Ian

If you've used Windows Media Player to save your files, then its probably converted them to "wma" format. This is Microsoft's own compression format - similar to MP3 but not as universally accepted and it does have some restrictions. Microsoft have built in some anti-piracy features, one of which is that there is an option that allows the wma file to be played back from the initial copy, but further copies won't work. I think this is something that can be disabled by the user, but as I don't use wma files I'm not familiar with the settings. Its much better to convert to MP3 as stated above. There are several utilities available as free or low-cost downloads that will rip directly from a music CD to MP3. I use Audiograbber , which is very powerful and gives flawless results. If you search for MP3 on this forum you'll find lots of other advice to get you on the right track. Ian

I think the problem is most likely the different disc access times between running the exe from a hard-drive and a CD. This is especially true if the show has been synched to the soundtrack. When PTE creates/previews the show, the image files are all read directly from the HDD and will all load in quickly. When the show is playing back from a CD, the time taken to load in the images will vary with the type and speed of the CD drive. A large image file will take correspondingly longer to load. The way that PTE works is to fetch each image individually as required in the sequence, and a synched sequence may call for an image to be displayed before it gets fully loaded, which will cause jumping. I find it necessary to leave at least one second between images (ie after the transition has fully played) to be sure that the show will play back on a variety of CD drives. Also - as per the previous point about image sizes - it is far better to first re-size your images to the correct pixel dimension for a screenshow in an external image editor rather than let PTE re-scale large images on the fly. You will have much more control over the image quality, and the show will be a lot more portable. Ian

You could always set it so that each page waits for a mouse click to continue. That way the reader has complete control over when to turn the page.

hmmm.... I just tried at 10.20 am from England and it won't let me on.

Hello Ernst There are several things that can affect the smoothness of the fade transition. Firstly, as you have correctly said the size in Kb of the compressed file is important. If the program has to load in a large image file it will take longer to fetch from the disk or CD than a small one, and hence affect the smooth running of the show. For a 1024x768 dimension image, you should be able to compress the file down to about 180-200Kb before any noticeable decrease in quality. Secondly, if you are using 75% of the screen (ie not the full 1024x768 resolution), then the processor has 25% less pixels to change. This means the fade is less processor intensive and hence could be smoother if the processor isn't powerful enough to handle a full screen fade. If you are only using 75% of the screen area anyway, you'd be better off using 800x600 images, as this would give you a 1:1 display. Using 75% of the screen with a 1024 x 768 image will mean that you're making the screenshow discard 25% of the pixels to make it fit. Ian

One of Igor's future upgrades is to enable action buttons on the last page of a synchronised show. That way, the music would finish properly before the buttons would be actionable for use anyway. Ernst - now you don't have to keep a "menu" show looping. The "Keep last slide on screen" will hold the last page indefinately so that the buttons (on a non-synch show currently) are always available. Ian

I have to hand it to you, Leif - that's the longest and most complicted password I've ever seen!!

Hi Wendy What you have done all seems correct. However, like you I find that sometimes an autorun CD created in this way fails to start up when inserted in the drive, and only autoruns when the CD Rom drive letter is clicked in Explorer or My Computer. There is another way of creating an autorun CD - see previous thread there are suggestions here for using free utilities to create the CD's. I find that if I also include a file "autorun.exe" and use "autorun.inf" to open this file, then the CD will autorun every time. It shouldn't make any difference, but it does seem to! Ian

Don't forget that there are already several competitions available for those amongst us who would like to test their sequences against others. Next week the Geoffrey Round competition takes place in Aldbourne in the UK. This is an international competition for digitally produced sequences of 12 minutes or less in duration. There are 54 entries, including several from Forum members, and the list can be seen on the AV World website: Geoffrey Round Entry List Most have been produced using PTE, with a couple of GlobFX ones thrown in for good measure. All of them will be projected for judging on 23rd March - should be a good day! Ian

You can preview the show from any slide without having to go to the timeline window. On the main window, when you click on any slide in the list a small icon appears on bottom right of the image preview. Click on this, and the slides and soundtrack both start from this point. Ian

Excellent! many thanks for your prompt response Ian

There have been several suggestions and add-ins (like the 'auto-link' utility) for making several shows run sequentially. I've had some success with using these, but none of them give a really "seamless" show. On the Project Options 'Main' page, there are three alternative types of show already catered for: (O) Close Show after Last Slide (O) Repeat show until ESC is pressed (O) When Show ends keep Last Slide on screen If Igor could provide a fourth one that says: (O) Close Show and Run Application with a drop down file browser like the one used with Buttons, this would allow a seamless method of calling up the next sequence when the current one exits. Would this be possible in a future release Igor? Regards Ian

Version 4 (now up to beta#7) is very stable. The big benefit with this version is the shadow on the timeline showing the durration of transitions. As you say you are using customised synchronisation, then V4 is an essential download! I've been using it since beta#1 with no problems. The comments posted to Igor are in the main either small defects that don't affect the final show, or requests for improvements. Ian

Absolutely agree - Sandy you should download the trial version and have a go! Its a very intuitive program and you'll be able to produce a slideshow very easily. The "technical" questions and answers on this forum are from people who are stretching the program to its limits and hence may appear daunting to a new user. Once you've tried it though you'll see that its very easy to make a professional-looking slideshow. Ian

If you have several objects on a page - eg buttons - and want them to always line up, put them all into a 'group'. That way they will always remain in the same relative positions no matter what resolution the users screen is set to. When making the buttons, its always a good idea to size them so that they will fit on to a low resolution screen (ie 640x480), then select them all with your mouse and group them together. The grouped buttoms will then always stay together in a block and be useable no matter what resolution they are viewed in. Ian

I don't possess a PDA so have never tried, but I just e-mailed a programmer friend who is familiar with PDA's and he says: No, it won't. The pte .exe will be x86-based code and Pocket PCs run on ARM processors (at least the 2002 versions do; earlier ones also ran on Mips and other chips). If there's an x86 emulator for PPC's then it might run, but I don't know if such a thing actually exists. Ian

Its more than likely that you've used "autosynch" as ccmanz says. There is a thread here that discusses the problem: buttons and autosynch thread Ian

Likewise, I'm more than a bit mystified by Rod's comment. This is after all a "user's" forum where we all share knowledge and experience of the product. It is also a useful feedback mechanism to WnSoft, but its hardly fair to expect a reply from the developer on every single point! Just looking at the above thread, Igor has actually responded to many comments anyway! Ian

I had a problem where after editing customised pages, they didn't pick up the "Project Options" graduated background I'd chosen. The only way I could get around it was to adjust the background in every single customised page to match the default one in Project Options. Don't know if this helps or not! Ian

No it doesn't, but its big limitation is that it only outputs 800 x 600 resolution, and doesn't have a synchronisation feature. Its okay for some uses - eg screensavers, small shows and webshows etc, but not for anything more demanding! Ian

Panning shouldn't be too difficult to implement - all that would be required is a "slide" transition to move one image on to the next. Mediashow has this feature, and if you slice up a panoramic image into seperate pictures you can achieve a pan effect just by 'sliding' from one image to the next. Ian

Now that I've looked (should have done this first...) it actually says "Playback" and "Recording" rather than Output and Input.

Sometimes this can be a bit tricky to find. When you double-click the "speaker" icon the dialogue box may initially only show the 'output' settings and not the 'input' ones. On the Options menu choose Properties and you will then be able to select 'Input' controls and see the Lin-In checkbox. Ian

Alternatively if you browse to where you've saved the screensaver and right-click it, you'll see the option "install", which will install it in the correct location for your particular system and make it the active screensaver. Ian

One other point - if you don't have a CD Ripper, you could use your CD writer software (eg Roxio/Adaptec, Nero etc) to do the same job. Put in an audio CD, and open the "make music CD" software. If you right-click the names of the tracks you should see an option "extract to file" which will make a wave file from the audio track. Ian