JRR

I am with you Harold

Alan (the Oldie in the uk) I think there are quite a few using COOL EDIT (With the Studio plug-in). It is very good. I had been using Acoustica MP3 Audio mixer which did all I ever needed, for substantially less £££, but I went to Cool Edit when I needed to adjust the tone of a pre-recorded narration before mixing it with music.

Fuzzy: The "time-line" refers to the line that comes up when you do a fully customized show. PROJECT OPTIONS - MAIN - CUSTOM SYNCHRONIZATION. Yes I would put the object editors on the first slide. In reality you are making a one image show for which you specify that the last image stays on the screen under SHOW SETTINGS. Then you would have two OBJECT EDITORS: your e-mail, and one pointing to the .exe file with the show Jim

Fujiboy: Take your 20mb file, which is a normal size file, and open it in PhotoShop. Then using IMAGE SIZE, reduce it from your approximate 2200x3300 pixel size (I am assuming that is where you are) to 800x600 (don't change anything else in IMAGE SIZE) and SAVE AS a .jpg, Quality 5 you will likely end up with the right size of file at 100-200kb and it should be as sharp as what you started with (unless you try to print out a large print). On screen it should be fine. Good luck

Welcome Oldie I still do use the old fashioned two projector show system as I don't have a laptop or digital projector yet But I am using PTE for situtations that don't need a laoptop/propjector. The jerkiness you refer to is a function of the processing power your computer(s) have in combination with the size of your images and sound file. I have tried PTE on many machines and aside from one old machine that froze solid, the shows will run on most computers less than two years old. But you usually need a Pentium 3, and 256 RAM minimum. Keep the images and sound files at reasonable sizes. I use 800x600 images at about 100-150kb with fades as short as 1 second with no complaints. PTE has the best FADE that I have found after trying many. Hope that helps.

Jim: Neat idea to put choices throughout the show !!!! I never thought of that. But I will have to wait for the answer to your OBJECTS question before I try it. Thanks for finding the problem for me !!! Now who will find the solution ? Jim

Ian: The extra second of silence, if added, would add a second to your show and upset any customization that you might have done. If it is there, you can either remove the second, or use Alrobin's PTE Adjustor. See his posting on the forum at the "heart" http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums//index...t=ST&f=2&t=329: As to the internal vs extrernal player, I can't honestly help you except to say I never check the internal player and everything runs fine for me Jim

Ian: If the two MP3 files played before they were joined, I am not sure why they would not play after joining ! I never tick off the box for the internal player and mine work fine. Were the joined files saved as an mp3 in Acoustica ? (You have to watch out as sometimes Acoustica adds one second to the mp3 file at the front end when saving it) Other than that, which is not much , I am afraind I can't help you, but someone more technically minded will solve it for you I am sure. Jim

I do my title slides in Photoshop

I'm with you Truelight !!! Jim

My CDs are created on a WinMe computer and run on WinXP not problem (and Win 98) I know WinXP can be tricky at times with Autorun, but I can't tell you what the secret is as I have not had to try to find it. Hopefully someone else can be of more help. Jim

Jim: Others more expereinced than I might correct me, but if you have all the applicable .exe file in the root of the CD, then it should run OK. But I have been wrong before.... Jim

For me, I am not sure I would want/need a "CREATE MAIN MENU" to start various shows from. There would still be manual work to select the shows you want to run from there and what flexibility would there be with backgrounds to make it look good etc etc. All which would be done "manually". I find the use of the Object Editor on a single image PTE show gives me ultimate flexibilty, and little manual labour to create a "launch page" for my shows (and other exe files) that I might be using for various presentations. But I am sure others have different needs and views. Jim

Ian: Are the two pieces of music one mp3, or two ?? Are they made with the same specs ? If they are two separate files, you might have better luck putting them into one mp3 with spoftware mentioned in many other threads: Acoustica mp3 audio mixer, or Cool Edit 2000 and STudio plug-in. Both can be found on the web through GOOGLE. Acoustica is a basic program and will do 90% of what you may ever want to do. It is quite cheap. The other has many bells and whistles which you pay for. You migth also have a problems with transitions on the images being too close to each other at the sametime as you are changing music. If you are using 4.0beta and the synch timeline, you can check this by looking at the gray markings on the timeline. Hope that helps Jim

Must be nice to have the $$ to use Adobe Premiere as a audio compresser !!! Jim

I have lost more CDs than floppies Nothing is safe, back it up several places.... Jim

Al: Thanks for the fix !!! (Sorry I had to be the one with the "old" EXCEL version and found it ) BTW, I used the PTE Adjustor for a purpose you likely never expected - I still maintain a stable of 35 mm analog slide shows on ARION equipment. I had created a PTE version of one of the existing 35mm shows. I tweaked it in PTE, liked it better. So I ran the PTE_ADJUSTER and was able to print out a listing of the start, transition and on-screen times (my terms) to go back and adjust the "old fashioned" version. Thx again Jim

Wellybob: Changing the resolution really has no effect, but I suspect you really did was change the pixel dimensions of the image. See my post (and others) at Mega Project 380mb (1) at http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums//index...f=2&t=289&st=20 Jim

Al Robin, in his 9:24pm Jan 31st on this thread, felt that my comments re dpi and file sizing might be confusing for some. So let me try to say it in a clearer way: I leave all of my images (from a scanner) at whatever dpi they are scanned at. The dpi does NOT matter in the resultant file size (measured in bytes). The bottom line measurement is the pixel dimension e.g. 3000x2000 or 800x600. The more pixels you have the bigger the file is in size of bytes. The file type (e.g bmp, tiff, jpg) and any compression of that file will also factor into the final (byte) sizing. I was trying to state that you don't need to adjust the "dpi" as so many people seem to think they have to reduce a file (bytes) size. Hope that is clearer Jim

I leave all of my images at 1200 or 2400 dpi as this has nothing to do with the (electronic) file size of the image. The file size is determined by (1) the pixel dimensions and (2) the degree of compression. I find I spend a lot of time "discussing" this with people who argue I am wrong, but so far all have walked away convinced... I know you can batch size images in IRFANVIEW or PhotoShop (Thumbs Plus will as well, but it seems to want to drop the res to 72dpi !!!), but I tend to do the sizing idividually on critical images so I can ensure I get the exact "line-ups" I want for the dissolves one pic into the next. Not every one is critical thank goodness as sizing can get tedious. Jim

Thanks Stef: That does work well - so long as I remember to set the deafults to the 20ms when I set up a show with "cut" being the default (Not that I do that much as I usually use the FADE as default.) I can usually remember when doing individual slide customization I mentioned the "bug" to Igor when we spotted it just after the beta 4 came out, so maybe when the final version comes I won't need to worry about my "senior moments" when forgetting to set the cut to 20ms. Jim

Hi Welcome to the forum !!! I see you are not having much luck with getting answer to your question. I can't answer it either, but don't get discouraged, someone will pop in with the answer for you. I have not asked a question yet for which I did not get a helpful answer Jim

Thanks Granot Looks interesting, curently I use a autorun CD that starts with a single image show with OBJECT EDITORS linking to the various shows on the CD now. Click on the link and away it goes. (double click and away it goes twice !!! ) Yours sounds like a little more to set up, but might be more friendly to viewers. Jim

Welcome to the forum !!!! I only use FADE as well, I use PTE as it has the best FADE I could find for digital slide shows. I think you likely have a couple of "problems" The FADE is very taxing on CPU processing, you need a relatively new computer (minimum P3, 256 RAM, etc) for it to work well The file size of 300-500kb sounds a bit large, but to me just as crucial is the image size. 800x600 fades beautifully on my computer, if I take the same file size, but make it a 1200x900 image, the fade shutters badly.(depending on the transition time-see below) My files are 800x600 at 150-200kb (Quality 5 jpgs from PhotoShop) The transition time you are asking the FADE to run in is a factor as well. I can run a fade at any speed on a 800x600 file and it is OK, but others with less powerful computers find they need to extend the transition time to 3-5 seconds to get it smooth. It also sounds as though you might have some of the transitions too close to each other. You need to allow the transition to completely finsih and then give it a fraction of a second longer, before transtioning the next image in. If you are using PTE 4.0beta, there is a grey marking along the custom synch timeline that shows you the transition timing vis a vis the on-screen times. Alrobin's excel utility See (http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums//index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=201) on page two of the forum-look for the heart can also help you with the timing issues. Hope that all helps Jim

Jeff: (I told you there would be more knowledgeable people than I who would help !!) It didn't click that you had 4 separate MP3 files. Putting them together is easy, you'll see elsewhere on the forum that Acoustica MP3 Audio Mixer (inexpensive) or COOL EDIT with the STUDIO PLUG-IN (more expensive)are amongst the best softwares to do that. If you have used the timeline synchronization for the show, PTE v4.0 beta has grey markings on the timeline to show the transitions times (except a cut shows up with 1500ms). That may help to adjust the timings, or you could use alrobin's nifty excel routine. You can find a discussion on it at Page two of the forum (as of today) look for the heart) http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums//index...ct=ST&f=2&t=201 Jim