alrobin

Dom, I just downloaded your slideshow (took a little over an hour), but when I clicked on the zip file, I received a message that the file could not be opened. The file I downloaded is 67.652 Mb in size.

Dom, Good to hear from you again. Am looking forward to your Libya slideshow. Unfortunately, when I tried to download today, the link was too slow (2 1/2 hours). Will try again later tonight.

Igor, I think that would be a great idea, as some shows may be meaningless without the special effects used, in which case the author might prefer that if the viewer's pc cannot handle it, the show would just not be viewable. But the author would have to specify which engine should be used, as you suggest. If no engine were specified, then the program could choose which one would be most likely to run successfully. Brian, "SnagIt" tells me it's Red:219, Green: 237, and Blue:1 . Definitely a shade of yellow, but leaning ever so slightly toward green in the spectrum! Ronnie, don't be invoking the KISS rule on me here, now, will you!

Brian, My interpretation of what Igor suggested is that the program switch would be applied to the running of the "exe" file, not the project file. I don't think I would like to have a slideshow come up all in grey if I were trying to run someone's show on an old computer.

Den, This was a method for using a "text" object with actions. As you know, normally it is not possible to assign actions to a text object. However, by overlaying a transparent gif over it, and "programming" it in "properties", actions associated with buttons are now possible with text of your choice, and without the annoying outline. .

Archive creator, eh? How does that work?

Tom, I enjoyed watching your show - the countryside portrayed is very beautiful. I would have preferred the nice images without the paratrooper or the balloon and sailboat, though. Just two small glitches: 1. There is a thin sliver of a horizontal line about mid-way up on the opening images (where the text appears as it scrolls upward - see screen-cap below, just above the cursor arrow). It is so thin, you have to view it full-screen (or at 100 % in PS) in order to see it at all in the jpeg. It also appears along the lower left-hand side of the image. 2. Just before that point in the show there seems to be a tiny glitch in the sound as well - don't know if it is caused by conflicts with my pc trying to process the moving text at the same time as the sound, or not. Otherwise, a good slideshow! Thanks for sharing it.

Tom, That is a good idea, and one that we will all have to follow if we want to distribute shows using v.5. At one time I didn't think I would ever use the "video" feature of PTE, but since I enjoy the new PZR effects, and have fun using them, I suspect that I will be using the "video" capability of PTE on a regular basis after all. Especially now that wide-screen formats are supported.

Ken & Brian, I have had my share of trouble with CD's, too, but mainly when I tried to play them on other peoples' pc's. I had a slideshow prepared on a CD once, and couldn't play it at all on our Club's pc on the night of the presentations, either directly from the CD or by transfering to the HD. I have also had problems with memory sticks - my first one was an early Sony version, and I found that I could not read it on my wife's pc until I downloaded a Sony driver for it (even though she had a USB port on her Win Me pc. Another time, I was taking our Club's contributions to an AV meet at another Club on the memory stick, and when I got there I found that their pc didn't have a USB port at all. Fortunately, it was only a matter of a half-hour drive to go back home and pick up my laptop and take it back to the meeting. Now, for important presentations, I usually try to use my own laptop. In Gilbert's case, he would likely be using the storage device mainly in a controlled environment (i.e. his own), and he would have the opportunity to test each DVD immediately after creating it to ensure it was intact, and that his drive was reading it successfully. (This is a very important step, as it allows one to repeat the process if there happens to be a glitch and the disk is unreadable for some reason or other). I have had this happen with CD's but not lately with DVD's. Of course, I haven't burned as many DVD's as CD's, either. I would also suggest that in the case of important data one should burn two or more copies of the DVD, one to use for day-to-day access of the data, as required, and one or two as backups in case the day-to-day usage results in scratches, making it unreadable. However, if one burns the DVD at the slowest speed, on the best material, it should be pretty rugged, and able to correct most oft the data affected by the odd scratch. This has been my experience, anyway, so far. But you are right, nothing is perfect. And since we are on the "bleeding edge" of all this new technology, we have to expect some unpleasant surprises, and try to be prepared for them.

Lin, He said he would be back mid-August. I think they take the summer off over in Paris, and head for the beach. Or, he's probably too busy keeping his PTE forum site up to date??? (which is a very fine professional-looking forum, I should add). See Dom's "How to precisely extract an image" thread, post # 9. Dom, hope you are enjoying the summer! By the way, you can see a portrait of Dominique HERE on his forum website. Very cool-looking dude! But, I suspect that's not really a true photo of the Dom - it's probably Laetitia's boyfriend, instead!?

Brian, In theory, I agree with you. Solid state is the way it's heading. But we ain't there yet, at least in practical terms, as Ken pointed out. My solution to Gilbert wasn't a CD, either, but a DVD, to avoid all the finnicky handling and keeping track of what shows are on which CD. And, today, it's probably the least-expensive solution, with the exception of external hard-drives, which are very affordable, but unfortunately, are bulkier and are probably less reliable for working storage than DVD's would be (they are OK for backup in case one loses one's primary source). On a final note, memory sticks and CF cards are not infallible, either. They are easily broken, and I have had difficulties reading to CF cards from my camera at times, too. I guess it all boils down to a matter of preference - for me, the DVD is the way to go at the moment.

Brian, $20 for only 512 Mb of storage? Price-wise, the CD's still win, hands-down. And we're not even comparing DVD's yet.

Unfortunately, the transparent "button" object always has an outline. However, you can create a button in Photoshop, and use that as a "picture" object.

Adobe One, Are you sure all of the images are already loaded into the "slide list". If not, and if you are adding more images in the timeline window than you already have in the "slide list", you should also make sure that "View / Auto adding of new transition points for new slides" is checked in the Timeline window. (I assume you are using PTE version 4. If not, remember that not all of the options have been activated yet in version 5).

Yes, Brian is correct - definitely burn them at a slow burn rate to reduce errors. The fewer the errors that the system has to detect and correct, the longer the data will be readable (other problems notwithstanding). As far as only lasting a year, none of my archived disks are unreadable yet, and some have lasted over 5 years so far. However, the information does deteriorate, as Brian says, so a routine copying of at the least the most important disks is advisable. It's a good idea to use high-quality disks, though, preferrable the "gold" ones, if you can get them.

Gilbert, Good to hear from you again and to hear that everything seems to be going well with your slide-show production. Running out of storage space is a good sign of success. I download all of the Beechbrook shows, as well as shows from some of the European sites, and periodically find that I am running out of space on my hard-drives. I solve the problem by offloading all of the Beechbrook shows to a DVD (not as movies, but just the straight "exe" files.) Then when I want to view a show, I copy it back to the hard drive (either on my laptop or my desktop pc). I rarely run a show directly from the CD or DVD. I also have an external hard drive, but I tend to use this mainly for backup of my own shows, documents, and images. Best of luck!

Bob, Welcome to the Forum! As you are finding out, this is a great place to learn, not only the technical aspects of PTE, but also some of the not-so-obvious considerations and techniques of slide-show creation. To address your questions in order, in addition to what John & Ron have already mentioned: 1. PS Elements is an excellent program for image editing, and you will use it a lot in creating your shows in PTE. You will also need a good sound editor such as "Audacity" (free download), or Adobe "Audition" (medium-priced, but excellent), or Steinberg's "Cubase" (expensive professional editor, both for sound and MIDI). There are other good sound editors, too. Do some searches in Google to find these and other programs. It really doesn't matter what resolution you use for your images, PTE will accommodate all formats, and modify them to suit the monitor used for viewing. You may end up with some horizontal or vertical bars above or beside them, and then you can try a different resolution until you eliminate them, or achieve the fit you want on the designated monitor. To make it easier, in the top right corner of the Object Editor you will find a menu which gives you the opportunity to test your images and objects under different monitor resolutions. 2. It's best to transfer the finished "exe" file from the CD to your laptop, but yes, it is possible to set things up so the show will autostart and run directly from the CD (or DVD). A lot depends on the quality of the CD/DVD player (how fast it the computer accesses it, etc.) and the size of the music and image files (this determines how fast the computer can pull the images into memory and have them ready for viewing in the show). You are best to use an "autorun" utility such as that available from RJL software (see Google), or you can try setting up an "autorun.inf" file (search for instructions and discussion about this on this forum.) 3. To manually sync the show to your music, click on "Timeline" and use the menus and buttons available there. (A little experimenting will help you learn what each of the options is for). You can open up a waveform to help you move the transition markers to the beats in the music. You can also preview the show on the timeline to see where you want certain images to start. My tutorial covers basic operation of the timeline. However, it does not include instructions for all of the recent additions in later versions of PTE, such as the effect of adding and deleting images under different options. As far as PTE-101 is concerned, it did take a number of hours to put together (entirely in PTE), but it was also a learning exercise for me, so I enjoyed the effort it took to complete it. I don't remember how many hours it took - probably over 100. However, having done it once, I could probably do it again in half the time. Hope this helps some. Don't hesitate to come back with specific questions after you have experimented some more with the various options and features. PTE is loaded with features, many of which remain hidden until you become more familiar with the software.

We don't very often get thunder and lightning with our snow-storms up here - must be different in Colorado.

Well, it worked OK in my test, with no discernable clipping (see screenshot). Maybe you need to adjust your monitor so as to be able to see 100% of the viewable area.

With images that large, how wide do you expect your border to be after PTE resizes the image to fit into a 1024x768 or 1280x960 pixel screen? Remember, half-pixels are not allowed.

Kevin, Can you please give us a little more information about what you are trying to do? (What software, image sizes, how you are adding the border, etc.)

Igor, Did you see my note regarding the missing end keypoints when reducing slide durations in Project Options or Customize Slide? (See post #63 in this thread). To repeat the problem, when I change the slide duration from 15 sec to 4 seconds I find that the end keypoints for all of the "O/A" objects are missing. However, the "pzr" effects are still functional. I thought that if slide duration or transition times are reduced, the keypoint times would be adjusted if necessary in proportion to the new times (i.e. if they no longer fit).

The operation of the Object Editor and the need to think ahead when it comes to placing objects has been thoroughly covered in previous posts here on the Forum, and also in my basic tutorial "PTE 101", available on Beechbrook, as well as in other PTE tutorials from time to time.

Yes, in V. 4.48, if your images are of a certain aspect ratio, and the monitor on which you are viewing them is also that configuration, then you would have to make the images "shorter" in order to leave space above them for text objects as PTE always reduces images to fit a smaller screen. You can have smaller images, and arrange to view them at the same size on a higher-resolution monitor, but not the reverse. You can preview to see how your objects will look on a different monitor by opening the Object Editor, and selecting one of the screen resolutions in the top left-hand corner. Then make adjustments accordingly. As I mentioned, this will all be corrected in Version 5.

Robert, If I start the preview (using the "loaf") from the first slide, I see the same timing as using the main "preview" button. However, if I start the preview from a slide near the middle, then the result is closer to that set up on the timeline. Wierd, eh? Igor, I think this is something you need to have a look at. Or, perhaps you know about it already, and it's one of the things you still have to perfect in v.5.