alrobin

Thedom, I love it! Amazing demonstration of both your own creativity and PTE's capability. I can tell - we're going to have fun with this v.5!!!

Igor, This is an answer to our prayers! You the man!!! This will also keep us from accidentally clicking on the wrong object and moving it by mistake, something I have done many times already when working with v.5.

Charley, Again, there is a lot of discussion on this topic on the past posts on the Forum. Best way to ensure uniform timing is to synchronize your show to music.

Charley, Welcome to the Forum! There is a lot of information about this in previous posts - do a search for "scale" or "position". One way to fix the objects is to turn on "Windowed mode" in "Project Options / Screen". Or, you could wait for v.5.0 which retains the size and position relationship between objects in Full-screen mode..

Great idea, Robert. And in v.5 it is would be a simple matter to zip everything up and upload to a central repository.

Robert, I don't mean to criticize your suggestion, as the more options there are available, the more user-friendly PTE becomes. Additional features do come at a price, however. Doesn't adding an object require the same capability as adding a transition to the timeline? Often in the timeline view, the slide one wants to insert between two slides is already on the slide list. However, the "Insert slide" function brings up a light-table, where one can now browse to any folder one wishes, including the "file list", which also may contain the same slides as already on the slide list. I just want to point out that if one has set up a single folder to use as a "File list", as is recommended, then it is easy to select that folder, in O/A mode, to choose whatever object one wants to use, whether it is already on the slide list or not. I really like the addition of an "Explorer"-like list in addition to the "File list" in the main window. Likewise, I appreciate the use of a "normal" windows browse mode with which to choose objects in the O/A window. It is possible to choose whatever file format one wants (details, thumbnails, etc.), and it is easy to browse to the folder representing the "file list". Just my personal thoughts on this.

Brian, my key is called "PTE.KEY" - don't know if this makes a difference. Also, your screenshot showed some extra characters - mine looks like this:

Bill, Save it as a ".png" file. And you will probably have to resize it in O/A.

Lin, The dark slide is actually redundant - I'm just in the habit of starting out with a dark slide. Also, the bottom map is just a sliver of the map, along the line of the route, in order to save on file size, and it looks gross if used as the main object. I first used a rectangle with the corners cut off, for where the road changed direction a bit, but found it was too complicated to "program", and retain a smooth forward movement. If the road changed direction radically, perhaps two red rectangles would have to be used, as you say. The red circle idea is a good one, but I found that a feathered edge solved the problem of the hard oblique line, and is less complicated. Thedom, The map doesn't follow the direction of the red rectangle. The two could be set up, one dependent on the other, but I wanted to be able to pause the line at "Oklahoma" while showing the snow scene, just for some variety, so I wanted the two objects to move independently. Igor, Do you get it yet? I think you posted your query while I was writing up the response to Bill.

Same link as the first version - http://www.alrobinson.com/BigBend_demo.zip .

Bill, The red object was created in Photoshop - just filled a long narrow rectangle large enough to completely cover the red line on the map. Then I erased the travel route on a copy of the map, so that the erased area would be transparent, saved it as a "png" file, and sandwiched the three together, with the erased route on top, the red rectangle "below" it, and the un-touched copy of the map as the base. I then put the maps in motion (so that the erased copy would exactly track with the bottom unretouched version). Lastly, I positioned the red rectangle at the top of the screen, and arranged it so that it would move downward behind the transparent travel line, thus making it turn red. Of course the un-travelled portion remains unseen, as it is overlaid over an exact copy of the unretouched map. Really simple, but it looks like magic! p.s. I feathered the leading edge of the red rectangle, and it greatly improves the appearance of the moving red line (removes the hard edge which at times takes on a sharp knife-edge appearance. I replaced the example on my web page with the modified version.)

Theo, All of the transitions have not yet been implemented in v.5 - only fade and circle. Speaking of map lines, I have posted an example I'm using in a travelogue of a recent trip HERE on my website. Or, you can type in: "http://www.alrobinson.com/BigBend_demo.zip" on the browser address line. You can sure do some neat stuff with this new version of PTE! Our biggest challenge will be in not over-using it in all of our slideshows. I tend to get carried away with the technology, myself!

Robert, Make sure you have DirectX 9 - it comes with Win XP, SP-2.

Ken, Try clicking on your screenshot - I just get another view of the icon.

Thedom, Sorry, I must have done something wrong when I tested your suggestion - I wanted to retain all the characteristics of each object copied, and after trying it out again, I see that the new objects do retain all of the "pan", "zoom" and "rotate" characteristics of the original objects. My mistake! Call me an Irish tree-toad! And, I understand the reason for deleting the original objects, too, unless, of course, you do still want to keep them alive.

That is great news, Lin! Any chance of posting the two shows? The ability to accept hi-resolution images and apply Ken Burns effects to them not only gives PTE an edge over competitive slide show programs, but also makes a move to video less compelling.

Thedom, Maybe I'm more dense than usual today, but I don't quite get it. Why would you delete the two objects after copying them to the frame? I tried copying two objects to a new frame, and all I ended up with were two objects and a frame with no actions selected. Then when I deleted the objects, I ended up with an empty frame with no hitpoints or actions selected. ??

Jeff, You have to group them onto some other object, and you may not want to use an image or dark slide for this purpose. (You will notice that there is no longer a "Group" button in the O/A window any more.) There are probably other reasons for using a rectangle "frame" - less memory required, less clutter in the window, etc.

CHP, Welcome to the Forum. How have you received your registration key - as an attachment to an email? If so, it may be embedded into the message of the email and not really "attached". There has been a lot of discussion on the forum regarding this situation, which you can find if you do a search of "registration" and the read all of the resulting postings. If you are still un-successful, post back here and someone will probably be able to help you.

Jeff, I believe that "hold time points" was added to assist in proper adding of transition points when adding slides to the slide list. It has no value in the timeline view as there it is possible to add transition points where one desires.

Peter, It sounds like you had an earlier version of PTE 4.46. Igor did some experimenting when a few of us had problems similar to yours, and issued a "beta 3" version of 4.46 which cleared up the problem. See the Forum discussion on this problem HERE . You should perhaps download the latest "official" version of PTE (4.48) from the Wnsoft website and use that instead.

Jeff, That is correct - if you merely add a rectangle (or "frame"), without any objects indented directly below it, then it has no effect on anything else in the list of objects. However, if you add a frame or rectangle, and then add a number of sub-objects "attached", or secondary to the frame or rectangle, then whatever action you give the frame or rectangle will be applied to the individual objects, in addition to whatever different actions you apply directly to the objects themselves.

Theo, Welcome to the Forum! I'm not sure how you managed a batch re-sizing on slides coming from a lot of different folders. However, assuming that you found a way to do it, then all you have to do to preserve the order in the slide list is to temporarily rename the original folder(s) to "my_folder.old" or something like that, and rename the new folder(s) to the same name as the original folders. The batch-resized slides should then appear in the same order in the slide list. However, it is best, as Jeff says, to first collect all your images in one folder, not only to preserve the slide order, but also so you can still find the slides after a period of time when you may have made changes to the original folders and their locations, and suddenly find that you can no longer open your original project. If you create a "template" once your slide show is complete, you will collect all your project files, including copies of the images, into a single "template" folder (located where your PTE program was installed.) Save this, and you will still be able to open your PTE project.

Don't forget Guido's site, too: http://www.guru.to.it/ .

Another thing I noticed with a monitor setting of 1024x768, and I suspect it may be a change in the way PTE displays images on a "fit to screen" basis, the verticals do not extend to the maximum window size, even though their height in pixels is greater than the vertical screen dimension.