alrobin

Andrew, It seems to be dependent on the monitor settings. If I view the show at the maximum resolution of 1280x1024, or 1280x960, there are no white lines. However, if I set the resolution to 1024x768, the white lines are very noticeable. I noticed that the vertical dimension of the verticals is greater than that of the horizontals. Maybe if you resize the verticals so that PTE doesn't have to reduce them "on the fly" so much, they will behave in the manner expected? They seem to be 1200 pixels in the vertical dimension, whereas the horizontals are only 600 - quite a difference.

Dave, It's a small utility that I described HERE (second page, I believe). Let me know if you can't find it.

It does take a bit more storage at "Invision", but they probably have lots of room for it. It saves on storage at your own site.

Lin, You probably know this already, but you can automatically add a thumbnail of an image by browsing for it under "File attachment" and then clicking on "Add this attachment", waiting for it to "find" it, and then NOT clicking "Add into Post".

Ken, I envy you being so close to all that desert down there. Have you had any rain yet this spring? When we went through in mid-Feb it was dry as a bone. Needless to say, we were way too early for the flowers. Any bluebonnets out? I'll have to get your son's coordinates before our next trip down that way, just in case we run into any trouble with the law!

Ken, The "levels" are used to associate a "sub-object" with the properties of the object to which it is "attached". You're familiar with "object-oriented" computer programming. It's the same sort of idea, except applied to "objects" in PTE. You can see all this in action in the script file for your PTE project if you open it in a text editor. For instance, you can associate a number of objects with one on a higher "level", and by simpling panning and zooming and rotating the main object, all of the sub-objects will behave in the same way. So, you don't have to create the same "hitpoints" for each image - just the one at the higher "level" with which they are all associated. Attached is an example - "van-2" is "subservient" (or at a lower "level" than) to "Rectangle", which is, in turn, a "sub-object" of "background" (the dark slide).

Andrew, Do you superimpose your verticals over a dark slide? If so, it could be caused by a slight mis-alignment of the dark slide? I find I have to carefully center the dark slide, too, in the image area. You can do it easily by right-clicking on that object's name, for each hitpoint location, and selecting "Put to center". Or, it could be the size of the dark slide. Check to see that it is exactly the intended screen size (or larger), and that there is no white line at the top edge.

Ken, I had the same experience with a travelogue I'm working on. I found that the size of the "png" image was influenced by which object "level" I was importing to. It's easy to adjust the zoom factor back to "100", though.

Roger, V.5 runs very well on my HP Pavillion zd8000-series wide-screen laptop (3.2 GHz P4 with ATI Radeon X600 card, e/w 128 Mb video RAM). I have to clear out all other operating programs, though, with "EndItAll" to make the transitions run smoothly.

Andrew, I notice that your slideshow repeats on-cue much more accurately than before. What did you do to sync it more closely?

Robert, That is true, especially given the clever way that Igor has implemented the new effects. One additional feature that would complete the capability would be the ability to have a mini-scenario repeat over and over while "riding along" on a slower-moving pan, for instance.

Ken, I've had the same experience with others' Yahoo sites too.

Ligia, You may have to hit the "Refresh" button a couple of times as I did, but after a couple of tries I got through.

That's the way I read Ken's response, too. There is a work-around to lessen the inconvenience, however, and that is to add a long period of silence to the end of the music, and end the show on a black slide with a note to the viewer to press "Esc".

Good news, Igor! We knew you could do it! Looking forward to all the new features and enhanced capabilities!

Ken, I like the effect - really separates the foreground and background, and puts more emphasis on the foreground image. At least we will be able to simulate it in v.5 using Photoshop.

We spent a week in Big Bend Nat'l Park in Texas, then a few days at Ft. Davis, then on to White Sands, Tucson, Anza Boreago, and then north just east of LA, spent a few days at Los Osos, and then headed up to Seattle where we stayed for a week and a half with our son and his family. Then up to the Okanagan in BC and back east the Canadian route. 15,000 km altogether. The best places were Big Bend and Anza Boreago. 5 or 6 years ago we spent some time in the east Mohave (near Baker), and 3 years ago a few days in Joshua Tree park on our way out west. Nice country - I love the desert.

"Center" moves the "centre" for the object highlighted so that you can rotate it around a "lopsided" centre point. There's always something new to discover with PTE! (It took me a while to figure this out too). "Right-click / Put to center" is also a useful function for centering objects in the window.

Andrew, I found that the images in question were about a half-second too late on the first pass. I have noticed an anomaly with the new v.5. Even if you make sure you have lots of space at the end, the show can still drift out of sync on further passes. Don't know if your show is going to be played over and over or not, but you might want to check out the sync on the 4th or 5th pass. I noticed when I played it, that on the second pass the images and music were in-sync, but on later passes, the images appeared too early. I corrected for this with one of my experimental shows by changing slightly the timing "on-screen" of the last image in "Customize slide". I think that until Igor has completed development of all the synchronization features in v. 5 that we will have to put up with some minor inconveniences like this, and be careful how we distribute our shows.

Gary, You're welcome. Two heads are usually better than one, anyway!

Jeff, One adds an empty "rectangle" and the other an opaque, gradient-filled "rectangle". The purpose of the former is to provide a platform on which to add objects so their parameters can be changed as a group. Haven't found a use for the opaque rectangle yet. The > button is for "Re-do", the opposite of "Un-do"..

Jim, The best way to learn this stuff is to just dive in and experiment with it. It's too bad we didn't connect sooner - I was through LA in mid-March on holidays, and could have used a beer after a month in the desert in various points east of there!

"Timeline / Timed points / Arrange selected points". Dave called them "slides", but he probably meant "points".

However, Gary, you raise a good point. I usually forget how many edits I make by the time I'm done, and so simply "undoing" does not give me everything I need, as I don't know how many times to click "undo". It would be nice, as you mentioned, to have the "x" return to the main window without any of the changes (just like it does in the main timeline), and have another button marked "OK" to accept the changes. Conversely, it would be ok to have an additional button that would undo all of the changes, not just the latest one.

Gary, Don't give up - it's complicated, but after working with it for a while, you will "get the hang of it" as they say. You're right, the new slide may appear on the timeline, but only because it displaces another one. If you add it to the end of the show instead of somewhere in the middle, I'm sure you will find that it does not appear on the timeline under this option until you "manually" add it by clicking on "new transition" in the timeline window. Be sure to position the cursor to where you want the new transition, however (i.e. near the end of the timeline). If you place the cursor between two slides, a new transition will appear there, but it will not be the "new" slide unless you move the new slide to that relative position in the slide list as well. The timeline always displays images in the same order as on the slide list (for obvious reasons).