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Dave, I'm afraid I'm not familiar with that chipset, so am unable to offer any immediate advice in respect of it. Just to extend the information gathering exercise: could you please confirm the version of PTE? (it's obviously v5 of some kind because you were using PZR, but which version?) You said you had resized your images. What size are they (expressed in pixels wide by pixels high)? Have you confirmed that you have used the resized images by watching the bottom info bar of the PTE window to see what size PTE says they are? You've made a sensible start on the diagnosis by removing all the PZR effects. Some further avenues of investigation that spring to mind are: - Is the "jumpy" behaviour present on every transition or only some? - If only some, which transition type does it occur on?

Hi Dave, To determine what graphics chipset is built into your laptop proceed as follows: Start...Computer In the list of folders, right-click Computer Select Properties from the pop-up list Select Device Manager from the Tasks Expand Display adapters This will tell you what chipset your system uses for its graphics capability. Report back with this info and somebody should then be able to give you further advice.

Hi Xaver, I see the same effect as you when I Preview your project file on my desktop PC system (1280x1024 monitor). I have never used customized shadows before - only the default values, which give a much softer shadow effect. It will be interesting to follow this thread in order to find out what the explanations/resolutions are. Thanks for bringing it to everyone's attention.

Mike, Can you not achieve what you want by assigning the music file with the first of the selected slides rather than adding it in via Project Options...Music tab?

John, You still have not made it clear in what way PTE is not giving you what you expect. Are you saying that in PTEv5 the 1024x768 prepared image when viewed at 1024x768 looks as bad as the 1400x1050 prepared image? Or are you saying that the 1400x1050 prepared image looks just as good as the 1024x768 version? To simply say that both images look the same in PTEv5 is telling us nothing of any value in furthering the technical aspects of this discussion. How about zipping the images and the PTE projects and posting them so that we can all see exactly what it is that you're talking about?

To my mind (and here I'm speaking as an ex-Competition Secretary at my local Photographic Society and as the chairman of the sub-committee which established our principles for projected digital images) there are two main factors that should come into play when setting the rules for a competition of projected digital images (and I mean single images not AVs): - the native resolution of the digital projector that will be used to display the images - the colour space in which the images are presented If images are prepared to a size greater than the native resolution of the projector they will suffer interpolation downwards with a consequent loss of definition (i.e. they will handicap themselves) If the images are prepared in a colour space other than that which will be used to project them they will suffer colour casts/changes and that, too, will handicap them. If the entrants are daft enough to give themselves a handicap by not working in accordance with the competition rules, they don't deserve any sympathy when their entries get marked down. Our rules in this matter are straight forward: - all images are to be supplied as JPEG files sized to a maximum width of 1024 pixels and a maximum height of 768 pixels - all images are to be prepared in the sRGB colour space - the Competition Secretary reserves the right to disqualify any images that do not meet these criteria At present, while the world of computing and HD TV is going through a period of flux as far as resolutions and aspect ratios are concerned, the only sensible option seems to me to be to work to the "lowest common denominator". If 16:10 aspect ratio becomes the norm - with projectors offering a native resolution that conforms to this aspect ratio, then the rules should be changed when the equipment used gets upgraded/replaced. Until then, why complicate matters?

John, It would do. When viewing the 1024x768 image you were viewing every single one of the pixels that you had included in the image. When viewing the other two images (both of which were sized bigger than 1024x768), you were seeing only some of the original pixels. The excess pixels were deleted from your image and some of the remaining pixels that you did see would have been modified in order to achieve a "reasonable" facsimile of your original images. It's called "interpolation" - a term used to describe the addition or removal of pixels to/from an image in order to make the image fit the defined size of the viewing area. When-ever interpolation happens there will always be a loss of definition. Identically good or identically bad? As you have seen in my posts above, it is easy to get the wrong settings in PTE and thus not have the expected result when the images are displayed. If you were trying to simulate in PTE the views that you had just had in Windows, I think you would need to have Project Options...Screen set to 4:3 aspect ratio (to ensure that you are matching the aspect ration of 1024x768) and you would need to give consideration as to whether to use "Fit to Slide" or "Original" as the Mode setting on each image in the Common tab of the O&A window.

Further to my last post (#13)... If I take Image2 into Objects & Animations and change its setting from "Fit to Slide" to "Original", it then fills the screen exactly as I believe it should have done in the first place. But I shouldn't have to make this change. My image file is sized at 1280x1024. My monitor resolution is set to..... Cracked it! Whilst thinking about the words I wanted to use I suddenly realised that I was running with my aspect ratio set to "4:3" in the Project Options...Screen tab. When I change this to "5:4", Image 2 now fills the screen and Image 1 now has a narrow orange band at the top and bottom. Everything is working as it is supposed to - except my brain! As I said in a reply to a different thread: Life is getting too damned complicated! So, for the past ten months I've been looking at a "cross-eyed" monitor which now "sees straight". PTE does show all of the image in its proper proportions provided you set all the parameters up correctly. My apologies to all for having temporarily hijacked this thread. Let's get back to where we were at posts #8 and #9. John, the question still stands: what did you mean when you said that PTE didn't display 1024x768 precisely?

Progress!!! I downloaded Xaver's test project and this gave me the same result as my own projects - no wihite line at top or on right. So I was now suspecting my hardware or drivers rather than PTE. I visited the nVidia website and established that I am running out of date drivers. However, the installation process sounded a bit too complicated for my liking, especially as they warned that I must turn off my anti-virus software whilst doing the install. As I am on an "always on" broadband connection I am very reluctant to disable such a key element of my protection. I decided to park any work on the drivers for the moment and look at the monitor hardware set-up. I activated the monitor's in-built menu system and before I had a chance to do anything, it immediately started doing what it called an "Auto-Adjust". As I watched, it nudged the screen display to the left a bit and down a bit. I stepped through the rest of the menu system making no other changes. Upon re-running the previews of my two projects, the v449 one now ran exactly as I expected it should. The second image filled the screen top-to-bottom and left-to-right and with all the white borders visible. However... The v5.5 project second image still showed a narrow orange stripe at both the left and the right. This has to be my background setting coming through. But the second image is sized at 1280x1024, the native resolution of the monitor. Why isn't it filling the whole screen display (as it does in the v4.49 project)? We're getting there; but we're not quite all the way there. I've attached a zip of my two images and the two PTE project files. The Pte file names make it clear which is v449 and which is v55. ImageSize.zip

Jim, Pleased to hear you've cracked it! Life is getting just too damned complicated, ain't it?

Further to my post above (post #8)... You got me thinking so I did a few simple tests. I created two images in Photoshop: - Image1 - a black slide with a 1 pixel white border (total image size = 1024x768) - Image2 - a black slide with a 1 pixel white border (total image size = 1280x1024) Image1 is built to match the native resolution of my digital projector. Image 2 is built to match the native resolution of the monitor on my desktop PC system. I then opened PTEv4.49 and created a new project that contained just these two slides. I also opened PTE V5.5 and create a new project that contained just these two slides. In both projects I set the background to be a bright orange shade via Project Options...Screen tab When I Previewed the v4.49 project, the first image was displayed in the centre of an orange screen (as I expected it would be). The second image was displayed with the left-hand white border visible at the extreme left of the monitor, the bottom white border visible at the extreme lower edge of the monitor - but no sign of the top or right borders!!! When I previewed the v5.5 project, the first image displayed the white border on the top, left and bottom - all at the extreme edge of the monitor display: and no sign of the right-side border!!!. The second image displayed in the middle of the screen, all borders visible but with a small orange band at the left and right sides. All the work was done on my desktop PC which has an nVidia GeForce 8400GS graphics card So, to summarise: PTEv4.49 + Image1 - Displayed as expected PTEv4.49 + Image2 - Display did not show the top and right edges PTEv5.5 + Image1 - Display did not show the right edge PTEv5.5 + Image2 - Display did not fill the monitor screen Does anyone else experience these results? It seems to me that the problem could lie with any one or more of: - PTE - Monitor drivers - Monitor hardware settings - Something else that I've not thought of Where's the best place to start looking to get to the bottom of all this?

Hi John, In an earlier post you stated "...it appears not to display a 1024x768 image precisely". This point doesn't seem to have been clarified in subsequent posts. What exactly did you mean by this?

Jim, You're missing the point. The solution has already been provided in v5.5 via the "Set End of Last Slide at End of Music" feature of the "Timed Points" button in the Timeline view. If you take one of your "problem" v4 sequences into v5.5 and then go into the Timeline, click on "Timed Points" and then select "Set End of Last Slide at End of Music" this will adjust the duration of the last slide (and only of the last slide) so that it ends when the soundtrack ends. No other synch points will be altered in any way. You can check this out without damaging your v4 sequence provided you take one precaution. PTE v5.5 now has a feature to do "auto-save". To fully protect your v4 sequence while it is open in v5.5 I strongly recommend you turn off the auto-save. To turn off auto-save do "View"..."Advanced Options"..."Auto Save Project" and untick the box. All you have to do is NOT save the project under v5.5 - just play with it and then close without saving. Remember to turn it back on once you have opened a "real" v5 sequence - if you want to have the auto-save feature working for you. The "bug" is that, when a v4 project file is opened in v5.5, PTE doesn't seem to assign a duration to the final image: and so the user sees what appears to be a difference between the total duration of all the images and the duration of the soundtrack file.

Jim, I think we are seeing a minor bug in v5.5. I've just loaded a couple of my "v4.47-build" sequences into v5.5 and noted the following: On the Project Options...Music tab the music duration showed as 09:59 and 07:08 respectively. However the duration as shown by the total time at the right-hand side of the mini-player slider showed as 09:56 and 07:06 respectively. When I checked the duration assigned to the last slide it showed as 0 seconds and 0 milliseconds in each case. When I opened the same pte project files under v4.47 the durations of the last slides are: 2s-907ms and 2s-568ms respectively. I think this behaviour must have come in when Igor added the Timed Points function of "Set End of Last Slide to End of Music". It seems as though v5.5 isn't picking up the actual duration of the last image when the project file was previously built under v4.4x. Jim, provided that you never want to take the pte project back into v4.4x, you can circumvent this particular problem yourself by opening the project in v5.5, going into the Timeline, clicking on "Timed Points" and selecting "Set End of Last Slide at End of Music". After you have saved the project under v5.5 you will not be able to open that project in v4.4x ever again. PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

That is the same graphics chipset that was installed in my old Fujitsu Siemens Amilo laptop. It proved incapable of running PTEv5 without occasionally giving some flicker at times. The flicker was most noticeable on images that were made up of several other images. Although there was no pan/zoom/rotate active (i.e. no changing image) the individual objects had been zoomed down in size, slightly rotated and positioned using pan values at their origin keyframe. As I wanted to make full use of the pan and zoom feature, I eventually decided the only long term solution was to get a more modern laptop with a graphics chipset that was known to work OK with PTEv5.

Jim, I've not noticed this on any of my older sequences but I'll check some out. What I have seen is that the time given on Project Options...Music tab and the time shown below the mini-player image can be very different. I get the impression that the time below the mini-player image is the total time of the slide durations. If the soundtrack is longer, the two don't agree until you use the "Timed Points" option to set the end of the last slide to the end of the music. Is it worth while you posting the offending mp3 so that others can check it out on their systems and with their releases of PTE?

Hi David, Glad to know you've got past that hurdle!

Jim, When you say: "The left part of the image is clipped and you can see that there is space where the image should be.", are you referring to the screen on which the image is being projected via your projector? If so, it sounds as though your projector's alignment may be a touch off. You will probably find you have some control capability via the in-built menu system of your projector to adjust the horizontal and vertical placement of your image. There may be some other root cause but this adjustment could produce a quick circumvention for you. You also mentioned RGB and sRGB. These are simply internationally recognised colour palettes (for want of an easy to understand term) and have no influence over the placement of your image (only on the shades of colour that you see).

I've just noticed that on the Project Options...Effects tab the transition duration doesn't have it's value in milliseconds converted to "about nn second(s)" whereas on the Effects tab of "Customize Slide" it does. As I said in the thread title: a purely cosmetic bug.

Hi Bruno, I think I'm seeing the same as Xaver and Neil. Your first slide uses a diagonal page curl from top left, your second uses a vertical page curl from top to bottom, your third uses a mosaic effect, your fourth uses the diagonal page curl from top left again, the fifth uses the vertical page curl from the top again, the sixth uses a diagonal page curl from bottom right to top left and the last uses the diagonal page curl from top left once more. Which of these transitions do you not see? When do you not see it? When using the full-screen preview or when using the mini-player preview?

Hi Mike, There are several avenues of possible exploration here: Perhaps the most likely culprit is the Graphics card in your PC (or the Graphics chipset if you are using a laptop). - What Graphics card is installed and how much on-board memory does it have? - Do you have the latest drivers installed for your graphics card? Next possibility is the image file sizes. -How large are the image files involved in these rapid transitions? -Are any of these images involved in Pan, Zoom or Rotate activity? Also a possibility is that you don't have Hardware Acceleration turned on. - Check in Project Options...Screen tab You mention "earlier versions": - Which other versions have you used? - Have you taken this part of your current sequence into an earlier version to see if you get the same result?

Hi David - and welcome to the Forum. In order for other forum members to help you, you will need to provide a little more information. From which website did you download the file? On what date did you last download it? When you click on Help...About PicturesToExe, what release level does it say you have? To reply to this post just click on the FASTREPLY button below my post, scroll down so that you can see the input box and key in your reply. Then click on the button to "Add Reply" that is immediately under the input box into which you have keyed your reply.

Bruno, Ignore my previous post. Lin's suggestion is a better "next step" in helping you.

Bruno, I know English is not your first language, but could you please try to explain exactly how you are trying to set the special transitions. By exactly I mean: which button do you click, which box do you tick - a step-by-step explanation. Once we understand how you are trying to do this, we will either spot what you are doing wrong or, hopefully, be able to re-create the problem on our own systems.

Mike, The "drag and drop" technique works just the same in the Timeline view as it does in the Slide List view.