davegee

http://www.pat-testing.info/ Was it Sodd or Murphy who said that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong? At the risk of being misunderstood once again I repeat that the senseless part of this discussion is not the technical aspects but the fact that we are all trying, once again, to find a way around a legal requirement. PAT of your own equipment in your own home is not a legal requirement but if you take that equipment to a public place like a hospital, school, village hall etc then you have to comply (whether requested or not). DaveG

Paul, As Ken said it is the discussion about something which should really be common sense - black and white - which is senseless. Your contribution was the first bit of sense spoken and I endorse all that you said. You and I possibly have the same background and the same insight. DaveG

This whole discussion seems to be a pointless excercise. But, just to put things in perspective, a lot of (if not all/most) village halls/community centres are maintained by and share the same insurance as their local council. If the local safety officer wishes to enforce the letter of the law he is well within his rights to do so and, yes, if he wants to see the PAT certificate for an item brought in he is entitled to do so but that duty is usually passed on to the people who run the hall on a daily basis. Failure to comply could possibly mean the closure of the hall for public meetings so a little bit of sense is required. Worse case scenario: someone is fataly electrocuted by a bit of gear brought in by a visiting lecturer which did not have PAT certification. The insurance is invalid and someone is made responsible in a court of law. You can be sure that person is not going to be the visiting lecturer so can you blame the people running the place for being cautious? I don't! That's all....... DaveG

Ed, I started a thread recently on this and described my methodology: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....ost&p=62630 DaveG

Paul's description fits in with my experiences when I was working at University. Everything new or brought in by an employee required PAT before being used. I see no reason why the village hall who are requesting this would not be right in asking for it. Some do and others are not as aware of its implications. It is a bit like having your projector/laptop MOT'd annually - it is not invasive and takes literally minutes. DaveG

Ray, On your XP machine save the project as a TEMPLATE or BACKUP IN ZIP. Transfer the whole template folder or the ZIP to the Vista machine and then all should be well. DaveG

Hi Ed, The reason for suggesting 256kbps is that it is, to my way of thinking, a good compromise between the "ultimate" (?) quality of a WAV file and the file size of the MP3. 320kbps is even better but to my ears, which have taken a hammering over the last 40 years both in my daytime job and my part-time musical career, I can't tell the difference between 256 and 320 (on my system and without earphones). Being a musician, I have a respect for other peoples work and wouldn't want to degrade it by choosing a quality which is too low. I have tried to emulate the recording quality achieved by Les Paul in his recordings from the 50's and early 60's which still stand up today as being amongst the finest ever produced. It's like using RAW in the camera. I have to convert to JPEG at some stage to get images into PTE so I use quality 12 wherever possible and only lower the quality when PTE begins to grumble (on my system). Others will approach things from the opposite angle - they use the lowest quality they can get away with and raise it when they begin to see (or hear) problems. That's OK too - each to his own. DaveG

Others are more knowledgable about this but..... You can output to an EXE file for PC, OR You can create high quality Video files which will play on a MAC. You would not need a dual boot system for that. However the original work has to be done on PC (at this time). I have already tried this on a MAC and it works very well. DaveG

Windows Temporary files? DaveG

Ed, Because of the file sizes, I would SERIOUSLY consider sticking with 256 kbps MP3 files. DaveG

XP SP2 (Media Centre Edition) In Explorer - Rt click - Properties - Summary. I think that two things are possibly relevent: Compression ratio??????? and Lack of PCM anywhere. Try altering File format to WAV (Microsoft 16Bit PCM) Something else appears to be at work here - Audacity says "UNCOMPRESSED EXPORT FORMAT" DaveG

Ed, See edited PS above. DaveG

Hi Peter, I see what you mean but it is not likely that Ed would have changed the default.....or is it? In Audition all variants are selectable in the dropdown which appears when you Save As which makes it easier to pick the "wrong" one. DaveG P.S. I looked at the details of the WAV file that worked for me (in Explorer) and they are as follows: Bit Rate 1411 kbps Sample Size 16 Bit Channels 2 Sample Rate 44Khz Audio Format PCM

Hi Ed, FWIW I have just imported a music file into Audacity and exported it as a WAV file which I then put into PTE firstly under the MUSIC tab and then under the Customize Slide option. In both cases the file played OK. I noticed that in AUDACITY there is no alternative WAV file other than the default. Therefore my post above refers specifically to AUDITION. The "User Error" I mentioned was choosing the wrong WAV type in the dropdown menu in AUDITION when Saving. Do you have a main music file playing as well as the comments? DaveG

So, rather than convert to greyscale it has DESATURATED and not done a very good job. DaveG

Ed, This is just a stab in the dark - I remember having a similar problem and the answer was, as usual, User Error!! There is more than one kind of WAV file and the correct one for most apps is WINDOWS PCM (*.WAV). Check that it is the right kind of WAV file? DaveG

Eric, If you open one of the converted images up in Elements and look at its MODE - what does it say? Is it converting to greyscale or desaturating (badly). DaveG

Hi Peter, Not "full", and I had to open it up to find out just how much support there was. I use CS3 on a day-to-day basis and saw something about actions in Elements 7 thinking that it was "full" implementation. It seems that it has an Action Player and around 15 ready made actions. It also will play Photoshop Actions (.atn) which can be loaded into Elements 7 (restrictions apply). There are literally hundreds of actions available on the web for download and there are people who will create actions for you as indeed anyone with a full version of Photoshop could. So, Eric, don't buy Elements 7 - it might be a big leap forward in some respects but for actions - no. Reading the fine print is always a good thing!!

Perhaps Igor could tell us if anything is proposed for the next version? DaveG

Like Peter said. It might be the right time to upgrade to Elements 7 - You could benefit a lot from it. Actions are a central part of the way I work. Pressing one key, for instance, can change Mode from 16 bit to 8 bit, flatten an image and convert from RGB to sRGB instantly. DaveG

Eric, Leave out the "dot" after zip? .... and paste in exactly as given. DaveG

It's a similar situation to the PTE file and the EXE file. The PTE file is very small compared to the EXE file it creates. It is just a set of instructions. DaveG

I think that we are all in agreement on this - it causes a lot of unnecessary posts from very frustrated would be users who cannot load a key. The situation is made worse by the apparently different systems that have been used to deliver keys over the last few years. DaveG

Try changing the name from "Reg.txt" to "reg.reg" in Windows Explorer. Alternatively you can type reg.reg into the file name when you "save as". You appear to have both the basic PTE reg key and the VideoBuilder reg key in one file. DaveG

Hi Peter, I copy that behaviour. I have never used the "Change Image File" Icon and doubt that I ever will - there is obviously something not quite right there. The other thing that threw me was that I was "experimenting" with a slide that did not have a "Main Image" - a blank slide to which an image had been added in a "Parent/Child" setup - and here, although clicking on the icon offers you the opportunity to change the image shown, it actually does NOTHING. If your setup is a "Cale" with an added image, the slide list shows the added image but it is not possible to change that image using the "Change Image File", even though it appears to be doing it, because there there is no main Image File to change. The image does not change and, obviously, nothing changes in O&A. So, summing up, I find that the situation would possibly be helped by renaming the Common "Name" to "Label" (after Igor has sorted out the "Change Image File" icon). DaveG