alrobin

Carol, When you "create" a show, the images are bundled together and reproduced inside the "exe" file, but the original jpeg or gif image files are left intact in their folder so that you can still go back as often as you want, and as long as you leave the files in the appropriate folder, in order to revise the show, save a new version of the project file (.pte), or create a new version (.exe) of the slideshow.

Also check to make sure you haven't checked "Auto hide navigation bar ..." on the "Customize Navigation Bar" menu.

terily, Welcome to the Forum! I really don't know what to suggest except to ask whether you have "Show navigation bar" checked in Project Options / Advanced. Can you see the navigation bar on other shows such as some of the ones available on the Beechbrook site? You might try playing around with the video card and monitor settings, such as selecting different screen resolutions, the number of available colours, etc. I doubt if it has anything to do with using an older version as it should work in all of the versions available over the past few years. Good luck! Maybe someone else will have some further suggestions.

Bill, Forget Barcelona and Lisbon - at our Festival we'll take you all around the world and back several times over. And with our low Canadian dollar, you will still have money left over for a cruise down the Rideau Canal and a side-trip to Niagara Falls! Maureen, I'm not sure what to call 10 November - over here it'll either be late autumn, or early winter. Probably the right kind of weather to make one want to spend time indoors watching slide-shows from warm, sunny climates. In fact, Bill, we may all be wishing we were in California! Maybe you should think about hosting a leg in 2006!

...and another: From Brigitte M: For information purposes, for Supercircuit 2004 we received 82 digital AV sequences, from 17 countries, all over the world. It is very gratifying for us, the organizers, to interest photographers in taking part in this completely friendly competition. The AV sequence is an old habit here in Europe, where several of our "diaporama" friends gather each year for festivals. Now, with the arrival of the Internet, distribution is easier and friendly, and we hope that many of you will particpate. The last date for the reception of sequences is set for August 20, 2005.

A quick English translation: From GAPHE: We are only now officially announcing AV Supercircuit 2005 but preparation started in November 2004. Since this date, almost daily contacts have been made with the various Co-organizing teams and it was with great pleasure that we created bonds of friendship with Al Robinson in Canada, Erhard Hobrecker in Switzerland, Juan Carlos Duarte in Argentina, and Lorenzo De Francesco in Italy, not to mention our Luxembourg and French friends with whom we have shared the passion of the AV sequence (diaporama) for several years.

Good-looking site and a wonderful collection of shows - I've watched every one of them! I put a link to your site on our SuperCircuit links page in both French and English.

Jaz, What sound files are you using? I find that mp3 works best, but then I have not had any experience with Ogg files. I have used wav files but found on a couple of occasions that the music "stuck" while playing off a cd. They are much larger files in general, so take more time to load and make your exe file much larger. By the way, you don't need to worry about the "72 dpi". If you save your files as 1024x768 px at 2 dpi you will get the same effect and quality on screen as the same size at 72 dpi. The dpi is significant when scanning or printing. It's the total number of pixels that matter when projecting, and also the quality of the jpeg. I generally use around 7 on a scale of 1 to 12, but for home use for displaying on the monitor of a fast pc I usually bump it up to 8 or 10. As Barry says, if the images are good to start with they will look great projected using a good projector. Good luck with your show!

Jaz, What size are your image files? What jpeg setting are you using? What music files are you synching to? mp3, midi, wave, etc? You might have to be satisfied with longer time separations between images until you invest in a P4 computer. I have no trouble running animations using quick transitions on my P4 with 1024x768-pixel jpegs, around 1/10 of a second apart. I also have a good video card with 128 Mb of RAM so that probably helps too. For music, I stick mostly to mp3.

We are co-hosting one of the seven legs of the digital AV SuperCircuit here in Ottawa this fall. This will be of interest particularly to AV enthusiasts in North America, as it will be the only opportunity to view most of these world-class award-winning AV productions this side of the North Atlantic. Hosted by the Camera Club of Ottawa and the RA Photo Club under the auspices of the Canadian Association for Photographic Art, and supported in planning and preparation by le Club de Photographie Polarisé de l'Outaouais and the Orléans Photo Club, the bilingual Festival will be held in Ottawa, Canada, from 10 to 13 November 2005. You can learn more about the details of this Festival on our N. American web page. Tune in from time to time to this site as well as the official SuperCircuit site mentioned earlier in this thread to learn more about the details of this Festival and the others as planning progresses. In the meantime, please don't hesitate to contact me or other members of our committee for details. We would love to see all of you in Ottawa this fall! The folks at Gaphe have done a wonderful job of coordinating this competition, so if you can't attend one of the Festivals, at least consider entering an AV sequence into the competition.

Jaz, Welcome to the Forum! If you click on "Quick (no transition)" (a "cut") at the bottom of the "Customize slide / Effects" menu instead of inputting a small transition time for some other transition, such as a fade, the images should cycle through quicker. Otherwise they tend to slow things down, and get out of sync with the music where there are images close together. Note that when you select "Quick transition", there is still a time showing for the transition time, even though it is a cut - just disregard the time in this case. I regularly run shows satisfactorily on my P3 laptop, but can't have the transitions (even "cuts") closer together than around 20 to 30 ms, depending on the size of the image files. On other pc's this limit may vary to as much as half a second. If you find them dragging, try compressing the image files involved down to lesser-quality jpegs. Hope this helps.

Hi, Michel, It's probably best to leave it at 1024x768 if it is to be distributed around to various locations as not all will have a super XGA projector. The most common projectors in use today will only show only SVGA (800x600) or XGA (1024x768). Projectors do exist that will show all pixels at 1280x960, or higher, but they are still quite expensive and not in common use, except in the larger auditoria. For the computer screen, I would prefer 1600x1200. Bottom line (IMO) - for the best compromise, stay with 1024x768. PTE will automatically size down for those with only 800x600 capability. And image sizes will still be reasonable for those without high-speed P4 computers and lots of VRAM.

OK, I think I understand. The part I was missing was that you were running on a WXGA monitor. I was still in the world of 3x4 video technology.

Justin, If you don't want to "clog" up your hard drive, just delete all the compressed jpegs after you create your show. If you still have your original large image files, you will still be able to open the PTE project file to make changes if you want to do so in the future sometime. Then batch resize again when you are ready to "re-create" the revised show.

Ken, Very nice demo of this interesting transition. Well done! However, I don't understand your comment about distortion. Since your images are all 1024x768 except one (but it's ratio is 3/4 too), why would there be distortion in the vertical on a 1024x768 monitor? If Igor implements "pan and zoom", I would hope it would be applicable to a single image of an appropriate size, and viewable properly on any monitor configuration.

Wedford, This is something that was possible in the days of analogue multi-projector systems (in fact I once designed a micro-processor-controlled system for 4 analogue projectors that would allow you to specify how many times to "flash" each one and for how long, etc.) So, it is logical to ask for something equivalent to that with digital. However, synching in PTE and other modern digital systems involves locating all the images and sound on a linear timeline, so it would be more difficult to achieve something like you are describing without considerably adding to the functionality of the present system. The present approach is to repeat slides that are "looped", and this is very easily accomplished by creating a loop and then copying it as many times as are required to achieve the effect. In the long run, this is probably a lot easier than setting up all the calculations required for effecting and displaying a loop, and then merging it with the music on the timeline. Even in MIDI systems this looping feature is no longer used - it used to be available in the old "Dr. T" MIDI program for the Commodore "Amiga" and Atari computers, but has been abandoned in modern systems such as "Cubase" in favour of completely linear timeline-based programs. Sometimes after taking two steps forward it seems we have to take one step backward! Just one more point about PTE - don't worry about the "extra" slides taking up space in the presentation - whenever you use a slide or slides several times over again, no additional space is required in the ".exe" file. You can use these "looped" slides several times over without adding to the "physical" size of the show.

Thanks, Brian, for a thorough, informative summary of all the vermin, good and bad!

Ron, I guess that explains why it takes me 8 seconds from Italy, while you can get there and back in only 5. However, Russia is just over the pole from us, so I would expect my time for download from WnSoft to be faster than your time.

Just a little more fuel for this thread: the other day I installed the new MS spyware beta, and then first ran my existing "Ad-Aware SE" program, and cleaned out several implants. Then I ran the new MS "AntiSpyware" program and identified one more interloper ("aureate"). Today I ran the new MS program first, and then, just for kicks, ran "AdAware". This time MS "AntiSpyware" found zero spies and "AdAware" found two! ("2o7.net", and "doubleclick.net"). Is there a difference between "spyware" and "adware"?

I just tried the download again - this time 8 seconds from Guido's site, and 11 seconds from WnSoft. Guess it all depends on the amount of local traffic on the network.

Guido, With broadband connection, 6 seconds from your site; 55 seconds from WnSoft.

Ken, There is one situation in which the mouse action is preferred over the navigation bar. With a wireless mouse, if you are giving a lecture, and don't have any support for the mouse, you can use it as a "remote" by programming the left and right mousebutton action appropriately, and then you don't even have to click on anything in particular.

Maureen, You can also accomplish this for each slide by unclicking "Display each slide for" in Project options. However, if you want to have some slides still advance as timed, then you will have to use the method you suggested and customize the slides which you want to advance sooner. Maybe in the next version, Igor could set the program so that if some slides are customized with "Use own time preference" they will still advance automatically as timed, even if "Display each slide for" is un-checked. As it is now, everything grinds to manual operation, only, if "Display each slide for" is un-checked. This all assumes non-synched operation, of course.

.Flash is a program from Macromedia which is used to create animated graphics, including photographic images, for web pages. There are also a few other more user-friendly programs which will allow you to create Flash (.swf) files. Boxig has designed a few utilities which make it possible to attach and run Flash animations at the front of a PTE show. Check out his web site at www.thailandphotoalbum.com . There is also an excellent demo show on Beechbrook that illustrates very well some of the ways that Flash can be used in conjunction with PTE.

MyJoanB, Welcome to the Forum! Here is a work-around that might help: PreviousMessage .