alrobin

Thanks for your compliments, Bob and Andrew! They're much appreciated! Andrew, I agree wholeheartedly with your comments about Michel's "Into the Night". The colourful photos are most effective in their depiction of city night-life. Michel has an uncanny ability when it comes to architectural subjects, both day and night! Re your question, Bob, the music was grabbed from the CD as is, via Cool Edit and my sound card (a Creative Labs "Audigy 1"), with no further treatment - but I agree with you, the music is very nice. It's one of my favourite CD's. The file used for PTE is in MP3 format (96 kbps, 22,050 Hz).

Hi, Tracy, Welcome to the Forum! The special Canon orienting feature is mainly for displaying the image correctly in the camera. However, if the images are still oriented horizontally after importing, you will have to rotate them with your special Canon software, or in an image-editing program like Photoshop or IrfanView and save again once they are in the proper orientation before using in PTE. Check "My Computer\My Pictures\ ....", or whatever, to see if they appear vertically there. If the software was automatically orienting the images before, and is no longer doing so, then you must have turned off some feature in the menu of the camera or in the Canon software. Or, maybe you have changed your method of importing from the camera to the pc (e.g. copying them directly using "Explorer" or "My Computer" instead of through the Canon software "wizard"). My Nikon D70 has a similar feature, and I have the same "problem". If you have a lot of verticals, you can use the batch mode in your editing software to rotate the whole group at once, provided you have them all in a special folder.

Sounds like a lot of "bal-arney" to me!

Bob, In the absence of a PTE show, there are a few photos of Toulouse at this web SITE . A more detailed Google search would probably yield quite a few more. These would be next best to a "formal" slide show.

Thanks again, everyone, for your kind wishes! Alan, you mean I may have to kiss the Blarney Stone before I come home? Looking forward to meeting you!

Granot, Thanks so much for your kind words. You have been an inspiration to me, too, with all the work you have done on behalf of the Forum, and you would have even more posts than I had it had not been for Igor's "resetting the clock", so to speak. Your perseverence in developing new utilities and special programs for solving Forum members' problems is amazing, and you and other long-standing members have done much to further the development and enjoyment of this amazing AV software, "Pictures to Exe". I'm looking forward to another year of participation with you and Bob and Ken and Guido and others, too numerous to mention, in promoting the enjoyment of photography through AV. It's a great hobby!! :-))))))))

Thanks so much to all of you for such kind words! I really have to thank Igor, though, for pulling the old forum down, a little over a year ago, and starting the count from zero again. Otherwise, I would never have passed Guido or Bob or Bart, or Ken, or a few others like them, who have been so active on the Forum much longer than I. It's been a real pleasure, though, and a chance to "meet" so many wonderful, interesting people. To celebrate the occasion, I went out a couple of weeks ago and bought my first digital camera (a Nikon D70). Now, in future, I will feel even more qualified to answer digital questions and contribute even more to this great Forum and in the promotion of such a teriffic slide-show program!!!

Hi, Glenys, Other people have experienced some strange things happening, too, in a synched show when using multiple music selections. Theoretically, it is possible to link selections as you are doing, but be prepared for the unexpected. Sounds like you were able to adjust without too much trouble. To be really safe, it is better to mix all the music together into one selection in a sound editor such as Audacity or Audition or Cubase as then you have total control over the total length, the timing between selections, and the fading in and out between music items.

Thanks, Guido. I thought maybe I was starting to halucinate. Actually, I thought Alan was halucinating! So, Len, the answer to your question is no, there is no way yet to spread the narration over more than one slide other than by combining it with the background in an audio editor, and synching the show to both. This is somewhat more tedious than being able to overlay the narration through the use of the "Sound" line on the main page.

Alan, Do you mean the "Customize Slide / Music" tab? There I see only "Use customized settings" , "Play new background music file" and options for choosing the music file. Maybe you have to set some other music option first to see it?

Pete, I've seen the small 50-mb discs for sale at a local computer store. They're not cheap, though. The ones I saw were around $2.50 CDN, each. However, one of these, along with a PTE show would make an excellent electronic business card.

Len, You wrote: This is a feature some of us have requested from Igor, but so far it has not been provided. Unless he has added it to version 4.20 without informing us???? Where do you see that option in the program?

Neia, Glad your music works for you now. I'm sure that if your show is as good as the photos on your web site, it will be a masterpiece!!! I'm interested in seeing it also, just to hear the music you paid $40 for!!

Jim, That's a riot! Times sure have changed. Along the same vein, I just heard a news clip today about the inventor of the answering machine (he just died), and his first version was an automated phonograph playing a message from a record, with a wire recorder for recording the response. Now all this can be done digitally.

Hi, Malcolm, Welcome! You're right, the colours hold once set for a particular feature, but the setting in the "custom colour" palette seems to disappear when returning to that option in "Customize Slide". Maybe this is something Igor could address in the next version.

Guido, I have found I can also enter and run a non-".exe" file in "Proj Ops/Adv/Run application". For example when I enter a ".swf" or ".txt" link the flash player or "Notepad" opens automatically to run the file I specify.

Hi, Ron, Welcome to the Forum. Sorry, no animated GIF's, yet. It's on the list for requested future improvements, though.

Stephen, Welcome! Other than copying the slide several times in the slide list, and then browsing to select the correct identity of the slide (probably harder than manually changing each one), the easiest way I know of is to use the Adjustor model (available on Beechbrook, p. 4) to see at a glance all the slide time delays in a spreadsheet format, and then copy the same time for each slide you want to stay on for that amount of time. The only catch is that you have to already have Excel 97 or 2000. Or, you can look at the ".pte" file in a text editor, and manually change the numbers there. Best of luck!

Hi chuck, Welcome to the Forum. Which ones are incorrectly rotated? Were they in the correct orientation before you uploaded them to the web site? If so, maybe you need to contact AAAPhoto.

Hi, Photo, Welcome to the Forum. With a name like this, sounds like you are in the right place! With 30 or 40 shows under you belt you are hardly a beginner. Please tell us how you are going about trying to get the nav bar to show up? Are you setting it up in the Project Options / Advanced menu? What version of PTE are you using? Are you running synched or non-synched shows? We need a little more info in order to help you.

Yes, that's one solution. I wondered how long it would be before someone came up with a "dissolve" unit for two digital projectors! And, maybe this is the only practical way to accomplish this. By the way, the fade representation looks very similar to that for the Arion slide-projector controller.

Eric, Sounds like you've got everything under control! Best of luck! You'll find your PTE shows run "like stink"!

Richard, I, too, second your third request! This would give a lot of flexibility and control to PTE, and make it capable of some nice effects already available to traditional AV makers. True, they can be "fudged" in Photoshop, but not without a lot of effort. And, with the current requirement for large delays between consecutive transitions, different-speed pc's will display them differently. In conjunction with this ability, I believe that a capability for tighter transitions would also be very useful (i.e. transitions which start immediately after completion of the previous ones).

John, Your second wish is feasible today in PTE by adding two or more images in the "Object Editor".

neia, Are you using a registered copy of PTE 4.20? When you are previewing the synched show, do you hear the whole selection, even though PTE only shows "1.31"? Do you have more slides in the "slide list" (the one on the right-hand side of the main PTE window) than you are able to add on the timeline? It sounds like there may be a problem with the .mp3 file. If you like you can send me your PTE file and I will have a look at it. If the whole package is not more than a couple of Mb, you can email it to me at al@alrobinson.com. If the show is larger than this, then just email the ".pte" file (no photos or music). Or the .pte file with photos and a url to where you downloaded the music, provided it is a free download.