files, the labels will all be the same size when imported into O&A - however, they may not be the size that you want (as per my example in a previous post), so the best way to import them may be to use the "original" mode option. Otherwise you may have to resize them in O&A, which, if you have a lot of labels in a tight space, could be messy. Right, that's why. I'm not worried about the speed of the action - only the ability to obtain the text font and characteristics that I want, and to ensure that these will be the same for all viewers. I prefer to "rasterize" in Photoshop where I have more options and more control.

Lin, Just a further clarification. The text files are transparent "GIF's", so they are treated just like "normal" files - not text, per se.

Igor, That's good news. Also, glad to hear PTE is so popular - that's a good sign! All the best!

I just spent several hours importing and resizing titles from Photoshop into an Introduction show, and having to resize each one in order to place them properly onto the main slide. This is the effect I was getting: The problem was that even though all title images were the same height, all were of varying widths, so were "fitted" to the main slide as different sizes in O&A. I had completely forgoten about the "Original" setting, which would have saved me considerable time and effort: As long as the titles are placed as "children" of the main slide, and as long as it is made to "fit to slide", the titles themselves will remain consistently scaled onto the main image. I'm posting this just in case someone else out there is experiencing the same problem.

Tom, Welcome to the Forum! Try turning off the "Synchronization" option, and select "Customize slide / Main / Timing / Stop at the end of this slide" for each slide you want to pause on. Or, you can use the manual method by using the Navigation bar. Another way is to set the duration to 5000 seconds for each slide where you want to stop. Hope this helps.

Peter, Check "Customize Slide / Run external application", then browse for the "AVI" file, or type in the file name. You can also create a button in "O&A" (or Object Editor in version 4.48) and "program" it in "properties" to open an external file (i.e. your AVI file). You should check first to see whether you have a player assigned to play "AVI" files. (just double click on an AVI file in Windows Explorer, and see if it opens).

Yes, that's unfortunate - MS made some major changes to Excel and VBA when they updated to Office 2000, and I took time to update the previous Adjustor for PTE v.4 to make it compatible. Unfortunately, I don't have time at the moment to go back and create a special version for v.5 in Office 97. JC's "Sy(P) v.2" will probably work for you, and others having problems with Adjustor, when he gets it updated.

Judy, You've made my day! So glad you got it working, and that it's not a bug in the programming! Now if we could just get Dom's copy working too, everyone would be happy!

Lin, Thanks for the plug, but unfortunately my Adjustor model does not yet collect any data on individual keypoints within a slide - only duration and transition times for the slides themselves. Next beta!

Bob, Yes, it starts with "REGEDIT4", and has the following format: REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WnSoft\VideoBuilder] "Key"="xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx=" where "xxxxx...." are a bunch of miscellaneous characters.

Hi, Judy, You need to open "References" from a blank spreadsheet (before you open "Adjustor"). The model is password protected, so you won't be able to open any of the macros themselves. However, the "References" items for your system should be available from a blank, unprotected spreadsheet. The difficulty in running could mean you need to add another "Library reference item" (I have 4 of them ticked off in my version of Excel), or it could mean that you need SP2. Hope this helps some.

I understand the problem, but each main image is in fact an object in O&A - I wonder if rearranging each main image in question so that each was an object of an empty frame would make a difference, and make positioning the next one any easier. You could maybe position it on the image before it as an object on that image, and then copy it onto the next image and make it the main image there. I haven't played around with this, so don't know if this would be of any help in lining up or not. An interesting challenge!

Lin, Another way to accomplish an exact placement might be to set up the two slides and copy the object(s) in question from one slide to the next - that way it(they) will start out in precisely the same position as on the original slide.

Another of my favourite Digital Photo magazines: Digital PhotoPro (USA)

"Canadian Camera" - official publication of the Canadian Association for Photographic Art . Editor-in-chief: Joy McDonell, email .

For those having problems opening and running Adjustor, you need to make sure you have certain visual basic "references" available in your Excel setup. Open MS Excel, and click on "Tools/Macro/Visual Basic Editor" to open the "MS Visual Basic" page. On the VB page, click on "Tools/References" to open the "Available References" menu. Make sure you have the following 5 items clicked as shown in the screenshot below - Visual Basic for Applications - MS Excel 9.0 Object Library (or equivalent for your version of Excel) - OLE Automation - MS Office 9.0 Object Library (or equivalent) - MS Forms 2.0 Object Library The attached screenshots illustrate where to locate these items.

Igor, "Photo Life" Canada

Luc, That's great - so the problems others are having are not because it's Excel 2003.

Good point!

Bob, You can add background music to a particular slide if you wish in "Customize slide". However, you have to turn "Synchronize music and slides" off, and realize that any music playing under "Project options" will stop as soon as a slide with music assigned is reached. You can also dedicate sounds and music, slide by slide, on the "Sound" line in the main window (bottom right), but if you want it to continue on past the end of each slide, make sure you check "Don't interrupt sound comment when next slide appears" on the "Proj Ops / Music" tab. Of course the ideal way to add background music is to arrange all music together into one file as Dave has suggested, and "synchronize" the show accordingly. Hope this helps.

Alain, If you click on the slide in the file list, the dimensions will show in the preview window.

Shito, Select the "Synchronize" option - the sound will start at the proper place relative to the slide selected.