alrobin

I have found Brinkster to be excellent, both for my own account, and also for the one we took out for the SuperCircuit - very fast technical support (via real-time chat facility) and low prices. Actually they have a deal on now whereby present users will receive a 50% commission for referring others. Sooo .... if you contact them, be sure to use this URL: Brinkster This way you will also be contributing to the SuperCircuit if you do decide to go with them.

And it may be worth pointing out too for those new to the Forum that sometimes the key comes as an addendum to an email instead of an attached file. If that happens, you can find out how to de-cypher it from some of the past postings to the Forum (search for registration), or post a message here and we will tell you how to activate it. Whatever you do, don't despair - a year from now you will be more than happy you were patient and stuck with PTE.

Bravo to Igor! He always tries to please everyone! and usually succeeds!

In my operating system (Win XP) I have to right click on the particular show I want and then choose "Save target as". It should then present a dialogue box allowing you to choose where to save the ".mov" file.

Patrick, This is a wonderful tour of a very beautiful city! Especially at night. I enjoyed your slideshow very much - the synching was right on, and I liked the change in tempo and mood for the night sequences. And the images are very good, too. I think this is one of your best shows.

Yes, you could have a slightly longer pause between each image of the pan, and say something like "And then continuing on, we see that ...." or "I took time out here to go to the washroom .... "

Only 4 more days, and counting! But just so's we're not disappointed, let's not forget that Christmas comes later in Russia than here in the Americas! But, Igor, we'll be happy even if 5.0 isn't available until Christmas 2006, so be sure to take time off and enjoy the Holidays yourself with your friends and family. And make sure you give Alexey a little time off too! All the best of the Season to you and all your team!

Ralph, That works fine for me. And, in a synched show, if you didn't want to use Granot's excellent utility, you could simply activate "Run external application" in "Customize slide" and make sure there is time on the timeline for the video to complete before continuing on with the next slide. There would also probably have to be a gap of silence in the music while the video is running, but not necessarily, as everything would still be in sync. You would have to enable the mouse cursor, though, so that the video could be turned off when completed, as the PTE show will go on uninterrupted. And you could provide a button as you suggested to pause the show at that point while you turned off the video.

Igor, Would it be possible in version 5 to make "permit the control of show" the default mode, and give the maker the option to switch it off if desired? Then more shows would permit pausing. Or, even better, provide the capability to pause all shows, whether the maker "permitted control of show" or not?

morturn, I like this show very much - the haunting music and lovely B&W images, nicely synchronized, work very well with the subject. The misty backgrounds are also very effective as are the "cut-aways" to the closeups of the local flora.

Lin, I agree with you on this - it is so frustrating to be called away from watching a show and not be able to pause it so you don't have to start all over again from the beginning. There should be some universal command that would handle this for every show. Or, at least make it the default situation which a maker could over-ride if he or she wished to, for some reason.

I was on the Forum when it happened, too, and I did not get any warnings from AVG. Just all of a sudden a blank page when I tried to access a thread.

The "Photoshop Guru", Russell Brown, also recommends the "LAB" method.

Russell Brown, the "Photoshop Guru", recommends a method for sharpening whereby two copies of the main layer are created, and then the "unsharp mask" filter is applied to each, but selecting "darken" mode for the one and "lighten" for the other. The two resulting layers are then overlaid over the original using different opacities. The result is a more delicate sharpening than obtained by just applying "unsharp mask". I suspect that if one examined what is really happening with these different options, that the end-result might be identical, just 2 different ways of getting to the same place.

Fuzzy, Theoretically, you should be able to call up a video file from the "Run external application" feature in PTE, either at the end of a sequence of images, or in "Customize slide / Run external application". However, I have not found this to work satisfactorily - probably because video requires all of the pc's resources to run smoothly, particularly at full-screen. I experimented with AVI files, but ended up having to get out of PTE in order to run the video file. Have you experimented with this feature at all? It would be interesting to know if anyone has successfully used this feature with video.

John, It's not possible in the current system to avoid the pause between panned images as each image is treated separately, with it's own transition, and we know already that in PTE there must be a slight space between transitions. However, the faster and more powerful one's pc system, the shorter the time required between pans. It can be less than 1/10 sec on high-end systems, but there is still a perceptible stop in the action, which can be disconcerting. One way to "live" with the present situation is to time the start of each pan with the music, and allow longer delays between images so that the pauses appear to be intentional and fit in with the music. The duration of each pan would also have to be in sync with the particular music you are using.

Thanks, Ralph! It's a good summary. I had no idea it was so simple!

Dave, You can get a vertical and horizontal pan in PTE by using the "Push" transitions. And you are right, you have to have a large image already prepared, and then cut it up in an image editor into pieces the size of the resolution at which you are making your show, with the edges of each adjacent image matching perfectly. You also have to have your monitor set at the same resolution as the images to avoid a gap between them. I put together a small spreadsheet which gives me the top-left pixel address for each segment of the larger image, according to how large the transition is and how many segments are required for the pan. Then you simply set the cursor at each address in turn and "draw" a selection rectangle the size of the image you want. Then you can set up the pan, either for automatic motion from one image to the next, or under button control on each segment. If you are curious, you can download it from this PAGE of my web site. When Igor implements the Ken Burns effects, we should have the option of either pan/zoom in any direction, or continuing to pan large high-quality images as with the present arrangement.

Maybe I can put together some ads and sell them to the politicians!

Thanks, Fred, & Ralph, & Ken for your kind advice. Through your concerted efforts I was able to finally get Nero to burn a viewable dvd for me, so it's onward and upward to try a full-blown multi-show dvd with titles and menus, etc. It actually looked better than I had expected. Will report on my progress. As I mentioned to Ken & Ralph, I discovered that the PTE "Push" transition (pan) doesn't translate too well into video. "Shimmer", and "jerky" in places. Have to experiment some more. Gives me something to do while waiting for Santa.

Yes, I'm using the full suite of Nero (version 6 - "the ultimate CD/DVD burning suite"). I found the options for doing titles and menus less user-friendly than with Pinnacle, plus the fact that the rendered shows would only play back at high-speed and not like in the original PTE show - something was off with the timing. Menus and titles in Pinnacle are fairly straight-forward, as you just dump things onto a timeline, but as I said before, I couldn't get multiple shows to record. So, I'll try again with my laptop and see if I have the same problem. I also had a problem running some DVD's with my desktop DVD player around that time so suspect there may be a common problem with either my hardware or software. I didn't really have time to follow it up, but will do so now while I have some time before Xmas.

Thanks, Ken - good idea. I didn't think of that. Actually, the connection was so slow that I gave up. Will try again later.

Thanks, Fred, for your concern and offer of help. Maybe I can get a Christmas DVD made up to send to my non-pc friends and relatives! I don't have ULead, (yet), but I have tried Pinnacle and Nero and Premiere "elements". Also "DVD-It" (I think) and at least one other "freebie" program. Do you also need to use "TempGen" along with Movie Factory? I did think I was going to have to prepare a DVD once, and that is the main reason for my interest in it, but like most things, if you wait long enough, the urge expired. I did get the menus working in Pinnacle, and multiple shows installed, but each show was the same. For some reason, the program would not recognize my other temporary "avi" files. I'll try it out again on my new laptop, as it's set up for multimedia priority and has a dvd burner. It would also be interesting to see how the results look when projected at higher resolution than on the TV monitor. If that doesn't work, I guess I'll have to look around for a copy of "Movie Factory", as that seems to be the one that is most popular and most effective. I'll let you know how I make out. I promise!

Forgive me for belabouring this, but here I pressed "Quote" and "Reply" to see what the difference is. And, it doesn't seem to make any difference! Still don't know what the "Quote" button is for. I think I figured it out. Here I pressed "Quote", waited for it to turn red, and then pressed "Add Reply". Your previous posting is thereby quoted. However, it was all added to my previously posted message! Igor, it be very useful to be able to highlight a section in a particular posting, and then press "Quote" to repeat only the section highlighted.

Bob, "Infuriate" is the operative word here. I still haven't been able to use any of this software to burn several shows and set up a menu so that I can pick and choose between them. And, I'm following all the rules such as leaving each of the original shows open in a separate instance of PTE, until they are all burned to disk, etc. I've also tried saving the mpeg file on the HD before copying to disk, to no avail. For me, fortunately, this is all academic, as I don't have a particular need to convert to DVD, but it is frustrating.