JRR

Simon: One club I know uses THUMBSPLUS, another uses ACDC Thumbplus has the advantage of being colour managed. ANother club designed their own software. Based on my experience, I don't think PTE is the best option here Although PTE being so flexible, there is little it can't do.....

Bill: Igor already is working on it. He is hoping to have it in the next series of beta once the current beta is released as an "official" version. I am looking forward to pan and zoom too, BUT Based on shows prepared by others using a competing AV softyware that does have pan and zoom, I have a lot of hestitation. Many of those shows over-used the pan and zoom leaving viewers dizzy. One has to remember to show off your images, not the software.

Mark: It is there now, one way is in the set up of PTE , click on the small box with the arrow pointing up, above the areas listing the images/thumbnails. BUT I doubt if you want to give your clients the .pte file and the images as they would have to have the PTE software too etc etc You could do it in a finished PTE show by using OBJECTS. Set up a page with as many thumbnails as you want. Lay invisible buttons over them and your clients can click on the one they want and go to that individual piture you have alreay loaded in the show. The USE of OBJECTS and making invisible buttons has been discussed frequently in the forum. I am sure a quick SEARCH will turn up a thread that will help.

There are a couple of ways If you are on the main screen, select the image where you want the preview to start and click on the "slice of bread" to the bottom right of the larger image in the top right of the main page If you are on the timeline, click on the transition number you want to preview from and click on the PREVIEW on the right side of the timeline dialogue box

We have had threads about batch running files to a size that works well for AV shows. Several options were discussed: Irfanview, PhotoShop etc Well here is another that does even more... My wife just gave me a day-late birthday present She pointed me to the following site that has a free utility to convert a series of images of one file type to multiple file types, convert the colour space, "fit image" to maximum size length or width, sharpen, save jpg to desired quality etc. (But I don't think it makes kitchens sinks ) The one thing I would like it to do, but it doesn't, is to save jpg's to a file size (# of kb) rather than quality. That would be a unique request from AV'ers? (I have found that for plain background images, you sometimes need to bump up the quality to preventing pixellation particularly when projecting shows) The site has a tutorial, plus a second shorter tutorial that updates the first one, plus the download Look for Image Processor 2.3 here

Ken: I downloaded it about three weeks ago to two new computers and did not run into and troubkle with it not being free. But things can change quickly

I guess the advice is worth what you pay for it (this time)

Fuzzy: There are more knowledgeable people than I who will come along, but I suspect you "might" be able to using OBJECTS. But I have never used video clips so I am only guessing

Igor/Inna I have posted them on the forum for our Photo Club (and gave Al Robinson and Guido Russo a plug too for their tutorial/sites) Thank you very much, Inna

Jack: TC is correct. Of course you can use any sound editing software. Audacity is an excellent free one. You can add your voice over several ways, but with the current beta I use the sound line at the bottom of the main screen. (over top the row of pictures/file list that are being used in the show) . (Make sure of course that the image requiring the voice-over is selected) If you go to PROJECT OPTIONS>MUSIC you can click on "don't interrupt..." at the bottom and then your voice-over will carry on over more than the one image if you want. Generally it takes practice to say what you want succinctly. If you can't say it in about 6 seconds, bring on another slide so people don't get bored looking at one image for too long. (6 seconds is a GUIDELINE, I have some images up for 15 seconds of voice over, but there has to be a good reason for it.)

Guido: Sounds great !! Thanks for all your work. Now I have to go check out the new music

Ednys You are right, Audacity as downloaded will not write a mp3 file. MP3 is a propriatory (spelling ?) format, but the AUDACITY site points you to various places to download the missing file. All you have to do is download it, save it and point AUDACITY to it and you'll be able to save as mp3.

Ednys I use Audition and it is great There is another software that can do almost all Audition can (Well I am not sure about "all" ) AUDACITY, its free. Just Google it and you'll find it. Hope things are fine across the "pond"

Ednys: This is a new feature that we are VERY grateful Igor implemented. One way to add a sound track is to add it on the SOUNDLINE on the MAIN page, just above the thumbnails/file names of the images in the show. In pre-4.4 beta days, if you added a sound track there (used mainly for voice-overs) that was longer than the image was on the screen for, the sound track was cut off when the next image came up. This was VERY frustrating when you wanted to do a voice-over that carried across two images. So the remedy I had to use was to VERY CAREFULLY mix the voice-overs in with the background music. That takes a lot of work and re-makes to get timed just right. Now it is a breeze.

Ed: I won't be much help, but did you try re-installing the software ? Doesn't sound as though you have many other options. (Selfishly I am glad it didn't happen with your shows for the April 12th Showcase, I have them safely stored on my computer)

kdwolfe The utility is on boxig's website Use the first website under his name in his post

Proimage1 Welcome to PTE I am no techie, but I suspect your issue is trying to run it from the CD with such large files. Normally we aim at file sizes between 100-300kb. (I use files 200-300kb only when I have a large expanse of one colour background that might pixellate if the file were smaller) Your CD reader likely isn't fast enough to read from the CD to keep up the show, many of us don't run shows from a CD unless they are relatively small.

This is more of an observation of a change than anything else. When starting to work on a new show in previous versions, I would, after selecting the images of course, start with PROJECT OPTIONS and work through the various TABS. I would set the MAIN TAB to SYNCHRONOIZATION and turn off DISPLAY SLIDES FOR "X" SECONDS Then I would work through the ADVANCE TAB etc. adding the music in the MUSIC TAB, selecting the TRANSITION Defaults in EFFECTS. Then I would come back to PROJECT OPTIONS>MAIN, open the CUSTOMIZE SYNCHRONIZATION to get the TIMELINE. In VER 4.3 and previous, I would be greeted with a blank timeline and I either put the transitions in manually, or let them be distributed equally before I started finetuning. In 4.7 when I open the TIMELINE the first time, all the slides are alreday distributed across the TIMELINE, but spaced as per the "DISPLAY SLIDES FOR "X SECONDS" that I had turned off. It is no big deal as I just delete all the points, and then let the software arrange them again or in put them in manually and start the fine tuning. It is just an extra step for a reason I don't quite understand.

IGOR: Re: being almost first one who asked for undo.... I like to be ahead of everyone else (except it usually is in making errors, so an UNDO would be welcome )

Igor: As Al says, that solved the insertion of the wrong slide issue BUT (there is always a but.... ) If you DELETE SLIDE and change your mind, cancelling out of out of TIMELINE brings it back. But if you say OK to TIMELINE, realize your error and CANCEL out of PROGRAM OPTIONS, it is too late...... To me CANCEL out PROGRAM OPTIONS should undo anything you just did, but it seems not for DELETE SLIDE anyway. I can live with it the way it is as there are three options: - NEVER use DELETE SLIDE unless I really want to <grin> (I NEVER use FILE>SAVE or FILE>CREATE so not much difference) or - Use INSERT slide to put it back in or - close the window, but don't SAVE. PS: I notice the program no longer fits on a floppy, oh well......

Steve: Another way to preview is to highlight the slide, where you want to start the preview, in the thumbnails at the bottom of the main page, then click on the "slice of bread" to the bottom right of the larger image of the slide above. Preview will start up at that point. PS: Who thought up the term "slice of bread anyway" ???

SteveP Re TIMELINE and checking partway through. Yes Ronwill's solution works. Another solution is to click on PLAY (note it changes to PAUSE) Click on PAUSE and cursor does not revert back to start of show. To start from there just click on PAUSE again or you can move move the cursor to whereever you want when PAUSED (or when it is running as Ron says)

Thanks Igor !

Cor: They are not quite the same, (and I believe are not meant to be the same), but can produce the same result if you change your mind. DELETE THE SLIDE actually deletes the slide from the list being used (OK, I can live with that) DELETE THE POINT deletes the transition point for that slide, but leaves the slide on the list for later use, OK, but..... re-inserting it does as Alrobin says, brings the last slide in your list (even if already on the timeline) into where you are currently working which is a problem.

Re Alrobin's point, I bumped into this the other day when working with a new show and not fully appreciating the nuanaces of the new TIMELINE. I had moved so many points to the left, that the points off to the right were hard to get to and drag back across the TIMELINE so I just deleted some points off the end of the TIMELINE (I had not yet picked up on the ability to move transition points in groups in ver 4.4 beta 5) and went back to ADD TRANSITION POINTS in the area that I was working. BUT up came my slides for the transition points I had just deleted. i.e. the end slides were now appearing in the middle of the show ! I was expecting the old 4.3 version of the slides just slipping into place. I really like all the new features of the TIMELINE, but I would really appreciate having the old feature back as Alrobin describes. I want my cake AND cookies too