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In response to Xaver's posts above, and after thinking this matter through some more, I offer the following thoughts... It seems that there are four possible kinds of "deletion" that we, as users, might like to have available: 1. Delete slide "n" from the Slide List and, by implication, from the Timeline and have all slides "n+1" onwards move to the left by an amount of time equal to the duration of slide "n" (the action that I have previously described as closing the gap). 2. Delete slide "n" from the Slide List and, by implication, from the Timeline and have slide "n-1"'s duration increased by an amount of time equal to the duration of slide "n" (the action that I have previously described as leaving the gap intact). 3. Option 1 plus the deleted slide gets placed at the end of the project as the last slide (equivalent to "the current "Cut Transition") 4. Option 2 plus the deleted slide gets placed at the end of the project as the last slide (equivalent to "the current "Cut Transition") I have explained the above in terms of a single slide but the actions are equally applicable to a group or a collection. There are four possible actions and there are four possible keyboard short cuts that could be used: Del, Shift+Del, Ctrl+Del and Alt+Del. I agree with Xaver's point that a keyboard shortcut should, ideally, not be context-dependent. So it seems to me that there is an opportunity here to make PTE behave in a consistent manner, with the flexibility that ought to be present and to have keyboard shortcuts to go with the command menu options. The remaining decision is: which keyboard shortcut should go with which action?

Igor, Whilst checking out v5.51-beta for you I spotted some very minor bugs in the drop-down menus. I think these might have been present ever since the first v5 release. If you select the Slide command off the command line; then in that drop-down menu the Copy Slide, Paste Slide and Remove Slide from Slide List options do not display their keyboard shortcuts of Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V and Del.

Igor, Firstly, it is now possible to select an individual image (Click), a group (Shift+Click) or a collection (Ctrl+Click) in the Slide List, in the Timeline and in the Fullscreen view when taken from both the Slide List and from the Timeline. Thanks for correcting that anomaly. From here on things get a little more complicated! From the Slide List, the deletion of a single slide, a group or a collection using the Del key always results in the gap being closed up when one switches to the Timeline display. From the Slide List, the deletion of a single slide, a group or a collection using the Shift+Del key always results in the gap being closed up when one switches to the Timeline display. From the Fullscreen view taken from the Slide List, the deletion of a single slide, a group or a collection using the Del key always results in the gap being closed up when one switches to the Timeline display. From the Fullscreen view taken from the Slide List, the deletion of a single slide, a group or a collection using the Shift+Del key always results in the gap being closed up when one switches to the Timeline display. From the Timeline, the deletion of a single slide, a group or a collection using the Del key always results in the selected slide(s) and all slides to the right being moved along the timeline by an amount equal to the duration of the first of the selected slides. From the Timeline, the deletion of a single slide, a group or a collection using the Shift+Del key always results in the gap being left in place. From the Fullscreen view taken from the Timeline, the deletion of a single slide, a group or a collection using the Del key always results in the gap being closed up. From the Fullscreen view taken from the Timeline, the deletion of a single slide, a group or a collection using the Shift+Del key always results in the gap being closed up. So, to try and summarise: - 1. Deleting via the Slide List or via the Fullscreen view navigated to via the Slide List is behaving consistently and as one would have expected from the behaviour of all previous releases of PTE - 2. Shift+Deleting via the Slide List or via the Fullscreen view navigated to via the Slide List is behaving consistently with the above - 3. Deleting via the Timeline is closing up the gaps - 4. Shift+Deleting via the Timeline is not closing up the gaps - 5. Deleting from the Fullscreen view navigated to via the Timeline is closing up the gaps - 6. Shift+Deleting from the Fullscreen view navigated to via the Timeline is closing up the gaps 1 and 2 above seem OK to me. 3 and 4 give the flexibility to either close the gaps or not - which is a nice option to have. One of 5 or 6 is not behaving consistently with the rest. In 3, 4, 5 and 6 above I wonder if it would actually be more logical from the user's point of view to have Shift+Del close up the gaps (i.e. shift the timepoints) and have Del merely remove the slide without closing up the gaps. In other words, swap 3 and 4 around and then bring 5 and 6 into line. Hope I've managed to explain the situation clearly enough for you to understand things.

I am using PTEv5.5 and developing a one-day workshop on PTE for the members of my local Photography Society. I have found some apparent inconsistencies in the behaviour of PTE in the area of the Slides view, Timeline view and the Fullscreen views of these. First inconsistency: If, from the Slides view I click on the Fullscreen View icon in the bottom right hand corner of the window, then in this view I can select slides by Click, Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click - i.e. I can select individual slides, a contiguous group of slides or a non-contiguous collection. This is as I would expect it to be. If, from the Timeline view I click on the Fullscreen View icon in the bottom right hand corner of the window, then in this view I can select slides by Click or Shift+Click but not by Ctrl+Click (or at least they don't get highlighted as being selected) - i.e. I can select individual slides or a group of slides but not a collection. Is there a rational reason for not being allowed to select a collection when in Fullscreen view from the Timeline view? Second inconsistency: If in the Slides view I select some slides and press Del, they are removed from the Slide List and the gaps on the timeline are closed up. If I go into the Fullscreen view, select some slides, right-click on one and then select the "Remove Slide from Slide List" I get the same behaviour. This is as I would expect it to be. If in the Timeline view I select some slides and press Del, they are removed from the Slide List and the gaps on the timeline are not closed up. If I go into the Fullscreen view, select some slides, right-click on one and then select the "Remove Slide from Slide List" I get the same behaviour. Again, this is as I would expect it to be - except that the action is described as "Remove Slide from Slide List" which made me think it would close up the gaps just as if I had done the action from the Slide List. Perhaps it would be better on the right-click menu to call it "Remove Slide from Slide List" on the Fullscreen view of the Slide List but call it "Remove Slide from Timeline" on the Fullscreen view of the Timeline. Is it possible to have both options shown on the right-click menu from the Fullscreen views? - "Remove Slides from Slide List" on one of Del or Shift+Del - closes the gaps on the timeline - "Remove Slides from Timeline" on the other of Del or Shift+Del - leaves gaps on the timeline

I haven't experienced that level of "junk" mail for over three years. I don't know exactly which action has eliminated them all but over the space of two or three weeks various actions were taken. I suspect the outcome was as a result of the combination of events, which were: - I upgraded my Norton Internet Security suite to one that included "anti-spam" filtering - I implemented a weekly "cleansing" routine using Spybot Search and Destroy - my ISP (Virgin Media here in UK) implemented a service upgrade that included improved filtering of e-mail content to eliminate unwanted "hitch-hikers" at source. Over the space of the next couple of months the level of "junk" items fell away to its present level of no more than one or two per day - and some of these are newletters that I did once subscribe to but now would like to stop but can't because the embedded stop link isn't having the desired effect! The key player in getting rid of unwanted emails from the end-user's Inbox is, in my opinion, the ISP. They are the only ones that can stop it getting into the Inbox. I suspect that differences in the legal situation across the world will mean that in some countries the ISPs cannot interfere with the passage of emails. I suppose it could be argued that what seems to be happening in the UK is a form of censorship . If that is so, its a form that I'm all in favour of! Just to bring the story up to date; when I bought my new desktop system (which runs Vista) I discovered that Vista would not let me install my then current versions of Norton and Spybot. I bought the latest version of Norton and, following some recommendations on this forum at the time from Brian.Conflow, I added the freeware version of Advanced Windows Care Personal to replace SpyBot. The answer for all PC owners is, undoubtedly, to implement a layered defence. Any part of it that cannot be fully automated must be carried out manually on a very regular basis. On my system Norton is set run a full scan of all drives automatically overnight Saturday to Sunday. Each weekend I run Advanced Windows Care manually, looking for any updates before I get it to do its scan. As I said earlier, I now get no more than one or two items of junk mail each day - and often go several days between junk items. I took a 4-day weekend break away from home recently. On my return I had 59 mail items - only six of which were junk (and two of these were the ones I'm trying to get stopped!).

PTE accepts sound files in WAV format but they are much larger in size than an equivalent MP3 file (typically about 10 times larger). If you want to convert them to MP3 the simplest way, in terms of a tool that will also serve you well in other aspects of soundtrack creation, is to use Audacity as suggested by Lin.

Jim, You asked: Consider the situation of a user such as myself who has customised the various settings of Project Options to those that I use on a regular basis and then saved them as a Template and made that template my default template. Each time I install a new verion of PTE I ask it to copy the settings forward and thus preserve my customised defaults. It works OK for me and is a handy little feature. As to why it seemed to cause you problems, I'm afraid I have no answer. Further to yachtsman1's tip about e-mail addresses: when I first joined the forum I, too, was reluctant to publish my e-mail address for fear of being inundated with spam and other junk mail. After a while I noted that some users (Ken Cox for one) did publish their e-mail addresses. So I took the plunge and added my e-mail address to my signature on the forum. Since doing so I have not experienced any rise in junk mail and/or spam. Whether this is because the forum's hosting service has got good protection in place, or because my own ISP has got excellent e-mail filtering in place, or simply because I've been lucky - I don't know.

Stuart, Just to clarify the image file size issue... If you simply want to use these images in a PTE sequence that will be projected via your digital projector then the images need be no larger than the native resolution of your projector. So, if your projector's native resolution is 1024x768, there is no point in making your images any larger as the excess pixels will have to be taken out. The only exception is if you are using PTE v5's Pan and Zoom features. In this case you need to resize the images such that, no matter what level of zoom or pan you have done, the pixels being displayed through the projector are all "original pixels". For example, let's assume your projector is 1024x768 and you want to zoom in to 200%: you will need an image of at least 2048x1536 to ensure that, at the end of the deep zoom in, every pixel on display is an "original" and not an interpolated one. You can quickly resize a batch of images in Photoshop Elements using File...Process Multiple Files... command.

Ken, That's exactly the point I made in post #25. This forum is a wonderful platform for stimulating debate and discussion and even, at times, heated argument. And there is likely to be at least one forum member who learns something new from each such discussion.

Dave, What the original poster wanted to do was: No mention of editting JPEG files! In the early responses Ken Cox and I gave him some advice on how to breakout of PTE into Photoshop (Ken) and any other software (me). The thread has, from that point on, then wandered along a route of its own devising and has given us all an opportunity to explore various related aspects. And that is what makes this forum such a great thing to be part of. We can have some damned good discussions/arguments/disagreements - and yet, at the end of the day, all the forum users benefit to a greater or lesser extent. For the record: I am entirely in agreement with your view that all editting is best done using a "Lossless" format. But I also can accept the pragmatic approach which says that I can, at times, get away with an edit on the 1024x768 JPEG safe in the knowledge that my viewing audience will never know or be able to spot that I've done it.

Xaver, Your understanding of Audacity's behaviour with sound files is correct! The original soundfile (as an .mp3, .ogg or .wav) is imported into the Audacity project file (the .aup file) and stored in a proprietary format that is Lossless. Each subsequent change is stored in the .aup file - which can be saved at any time and re-opened in a later session. Changes can be made in this way until such time as the user decides to export the project as either a .ogg, .wav or a .mp3 file. The LAME mp3 encoder allows the user to select the quality level for the .mp3 file thus leaving control of the amount of "loss" in the user's hands to some degree.

And to give an idea of how such an effect might be used in a sequence consider the following scenario: - image of a building with door closed - open the door by transforming just the door part of the image over a time period - zoom in towards the open door - fade to an interior view taken from the doorway Yes, the individual images might need to be set up outside of PTE but the actual effect of the door opening (i.e. transforming from head-on to perspective - swinging on its hinge, in effect) has to be achieved in PTE as an animation event. A possible technical implementation would be to allow each side (ideally each corner) of the shape to be zoomed independently of the others.

Colin, Thanks for your response to my previous post. I've just carried out a little test. I used an image that had, up to this point, only been uploaded from my Nikon D70. the process flow was as follows: - Launch Adobe Photoshop Elements v5 - File...Open...Image1.jpg - File...Save As...Image2.jpg (taking all my normal values for any settings along the way) - File...Open...Image2.jpg - File...Save As...Image3.jpg (taking all my normal values for any settings along the way) - File...Open...Image3.jpg - File...Save As...Image4.jpg (taking all my normal values for any settings along the way) - File...Open...Image4.jpg - File...Save As...Image5.jpg (taking all my normal values for any settings along the way) As expected, the first iteration produced a much smaller file (because of the parameter values associated with this save). Thereafter I witnessed a small reduction in file size at each subsequent iteration. Note it was a reduction and not an increase - of the order 100 bytes or less in a file size of just under half a million bytes. From this brief test I conclude that the implementation of the JPEG algorithm in Adobe Photosho Elements 5 is actually fundamentally flawed. I say this because, to any person of average intelligence, the act of opening a file into a piece of software and then saving it to a new file name without making any changes to the content should result in a perfect copy of the file. Clearly this is not the case with this JPEG algorithm. However, from the perspective of an audience watching an audio-visual sequence, the differences that do come about are undetectable to the human eye on a single viewing with nothing to compare against. I repeated the same test, saving the image as a TIFF file. The first Save As...tif gave me a file size of 18,073,864. This file was then Opened in Photoshop Elements 5 and then Saved As...tif to a new file name. If the argument put forward by Colin is correct then this second file should be exactly the same size as its predecessor. It wasn't; it was 18,073,908 - a very tiny growth in size. The next iteration produced a file size of 18,073,908 - this one was the same size! From this I conclude that even saving as a TIFF file doesn't guarantee to produce an identical file. The file content can change across a save with no actual modification made anywhere between open and save. Although there is a real and quantifiable problem I believe that it is not a serious issue for an A-V worker. As with so many other aspects of our work, we can often see things that we would wish to improve because we see the sequence over and over again during its creation. An audience typically sees it once and once only and rarely spots any of the weaknesses that loom so large in our minds.

That's why I proposed tighter integration of the O&A window in a separate thread. If the O&A window was more tightly integrated with the main window then it would be possible to have the "Customize Slide" tabs appear where the "Properties, Common and Animation" tabs appear and it would then be possible to step through the main images maing adjustments on whichever tab you wanted. But like you, John, I have no idea how complicated it would be to program this. And would those who have used PTE for more years than I have be willing to accept a totally different layout of info and a different way of working? Personally, if a new layout and a new working method, which might take time to become familiar with, were to make things easier in the long run, then I'm all for it. As an alternative approach to presenting all this info in different parts of the PTE window,; should Igor and his team move towards "floating palettes" like Photoshop has? We could then decide which ones we wanted open and where they were to be in the window. Now that would be total user flexibility! (If this has hijacked the thread, I apologise unreservedly)

If you want to make the same change to several slides all you need to do is select them in the Slide List (via Shift+Click for a range or Ctrl+Click for a collection) and then make the change. It gets propagated to all the selected slides.

Barry, I'm in agreement with all of these. Just one request for clarification, though. You wrote: "Another thought. What is the disadvantage of having the sound wave file displayed by default. I would guess many users always turn it on...". Were you referring here to the display in the main window or is there a way of displaying the actual waveform in the O&A window that I've missed?

Further to Barry's comments above... My training and experience as a computer programmer taught me that, if you give a computer program datastream "A" it will always produce datastream "B" unless there is an element of randomization encoded within the program. If it doesn't there is a serious bug in the code! So, whatever the piece of code is that "unpacks" JPEG into memory will always unpack the same image the same way and, in theory, you will have in memory exactly the same data that you would have had if you had opened an uncompressed version of the same image (e.g a TIFF file). You then make a small alteration to part of it and save it back as a JPEG. What's going to happen? Those parts of your image that haven't changed will get processed back to JPEG just as they were before you opened the file. Those parts that have been changed will be processed back to JPEG for the first time - but that is going to give you the quality that you would expect from any other first time save. I do not believe that repeated saving to JPEG causes deterioration of the image quality to any degree that we, as AV workers, can readily see in our finished product - provided that we do not alter the settings for the JPEG file (i.e. if you're using level 8 then stay at level 8 every time). If you start changing the JPEG quality values then for sure you are going to see a quality difference. And once you've dropped the quality level down there is no way you can get the quality back without stepping back to an earlier, higher quality version of that file. That's how I see it. I'm willing to be persuaded that I'm wrong.

You can break out to any application by selecting a slide in the Slide List and then doing: Customize Slide...Main...Run external application - and browse to the program that you want to launch. Instead of an application program, you can select a file (e.g. myfile.doc) and then the associated application will be launched and that file opened (e.g. Microsoft Word for myfile.doc)

Tom, You don't need expensive software to produce PDF files. I don't know whether you ever looked at the Audacity User Guide that I produced but that was written entirely with Microsoft Word and then turned into a PDF file using a piece of inexpensive software called deskPDF (see link below). I tried some of the freeware PDF creators but this one, at USD20, was better than any of the freewares that I tried. http://www.docudesk.com/desk_pdf_product_home.shtml#

Tom, It's nice to know I'm not alone in having that problem!

Tom, It's not where you come from: it's your age!

Tony, If your projector's native resolution is 1024x768, then this is the size that you should set for your images (unless you are doing some deep zooms or wide pans). Don't worry about how the sequence looks on your monitor at a different resolution. Just make sure that the PC that drives the projector is set to a resolution of 1024x768 before you start the show running. If you've built the sequence to 1024x768 then it will project at 1024x768. I build my sequences at 1024x768 (4:3) to match my projector. They are built on a 1280x1024 (5:4) monitor but played back through the projector from a laptop with a 16:9 aspect ratio monitor. All my images are set to "Fit to Slide". I don't experience any problems with this approach.

Lin, I've never tried to do any of your style of presentation (perspective frames, reflections, etc.). But if I was to try, I would have expected the reflection to be achieved by taking the "right way up" component images into Photoshop and flipping them - and then controlling their opacity when added back into PTE. Or is there more to it than that?

Hi David, Having now had a chance to study your sequence and your images in more detail I can make the following observations: When I use the Preview button to preview the sequence at full-screen on my 1280x1024 monitor I see the jumps (most noticeably on the zoom in on the Red-hot Pokers (Kniphofias) and on the deep purple flower; but also visible on the other zooms) When I use the mini-player to preview within the main PTE window I cannot detect any jumps. When I use the Play button in the O&A window on each image I cannot see any jumps. I'm not sure where that leaves me in terms of understanding the root cause of the problem. However, after previewing the sequence several times I feel that the jumps are occuring at the point when the next image is just beginning to appear. This would explain why I don't see them when using the Play button in O&A. As all your images are 3008x2000 pixels, it could well be that Colin came up with the correct explanation when he pointed the finger at your graphics card as being the bottleneck. At the start of each of your images, you have two 6Megapixel images active, both of them in an active zoom. I feel that this is asking a lot of a graphics card. Since you are zooming in to greater than 200% on these zooms, you do need all those pixels in order to retain reasonable image quality. Indeed, when I study your first image that is used for the long pan, I note that you have zoomed this to over 230% - and the image has softened significantly as a result. I also noted that you have built the sequence to an aspect ratio of 16:10 (presumably to match your computer's monitor); but have used 3:2 aspect ratio images - all of them at full 6Mpx resolution. I don't understand your reasons for doing this: I cannot help but feel that you are adding complexity by mixing such different aspect ratios. All my own work is done to a 4:3 aspect ratio (1024x768) because the final destination is my digital projector (whose native resolution is 1024x768). The 3:2 images are either placed on a background or placed behind a "windowed mount" mask. Any questions you have about 16:10 aspect ratio and image sizes will have to be picked up by some other member of the forum. I'm afraid I have no relevant experience to bring to bear. To calculate the deepest zoom you can achieve without image degradation: take the height of your monitor (in pixels) and divide it into 2000 (the height of your images in pixels) and take the width of your monitor (in pixels) and divide it into 3008 (the width of your images in pixels). Which ever is the smaller, multiply that by 100 and there's your maximum zoom without picture degradation.

Hi szphoto, You may not need to do anything. I work on a Vista Home Premium desktop PC. On my system I have a folder called "Digital Studio" in which each sequence has its own sub-folder (containing all image files, sound files and the .pte file for that sequence). I have found that, once my sequence is built to my satisfaction, I can move (i.e. drag and drop) the sequence folder from "Digital Studio" folder (which I use for the work-in-progress sequences) to "AV Sequences" folder (which I use for completed sequences). If I need to revisit one of the completed sequences I have two options: - for a quick modification I can launch PTE and open the pte file from under "AV Sequences" - and all the links are followed correctly - for a more complex modification, I just drag and drop the sequence folder back into "Digital Studio" folder and treat it as work-in-progress once more. I don't know whether the same approach would work with XP as the operating system.