alrobin

All versions work OK for me, too, both in Win XP,and Win 2000.

Zman, To be able to access the button controls in a synched show you need to click "Permit control of show" in "Project Options". It will then be possible for the viewer to activate the button controls as the slides go by, and have the program break away to the indicated second show. However, the music for the first main show, and the show itself, will continue to play, which could interfere with the second show which is now being displayed on the screen. In your case, if you want to prevent viewers from breaking away while the initial music is playing, don't show the buttons until the last slide, and don't display the last slide until the end of the music. Also be sure to click "When show ends keep last slide on screen" so that these buttons will remain accessible to the viewer. You can add a moment of silence to the end of the music if necessary to achieve the timing you want. Hope this helps.

Hi, Zman, Welcome to the Forum! I don't understand why you are experiencing this problem, as it works fine for me as you described it should. In other words, I get the "finger"! Brian, you probably have more experience with objects in computer programming than I do, but I have to say that I don't have any trouble copying and pasting either slides with objects on them, or the objects themselves onto other slides, and thereafter each one acts as its own separate object, with properties which I can readily edit. (see my PTE-101 tutorial slide show for an example of objects copied onto sevaral slides, and then re-edited to make them look different). Maybe it has something to do with the particular operating system that Zman is using?

Igor, I agree with Patrick - this could be especially tedious in a show with very long (e.g. 10-second) transition times - it would take forever to step forward or backward to the desired slide! Imagine having to step through Bob's innovative show, "Linger"! IMHO, it would be better to treat all transitions as quick "cuts" temporarily when under "pause" mode, unless there is some particular reason why this would degrade the normal operation of the program. However, I too join Patrick in congratulating you for making this improvement to PTE per our request - it's so nice to have such a responsive person in command of the design of this wonderful program! And, Patrick, your English is fine!

Thanks, Igor Let me know if I can be of any help in testing it.

Igor, The "thumbnail glitch" is the same one reported by Mike in the previous post. At first I thought I couldn't reproduce it, as resizing the thumbnails "fixes" the problem. However, if I close PTE and then open it again, the thumbnails in the slide list are again butted close together without any space between. Glad to hear you've found a fix to the other problem with the missing preview.

I am finding similar problems. This is similar to the problem I reported on in This Posting on July 20th.

David, You shouldn't be embarrassed - it's not uncommon for homemade software to cause glitches with other systems for which it wasn't tested, so the fault is probably mine in trying to make it too complicated than it really needs to be.

I may have given you a bum steer. By startup, I thought you were referring to first slide of the show, itself. The "startup window" option used as an "introduction" to the show does have a blue bar at the top, and I don't think you can eliminate it.

David, that's how the "pinning" in my Adjustor model works - you can pin 2 or more slides, and then everything before, in between, and after will be equally distributed according to how many slides are in that "zone", and the length of time for that "zone". It's of no use for those desiring an exact position for each slide, synched to the music, but would be a handy tool for those who only want certain slides fixed to the music (for example the start of a particular music selection), and then wish to have the rest of the slides in between distributed evenly.

Thanks again, Igor. Don't know about anyone else, but I'm having trouble keeping up with all these improvements! Looking forward to the waveform modifications. Igor, I noticed a small glitch that keeps occurring on the thumbnail view of the slide list. It's a bit unpredictable, but shows up now and then. For instance, this time when I installed the new beta #5, when the program opened automatically to the last slide-show I had worked on, the images on the horizontal slide list were all bunched together, without the usual white border between them. This has happened in the other betas, too, but I am unable to replicate the problem after I close PTE and then re-open it. Edit: On my latest show I find that this now happens every time I re-open PTE.

Hi, Vernon, Welcome to the Forum! You might be using "Windowed mode" - go to "Project Options / Screen" and check "Fullscreen mode". Hope this helps. If not, please post again.

You can't shrink the entire PTE show itself. You have to reduce the size of individual slides and/or music selections, or leave out slides and/or music to reduce the size of the show.

Bob, I just had the opportunity to download and watch your show, "Linger", and now I feel obligated to pass on my reactions to it. I enjoyed watching the AV for several reasons, not least of which was the suspense in wondering what you were going to give us next. The images were great - amazing what you can make out of fairly ordinary scenics with everyday photoshop effects. Some of the "twisted" trees reminded me of the abstract trees in a painting my wife and I bought while on vacation out west one summer. Like watching fractals, there is a limit to how long one can maintain one's attention unless there are significant changes to the patterns along the way. I like the way the trees "morph" into mountains, though, and perhaps this theme could be developed even more. IMO, I'm not sure you need to see the actual images, except maybe at the beginning, as you have done, even if they were somewhat stylized. Like most aspects of AV, however, it's a matter of personal preference. Maybe returning to a more recognizable actual image at the end, similar to the ones at the beginning, would "tie" the show together more. Overall, I like the idea very much - however, I think I would prefer a little faster pace and more variety. Good choice of music! I agree with Robert in that it is good to see people experimenting with the powerful creative tools in Photoshop and PTE in such an artistic manner as you have, rather than using them in their shows just because they are there. We AV'ers are so lucky to be living in this digital age and be on the forefront of such rapidly expanding technologies. It's a little like being in the front seat of a roller-coaster - exhilerating, and you never know what's coming up next! Maybe we need a few more shows like yours to enable us to sit back, relax, and smell the roses.

Carol, Your request has a lot of merit - in fact it seems to be the most-requested addition to the timeline synchronization features. It was the main reason for designing the "Adjustor" model, and I wish Igor would add the capability to PTE for shifting a number of slides together as a group, to preserve timing between each slide as well as all the customized characteristics of those slides. In Adjustor you can "pin" specific key slides so that their locations don't change, and then hit a button to automatically spread remaining slides evenly between these "pinned" points. This would be so easy to add to PTE that I wonder at Igor taking so long to implement it. However, he has given us the light-table so I guess we can't complain too much! However, if he would just add these timeline features, I could retire the "Adjustor" model completely. Brian, I understand your 'sliding stop bit' suggestion a little better now, and it has a lot of merit, too, for ease of adding slides to the end of a show, or for truncating the music where there are insufficient slides to "fill" the total time, as defined by the music selections chosen. Users have been requesting a music fade feature in PTE for some time, along with the capability to merge several selections without joining and cross-fading them in a sound editor. This combined with the "stop bit" would give users the added control over the music that they desire.

Chuck, That is very good advice. However, more for Igor's attention, I would like to point out that putting the images and sound files in the same Directory as the PTE project file works fine with the exception of sound files added via the "Sound" line at the bottom of the main window. Not many people use this means for adding sound - it is mainly used to superimpose narration or special sound effects over background sound. However, those using it should be aware of this little bug in PTE.

Chuck, If I could get my wife to put together a slide show I would think it was a miracle!!! This is no slur on my wife - she is just not too happy about relying on computers for her photography. Following on with your suggestion, though, it would be useful to have some sort of indication on each thumbnail for which there are objects added. I realize that it may be difficult to show them in miniature on the thumbnail, but a mark of some kind would help in zeroing-in on those slides with added objects.

Hi, Michelle, Nobeefstu, one of our more creative and knowledgable members, once created a utility designed to provide just the sales features you describe. The Forum reference is HERE . Another possible way to use PTE in selecting images with your client would be to use the non-compiled (project) version of PTE. You could provide the compiled version on CD to the customer to review on his or her own, and then when you are sitting down with your client, you could use the preview option in the ".pte" or project version of the show to review the images, deleting any images not wanted, and then "re-creating" the show at the end of the session if desired. This way you would preserve any fancy introduction titles, music, and information slides and burn a new show with only the slides selected, if you and your client wanted to preserve the image selection in a slideshow format. Hope this helps some.

Hi, red, Welcome to the Forum! The ideal (and only reliable) way to synchronize the music with the slides is to use the timeline to position the image transitions where you want them to occur relative to the music. Then, if you create a single music file, and add a suitable length of silence before the music starts, you can arrange to have the music start on the precise transition where you want it to occur. In a sound editor such as Audacity or Audition, etc., you can also combine two or more sound files into one so that you don't need to worry about the transitions occurring in the interval between music selections.

Gerard, This is probably because the effects are set to represent the transition to a slide, not from the slide, as would be required for going from the last slide to the desktop. I believe if you use a dark slide as the last slide, this may yield the desired effect for certain transitions. Igor, I just noticed that when I delete a slide from the "slide list", click "preview" from the main window, and then "escape" to return to the main window, "drop" the deleted slide back on the slide list, then click on a thumbnail in the slide list, it does not have any effect (i.e. there is no preview image, and I cannot bring up the "customize slide" menu.) Something similar to this would happen in the old version of PTE (i.e. the preview image would not show when clicking on an image in the slide list), but one could still get around this and use the customize slide option.

Igor, I just had the opportunity to try out the new version of PTE for the first time, and am amazed at how well you have implemented the light-table option! It performs much better and more smoothly than I had visualized it doing. The full-screen option works just as well as the slide-list option. I particularly appreciate the larger preview image presented when one activates the thumbnail option for the slide list. As far as you know, is there any limitation to the number of images the light-table can handle? I found that with my Adjustor "dark-table" there is a limit to the number of "objects" which Visual Basic can handle, so I could not implement the dark-table for more than approx 600 slides. The addition of a music waveform is a big improvement, too, and should help in matching the transitions with the "spikes" in the music. However, the dark blue waveform interferes somewhat with easy viewing and movement of the transition markers. Maybe these could be positioned lower down so as not to be covered up as much by the waveform? A different colour than grey for the horizontal transition bars might help make them more visible, too. I also like the increased zoom capability - you can now zoom right in on the waveform to provide even more accurate placement of the transition markers. These are very significant steps forward in the evolution of PTE, and it sounds like they are not the last major improvements. Thank-you so much for your continuing efforts on this great program!

This illustrates the power of this wonderful Forum - sometimes just getting the problem "off your chest" will solve things for you!

Granot, I don't have either of the two files on my Win XP Pro system. Good luck!

Giovanni, Welcome to the Forum! You can simulate the effect you are requesting in #1 by first having the slide appear (without the object buttons), and then have a copy of the same slide with one of the objects fade in, then the same slide with two of the objects, and so on until all the objects are on the screen. I find this way preferrable, as you have full control over the parameters of the object transitions. Another way to simulate this is to arrange all of the button objects on the copy of the first slide, from top to bottom, and have the slide come up using the "horizontal page effect" transition (top to bottom).

Just a note to add further to Brian's advice re the use of Audacity. Audition, as well as other editors, has the ability to set only the copy protection bit and leave the other tags intact. However, if I set this bit to "copy protected", it will still play in PTE on my Win XP system.