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Lin, I have downloaded and installed the recovery software. When I run the program it seems unable to find any logical drives. Reading the tutorial it implies that the first step in a recovery is to locate the logical drives. So I seem to be stuck when trying to go down this route. Having had to think the whole project through again, I can see several different ways of doing things. Therefore I would prefer to re-build from scratch. In fact, I've already re-built the "digital clock" to count the years in about a tenth of the time it took me originally. If I am heading towards a possible resource shortage on my system, would it be prudent to have the Task Manager window open all the time while I'm working in PTE and to take periodic checks on how the resources are doing? Let me take this opportunity to thank you for your advice and assistance so far. Help so promptly and freely given is what makes this forum the success that it undoubtedly is.

Lin, Just to "dot i's and cross t's", I have downloaded your 3d file and it plays perfectly on my system.

Lin, I have checked memory using Task Manager. It reports 2046MB total memory of which 32% (c.670MB is in use). There should be 2048MB. I have attached a zip of the images here: PTE_Error.zip The project file, when it failed, comprised: - Black slide - Google Earth image with Mask - Google Earth image with Mask - Google Earth image with Mask - Black slide Google #1 had seven blue squares as children. Each square had a single word of text as a child. All these objects were at 100% opacity with no animation keyframes Google #2 had same objects as above plus: 30 red squares as children, each of which had a yellow square as a child and a single text object child comprising either one or two words of text Google #3 had same objects as Google #2 plus: a Frame that had 120 children, each a single text object comprising a year (to cover all years from 1845 thru 1964) Google #3 had animation as follows: each text object had four keyframes: start and end of fade up, start and end of fade out. The keyframes of each start/endpair were 50ms apart. The two pairs for each year were 1000ms apart. Google #2 had animation as follows: each red square had start and end of fade up, each associated text object had start and end of fade up. In the final edit session, that failed on me, I had copied the frame from Google #3 into Google #2 as a child of the main image. I was adding additional keyframes to the yellow squares and associated text objects as follows: start and end of fade up of the square, start and end of fade out of the text. I was about half way through the thirty squares and text objects when PTE crashed. Hope that makes some sort of sense.

Xaver, Your suggestion of an auto-save feature, if already implemented, would have saved me from this disaster. As you will see from Igor's post, he now accepts the need for such a feature and says it will be coming (soon I hope) Brian, I've had a real good root around with the File Search and it just isn't there any where that I can find. I've drawn upon all my past experience as an IT technician to find it - and it just ain't there (at least, not under a name anything remotely like its original name. I'm now doing what I should have done all along (stable doors and horses!) and saving regularly to a new file name each time. I'll continue working in this manner until Igor provides auto-save feature. I have a secondary problem in that the copy of the file on the backups (taken using Windows Vista's Backup/Recovery software) didn't reflect its state as of last night at 22:00 when the most recent backup ran. That's another problem I'll have to look into. Igor, As I've said above for Brian, I've not been able to find any trace of this project file anywhere on the system. An auto-save feature would be a very welcome addition to the capabilities of PTE, especially as I'm sure I'm not alone in sometimes spending several hours on complex animations. I thought I was taking enough precautions by saving the project file regularly. But I always saved it back over itself. I don't understand why the project file was deleted. Was it done by Windows Vista's error handling clean-up routines, perhaps? Thanks for the offer of building the pte from an EXE. Unfortunately I hadn't got as far as creating an EXE. I've started again to build this complex animation - but adopting a slightly different technique. I was trying to build it all on a single main image. I'm now spreading it out over twelve main images. If the memory condition was caused by having too much information relating to a single image, I should have bypassed that particular problem.

I've just encountered a PTE "Out of memory" error: Exception EOutOfMemory in module apr.exe at 00002B28. As a result of this it would seem that PTE has deleted my project file. This project file contained the work of an entire day (5 hours) building up the complicated animated image that Lin said PTE would handle no problem. (See thread here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....showtopic=8304) Where is the file? Can I recover it without losing all today's work? During the course of the day I must have saved the file over twenty times. The file state as of last night will be on my backup drive and I could recover from there but I'd rather have all today's work back. HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Igor, I've only just noticed that when I do File...Open.. in beta8 the *.pte files in the file list do not show their usual icon. All I see as an icon is a white rectangle. Also I've found a minor fault in the O&A processing which I can recreate as follows: - create new project comprising blackslide, imageslide, blackslide - set transitions to 1.5seconds (fades) - set black slides to 4 seconds duration - set image slide duration to 122 seconds (this is the value that I was using when I encountered the problem. I'm not sure how significant the actual value is) - add an image object to the image slide as a child of that slide - add a text object as a child of the image object - set both objects opacity to zero - add keyframe to image object at 2000ms keeping opacity at zero - add keyframe to image object at 2050ms bringing opacity up to 100 - select first of these two keyframes - switch to the text object and Create keyframe The new keyframe comes up with its time offset as 1500 (the end of the transition) rather than 2000 which is what I was expecting, and wanting, it to come up with. Finally, a suggestion for a functional enhancement in O&A processing. At present child objects inherit their parents attributes for Pan, Zoom and Rotate but not for Opacity. Would it be possibe to have a facility to allow a child to inherit its parent's opacity? My ideal implementation of this would be to have four new Project Options tick boxes: Child inherits Pan Child inherits Zoom Child inherits Rotate Child inherits Opacity with the default settings as PTE behaves now: i.e. tick, tick, tick and untick respectively. And to have the same four tick boxes on the Properties or Common tab of each object where they could be over-ridden on an object by object basis. You already allow us to set the default transition and then modify that on an image by image basis. I'm envisaging the same sort of flexibility for inheritance on an object by object basis. I realise, of course, that what I am suggesting might be unreasonable from the practical programming point of view.

Lin, Thanks for the reassurance that PTE can handle what I'm about to try. Next step now is to knock up a spreadsheet to take the open and close dates for the mines and turn them into millisecond offsets to use on the keyframes. And after that a quick test at the digital calendar counting the years.

I've just started out on a project to create an A-V sequence telling the story of the discovery and exploitation of ironstone in the East Cleveland area of Yorkshire. As part of the sequence I would like to produce an animated map showing the location of each of the mines in the area (30 of them in an area roughly 10km by 7km - all either drift workings or deep pit workings: not open-cast strip mines). My vision for this map is that it would have a small red square showing each mine's location and a text object giving its name. I intend to bring each object onto the background (a Google Earth aerial photo) in the chronological order in which the mines opened. I will use a real-time to history time mapping of one second equates to one year for this. I will then change the colour of the square to yellow at the point in time when the mine ceased working (and fade the name down a little). In total I need to span a period of 120 years. So, for each mine I will have three objects: red square, yellow square and text. I will also have eight keyframes (excluding all the "origin" keyframes at offset 0): two to fade up the red square, two to fade up the text, two to fade up the yellow square and two to fade down the text. By my count that's 240 keyframes in total (excluding the "origin" ones): 30 mines x 8 keyframes. I would also like to show a "digital clock" counting the years as the seconds tick by. That will be another 120 objects each having four keyframes: two to fade up the time display and two to fade it out. That will be another 480 keyframes making 720 active ones and a total of 210 "origin" keyframes. Can PTE handle this? It goes without saying that I will be keeping the file sizes of the various elements as small as possible: e.g. the squares are only 15px by 15px A supplementary question: which uses less graphics memory and processing - a text object or that same text object rasterized to a png file?

Hi Lin, Cor and everyone, I've just re-installed v5.04 and tested this and all the lines of text respond to the alignment. It appears as though only the shorter ones do but, of course, the text box is sized to accommodate the longest line of text. Therefore this line is actually aligned left, center and right all at the same time.

Cor, Many, many thanks for your detailed explanation. I had misunderstood what you had meant by a chain of sequences. I thought you meant Sequence A always followed by sequence B always followed by sequence C, etc. By its very nature, an international forum such as this one has to use English as its common language. Those of you for whom English is not your native language face a great challenge trying to explain complex ideas. I think you are all incredible in that respect. I'll continue testing my existing solution - but alongside that I'll do a re-build following your approach. I'll post the results of both variants in due course.

Igor, I've just installed beta 8 (I never got around to installing beta 7) and I've noticed that somewhere along the way you've solved the problem of not carrying forward the choice of default template. Thanks very much.

Just bringing this saga to a close (for now): Ran the tests a third time: Intro - no problems Menu - no problems First sequence (a v5 that was originally 6th up and then ninth up) - flashed back to desktop just before it started Second through 4th sequences (the three v4s) all OK All remaining v5s OK. I now understand what is happening: the flash to desktop occurs only on the first of the v5 sequences. All these tests were done off the USB Memory stick. I now need to repeat the tests running from the hard drive. The article implied that having run off the USB Memory stick, the sequences would then run correctly off the hard drive. Await the next installment.

I'm back! Using the same setup, and having not rebooted the PC since last time, and having done various pieces of work (Word, Excel and Outlook), I have come back to the menu driven sequences for another test. Still running them off the USB Memory stick, the behaviour this time was as follows: Intro - no problems Menu - no problems First sequence (a v4 that was previously the second sequence to be shown) - ran OK but hung at the end. I had to use ESC to get out of it and then "End process" on the next pop-up. Second sequence (a v4 that was previously the first sequence to be shown) - no problems Third sequence (a v5 that was previously the sixth sequence to be shown) - flash back to desktop just before start, thereafter OK Fourth sequence (a v5 that was previously the fourth sequence to be shown - but was the first of the v5s last time) - no problems everything else - OK This suggests that the desktop flashbacks I'm now experiencing are associated with the first v5 sequence to be driven off the menu. A further test is clearly called for. But, why did I get a hang on the first of the v4s this time around when all three v4s played OK during the first test? That just doesn't seem logical to me and yet logical is what all computers are by design! Once again, I'll be back!

As promised, I've come back after doing a more extended test. The scenario: I am about to give an evening's entertainment to a local group and have prepared an Introduction sequence, a Menu sequence and nine sequences driven off the menu. (Cor, I know this is different to your approach. I want my audience to select the running order on the night; so it has to be Menu driven. If I was to show the sequences as a continuous chain then I would use your method and I know that it would work as I have built an "endless loop" chain of five sequences to be shown during my local Photographic Society's coffee morning later this year.) The Intro is animated so hardware acceleration is On. The Menu is not animated so hardware acceleration is Off. The system on which I'm doing the test is my desktop PC (Vista Home Premium) and the task bar has been set to not stay on top of other windows. Three of the sequences are v4.47 builds that now use the v4.49 software engine that I implemented using Igor's 449patch utility. The other six are v5 builds. The original builds were started using v5.10 but some of them have been completed using various beta levels of v5.5. I loaded all the EXE files onto a USB Memory stick and then ran them as follows: The Intro - which ran with no flashes of desktop The Menu - which ran to its end, keepin last slide in show on screen The three v4 sequences - which all ran with no flashes of desktop at all The six v5 sequences - which ran with no flashes of desktop except for the first of them which gave a very brief flash of the desktop just before it started. This sequence is the only which which I can be certain has never been processed by v5.5 betas. It also happened to be the first of the v5 sequences to be run off the menu. I now need to do another test running the sequences in a different order - especialy picking a different v5 sequence to be the first v5 sequence selected. I need to find out whether the desktop flash is associated with the first v5 sequence selected or is it associated with this specific sequence. As a full run-through takes an hour and I have lots of other things to do today, I may be a little while getting back again.

Hi everyone, The latest issue of "AV News" (the quarterly journal of the Royal Photographic Society's Audio-Visual Group) includes an article by Ian Bateman FRPS MPAGB that offers some advice about the problems of desktop "flashes" at the start and end of PTE v5 sequences when run under Vista. The suggested solution was to run the sequences off a USB Memory Stick rather than off the hard disk. I have not yet had time to do a thorough, detailed test but an initial experiment seems to confirm that this does resolve (bypass? circumvent?) the problem. I hope to have some time tomorrow (Wednesday) to do more extensive testing involving my desktop and laptop computers both running under Vista. If I get the testing done I will report back.

I'm in agreement with Barry and DaveG too. I always have to untick this box when building my sequences and think that Unticked would be the better default option. Looking forward to trying the Grid function on the next Menu that I build.

Geoff, Done! Done! Done! Done! Done! No desktop flashes. No taskbar flashes. But, as I said in previous post, I now get a "double flash" of the Menu image before and after each of the driven sequences. Cor, In my case I don't want a chained sequence. When I give my sequences to an audience I like to make it interactive and let them choose the order in which the sequences are shown. So I do need the button driven menu approach. I've already built a succesful chained loop ready for my local Photographic Society's annual Coffee Morning event. The chain works fine. It's the Menu that's the problem.

Geoff, Thanks for the advice. I was doing all of it except Unchecking the "Keep taskbar on top of other windows". Having added that into the mix I now no longer get any flashbacks to the desktop but I do still get a "double flash" on the Menu image both before the start and after the end of each sequence that is driven off the menu. It's a step in the right direction but still very intrusive visually. Dave, I've not had time to investigate your option of using Powerpoint. And I won't have until Wednesday at earliest. I'll report back in due course. Thanks for the suggestion.

Hi Bryan, I have the 8400 GS in my Compaq desktop system and everything runs fine for me.

Cor, In an earlier post you wrote: You were trying to produce a chained set of sequences that ran seamlessly. Did you succeed? If so, what operating system did you build it on and what operating systems have you run it on or tested it on (other than the system used to build the sequence). I'm interested to know whether any of the systems were running under Vista. I'm struggling to get totally seamless chaining off a menu to work on a Vista system without giving me "flashes" of the Windows Desktop either before the next sequence begins or after the sequence has finished and before the Menu image is displayed once more. Any enlightenment will be much appreciated.

Hi damor, There's never been a v5.4 but v5.5 beta 6 seems to be a stable product for nearly all those using it. It will install and co-exist alongside your existing PTE version(s). So I'd say, go ahead and give it a tryout.

Barry, You wrote"A projector won't resize an image will it". Yes it will. At least, some will. My Dell MP3300 has a native resolution of 1024x768 but if set into Auto-Sync mode it will resize SXGA (1280x1024) and SXGA+ (1400x1050) down to 1024x768 using some form of compression routine. Needless to say, I always run it in native resolution and consequently all my sequences are built to 1024x768 as a standard.

A starting point for further reading on the Moire effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern

Further to the discussion above on what is a pixel?, does it really exist?, etc. If I load an image file into Photoshop Elements and then zoom in (Ctrl++) repeatedly I will, eventually, see on my computer's monitor - which is an LCD/TFT type (I don't know if there's a difference and I don't care!) a part of the image displayed as a mosaic of small rectangles, each of which is a single colour. These little rectangles are what I consider to be pixels - and what I suspect the vast majority of the rest of us would consider to be pixels. And on an historical point, if my memory serves me aright, the "word" pixel is actually an abbreviation (or perhaps a better expression might be a "corruptevation") of "picture element" - i.e. a bit of something that makes up the digital representation of that which we humans call a colour picture (or if you're American or Canadian: a color picture. You guy's never could spell properly!) And of course, to a dog it would be a monochrome picture; and a Texas Cave Salamander wouldn't even see it, even if it wanted to - poor thing has no eyes! What bearing does that have on the discussion above? None at all, I just thought I'd get a lot of digressions out of the way in one go.

Hi DaveG, No, I don't disagree with your theories regarding zooming. I,too, try and ensure that I have only original pixels displayed when I am zoomed in. It's not always possible because sometimes I am using scans of old, historic photographs or postcards. But with this kind of image I find that I, and my typical audiences, can accept some loss of definition at the deep end of the zoom. For modern images taken with my Nikon D70 I never zoom beyond the original image size (3000x2000 = c.300% zoom). To date I don't think I've ever found a need for a zoom of greater than 200%.