JRR

Peter: Thanks for doing all the research. It will be of great benefit to many of us !!!!

Peter: I don't get the corrupt message on ESC if I have created a EXE version of the Menu. It is only if I am working on the menu show, not having created the exe version yet. (which I normally don't do until I am happy with my "production")I have checked when this happens that I am pointing at the exe version of the individual show. xxxxxxxxxx Regarding the other aspect of launching non PTE shows. I have always used ver 4.48 to create my menu shows and I have over the years launched PTE, PSG, .avi files, ppt, and PhotoShop from, there with no problems. Yes once ver 5.6 came along and I launched a show from a 4.48 menu page, I sometimes noticed a very minor flicker when starting that 5.6 show. Few others noticed it. I have converted all my shows to ver 6 now and am using a ver menu page (RUN SLIDESHOW AND RETURN) and it is very smooth. I have launched non ver 6 shows from the ver 6 menu page with the RUN APPLICATION AND RETURN option and things seems to go OK. I'll be interested to hear your results.

I should mention that I do a virus check with every show I download from anywhere. I admit I have not done a spybot (or whatever it is called) search for a while on my computer, But I have done them since this issue started happening and nothing turned up.

Geoff Not in my case, I just get a dialogue box that comes up in the middle of the screen and I have to tell it to go away. The PTE show carries on throughout the "interruption". If I can tell it to take the same action next time before closing the dialogue box, then I don't think it comes up again. But often my patience level is such that I opt for the one click to close the dialogue box rather than the two clicks. As I say, mine tends to be random and does happen wth other softwares at times

Is it normal that when setting up a menu show in Ver 6 (in my case that means a single screen show with OBJECTS that are used to launch other PTE exe files) that you can not ESC normally out of one of the shows started from within the menu in PREVIEW? I am told the file is corrupt. However so long as I have created an exe file, then I can ESC normally normally running in PREVIEW mode.

Peter: No this on my PC system. Windows XP. Sygate Firewall Haven't had the issue on the new laptop with Win 7, or either of the other two laptops with WinXP (none of the laptops have a specific firewall installed)

Geoff: I do get the same thing happening on my own PTE shows. It also happens sometimes with other programs. It has been happening on a random basis ever since I got my present computer. My techie has looked at it and said don't worry about it.

Joy: I don't have an easy answer for you, but have you got the grid turned on in the O&A window? That should make it much easier if you haven't. If you don't, the grid is the little square in the centre (well a little to the left)at the top of the O&A screen. Click on it and a grid will come up across your screen. It can be adjusted size wise by then clicking on the down arrow. Hope that helps a little I am sure someone will come along with a better way for you.

I think you might have tried using PROJECT OPTIONS > COMMENTS to put your titles in ? (see picture below) I can come up with two possible solutions for you (one of which is along the lines of Peter's comment above): 1. If you use Project Options > Comments, ensure the photographers submit their images with the file names as you want to display them. But that is too late now (unless you RENAME them all) and they still can not be edited in PTE 2. Use a Directory to Print utilty such as Karen's Directory printer (which is free) and save the directory listing as .txt file (or whatever format you want that is allowed within the utility), then you can copy-paste the file name into PTE via PROJECT OPTIONS > COMMENTS (don't use the TEMPLATE section) or OBJECTS and ANIMATION and edit them as you see fit. If I have understood what you are after, hope one of those two suggestions might work

Mary: Yes as time consuming (and mind boggling) as it was to link all the AVs to each other, putting together the Family Tree slides in PhotoShop was very time consuming. Ken: Thank goodness I am more than a "pretty face" as it ain't that pretty.... (I keep thinking I should use my profile shot as my avatar - but that would be overdoing it :D ) Andrew: Hope the pte files help you somewhat

Another example of how to handle different sized, oriented pictures. These are Olag Boritsch's images in a presentation produced by her husband a few years ago, This show was on Beechbrook for a long time and one of the heavier downloaded shows at the time. You will find the production here

Andrew (and all) Esc (Lennart)and I have been e-mailing back and forth for the past little while re my family tree "production" and he has asked that I make my template/pte file available. An explanation first: The "production" was done in 2003, using ver 2.x or maybe 3.x of PTE. It involved over 100 individual .exe files that were linked by OBJECTS. Back then, OBJECTS did not "stay in place" as they have since ver 5.0. If the show was presented on a different screen resolution than the one it was made on, the OBJECTS did not maintain their position (and in my case I used transparent buttons) and would not line up where they were supposed to. The transparent buttons appear as rectangles around various family names etc. Screens were smaller back then, so the production was aimed at a screen size 1152x863 and I used WINDOW MODE to keep everything in place. (I had to use a few other tricks too, but I won't go there now) As mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, it was a lot of work and has not been viewed by the family as much I would have hoped. If I were to do it again, I would do a printed version in book publishing service (see above postings). I have created two versions of the pte file: - one was created as a template in ver 4.48 - second one was created as a zipped back up in ver 6 This was the main show from which most other things linked off. The two zips are contained in one zip file here Hopes this is of some help to someone, if only to get a feel for just how much work is involved.......

Yes old scars........ When this thread started I was thinking about what Ed and I had been through.... Yes it might be worthwhile trying mip-mapping on the tests again with the problematic projector.

As Peter says there as many differing views on this as there are AV producers. I tend to use Peter's #3 as well in most cases. (Although back in the "old days" I would never turn my film or digital camera on end as I always wanted landscape shots. I used to tell puzzled non-av photographers that the film or pixels would fall out of my camera if I turned it vertically :rolleyes: ) I use 1280x960 for my landscapes and I use 900x600 for my verticals. I superimpose the verticals on an out of focus version of the last landscape picture, run a number of verticals alternating left and right and then when I want to go back to landscape, I change the background to an out of focus version of the next upcoming landscape shot. To my eye that eases the transition a lot. You might also want to look at this posting by Ed Overstreet a member of this forum. Ed's notes referred to here are on our Photo Club website, but I seem to recall that there was a PTE thread on this in the not too distant past.

Peter: Beautiful countryside, the snow makes me feel right at home It was smooth as silk for me

Joseph: You did turn on "Synchronize Music and Slides" in PROJECT OPTIONS Main Tab ?

Andrew: Yes I did produce an extensive family tree using PTE "many" years ago. It was actually 110 individual PTE (cross)linked by over 200 OBJECTS (buttons) I used "Run application and return" as that was the only option back then, you could use "Run Slideshow and return" if they are all in ver 6 today. More recent versions would work much better as the objects remain in the same relative position now - back then I had to force the show to play on any PC at a fixed resolution otherwise the buttons were not in the proper place. Today I would either use .png images or invisible gifs as the objects. There were so many individual PTE shows as I included many different branches of the family on a very discrete basis. I also had AVs on my mother talking about how she met my father, houses they had lived in, and other family memories. Other AVs included newspapers clippings on family events over the past many years etc etc It took me 6 months full time to produce it. I suspect that I could do it more quickly today with ver 6 and the knowledge/techniques I have accumulated over the years. But be cautioned Andrew that while you have an interest in the family tree, the rest of the family might not be as interested and all the work might not be watched as much as you might hope. While I personally feel the AV show is the best way to go as it allows total flexibility and permits sound files (and video files in the future :rolleyes: ) I would recommend using a self publishing site such as BLURB as that medium would likely be looked at more by family members and withstand the changes in the PC world that will inevitably happen.

Jerry: If the math won't work out for you as the beat is not exactly even, then you can spread the slides out as per the math and then manually fine tune/adjust the slide positions by using the TIMELINE at the bottom of the main window However since you are using 400 images, this might take a little time..

Need a little more info... (or at least I do to try to help ) How have you put the music tracks into PTE ? - PROJECT OPTIONS > MUSIC ? - "Add sound" at the top of the main window? I assume you have individual tracks of music, and not a single track of music containing the individual tracks attached in a sound editing software such as AUDACITY>

Use the CREATE BACK-UP IN ZIP under FILE and move the zip to the other computer and then you should be fine

Peter: Not sure if this is the one you are looking for or not: click here It was on Beechbrook for a long time. Oleg's shows sure inspired me in the "old days"

Igor: I had an issue with Windows 7, somewhat different than what you describe above. See posting: here 1. Issue was random slight drag on a transition accompanied by a static sound on the audio. This was for PTE ver 5.6 and before. 2. Windows 7 Home premium 3. 64 bit 4. Clean install on a new laptop 5. Problem was solved to a large extent by re-compiling all my PTE projects in Ver 6. 6. Yes the problem is solved for large part. I still had a very few minor re-occurrences so I turned off AVG anti-virus and a few other things in START-UP. Problem is still there on an infrequent basis but I really have to be paying attention to notice it.

I don't think this site has been mentioned before: Mark Johnson Mark Johnson posts a new PhotoShop workbench each week taking the viewer through the use of PhotoShop in image enhancement/manipulation/etc You can watch the workbench on-line or, for a very low cost, download a version for your files. Most of his past work benches (He is at #208 now) are available on the site as well There's always something to learn in PhotoShop

here is a "utility" that I use to check sound, focus and “calibration”. The image allows you to “calibrate” the projector for brightness/contrast so as to not blow the whites. Hopefully the computer/projector have been calibrated properly but if it was not done this is a useful check. The bottom line on the left has squares of white and black that are ascending/descending 4 RGB points to Zero or 255 I have a jpg included 2 jpgs that explains the “calibration” I should change the music and add a voice over section as well. That would check that the tone controls of the sound system are properly set for the narration The utility starts on its own and stays on the screen until you hit ESC

Thanks for thoughts Stu I got up early this morning and re-built the menu show all over again. I used five ver 6 shows (Hardware Acceleration ON although only one show has any animation) Menu show had hardware acceleration ON (No animation in this show) Bottomline ? It worked very smoothly on XP and Windows 7. Only differences I can see between the new Menu and the old one: - Hardware Acceleration ON in new Menu show, OFF in old menu show - Object used to launch the shows was an invisible gif file. In the new show the name of that file appeared 5 times in the O&A window. In the old show, I used the same file, but in the O&A window it was called "Image 0", "Image 1", "Image 2", "Image 3", "Image 4". Those names were not put there by me, they came up automatically. - I did not try to preview the Menu show, so I don't know if I would have gotten the corruption note that I got before.(see post 33 above) Bottomline is that it works !! The problem might have been the corruption (whatever it was) only affected Windows 7, not XP