alrobin

Jeanie, Your timing is perfect. Alan and I will be meeting for a brew Saturday night in Dublin, so we'll keep your project in mind and let you know if we come up with any inspiration. Matter of fact, that's probably the best way for you to think of suitable music - sit down and have a few brews in a nice pub, and you never know when the muse will inspire you. I got the idea for a skiing slide show once while driving up for a ski meet, and they were playing a piece on the radio which was perfect for what I wanted. Then it took me a year to find it - on an old Weavers LP at a garage sale! These are the best shows - for personal use and enjoyment, anyway!

Ash, I would also encourage you to learn how to use Audacity to join the selections together into one file, and you then should be able to sync your show to music. In order to save the joined selection as an mp3 file, you will also have to have an mp3 codec which you can obtain by downloading dBPowerAmp (available free from HERE .)

Well, I give up - it looks like you've stumped us all! Sounds like it's related to your particular computer setup, though, as no-one else seems to have the same problem.

Hi, Alan, I'm looking forward to debating this one with you over a pint this Saturday night!

Ash, Have you changed computers or sound cards since you made the previous shows? Also, check carefully to make sure all image and music files are in exactly the same folders as your pte project file thinks they are. You might try putting the project ".pte" file and all image and music files in the same folder, without re-adjusting the pathnames in pte, just in case some of the images or music files are misplaced. Good luck!

Ken, The title of the thread is "King of Edge Hill", so I guess that must be the title.

Are they ".mp3" files, and did you download them from a music site? Someone else recently had trouble with a downloaded mp3 file - she asked for another one, and it worked OK. Try re-saving them with Audacity. That might help. Good luck.

Hi, Derrick, Welcome to the Forum! I have a tutorial "PTE 101" on the Beechbrook site that briefly explains how to use the timeline. This is the only way to ensure that you have perfect synchronization between images and music, as PTE plays slightly differently on different pc's.

Have you tried adding different .mp3 files, and does the show still hiccup with the different music files? How many music files are you using? Have you tried linking all the mp3's together into one larger file using Audacity or Cool Edit, etc? Might be an idea to load the music files into a music editor and re-save them.

Hi, Caroline, Welcome to the Forum! You have to first install the appropriate Lame mp3-encoding".dll" file. Do a search to see if you have a file called "lame_enc.dll". If not, you will have to find it by browsing the internet. A good source for this file is DbPowerAmp . It is also a good conversion program to and from many different sound formats. Then in Audacity, when you have finished editing your .wav file, click "File / Export to mp3". It will ask you for the location of the "lame" driver. Or, if this is too complicated, you can also export the file as "Ogg vorbis" as this format is also compatible with PTE. Hope this helps.

Congratulations. Did you receive a confirmation back from Beechbrook? If so, it should be up there as we "speak". If not, try again, and if it still doesn't appear, send Bill ("Cottage") an email. Looking forward to seeing your work!

Maybe we could get Igor to "pin" it in the other "Presentations" forum, alongside Ken's excellent "Links to Members' Sites" thread, at least until we see whether it generates enough traffic for its own separate sub-forum.

Hi, Brian, I was assuming you were referring to Object Editor "buttons". However, since you are obviously using a monitor, you might be able to wire in a keypad consisting of three buttons as follows: 1) "go left" (with the same action as a keyboard "left" arrow key). 2) "go right" ("right" arrow key). 3) "enter" (same action as a left-mouse-click. Each of the first few slides would have ten buttons, "0" to "9". The "#1" button on the first slide would be highlighted with a different colour, the "#2" button on the second slide would be highlighted, and so on. When you press the "go right" button, the show will advance to the next slide, so it will appear that this button is shifting the "focus" from one screen button to the next, and vice versa. In addition to the "digital" buttons on screen, each slide would have one large invisible button the same size as the screen, programmed such that a left mouse-click ("enter") will advance the show to a specific slide. When one reaches the button representing the desired digit, "x", one would press "enter", which would then advance the show to the pre-determined slide for that digit, where the action could begin all over again, or else a particular show could commence (by "programming" it to "run external application: 'Show #x.exe', in the "Customize Slide" menu.) Does this help generate any further brain-waves? If it does, you owe me a pint on Saturday!

Good point. I think this sort of discussion would be very useful and enlightening. It would touch on points which are very subjective in nature, so I guess that is why people seem to be reluctant to offer opinions on technique and the more artistic aspects of AV. The approaches to and uses for AV by different members of the Forum are very diverse, so not all would agree with the opinions offered, but I do agree that discussion of these areas would be beneficial. Maybe the "Pictures to EXE Presentations" forum would be a good place for this to take place, and this forum could be reserved for technology.

Brian, You could try preparing 12 slides, each with the same 12 buttons, and have only the appropriate button on each slide programmed to go to slide number "x", where x is the next digit in the sequence. If someone were to press a wrong button, that button would be programmed to go to a "dummy" slide with the same 12 buttons, but going nowhere. The person would not know he or she was at a dummy slide, as transitions to each slide would be imperceptible. Then, the last digit in the sequence would take one to the slide with the "go" button activated to either start another show or go to yet another slide which would be the starting point for the show. If this doesn't work, we can discuss it in more detail at Davey Byrnes next week.

Brian and Guido, Processor speed can be a significant factor too. I notice that even with my new P4, 2.8 MHz pc, during transitions the processor utilization is over 80% for some shows, with larger images. Dianah, Un-synched shows will run at different speeds on different pc's. To ensure perfect synchronization on different machines, synchronize the show to the timeline.

George, PTE does tend to run at different speeds on different computers with different processing capabilities, and thus get slightly out of sync with the music. However, unless some of your images are far too large or the transitions too close together, if you synchronize the show using the timeline, the images should stay perfectly in-sync on all computers. With the new capabilities of PTE v. 4.20, it is difficult to give a rule of thumb for image sizes, especially if the show will be shown on a new-vintage pc with high processor speed, plenty of RAM, and a good video card. I have been able to use images up to 1600 x 1200 pixels in size, and been able to put the transitions tightly together, and the show has still performed smoothly on my newer pc. Others on the Forum are using image sizes up to 1 Mb, without any problem. It depends on the intended audience, though, as if you are directing the show to persons with a wide variety of pc's, then the "rule of thumb" is: images no larger than about 200 mb, and 1/2 sec between transitions.

Tahitu, Normally PTE does not provide for command-line interfacing with external programs, so I doubt if your options will work - however, there is no harm in trying, and if you do get something to work in this manner, please let us know. In show settings, "close show after last slide" is intended to close the PTE show. I doubt if it would have any effect on the closing of the external application. Did you try the method I suggested? What happens re the closing of the mpeg file when you run it normally, outside of PTE? Do you have to manually close it, or does it close automatically? Best of luck!

Tahitu, If you make your "media player classic" the default player for mpeg files (it may be already), then if you put in the name of the movie ("hotel.mpg") iin PTE instead of the "media player" exe file name, it may work as you want it to.

Tahitu, If you make your "media player classic" the default player for mpeg files (it may be already), then if you put in the name of the movie ("hotel.mpg") iin PTE instead of the "media player" exe, it may work as you want it to.

Diana, I have had problems in the past playing a PTE show directly from a CD when it used .wav files. Try compressing your music to an mp3 file and see if that works any better.

You have to leave the menu open until you process, in your other video software, the temporary avi file that PTE produces. It is of no other use, so there is no point in saving it.

Doublex, What video card are you using? I don't know what to suggest to solve the partial menu problem - you might even have to try a new video card - maybe one with more on-board memory.

"Picturestoexe.com" is no longer in use. The correct address now is "http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums".

Wyattsmom, You may not need to add them, but it's good to check to make sure they are there anyway. Open apr.ini in a text editor such as Notepad (you can drag and drop it from its folder in Windows Explorer directly to a blank open Notepad.) Then scroll down to the line which reads "pte_SoundInitDir=", and you should see the two lines in question directly below it. If not, simply type them in and re-save the notepad file as apr.ini. If you save it as "apr.txt", you can then change the name to "apr.ini". (Better backup the file before you start all this, and rename it something like "apr.old" so you will have it to fall back on if you foul things up). Good luck.