Fried

Just heard back from my friend. He tried to download again and the new download ran fine. He was pretty pumped.

Hmmm... I just now downloaded myself here at work after seeing Ralph's post and I got a good copy. It ran okay. The size of the file when downloaded to my comptuer is: Size: 44.8 MB (47,036,448 bytes) Size on disk: 44.8 MB (47,038,464 bytes) I have asked my friend for the file size on his computer. Something fishy here... Fried

I've had several people successfully download and play my presentation; however, today I had my first user reported error. An individual I know who is a pretty sharp guy tried to execute my slideshow after downloading the exe file from my website. When he tried to run it, he got this error message: "Exception EListError in module Keane2005SnipeUSNationals.exe at 0007666F List index out of bounds (0)" My slideshow can be downloaded from here: http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing...USNationals.exe I used P2E version 4.42 to create the slideshow. Question: Searching the forum brought up some threads possibly attributing this error to ISP bandwidth/file size limitations. I'm assuming this is on the user's side, not mine since mine are effectively limitless (I have my site under a business package that has huge upper limits on bandwidth and storage). Is this relevant? Would it be a worthwhile exercise to zip the exe and have him try downloading the zip? Anything else I can try? I love smashing bugs. Fried

Hi Ron Thanks! It is my first show and so I'm still learning. I set the replay feature so that it can be used at boat shows and places where they need to "loop it". It is kind of confusing as you say how it ends but doesn't really. This is one of those settings that would be nice to somehow control outside of the .exe file itself. Fried

Here is the final version of my first slideshow. Available from my website, you can drill down to it from here: http://www.friedbits.com/photobits/sailing...snipe/index.php or download the .exe file direct from here: http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing...USNationals.exe I took the photos during the week of the 2005 Snipe US Nationals in San Diego July 2005. I put an initial version together throughout the week and showed it at the final awards dinner and it was a huge hit. Since then, I've reprocessed all the photos and made some substitutions to arrive at the final version. It is a bit long: 46MB and almost 10 minutes. Music track was created using Audacity. Comments and suggestions welcome! Thank you everyone for helping to make my first show a big hit! Fried

Here is the final version of the slideshow! Available from my website, you can drill down to it from here: http://www.friedbits.com/photobits/sailing...snipe/index.php or download the .exe file direct from here: http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing...USNationals.exe It is rather large (46MB) and runs almost 10 minutes. As art, it should/could be shorter; however, the sailors love every second of it. Reading another thread in this forum, I saw the tip to go ahead and put it into a zip file to minimize download problems, which I will do tomorrow. Suggestions or comments welcome! Thanks to everyone for making my first show such a big hit! Fried

Well... I'm back. And I am most happy to report that Friday night's slide show was a HUGE SUCCESS!!! Wow, was it cool! People were just blown away. Looking back on it, I have plenty of things I can do to do to improve my onsite Photoshop workflow but the P2E + Audacity aspect of it was flawless and painless. Many thanks to everyone involved in creating P2E and the contributors on this forum! At the venue the yacht club's staff was very "don't worry" concerning the projector and sound system (California cool.) But with everyone's emphasis on testing in advance of the event ringing in the back of my mind, I kept pushing them to allow me to test everything and it was a very good thing I did. Missing cables, crappy speakers, a tiny screen in the wrong place in the room... it took all week and several "discussions" with the club management but by the end of the week everything was as good as I could expect. In the future I am going to have my own LCD but I'm very seriously looking at what it will take to also be self-sufficient in terms of sound system and screen. I have some tweaks to a few of the images I want to make and a bit of reordering but when I get v2.0 finished I will upload the presentation. Thanks again! Fried

Hi Brian I'm a former physicist and I too am very impressed with P2E. It is obviously the right way to do this sort of thing. Lists are big with me as well. Although new to P2E and these sorts of presentations, my photography equipment checklist is pretty extensive and it looks like I'll be adding to it! Your test presentation sounds terrific! My paranoia level is pretty high and this morning after my post I started worrying about some sort of test setup presentation but nothing as sophisticated as yours. By chance is it available? THANKS!

Hi Alan Thank you again for both suggestions. I put together the presentation these past two days using a random set of slides from my image library. I see your point about the blank color slides. I could easily get mesmerized into leaving one of my old slides in there if I'm not careful!

Hi Everyone Over the past two days I've put together the skeleton presentation using a random selection of slides from my image library. This is cool. Very cool! I'm now trying to work out the actual script and mechanics during the evening of presentation leading up to the first image. It will be a typical awards dinner setup in a mid-size banquet room. I intend to play the .exe file created by P2E direct from my laptop on a LCD projector. I will be able to check everything out in advance so lets assume the projector, sound system, and laptop are all ready to go. The MC introduces the "surprise entertainment" of the evening (I'm not commiting until I know I can do it!) and says something like, "I'm sure you'll enjoy the show." At that point based on your experience, what is then the best sequence of events and their timing? I'm thinking: 1. Some shuffling around of chairs while I activate/"wake up" the laptop and LCD projector 2. The lights are dimmed (probably by someone else) 3. A period of darkness to allow people's eyes to adjust, move around their chairs some more, and quit talking 4. First slide transition begins Q1: When in this sequence do I double-click the P2E .exe file? Q2: How much time should I allow for #3? Any suggestions are most appreciated! Fried

Wow!!!

Hi Alan and thank you for your reply. The method you outlined with the dummies sounds like what I had hoped to be able to do. I can use slides from previous events to give me a set of "one that looks like this" examples and then build skeleton using those. I was going to also put the actual slide # on each dummy in big letters so it would be obvious which ones I needed to still replace as I got near the end. Necessary? I take your point about the black between each slide not being effective. I should have made myself clear. There are about 10-12 places in the show I wanted a "no image" break between one musical/thematic passage and the next so I wanted the last slide in the previous passage to just fade out, have a dark interval and then begin the new passage. The rest of the presentation would not use this fade to black idea. What you are saying suggests to me that maybe what I really want aethestically in some (or all) of these points may be just a slower fade-in of the next slide. For those places I still want a complete transition to black I need to fade in a black slide and it should be used sparingly. I think I get it now. I'll experiment with a few dummies. I appreciate the points made on this forum about overusing transition effects. It drives me nuts when I see PowerPoint presentations in which someone has used every transition in the program and every bullet is a drop bullet. Let the content speak for itself! People love the photos. They are more than enough. Thanks! Fried

Hi Everyone My apologies for what I am sure are simple questions addressed many times. I am at that stage where I know what I want to do but don't know the words to use for my forum searches so I'm having trouble finding the answers. Please bear with me! SETTING & MATERIAL The P2E presentation will be performed at the final awards dinner at the Snipe National Championships July 15th for approx. 300 people. The Snipe is a small one-design sailboat. The Nationals are a one-week event held this year in San Diego. If you are interested in seeing what the images will be like, here are some from other Snipe events: http://www.friedbits.com/PhotoBits/Sailing/Snipe/ GOAL I want to build a simple show in which a series of slides each dissolve in, hold, and dissolve out in sychronization to a set of timing marks on a soundtrack I specify. The dissolve in and dissolve out intervals may vary from zero to three seconds. Some slides may have only a front-end transition, others may have only a back-end transition. WORKFLOW 1. As suggested on this site, I first mixed my music track as a single MP3 using Audacity to merge the four pieces of music I am using. Perfect tool! The music track is 9:39 in length, the first minute of which are "credits" to the event organizers and so forth. The remaining is three sections of music: fun, slow, fast. 2. This weekend I intend to go through the music track and identify the exact timing marks when I want a slide's fade-in transition to begin, the duration I want the slide to be "up" until its fade out (dissolve) begins, and when I want that dissolve to be complete. I was thinking I would compile this information into a spreadsheet where I would essentially be compiling a script with notes to myself concerning good photo composition ideas at various key points. As the images are created throughout the week I can enter their filenames into this spreadsheet as well. A rough pass through the music indicates approx 90-120 slides will be needed. I will have at leat 900 shots from which I will be able choose the slides for my presentation. 3. I use Photoshop CS2 for all image post processing. I intend to create a uniform 1024x768 JPEG for each image I want to use and put them into one "PresentationImages" folder. I am adept with PS automation, layers, etc. I intend to use Illustrator CS2 to make the credit slides and these can be pretty much completed before I go. QUESTIONS From this point, I'm kinda lost in the alternatives. Q1. I would like to create the timeline template and have dummy slides in place in advance so that I always have a complete presentation in progress. As the presentation images are produced, I want to just drop them into their appropriate spot on the timeline and as the week goes by, the dummies would eventually all get replaced by the presentation images and at any point during the week I can watch the presentation to see what I am missing and how things are coming together. Is this a good way to approach things given the context and if so what are the basic steps to follow for setting it up once I have my spreadsheet, and if not, what should I be thinking instead? Q2. Simple effect sequence. For each slide, I want to fade it in from black over an interval of time specified on the timeline, hold it for an interval of time, and then fade it to black. Within sections of the music these effect intervals will be pretty consistent (and might range from 0 to 3 seconds) but their location and length will be slightly different depending on the nature of the music. I see how to create the first transition to fade-in the slide. It appears it stays up until the next slide's transition begins but there is no obvious way to make the fade to black between slides. What is the best method for creating this series of transitions? I read something about using Photoshop layers but I am a bit confused how they might be used to do this. I also like the "third image" effect I've seen in a few presentations but I don't quite understand it yet and I'm worried about making things too complicated as this is my first P2E and I will have my hands full just capturing and processing the images throughout the week. Any help or suggestions you care to make would be most appreciated. In this relatively small world, the presentation will be a huge event. I have known some of these people for 40 years and a presentation of this caliber will be a first for the Nationals and for me. I am very excited about this project and what P2E will make possible! THANKS! Fried Dallas *** edit *** For those of you who are P2E wizards, it just occured to me it might be faster and easier for you to simply email me a P2E file you already have that works like this rather than writing out some long explanation. If so, please feel free to email to: ftelliott @ gmail.com or just post it here if that is possible. THANKS AGAIN!

Thanks everyone! I'll give the suggestions a look later tonight. After posting, I copied a track off one of my CDs as an MP3 and loaded it into P2E. It was great. Perfect for what I'm hoping to do.

Hi Everyone What a terrific program! I can hardly wait to use it. Unfortunately, I am not even out of the gate and I find myself outwitting Microsoftness. Please bear with me as this music file biz is all new to me, and obviously more complex than I had thought. I have hundreds of WMA files that I've created over the past two years unknowingly under DRM (Digital Rights Management) which I then copied onto my new computer's hard drive, which apparently broke the license keys, which had to be updated using some Internet connection back to MS which would not run because my "Netscape browser did not have the necessary Windows Media Services plug-in installed" which I was able to get around by... Anyway, the WMA file can now be played by WMP9. I then launch P2E and it says I need to load an MP3 and not an WMA file for the music. I google for a WMA to MP3 converter (Fast Audio Converter) and it says it cannot convert the file because it is protected by DRM. I am very confused at this point. And also extremely angry with MS (not the first time) as I have wasted alot of time simply trying to get a copy of a file of music I have legally purchased to play on my computer and load it into P2E. Could someone please outline for me how to make a WMA file protected under DRM useable in P2E? I am running XP SP2. Or would it be easier to simply recapture the music off my CDs I intend to use as mp3 and if so, how would I do that? Many thanks! Fried Dallas