alrobin

Igor, Sorry to keep bothering you on this, but if the new "image-parent" can have the same proportions as the default "parent", why can't the rectangle be designed to have these proportions too?

JP, We can change the size of the rectangle in the "O/A" window in beta 2. Or, am I misunderstanding you? Also, if we don't use "original" for the main image, why would you use it for the "dependent" objects?

+2

Igor, I found another solution to this problem and since it works, I don't understand why the rectangle solution doesn't work. If I use another image instead of a rectangle, and set its opacity to 0, then everything works as it should. See screenshot below.

Some respondents have been associating the size of the show with liimitations in video RAM. It should be pointed out that the entire show is not loaded into video RAM but pc RAM, which is usually over 512 Mb, and can sluff over into virtual RAM if absolutely required. The video card only uses it's RAM as required during the playing of the show for individual images & objects.

Ken, I hesitate to use it as I can't proofread it as I can when translating from Spanish to English. He or she will have to use Altavista on it him or her self, I'm afraid.

Igor, I still don't understand why I can't resize the "new" rectangle so that when I copy the two other "object" rectangles and paste them to the "new" rectangle they retain their relative positions. If I group them onto the main image, they do retain their relative positions, and it looks like this "new" rectangle has the same "proportions" as the main image, (even if it is square and the main image is rectangular). So why do the small "ruler" objects appear in different positions when their "holder" rectangles are copied to the "new" rectangle? I have not changed the orientation or size of this "new" rectangle at all - just clicked to create it. It should have the same characteristics as the main image. And it has exactly the same proportions as the two rectangles copied to it. Is there anything I can do to the "new" rectangle so that when I copy over the other rectangles, the objects retain their relative position? This is important if we are to be able to freely group objects after they are laid out on an image, and move them to another "holder" rectangle so that further actions can be applied to the entire group. I have put the two examples on my website at: www.alrobinson.com/rectangle_test.zip . By the way, it is only 41 kb in size, even though it has two "project" files, for those concerned about times to download. Below is another screen-cap demonstrating the uneven shift of the two object rectangles when they are copied to the "new" rectangle. All objects retain their size, but the rectangles are spread a different distance apart. The second screen-cap shows the result when the object rectangles are copied to the base instead of to another rectangle. The object rectangles retain their relative distance apart, just as they do if copied to the main image.

Morasoft, Welcome to the forum! Unfortunately I don't write or speak Spanish, but I did open your message in Alta Vista as did Ken. I think you will find that if you first "minimize" the Neobook window so that you can "see" behind it, then when PTE starts, you should be able to click on it and bring it to the foreground. Hitting "Alt-Tab" and selecting the PTE icon might work too.

Is this a new demo, Cèlou, or the same one that you posted before?

Igor would make a living from it if he didn't have to answer all our questions! I know, I'm just as big a culprit as anyone else!!

Igor, I stumbled across another unexpected condition with use of rectangles in v.5. When I copy two existing rectangles onto a third main rectangle, and then delete the original rectangles, the relative position of any objects associated with these rectangles changes. See examples before and after below.

Igor, No problem! I'm glad I don't have your headaches! Hope I'm not making your headaches worse!

Igor, Thanks for your detailed reply. It answers many of the uncertainty around this complicated topic. I appreciate the difficulty you must be facing in trying to make compromises in order to make all the PZR features work properly in the maximum number of potential combinations of monitor sizes and resolutions, etc. As I said before, I don't see the need for "Cover screen" - I wouldn't want my images arbitrarily cropped just because someone might be viewing a show on a "non-compatible" monitor. Also, I think it would be useful if a feature could be added such that a viewer could tell ahead of time what aspect ratio a particular show was created for. Igor, I think that's a wise move - at least it will still be available for those few who want it. Your demo actually looks better in "cover screen" mode, though - gets rid of some of the distracting foliage on the sides! Thanks again for your help in clearing up some of these issues, and explaining them to us "numb-skulls"! (speaking for myself, of course.)

Igor, When I drag a keypoint from the beginning of a slide it does "lock up", but only until it reaches the end of the transition. If I "drop" it there it reverts to "0". I find this very confusing, as when I am trying to move two keypoints, one at the beginning of a slide, and the other which just happens to rest on the end of a transition, they both end up having the same timeline value, but both are in reality 1 second apart. To me this is "counter-intuitive"?? Is there a reason why the keypoint has to start counting all over when it reaches the end of the transition?

Ken, Sorry about that - when I browsed for the file in "Start/run" I had everything enclosed in quotation marks. I went back and tried it again, and this time separated out the -cover from the quotes, and it worked fine!

I thought it should work from the Start menu, but I tried, and apparently not.

Yes, I suspect that's the answer - I thought of that after I posted my message. It caught me by surprise as I wasn't expecting that.

Igor, You can download my example at www.alrobinson.com/problem_o-a_timeline.zip . I've noticed another small problem with this example. When I enter a value of "1000" in the "Keypoint Time" box for the second keypoint of the first subordinate rectangle, to move it's position along the timeline, and then press "undo", the time reverts to "100" instead of "0".

That would be useful, but it would help too, if possible, if an option were added to "project options" such that all images would be fitted to the "screen", (not just to the black rectangle), without the maker having to adjust them one by one. This is the way it works now in v.4. I think that this would be a good idea, as it might remind the maker to turn off the option where cropping would be undesirable. I have a question relating to these features: If we choose "Original" instead of "Fit to screen" or "Cover screen", will objects be scaled so that they appear in the same relative place under different screen aspect ratios?

Igor, I have noticed something peculiar relating to the object timeline. I added a rectangle (as a "child" to another rectangle), and then added a second keypont for this second rectangle which happened to correspond with the end of the grey horizontal bar marking the transition to the main image. I also rotated the rectangle 180 degrees, but it does not pan or zoom. The "time" box at the right reverted to "0", but correctly shows "1000" in the blue box just above the keypoint (the transition to the main image is also 1000 ms.) I then entered 4000 ms in the box at the right-hand side for the right-most keypoint, and 3000 ms for the first keypoint in order to shift them along the timeline 3000 ms to the right, but hoping to retain the same separation between them. However, the two keypoints ended up being 2000 ms apart instead of remaining 1000 ms apart as they should have. However, if I enter "3000" in the box for each keypoint, they end up being spaced 1 second apart as they should be, but the boxes for both keypoints each show "3000". The blue markers however, read "3000" and "4000" as they should.

Igor, Thank-you for you well-thought-out response. Like I said, you are always one step ahead of us! There is one situation that Ken (Nickles), DaveG and I have been discussing in this thread, however, that we don't see a solution for in the current v.5. This is the case where one has a certain aspect ratio selected for a show (say 16:9), and is viewing the show on a 4:3 monitor. Currently, if "fit to screen" is selected, the images (assuming they are also 16:9), will show on the narrow monitor with black bands top and bottom. I realize that this is unavoidable, in order to not crop and also to retain proportionality (not squish the image). When one views a narrow image (say 5:4) in this same show, there are black bars not only top and bottom (to be consistent with the aspect ratio of the show (16:9), but also on each ends (due to the "5:4" aspect of the image). There does not seem to be an option to allow the maker to have these odd-shaped images fill the screen, given the settings already described. "Cover screen" would do it, but there would be some cropping. Perhaps we need another option (just when we were agreeing not to over complicate things) which would allow the narrow images to be shown "fit-to screen" on all monitors being used to view the show, and still have the overall aspect ratio remain at 16:9. Any thoughts on this? Or are we missing a feature already available in v.5 which would accomplish this?

Yes, "fit to screen" is the default, and there is quite a discussion in another thread on this relatiing to aspect ratios. However, you can set individual images to "Original" if you want to force the size smaller on your laptop, but the best way to accommodate a show is to reduce the resolution of the laptop to something similar to the image sizes. I suspect Igor will be making a few changes to the default settings, etc., before v.5 is finalized. Not all of the features are activated yet in v.5, so you will find that quite a few of your settings will not have any effect.

Ken, Yes, I agree with your two points, with emphasis being on "when a slide show designer creates a slideshow with PTE 5, he should be able to create a slideshow in which all the slides "fit the screen" regardless of the aspect ratio of the screen on which the show is played. " And, I agree too that at present this is not the case. (Forget about the "16:9/dvd" statement - it was only an example. Any other aspect ratio would work just as well). What I would like to add is that, IMHO, the present design with respect to "fit to screen" should be left as is (the default condition). Usually, most slides in a show are of the same size, the exceptions being some verticals, perhaps, or some smaller images such as text which one does not want blown up and pixellated. So, as it is presently designed, by fixing the aspect ratio of the show to this most common image size in a show, all of these images will "fit the screen" on any monitor. So far so good. So, the question is how to make other-aspect-ratio images also "fit the screen" on any monitor. I suspect that the majority of designers, myself included, would prefer the presently-designed "fit-to-screen" capabilities with an option added in "O/A" to adjust individual images to a different "fit", particularly one outside the black box, if that were desired. We already have that capability when it comes to images that are smaller than the "show size", as it is a simple matter to "zoom out" in O/A and reduce their size to what is desired, relative to the black rectangle. It's the images larger than what the set aspect ratio allows that would be a problem and need an additional option to make them go "outside the box" if the designer wanted them to do so on other monitors. Does this make sense? Let's hear from some other forum members as to their preferences, now that we've thrashed this around so much that probably no one else will even understand the question, including ourselves.

Ken & Dave, Sorry to throw a "monkey-wrench" (spanner) into all this, but I'm slowly coming around to a different way of thinking on this as I alluded to in one of my posts yesterday: I think Igor is still one step ahead of us (except for "cover screen", which we will leave for him to sort out for now). I think what Igor has given us may be the best of all worlds. The current "aspect ratio" setting in "PO/Screen" sets the "ideal" aspect ratio which the designer would like to maintain. And, it actually introduces another measure of control over the show. Let me explain: if I decide, for instance, that I would like my show to have an aspect ratio of 16:9 for wide-screen or someday hd-dvd application, I can indicate this in PO/Screen. This defines the black box in the "O/A" window (unless over-ridden by "windowed mode", but we'll leave this alone for now too). Having decided upon this particular aspect ratio, it could be undesireable to have a 5:4 image all of a sudden come in "full screen", just because one is viewing the show on a 5:4 monitor. I think what Igor is doing is making sure that all images will be consistent with the 16:9 aspect ratio to avoid a sudden jump up to a larger format in cases such as this. So, the only option is to provide black borders on all sides of the image. Dave, if this is what you have been thinking all along, please forgive me for being so dense, but I really think this is the intention of Igor's development, not just an accident. The only question which remains is how one can over-ride this effect in the current design (i.e. provide the option for "true" fit to screen on any monitor, as I have been advocating up until now, and Ken is still favouring) if a show designer wishes to do so. The answer may be a simple one, but my brain is too fried right now to think it all the way through. More later. Gotta run! Hope I have made my thoughts clear

Very sexy! (The model is nice, too! ) Like I said, we are in for some wild and exciting times with the new PTE! All kidding aside, very nicely done, Thedom - I can see PTE being used on TV and all kinds of places in the future.