alrobin

Welcome, David! I'm originally from BC too (a little town in the interior called Castlegar). All the best with your AV creations! Don't hesitate to ask for help or advice - there are lots of people here who can help you out (espically with the advice )

Jane, Did you mean "how important is audio as a feature of the projector", or just "how important is audio in the slideshow"? The digital projectors we use in our photo clubs don't have an audio capability at all, but audio is provided by connecting the laptop or pc to an amplifier and from there to speakers. When watching a show at home on my pc, the audio is provided through the sound card to my external amp and speakers. As Ronnie says, though, audio is definitely an important part of AV.

"Avatar": from Hinduism: "The descent of a deity or released soul to earth in bodily form". Hence "Incarnation", "embodiment", or "manifestation". And if you put your image into an animated GIF (using software such as GIF Construction Set), it will look something like this.

Eddie, If you first uncheck "Auto adding of new transition points for new slides" in the "View" menu on the Timeline, when you add your slides to the slide list no transition points will be added to the timeline. Then, when you finally go in to add transition points to the timeline, no new slides will be added to the slide list. You will be able to add transition points then until all the slides in the slide list have been "used up".

It could be due to a transition not finishing before asking the system to start another. Check the horizontal grey bars for each transition to ensure that there is no overlap. This would not likely be a problem in "auto sync" as each transition and slide duration would be the same length, unless some slides were customized with longer transitions. However, in custom sync, it is quite common to find a few incompatible transition times.

2 to 3 mb is pretty large for an image in PTE. Unless you are playing the show back at much more than 1024 x 768 pixels in size, you should be able to get by with images in the order of half a meg or less. Try reducing the size to see what effect this has. And be sure you don't have any overlaps of the gray horizontal bars with other transitions on the timeline.

Has anyone had any experience with or knowlege of the new Canon "Realis SX50" projector? It's SXGA, so would be able to do justice to AV sequences produced with 1200 x 960 pixel images. It also uses LCOS technology which is supposed to provide a high-density range. A little pricey, but the prices are coming down gradually.

This is very good news, Igor. We're waiting with bated breath, full of expectation, for the new engine. I, too, will be happy to help with the alpha testing.

Isalazar, One reason could be that you have too little time between the end of one transition and the start of another, or even overlapping transitions with no time allowance between. You can see this occurring on the timeline if you examine the horizontal bars between each transition. Playing directly from the CD may make the problem worse as more time may be required to read from the CD and process each transition, than to read directly from the hard drive.

What kind of music files - MIDI, mp3, or wave? How long are the transitions? Are you using the music synchronization option? Are you using several music files, or just a single file 5.5 min long? It sounds as though you may have some transitions close together. What happens if you remove these slides so that all are spaced further apart? Does this make the timing more consistent? What are your pc specs (make, processor speed, RAM, HD space, etc.)? How large are the image files?

I'm baffled. Does this only happen with the one show, or have you experienced it with other shows? (i.e. with other music selections and groups of slides). Are you using several stacked pieces of music, or a single selection. If the former, try joining them together in a sound editor like Audacity. What version of PTE are you using? What PC, processor, and how much RAM and available hard-drive space? What happens if you "create" the show as is - does it stop playing shortly after the last slide added, or does it keep that slide on screen and keep playing to the end of the music? Wish I could look at your setup so I could think of something that would help.

If you have many transitions very close together the slides could get behind the music and then play catch-up. If this occurs at the end of the music, there could be a loss of sync at the end of the show.

bd, I'm not sure what to suggest, other than it might help some if you describe in detail the method you are using to add slides and transitions (e.g. by using "add slide" on the timeline, or by setting up the slide list with all the slides first and then using "new transition" on the timeline to add the transition, in time to the music).

Ron, You have to click on the slide from which you want to start in the slide list first so that it is previewed in the large preview window, and then click on the toast. In other words, you have to put it in the toaster first. You probably know that, but I thought I'd mention it in case maybe you forgot to do that and then tried to start the preview. I've never had any trouble with the program refusing to start at the designated slide.

My zip opens OK, too, but sometimes I forget to close it!

You first upload the zipped file to the appropriate folder on your web-site host server, in the same way as you would upload images for display on your web site. Then you create a hyperlink to that image on one of the pages of your web site in much the same way as you would create a link on this forum to a web site. The HTML code would look something like this: <a href="myfile.zip">My File</a> Hope this helps.

Ron, I know I'm slowly going blind because of it, but I prefer 1280 x 960 on both my 23" CRT and the 19" second screen (also CRT). 1024x768, while optimum for the majority of PTE shows posted on various web sites, doesn't seem to give me the elbow-room I seem to need, even with a dual monitor setup. At this rate, though, it won't be long before I'm back to an 800x600 configuration just like Ken's and Igor's.

Hi, Tom, Welcome to the Forum! Are you playing back the shows directly from the CD drive? If so, try saving the files first to the HD. Are you able to play a CD on the laptop? What about mp3's? Do they play OK when you double-click on an mp3 file name? It's possible that you may have a defective laptop. With PTE you need to start with simple shows and gradually increase the complexity to determine what the limitations of your own system are. What vintage is your own desktop? Will a show with say 10 slides, lasting 1 minute, play ok? (i.e. the default 4 seconds per slide, and 1.5-second transitions). Is it possible that the first show had some transitions too close together? On lesser-endowed pc's you have to leave a half-second or so between the end of one transition and the start of another. If you have any overlapping transitions, you will see glitches in the show. Hope this helps you get things sorted out. If not, please provide us with more technical details about the laptop, your desktop, and the shows you are attempting to play.

Thanks for the explanation, Isabel. I would never have thought of doing that in PBase. I don't hear any dropout at all when I play back the sound on any of your images. However, I do not see a music player for the image of the tuba player (_MG_7487) , but there is one for the previous image. Maybe you used different code for it?? The background music is a nice touch! My digital camera is one of those staid SLR's so doesn't have a sound capability.

Just a reminder for anyone preparing a show for the SuperCircuit that the due date for entries in Hayange, France, is 20 August. For North American entries, that means that they should be in the mail no later than today to get in on the normal postage (approximately $3.65 Canadian). If you wait longer, it will cost you over $35 to send by Priority (Express) mail. Over 60 entries are listed on the SuperCircuit web page, so there is plenty of room for more. And, remember that you can view all of the entries in Ottawa, from 10 to 13 November (more information at our own Web Page .

Bob, We're off to Romania, Bulgaria & Vienna. Going back for a choral festival in Brasov, and then a bus tour of Bulgaria, and flying back home through Vienna. And, yes, I hope to have some show material from the trip, especially now that I'm shooting digital. I also just bought a larger space for my website, so I hope to upload more slideshows in the future. Am putting the finishing touches on a show for the SuperCircuit right now, so I don't even have time to download your new show at the moment. I hear it is pretty good, and am looking forward to watching it when we get home. If Jim lets me take time off from the SuperCircuit planning, that is! Hope you're having a great summer. Would love to see some of you neighbours from S of the border up here at the Festival in November! Judging from the entries posted to the website, it sounds like we are going to have a great collection of shows!

Blue, Welcome to the Forum. I think my "Adjustor" spreadsheet model might work for you. It takes a pte project file and produces an Excel spreadsheet with all the pertinent data such as slide name, number, timing, etc. This can then be "adjusted" where required, and fed back into a pte file which can then be imported back into PTE. "Adjustor" is available on the Beechbrook site and also from my own web site listed below. It should be possible to link the names and folder id's from your spreadsheet with the appropriate columns in "Adjustor", and then feed the sorted data into a specially prepared PTE project file. You would have to develop a PTE template file first in order to have something in the proper format to work with. Let me know if this works, and if you need any additional features, drop me an email, and when I return from vacation in September I'll have a look at what I can do to help.

Ron, They are "Adobe Extensible Metadata Platform" files used for embedding data with the files. This Site has some details.

Barry, I agree with you 100% that our usage of copyright music in AV productions would only serve to promote the artists' work without taking anything away from them at all. But here in Canada, and the US too, I believe, the copyright laws are currently being reviewed, and the outcome is almost certainly to be tighter controls in favour of the mega-music companies, and without regard to the needs of you or me. Unfortunately, we have very little voice in this matter at all.

Dave, My understanding is that if the composer has been dead for 50 years, his or her compositions are no longer protected by copyright. One can record such music, convert it to MIDI for a slideshow, or perform it in public without obtaining special permission from anyone. However, a particular arrangement of a non-copyrighted composition could still be protected by copyright. Certainly, a specific recording of any music selection is protected from direct copying, but one could transcribe the music into MIDI format, or play it using real instruments, and use that for a slideshow, unless, of course, the particular arrangement of that piece is still covered. I believe that MIDI pieces created by someone else are protected by copyright, but it is very easy to modify them so that it would be difficult to prove ownership, especially after they have been converted to mp3 or wave format.