davegee

Dave, Having an HDMI output is not imperative - however it is the best way and gives the ultimate quality. You could also use the vga output of your computer to connect to a suitably equipped LCD TV (with separate audio lead). You might, however, find that your LCD TV will not perform at full HD when connecting at anything other than HDMI. My TV defaults to 1280x768 when used with a VGA connection. Ken has also mentioned using sVHS (or was it sVideo?). If you are making 1920x1080 resolution shows it would benefit you to look into one of these methods rather than pursue the DVD/Bluray route IMHO. DaveG

Like Barry I will continue to use a seperate programme (Audition) to produce Audio files. I seem to remember seeing that in some AV competitions etc the fading of the music at the end is not acceptable. Perhaps someone more experienced than I at entering such competitions could elaborate (?) not that it has anything to do with this poll perhaps. To quote Stephan Grappelli: "Start well and end well - the middle will look after itself". I have always maintained that no poll (or general election for that matter) is valid unless EVERYONE elligible to vote does so (IMHO). It is merely the opinion of the small band (comparatively speaking) of users who have bothered to take part in the poll and the result could hardly be used on its own in any decision-making process. DaveG

Lin, It's difficult but not impossible to trace the Evans name. I did my family tree back as far as my paternal great-grandparents - (that's as far as I wanted to go - 1852) a little while ago with very little to start. I then was able to work "backwards" to today and trace all of the descendants of my great-grandparents. Not only are there a lot of them but the stories related to their lines of the family are sometimes fascinating. The 1901 and 1911 censuses have just been issued online and there's a wealth of info there but you need something concrete to begin the search. What you need are birth, marriage and death certs. Your birth cert gives you your father and mother's details and their marriage cert gives their parents details and addresses etc etc. I guess that you knew all of this and you have to have a certain determination to want to do it. I was just curious. DaveG

Forgive me Xaver, by force I meant - "some kind of friendly configuration assistant" which would only allow you to continue if you ticked a box and made a decision about which option you want. If you change your mind later................ DaveG

Further to Peter's good advice, if you add a "dot" along the way wherever a town or feature arises and also where you change direction the "bump" is less evident. I have created an ultra smooth transition in place of the "smooth" version supplied by Igor which accelerates for 50% of the time and decelerates during the remaining 50%. That also might help? DaveG

I must learn to choose my words more carefully - I meant FORCE!!

Now this might sound like a crazy idea, but as a compromise it might work. When you open a NEW PROJECT you always have to go to PROJECT OPTIONS to set the project up the way you want it. (The alternative to NEW PROJECT is a set of TEMPLATES ready configured). What if, when you opened a new projected, PTE forced you to make certain decisions about the screen setup? One of the decisions you might have to make is whether the project should maintain the size of the MAIN IMAGE at a fixed value for resolution and aspect ratio. OR fit to a fixed aspect ratio screen regardless of resolution. In other words instead of there being a default which suits some but does not suit others you would choose the "default". Nothing would change with regard to the project parameters, but you would be forced to make the decisions, making you think about the implications of what you are choosing. DaveG

Which part of Wales? DaveG

For a complete history of The Londonderry Air read: Love Me Tender: The Stories Behind the World's Favourite Songs by Max Cryer DaveG

Hi Barry, I wasn't suggesting that anyone change their resolution to view a show - I would be the last to do that myself. I was suggsting that a fullscreen show made at 1920x1080 will show fullscreen on any resolution monitor. Being 1920x1080 the majority of monitors in use at this time will be smaller and therefore the re-sizing is downwards. On the few (?) occasions when such a show is viewed at a higher res the warning I suggested comes into play telling the viewer that the quality of the show COULD be compromised. I'm sorry to keep bringing up the use of LCD monitors at anything other than full native resolution. I just think that it is stupid unless the user has a vision problem. We are covering old ground here. DaveG

Aspects of ratio of a slide - 16:9 Size of slide - 1920x1080 Should I choose "Fixed size of slide" or not - Ticked You will then get the black lines each side. It will possibly look even better if you re-size to something like 1000 high to get a black line all around. Better still resize to 1920 wide and re-compose for best look in PTE Objects and Animation. You can very often afford to lose a little from top and bottom - try it. DaveG

Ken, I'm not sure if that means that you are in favour of using the high resolutions or against it? Using the native resolution of YOUR OWN monitor seems to me to be the only answer. DaveG

Barry, I'm not sure that I totally agree with what you are saying but I certainly understand where you are "coming from". This was discussed at great length when we lost “Original Mode”. I have been advocating for years that it would be good practice on the part of the author to indicate at the beginning of a show the OPTIMUM resolution for viewing. This can be done utilising the start up screen. If it is overwhelmingly important that upsizing does not occur then Window Mode is still available in addition to Xaver’s suggestion. The programme has been made increasingly complex over the last couple of years, partly due to the demands made on Igor by individuals for features that, in some cases it would seem, would only apply to those individuals. But rather than change too much I would like to see better documentation created from a USER’s point of view. Rather than just explaining what each feature does it needs to demonstrate how a feature can be used. For instance, “If you want to maintain the same image size on screen on a variety of different resolution monitors this is what you do…….” The answer for me is to create shows at 1920x1080 (or 1920x1200) so that the show will be downsized on more occasions than it is likely to be upsized (I realise that there are higher resolution monitors out there). This makes the Project File Size high but it has not created big problems yet. There seems to be a reluctance on the part of MANY photographers to move up from 1024x768 and a lot of these photographers already have LCD monitors which have an even higher native resolution. I keep hearing that on anything other than 1024x768 "the icons are too small"! DaveG

Doesn't it still end up as PAL (768x576 - the output resolution of the DVD Player) on your TV regardless of TV resolution? DaveG

I see what you mean Ken, but it is a messy workaround which would not be necessary if the music could be started at a specific slide/point on the timeline. DaveG

Ken and Dick, Good suggestions. However in order to do this you first have to turn off "Synchronize Music and Slides" in Project Options and also this defeats the OPs purpose because then you can't then see the waveform in the timeline in order to synch slides to specific beats or portions of the music. The ability to start music in the normal manner (via the Project Options / Music Tab) synched to a specific slide would definitely be an asset IMHO. The other alternative would be the ability to be able to "slide" the music along the timeline which has been suggested elsewhere. DaveG

Hi Brian, There's a little confusion here I think. We were talking (at least I was) about using the first slide of a show as a Start Up slide with a long indeterminate duration for use where a preamble is required. After the preamble advancing the slide would go to the rest of the show which would be synchronized to a piece of music (from slide 2 to the end). However this is not possible because PTE in its present form does not allow for starting music at slide 2 or whatever. What you have indicated (in a previous version of PTE?) is quite a good idea and uses current facilities but that was not we were talking about. My problem came about because of PTE's start screen is unable to fill the screen and shows the desktop behind. At least I think so - it was a little while ago that this came up. DaveG

Brian, Sounds interesting. Could you elaborate a little on what you mean by "Start Screen" / "Screen-Start". Is this part of the main show or something like a MENU slide? DaveG

But, looking at it from a different perspective, Igor suggested to me recently that using the first slide as a "Start Up" slide would be a way of overcoming current problems with the Start Up feature. If the Start Up slide (first slide) needs to be onscreen for an indeterminate amount of time whilst a little preamble takes place, then the facility to start the music on the second slide would be of great value. You can't insert an indeterminate amount of silence at the beginning of a piece of music in Audacity (or Audition)! DaveG

We are not talking about REGION SPECIFIC. PTE DVDs are already REGION FREE. Here's another example of a relatively inexpensive (BUT GOOD QUALITY) DVD player which has dual compatibility: http://www.dvdcity.com/codefree/jvc-xvn650.php DaveG

P.S. I visited the Sony USA site chose a DVD player at random - dvpnw50 and downloaded the manual. Page 28 explains how to set up for playing PAL DVDs. DaveG

Limey, The default play mode over here is PAL, but if you give it a REGION FREE NTSC DVD it will play OK. Although US players are sold as NTSC they also play PAL. As I said I have several contacts to whom I send PAL DVDs (REGION FREE) and get no probs. Same goes for any REGION FREE DVDs that are send to me from US (or indeed anywhere). Your user manual will probably tell you this. If you have never tried playing a region free pal dvd then you wouldn't necessarily know. DaveG

Just some additional info: On a MODERN DVD player it should not make a difference. Standard DVD players are now PAL/NTSC compatible. At least that's been the the case over here in the UK for a few years and I send PAL DVDs to the USA and recieve NTSC DVDs from the USA all the time - no problem. In the case of commercially made DVDs they are REGION SPECIFIC which will cause a problem on any DVD player. PTE is not Region Specific. Also, both PAL and NTSC DVDs will play on any computer in any country. DaveG

Eric, That's not exactly good advice! It is, after all, a BETA version and not a full working working version in any sense. Barry has been waiting (IM)patiently for the dual monitor facility for a while now (and it is nice to hear that he has invested in 5.6). DaveG

In the Tutorials section: PTE USER GUIDE UPDATED. DaveG