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Gary, Have you changed your operating system from Windows XP to Windows Vista? The delay showing the computer's desktop is a "feature" of using PTE v5.5 under Vista. I'm not aware that it also affects Windows XP machine. I'd be grateful if you could please clarify for me. regards, Peter

Igor, This is only a very trivial matter that I'm raising. On the Project Options...Main tab, if I change the Slide duration a ">" gets added to the "Set for existing slides" button to remind me that I need to click the button. On the Project Options...Screen tab, if I change any of the three options that have a "Set for existing slides" button, a ">" does not get added. I think PTE's behaviour would seem to be more consistent to users if the ">" was also added as a reminder on these three options. I realise, of course, that for the slide duration we have the option of not clicking so that our existing slides retain their current durations whereas the other three options will always apply to all slides regards, Peter

Hi folks, As some of you regulars will know I have stated elsewhere in the forum that, in my opinion, burning to DVD and playing back through the TV, is a can of worms. Well, I've finally plucked up the courage and taken the lid off my can. And the worms are out! First the good news. I successfully burned the DVD using VideoBuilder (mine's a trial copy so I do get the scrolling message but that's no problem) And I found the burn process very easy to do - just followed the "Next" button taking defaults all the way. I took one of my shortest sequences (just 7 images set to music and lasting just 30 seconds) and burned to a DVD+RW disc. It plays back fine in my desktop computer and, to my surprise, it played back through the DVD player into the TV down in the lounge. Now for the BUT.... The sequence was built for projection through my digital projector so is sized at 1024x768 (i.e. 4:3 aspect ratio). The TV (a four-year old Tatung that uses CRT technology not LCD) is a 16:9 widescreen TV. So I ended up with a stretched image. This is what I expected. What I didn't expect to see was barrel distortion within the PTE image. The sequence was built using a background image (set via Project Options...Screen...Background within the pte project) and the individual main images are sized to 85% (again done via Project Options...Screen... within the pte project). The sequence plays perfectly in Preview, the mini-player and as an exe file on the computer. On the TV playback, the background fills the TV screen and has got clean straight edges but the superimposed main images all show consistent and identical barrel distortion on all four sides. I stress - it is the edges of the superimposed main image that shows the barrel distortion and not the edge of the background image. I'd welcome thoughts on this matter from those with significantly more experience of DVD and TV play back than I have. regards, Peter Post-script: I'd read many times about the significant loss of image quality when playing back from a DVD through a TV. Well, I'm pleasantly surprised at just how good the image quality is. Ok, it is not as good as on the computer screen but it is still very acceptable.

Lin, My sincerest apologies! I missed it when I had a look before replying above. Geo, You may not be going blind, but it appears I am! regards, Peter

Geo, It's OK, you're not going blind. You didn't miss it - it isn't there! The tick box for Rasterized appears on the Properties tab for Text objects only - and these seem to have been overlooked when preparing the User Guide. regards, Peter

Hi simonr, Welcome to the forum. I'm sure the collective wisdom of the members (backed up by the development team) will be able to get you going quite quickly. I think I know what you need to do but you've got to do it in Spanish! Launch the PTE program then take the fourth command off the command line From that drop-down list click on the fourth item down and then select English from the list of supported languages. Hope you can follow this and that it works. regards, Peter

And don't worry if you subsequently want to change the words of the text. Just untick the "Rasterize..." box, make your changes in the Properties tab in the usual way and then re-tick the "Rasterize..." box. Regards, Peter

Hi Connie, Welcome to the PTE Forum. I'm sure that the collective knowledge and experience of the forum members will help you solve your problems. I'm afraid I cannot help with your first problem as "I don't do DVDs". However, have you downloaded and studied the User Guide? There are two such manuals: the official one that is available via the Help command and an unofficial one that is available via the Tutorials part of this forum. I would recommend that you take time out to study both of them. Now to your second problem: Your terminology is confusing me a little. There are the following ways of running a full-screen preview (one in which the PTE window itself disappears whilst the slideshow runs): - from the Preview button on the lower tool bar in the main window - from the Preview button on the lower tool bar in the Objects & Animation (O&A) window - from the File...Preview command on the command line - via the F5 key They should all have an identical behaviour. There is also the "mini-player" within the main window. This runs a preview within that part of the main software window. The behaviour of your slideshow should be the same when running here; but obviously at a much reduced size. There is one other button that has a kind of "preview" effect. That is the Play button on the lower tool bar of the O&A window. This show only the animations on a single slide. To get a better understanding of where your show is having problems I suggest you go into Project Options and make the following changes: - on the Main tab - tick the "Wait for a key press...." box - on the Advanced tab - set the Mouse buttons to be "Next Slide" on the left button and "Previous Slide" on the right button. Now Preview your show using the Preview button on the lower tool bar of the main window. You are now in control of when each slide begins to change by clicking the left mouse button. You can use the right mouse button to step back up through the show to have another look at a particular transition. (Note: if you have music accompanying the slides you might want to remove it temporarily until we've got the problems with the images sorted out. In this manual mode, do your transitions behave as you want them to? Please report back. regards, Peter

I hope all goes well with the upgrade and that your next post in this thread is a "Yippee!". regards, Peter

Hi hfimages, I'm assuming that you are using PTE v5 of some flavour. If not please post again giving the version of PTE that you currently use. Windows Vista is a "memory hungry" operating system. Whilst it will run PTE v5 sequences on a PC with 1GB of RAM, it runs better with 2GB or more. Bear in mind that the smooth running of PTE v5 sequences that make use of Pan/Zoom/Rotate animations is dependent on the graphics card or graphics chipset. You talk about upgrading because your hard-drive is full. This suggests that the PC itself may be at the older end of the age range. So the suitability of the graphics card may be a concern. Do your existing sequences make use of Pan/Zoom/Rotate? Do your existing sequences play OK on your existing system? If the answer to both questions is Yes, then upgrading to Vista should be OK provided you also add extra RAM - to at least 1GB and preferably 2GB or more. If the answer to the first question is No then you should think about downloading some sequences with complex animations (e.g. from Lin Evans's web sites: http://www.lin-evans.net/ and/or http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/) and get your system checked out for suitability. You may find that you need to upgrade the graphics. If you do decide to upgrade to Vista then the only "problem" you are likely to come across is a brief flicker to and fro to the Windows desktop at the start and end of each sequence. The developers are aware of this and have undertaken to try and resolve it in a future release. Based on feedback via this forum, it would seem that PTE V5.6 is well advanced in its development. I'm hoping that this "desktop flicker" problem has been addressed successfully in that version. On a non-PTE aspect of the Vista upgrade - be very aware that not all your previous software will install under Vista. It has its own views as to what constitutes Vista-compatible software and if believes the software to be non-compliant it will refuse to let it install. I had to upgrade Adobe Photoshop Elements from v3 to v5 in order to get a "Vista-compliant" version. And I have had to retire my PDA because there were no Vista-compliant drivers for it. My experience is that the things that are Vista-compliant all seem to work as you would expect them to "straight out of the box". And that includes PTE v5. regards, Peter

Like several others, I have been following this debate with interest if not always with understanding. There would appear to be some who are wanting to see more new function added. Others are concerned that this will make the product even harder to learn for the new and novice user. Some (notably Brian) have suggested ways in which this complexity can be "hidden" until the user feels ready to activate it. I think you are all missing the root cause of the current problem of ease of use - or lack of it. I would like to make the following observations about PTE's ease of use. Getting to grips with PTE is no different, in concept, to getting to grips with Adobe Photoshop. Both products offer a wealth of features; not all of which will be required by all users. I struggled to get to grips with Adobe Photoshop (in my case Elements v3 and subsequently Elements v5). There were so many commands and each had so many different options and parameters. How did I eventually come to my present familiarity with it? Slowly! I took it one small step at a time. I developed a network of contacts through my local Photographic Society - who all gave freely of their time and advice. And I learned how to get the most out of the very comprehensive context-sensistive Help function. So, how does my experience with PTE differ from my experience with Adobe Photoshop Elements? I started with a local contact who guided me through the early learning curve using v4.43. I found the product extremely difficult to understand at first because it did not have good context-sensitive Help. I worked my way up through the versions until I was using v4.48. When v5.0 betas were released I started watching the forum on a regular basis - and learned a tremedous amount about using v5 even before I plucked up the courage to download a beta code product. The biggest single aid to my learning about PTEv5 was, without any doubt, Lin and Jeff's excellent User Guide (which I still dip into from time to time to check my understanding). But I found the potentially best source of assistance was still missing: a good quality, context-sensitive Help. I've continued to work my way through PTE versions (participating in the v5.5 beta program along the way) and now run v5.52 -and still there is no context-sensitive Help. In my humble opinion, a product of the complexity of PTEv5 must have context-sensitive Help of a very high quality. Until it does have this, it will continue to present a challenge to the new user. Achieving good quality, comprehensive context-sensitive Help will be a very large project indeed. In my days leading programming teams and support teams we had some basic "rules of thumb": - coding and testing the main functions of the software took 20% of the effort - coding and testing the error-handling routines took 80% of the effort - writing and proof-reading the documentation (user manuals, reference manuals and online help files) took 10 times the effort needed to provide the fully tested code. If PTE is to continue to attract and retain new users, it must, in my opinion, address this issue of good quality context-sensitive Help. regards, Peter

Igor, I've just checked my old Fujitsu Amilo laptop. I last used it on 28 July. The battery is still 94% full. Therefore I conclude that what you are seeing is not normal for all laptops. It might still be normal for an ASUS Eee PC. I seem to recall that another forum user mentioned owning an ASUS Eee PC in a post earlier this year. If you can find that post you could try a PM to the forum member to get their experience of owning a ASUS Eeee PC. regards, Peter

Igor, As I seem to be the only one to hit this problem, I'm happy to wait until v5.6 for the fix to be included. Can you tell me, will the fix do both the following: - prevent the fault happening in the future (this I expect it to do) - remove redundant code from existing project files (this I would like it to do) regards, Peter

Hi Xaver, It's good of you to try and diagnose the problem. Unfortunately I cannot remember exactly how the sequence was put together. It was not just built at a single point in time. It has evolved over a period of several months. The first snowfall occurred on 3rd January this year. The first version of the sequence was built in late January using PTE v5.1. We had a second fall of snow in late March so I rebuilt the sequence using images from both snowfalls. I suspect that this was built using a beta level of PTE v5.5. The build technique would have been to Open the existing v5.1 pte file into PTE V5.5 beta ?? (whatever version I was using at that time) and do a File Save As to a new name. This version was then worked up using that beta level of v5.5. I am now trying to give a common "look and feel" to all the sequences built from material taken during my walks up that lane. That was why I wanted to change the background and title images. So the pte file was now opened in PTE v5.5 and the attempt was made to replace the background and title files using the technique explained in my original post. So we have here a pte file that was created with PTE v5.1, amended with at least one beta level of PTE v5.5 (possibly more than one beta) and finally updated with PTE v5.5. Somewhere along the way some lines have been added to the pte file that are now redundant. But I don't know which lines, why or when! Nor do I know which lines to delete in Notepad so that all redundant entries are removed but no damage is done to any vital entries. I really need Igor's advice on this matter.

A little bit more info... Of the eleven instances of a "missing file" being reported, seven are on the slides that have a transition that is not the Project Option default transition. The other four instances are on slides 2,3,4 and 5 - the titles and credits slides. regards, Peter

I've encountered a strange problem with "Missing Files". Over the last few months I've built a series of short sequences based on images taken whilst walking along a country lane that is about two minutes from my front door. I was modifying them to give them a common "look and feel". That involved changing the background image. For this sequence, the original background image was called "C-Background.jpg". The new background file was called "Background1.jpg". I went into Project Options...Screen tab and changed the file reference there. For images 2, 3, 4 and 5 I went into O&A...Properties and changed the file reference there. I previewed the sequence. It looked OK. I created the exe and ran that. It looked OK. I deleted the file "C-Background.jpg". I relaunched PTE to work on the next of the sequences and, when it opened the previous project, I got an Error report pop-up window that reported several instances of "C-Background.jpg" as a missing file. I checked carefully along the Slide List - no "blue patches" to indicate where the missing files were. I stepped through the sequence in the O&A window - again, no "blue patches". Nothing obviously missing. I tried Save - the errors were reported again. I copied the "C-Background.jpg" file back into the folder. Now the sequence opened and saved without any errors reported. The project has been zipped and uploaded to MediaFire. It is available via this link: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=7836f6f...8365492a3e39a71 (As an aside: it looks as though MediaFire have changed their system recently. That monster of a link is what you now get when you upload a file) back to my problem.... The zip file contains all the images, the music file and the missing "C-Background.jpg" file. If you extract the zip into a folder, check the sequence out and then delete (or rename) the "C-Background.jpg" file, I'm fairly certain the problem will appear. I've taken the .pte file into Notepad and searched for C-Background. Sure enough, it finds several instances. What I don't understand is why these entries are persisting after all references have been changed. regards, Peter

When building my sequences, I've never found a need to use anything other than "Fit to slide"; so any changes made to "Original size" will not impact on me. As an ex-computer programmer, I'll support anything that makes code easier to maintain and modify. regards, Peter

Xaver/Tom, My User Guide for Audacity is written for v1.2. Once the latest version of Audacity goes fully live I intend to update the User Guide. regards, Peter

Vesa, Your PC should be OK unless you are running Vista as your operating system - in which case it would benefit from additional RAM. Vista is "memory hungry" and 2GB of RAM should be regarded as the minimum to avoid memory bottlenecks. Some ATI Radeon cards have problems handling some aspects of PTEv5.5 animations. I have no relevant experience to draw upon but I'm sure others on the forum will offer their thoughts on the graphics card. From the sound of things the problem has not recurred. So, perhaps it was a "one-off" glitch. I suggest you monitor the situation for, say, a week of regular usage. If the problem does not reappear then let us know via a reply to this thread - so we can all relax! Of course, if it does reappear, then get the full details of the error message and report back. regards, Peter

Hi Vesa K, Welcome to the forum! I'm sure our collective wisdom will help you get this problem sorted. I've been using PTEv5.5 for several months and have not come across the problem that you report; nor have I seen mention of it on the forum before. Let's start by eliminating some possible but unlikely aspects: It's possible that the copy you have is corrupted in some way, so: - From which website did you download the software and on what date and at what approximate time? - Have you received your product key from WnSoft and installed it? - Have you tried a fresh download from WnSoft's website (www.wnsoft.com)? Next, let's make sure your PC has enough resources: - What processor(s) does your PC have? - How much main memory (RAM)? - What graphics card or graphics chipset is installed? Finally, for now: - Could you please provide the complete text of the error message that you are getting? regards, Peter

Xaver, How Igor and his team choose to implement is their decision. They know the existing code and how it works. They know how much existing code could be reused if they do it a particular way. I have, in another thread, suggested that an integration of the O&A window and function into the main window (in a manner similar to the integration of the Timeline view and function) would seem an obvious next step in further rationalisation of the user interface. But just how that rationalisation is delivered (if it is delivered) has to be left to the developers. PTEv5.5 was primarily a major enhancement to the user interface. I am hoping that PTEv5.6, whilst it probably will add more new function, will also take the user interface forward another step. regards, Peter

Penguin, Sometimes a sequence requires a complex soundtrack and the precise timings of the pieces of the soundtrack are not known until assembly of the sequence begins; for example, a sequence that involves music all the way through it and that needs voice-over with some of the images but not others. Now, suppose one image, which doesn't have voice-over, is going to carry some fairly complex animations and the following image does need voice-over. The precise placement of the voice-over will not be known until the animation has been built. The precise length of the animation will not always be known until it has been built alongside the music. We all have different ways of building our sequences. Many of us build sequences of varying length and complexity. What works for one person isn't necessarily going to work for some one else. Even for one individual, what works for one sequence isn't necessarily going to work for all sequences - as I know only too well from my own experience. regards, Peter

Jerry/John, It would also run the very real risk of being a compromise for "all (or even numerous) of these functionalities". I'm a big believer in "jack of all trades, master of none". My preference will always be to do the work on the component parts outside of PTE (in my case, editting images in Adobe Photoshop Elements v5 and sound files in Audacity) and then bring those component parts together in PTE for final assembly where some minor re-tooling may be both necessary and desirable. Note my stress on minor. To be able to have several different files in the sound track and to be able to slide them along the timeline to get just the right positioning, yes, that would be a nice-to-have. To be able to apply fade-in/fade-out to the ends of soundfiles, yes, that would be nice to have. To be able to see the sound waveform no matter whereabouts in PTE we were (main window or O&A window), now that would be worth having. Right now it is impossible to achieve precision synchronization of object animation with the soundtrack because we cannot see the soundtrack or hear the soundtrack whilst editting the keyframes. Having the ability to see and hear the soundtrack whilst in the O&A window is, to me, an essential next-step for PTE to take. regards, Peter

Jerry, Just checking your understanding of PTE.... You do know that you do not need to preview from the beginning all the time, don't you? The little icon that sits between "Preview" and "Video" allows you to preview from the currently selected slide. So, if you've got the timing OK up to, say, slide 15, you can select slide 16 and then click on this little button and it will start the preview from slide 16. regards, Peter

Lighten up, Ron! Barry couldn't find the Emoticon for "tongue in cheek"! Peter