JRR

Ron: Yes I agree most people do use RGB. I brought this up a few weeks ago in the forum and had a mixed reaction... RGB for on screen veiwing is fine when you use a colour managed software, but computers handle sRGB better when not in colour managed software. I don't pretend to be an expert as to why, I have just been advised of this by many different people and have seen the difference. I understand most folks use sRGB for posting images to the net. At our photo club for various reasons, we switched from colour managed to non-colour managed software for projecting images in competitions and people wondered why their images looked so bad. Many have switched to sRBG for submissions and have seen a marked improvement. It has been the same with AVs, one person changed her entire show from RGB to sRGB and was VERY happy with the change on the screen. You can change the working space in PhotoShop EDIT>Colour Settings. Perhaps a few of the techies can enter this discussion

Don't forget to save in sRBG for most situtations. All the photoshop work can be for nought if the colour isn't "there".

Audacity uses the lame encoder As you may have seen eslwhere on the forum, when saving in MP3, save at bit rate of 128kbps (96 is acceptable as well)

John: I agree it is tedious, but short of having a sound editor built into PTE (which has been discussed several times before) I don't see anyway around it. There are AV softwares available that will allow many sound tracks within the software, but I prefer PTE over them for many reasons. So tedious yes, but I get the quality I want in PTE. It will be nicer too when the sound bites attached to individual slides can be heard while previewing in the TIMELINE. Igor has that one on his to do list, I think it might even be in ver 5.0 but not sure and I am not pushing for it either if it is not

And to you too, Ken Thanks for being such a resource to the PTE community !!

Jeff: Great summary !! Thanks

Dave: I just tried your music file in a PTE show and had the same problems you had. The music/transitions change when you pause etc on the TIMELINE. I am no sound expert, others are, so join in people, but I don't think it is your sound card. That track has a bit rate of 85kbps which seems odd to my luddite mind. I would have expected 80 or 96. 128 is what Igor recommended the other day. The other thing I noticed is that the encoder was "Xing" with a little note next to it saying "very old". I would have thought Cool Edit would be using a more current encoder (assuming that Xing is old). If other music is working fine, I think it is simply this file that is bad. If other music ripped using the same route is problematic, then try Audacity using the Lame MP3 encoder

Sounds to me like you have a sound file problem. I had a problem a while back of saving my MP3 at an inapproriate bit rate (no comment now as to why I was less than intelligent at the time ). So why not rip the track again using Cool Edit (or another software if you have another one) and make sure you save the MP3 at 96 or 128kbps. Since you can't zip a file to Roger, try the above and see what happens

Dave: Are there any transitions that do not have a 1/2 second space between the end of one and the start of the next ? Have you tried another piece of music (Not getting you very far are we )

Nothing comes to mind yet as an obvious solution. Is the sound file an mp3 file ? (Sometimes a large wav file with large pictures can cause problems.) What size are your images (pixels and kb) ? (generally up to 1280x960 and 300kb is optimal for many computers. Using images straight out of the camera can sometimes be problematic) How close are your transition points ? (There should be a separation of a half second - you can get away with less but it depends on image size to some extent)

I have never had this problem (thank goodness) PAUSE let's you pick up from where you stopped (or move the blue triangle around more accurately) vs STOP takes you back to zero. Can you actually see that the timings have changed on the TIMELINE when you re-start from PAUSE ? I know that is not of much help, but it might give us something to start with. What happens when you start the PREVIEW part way through the show ? (right-click on an image at the bottom of the main screen and choose START PREVIEW FROM CURRENT SLIDE )

Hi Karl: No you can start from any position in the PREVIEW mode. click on picture in bottom line where you want to start from and then click on the little icon to the bottom right of the larger picture on the screen. Looks like a rectangle pushed out of square If you are talking about starting other than at the start in finished .exe mode, no you have to start at the first image, but you could use the navigation bar to move elsewhere within the presentation Jim

Dave: You won't find any, but there have been several equivalent-to-books written in all the links that Ken gave you. Maybe that is something you could do, write a book for those following you

Ron: Not sure what you mean by "What U here" I have no option like that when select Windows recording mixer. I get: Mono Mix, Stereo Mix, SPDIF, AUX, CD player, Line in, Microphone, Phone line Using Realtek AC97 Audio card I am no expert in this stuff, so I might have missed the obvious

Ken: I know we have Newfoundland time 30 minutes later than the rest of us Canucks, but is Igor really 7 hours, 59 minutes, 26 seconds away from us

Jan: Welcome to the forum You might get a better answer posting it on the "how to create video" forum. here

Igor: I have egg all over my face (my wife through them at me ) I "always" use 128 bitrate. I remember now that I was showing someone the different compression ratios for mp3 (and comparing them to .psd and .jpg files). I obviously left Audition set at the custom 40 bit rate and didn't notice it when I made the mp3 tracks Thanks for pointing out my sloppiness. Now, for the next point.... What time is it over there ?? You really do need to take a break from PTE you know and get some sleep !!

Igor: It is on its way. My wife first thought she had done something to PTE (or PTE had done something to her ) when she was moving slides around within the TIMELINE, but then we discovered the file acted the same way on my computer in a new project.

Robin: There must be something in the air !!! I had a similar problem last night. Actually my wife had - she was working on a PTE show (her second) with an mp3 file I mixed for her. I have done lots and lots of PTE shows and mixed lots of files, but we hit a lulu last night. The music file came out of Adobe Audition showing a length of 8:02, it showed up in PTE with a waveform on the TIMELINE of 8:02, but the duration (PROJECT OPTIONS>MUSIC>music duration) was 8:34. Obviously the waveform did not correspond to the sound as it really did go for 8:34. We solved it last night by going back to the mix and saving it as a .wav form and used the .wav in the PTE file (It is a show that will be seen only 1-2 times so using the larger .wav file is not a problem) I suspect the MP3 tags were corrupted. Does your problem have the same characteristics ? Try another mix as you say and see what happens - use the .wav version and then the MP3 version

Backing up one with a comment (while you answer Hawk's question...) Image size 1424x2144 won't stop a show, but it will cause some hic cups if the file size is on the large size (>400kb) and the transitions are tight together. But I know someone who has done shows with files right out of their camera at 2-3MB and they have been fine.

Are you synching it to music ? Is the music long enough for all the images ? Does it stop before the music stops, or stops before you see all the images ? Need a bit better description to be able to assist

I have never used that feature, maybe someone else has, or you can tell us how it works

I meant "Light table"... Look for a little icon with a square and arrow to upper right (in the icon), at the end of the bottom row that starts with "create" "preview" "project options" etc That is the easiest way to sort and arrange your images. RE the problem of their not being inserted when you tried pasting, do you have "AUTO adding of new transition points..." checked on under VIEW on the TIMELINE ? Is there enough music left to add that many number of images ? Yes having all this possible from the timeline would be an option, but it does not seem to be right now

You can do question #1 by using the light table or the bottom row of the main screen (The listing of the images in the slide show). Use your usual select keys (CTRL or SHIFT) right click COPY and then select where you want them to be copied to and right click PASTE. The second question I will leave to someone else at this point

Jeff: Any and all tutorials are always welcome. Pls let us know when yours is ready as I am sure many will find it useful