JRR

There are a umber of possibilities here, but the most likely is that the CD reader is not fast enough to keep up with the show. It is far better to run from the hard drive than the CD. Your files might be relatively large for the show. Most of us aim the image files to be 300kb (plus or minus) and the MP3 is at 96 or 128 kbps.

Andrew: see here

This is NOT a work of art, but a fun AV that I put together for the Senior Citizen homes that we take our shows around to during the winter months. The images, except for the first part of the show, were taken in late 2005. The first part of the show has a few images from 2004, 2003, and 2002. All the images were taken by wife, Gwen Williams, or myself using a Canon D60, 10D or 20D. The presentation is divided into three sections. The first section was photographed around Canada’s National Legislative Building (The Peace Tower) and central Ottawa. The middle section is from a Pioneer Museum (Upper Canada Village) south of Ottawa on the St Lawrence River. (A long stone’s throw from the USA). Upper Canada Village consists of 30-40 buildings from the 1860’s that have been moved to one site and are staffed by costumed interpreters during the summer. The Christmas lights festival occurs each year for 6 weeks. The last section contains shots from one street in Ottawa that is known for its Christmas decorations. It can take 45-60 minutes to drive down the street which is about a half mile or 0.75km long because of the traffic. The street is called Taffy Lane, but nic-named Tacky Lane. Enjoy

Jeff: I think different people with different workflows use Templates for different purposes (or not all). Just like in PhotoShop and other process software we have our own workflows and resultant uses of various folders et al. I use the TEMPLATE in a number of different ways. (But not that way you do ) I put copies of the orginal images that I plan to use (Along with some extras) in a single folder related to the show I am working on (that is a subfolder of my PTE shows folder) That folder will house copies of my RAW files if I am using some, psd files with layers that I make up to ensure sequenced images transition the way I want them, copies of full size jpg straight from the camera, sound files (wav and MP3) I do a first cut of the show using the full size files and the wav file, then go in and crop each image to get the transitioning I want. I can adjust the White balance and correct exposure using the RAW file if I want to. When I first set up the show with the copies of original images etc it is a VERY large file, but after working through each image and substituting the final wav with a MP3 file, I get a more normal size .exe file. So at that point I have all my source images, and edited versions in one folder. One show folder I am working on now is at 1.5gb with all the files etc, but the PTE .exe file will end up at around 40mb. This is where I use the template file. I use the template file to back up the finished show with just the images in the show and sound file in what is a smallish file. (I also back up the larger folder too as well as the original images) When I take my show to some place to demo it or ask for a critique, I take the template folder as that allows for a more thorough review and critique. Might not make sense to all, but it does to me anyway

When I move my PTE show from one folder/drive to another, I always move the TEMPLATE file and never have a problem. FILE>TEMPLATE>CREATE TEMPLATE. I suspect someone else will come along with a better/simpler idea

Gilbert: I have converted many of my 35mm AVs to PTE. It takes time (or $$ ) to scan the slides, then put them in the same sequence as in the 35mm show using the light table in PTE to sort them. I use PhotoShop to make my titles, but you can use OBJECTS within PTE to do it as well but there are drawbacks to that. If you were doing synced 35mm shows, then plug your tape deck into your line-in on the computer and use a sound-editing software to record it digitally (AUDACITY will do it for you - just do SEARCH on the forum for AUDACITY and you will see references that will help.) Best thing to do is to find someone locally who has done it and you'll find out how easy (but time consuming) it is.

Jeff: The OBJECT EDITOR does save file size as just mentioned that can be an advantage. Personally I do not use it for mulitple images on the screen as it can problematic when shown on different screen resolutions. I realize there are work-arounds that JP has done good work with, but I prefer the PhotoShop method, pending the release of ver 5. I do use the Object Editor for making "launch pages" for other shows to start from.

Sam: Very nicely done !! Always enjoy your presentations, wish there were more available

Keith: You have to be in the OBJECT EDITOR page

“Fall Colour” was photographed in and around the Ottawa Ontario (Canada) region in 2004 and 2005. Due to the weather in the summer and early fall of 2005, the colours were not as good as 2004. There are a few images from the Fort McMurray (Northern Alberta) area as well. This is not an area noted for its rich fall colours, but a helicopter ride and a search of some back roads produced some colours beyond the normal yellow of their aspens. Again, any and all (constructive ) critiques are welcome

(SHOULD SAY "ON BEECHBROOK !!!) This presentation was the entry by my wife and myself in the Supercircuit this year. Last year’s entry, a nature documentary on turtles did not fare well at all. (Turtles of Petrie Island seen on Bechbrook last year) Based on the few well scoring presentations that we saw from last year, we knew we needed to have something that would be emotional and/or very cleverly humourous to do better this year. So this was our attempt. It did not fare well either. I did manage to get some feedback from two of the judges in the Canadian showing of the Supercircuit. After hearing the critique, we agree with the assessment fully. - The beginning and ending sequence of the lady walking down the road was excellent - The dream sequence was over-exposed and not dream-like enough, too static By the way, it was shot in the summer in 31°C temperatures. Our friend playing the part of the Old Woman was well dressed in heavy wool scarf and cape. She was not happy with us !!! Pls note: Any and all (constructive ) comments welcome

Igor: (and Aleseky) No problem, I know we are all anxious for it, but we know you take pride in your work (as do we in you) so take your time and release it to the elves when YOU are ready. Thank you for all the work you have done so far, we'll see the benefits for years to come.

There have been a few reports of delayed keys being received. You could send an e-mail to the support group at support@wnsoft.com Once the key arrives, you find just how great this software is.

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