fh1805

Unlike others who have contributed to this discussion, I don't have a specific way of working when creating my sequences. Example 1: the "Whitby Abbey" sequence that I posted a little while back started out simply as a location which I knew would produce some pleasing images if visited at the right time of day. I captured the images first. Then used Windows Vista's file Preview facility to take a look at them at nearly full screen size and decide which of them I wanted to shortlist for the AV sequence. The shortlisted images were copied into the "Whitby Abbey" folder and a new project in PTE was created and the images dropped into the slide list. A further review then took place during which the sequence of the images was adjusted and those not required were removed from the slide list. Now that I knew roughly how many images would be used, I could estimate how long the music needed to be (my "rule of thumb" is 6 seconds per image with an allowance made for Title, Credits and two black slides). I then found a piece of music that was: - of approximately the right length - of a suitable mood (i.e matching the mood and subject of the images) - to my mind, this is more important than anything else I was then able to finish the build of the sequence in PTE and decide what transitions, animation and "tweaking" in Photoshop was going to be required. Example 2: A month or so later I spent three separate days (spread over an eight day period) at my local steam railway. I had identified the pieces of music that I thought would be appropriate before I went to do the photo shoot. I had also given some thought to the kind of images I wanted and the most readily accessible track-side locations from which to photograph the steam-hauled trains as they passed by. Once the images had been uploaded into the computer the actual build process was pretty much as for the Whitby sequence (except that the music had this time, been pre-selected) Example 3: I'm building up a sequence in which all the images are taken along a farm access track, the start of which is just 30 seconds walk from my front door. In this case I first wrote an introductory voice-over script and then set about capturing images to illustrate those words. But the body of the sequence will be a series of mini-sequences each set to its own music and having its own theme and showing the scenery and flora in various weather conditions, at various times of day and at the various seasons of the year. So far, I've built one mini-sequence based on a shoot in mist and fog and another based on two days of snowfall. I'll be going out in the not-too-distant future to do the spring flower photography. So, as you can see, I adopt a "horses for courses" approach: sometimes its images first, sometimes its music first and just occasionally its pre-planned.

Tom, Your sequence seems to me to be a very creative piece of work. I think your combination of images and music works fantastically well. However, I think this sequence needs a "Goverment Health Warning" along the lines of "Watching this sequence can seriously hurt your eyes". (Only joking!). I'm curious to know: was there anything in this that could not have been done with v5.1?

On a similar line of thinking: Would it be possible to make the timeline in the O&A window look more like the Timeline in the Main window? I'm thinking now in terms of giving it "Tick" marks at every tenth of a second and being able to display the waveform. Both of these would make it easier to synchronise visual effects to the soundtrack.

Igor, The speed with which you produce new beta versions is remarkable. Just one small point on beta 3; the pop-up Hint that appears when I hover the mouse over the Cut button in O&A shows as garbage text.

Thanks for all the responses folks. I guess this is just another reason why it's good practice to extend a PZR effect all the way through the transition into the next image. I've just done this in the sequence that I'm building and it has completely hidden the "backspin".

Den, I don't mind the world spinning after I've had a glass or several of "loopy juice" - but when things started spinning while I was sober - that got me worried!

Colin, The keypoints are on the "Dome" object not the main image. Ken/Colin, Thanks for reassuring me that I don't need to seek medical attention!

My technique would be to adjust the duration of the music files using Audacity sound file editor. I described how to do this in my "Audacity User Guide for AV Workers" See thread here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7979

Am I seeing things? I was using v5.5 beta 1 to build a new sequence and had included in it the slide and the associated object that I've included in the zip file attached to this post. When I "Play" within O&A or Preview, I think I see the central image rotate left to a stop - and then slowly rotate a degree or two back to the right. It's programmed to rotate only to the left. Is it my eyes? Is it my graphics card? Does anybody else see this effect? I've checked the sequence out with v5.1, v5.5 beta 1 and v5.5 beta2. It behaves exactly the same in all versions. Rotate_test_Apr10_2008_12_18_32.zip

Brian, When we play on the PC at home - we love it! When we have to sort the b*****s out at work - we hate 'em!

OK, Barbara, let's try a different approach! You say that CDs from other people work OK. This offers two avenues to be explored further: - load one of the "other CDs" into your CD drive, let it autorun, then cancel whatever it starts up. - now view the CD contents with Windows Explorer - study the files and directory structure and compare them with those on your own CD If you spot anything that seems as though it might be significant, make appropriate changes to your own CD contents - open the autorun from one of these "other CDs" using Notepad, study its contents carefully and compare them with your own file - pay particular attention to the precise syntax of the statements (noting any spaces in their file that you don't have in yours and vice versa) I presume your PC has just the one CD drive? If it has more than one CD-capable drive it could just be that autorun is enabled on one drive but disabled on another. If the above doesn't give you any pointers for what to try next, then I'm baffled - but I don't do much burning to CD. I'm afraid you'll just have to be patient until one of the other "technical experts" reads this thread and offers some better advice.

Hi Barbara, Your autorun.inf file needs to have the following two lines: [autorun] open=pteprojectfile.exe where pteprojectfile is the name of your pte project Use Notepad to create the autorun.inf file. Save the file to your hard-disk and then include it with the exe file when you burn to CD. The autorun.inf and the pteprojectfile.exe both need to be in the CD's root directory. After burning the CD you may need to command the burning software to "finalise" the CD (or words to that effect) before you will be able to run the CD on another computer.

Brian, felix has told us that his computer has an ATI graphics card. See post #4

Igor, Thanks for the quick reply to my enquiry. I'll just have to be patient but I know the wait will be worth it. Once again, many thanks for the excellent product and first-class support.

Igor, Thanks for the explanation. I wasn't expecting the mini-player/viewer to allow manual advance - and it doesn't need to be able to. It's real value is in being able to check slide synchronisation to music from within the ordinary window - and thus being able to make small changes very quickly to get the timings just right. On a different matter. I've just Created using v5.5 one of my menu sequences and one of the sequences driven off that menu. I'm running under Vista Home Premium and I still see the flashback to desktop (which I and others reported under v5.1) at the changeover from menu.exe to sequence.exe and again at the changeover from sequence.exe back to menu.exe. Do you intend to release the fix for this problem in a later beta of v5.5?

Hartmut, I have several manual sequences and none of them show the problem you mention about not being able to advance them manually in Preview under v5.5. I cannot advance them manually in the mini-viewer but when I ask PTE to Preview the sequence, they behave as I would expect them to. I realise this doesn't solve your problem, but it does suggest that it is not a general bug in PTE V5.5

Hi silvia1 I think you may be encountering the following situation: When any software is installed on a Windows system, it places entries into the Windows system that associate its file extensions with that software. It looks to me as though PTEv5.5 has not updated the entries for *.pte files as part of its install process. I, too, cannot launch a pte file into v5.5 by double-clicking. It tries to open it with v4.49 which is the version that I installed prior to v5.5. (I also have v5.1 installed) Now, this may be the way Igor wants it to work whilst the code is at beta level. After all, it does safeguard you against inadvertently opening a precious project file in the beta code.

Peter S/Barry, Is the solution to adopt a different approach? I've just tried creating a new project, adding the music first, switching to Timeline view and showing Waveform - and then dragging the images into the sequence. Is this what Barry means by "creating on the fly"?

Barry, If you select an image and do "Cut transition" from the Timeline, it seems to leave the actual image in the Slide List when you switch back to that. Is this what you're trying to achieve?

Hi silvia1, You wrote: How were you trying to open the old projects? By double-clicking on the project (*.pte) file? Or by launching PTE v5.5 and doing File...Open... of the project file? I have successfully opened several of my v4.49 and v5.1 project files by doing File...Open... from within PTEv5.5

Henri, Not rasterizing becomes a problem only in certain, specific situations: - if you will be running the exe file on a computer other than the one used to create the exe file ...and... - you have used text fonts that do not exist on the computer used to run the exe file If, for example you use only Times New Roman font, then you are very unlikely to ever encounter a problem because this font occurs on just about every PC. Although I very rarely run my exe files on other computers, I have got into the habit of rasterizing the text in every show - just so I never get caught out by this problem.

I am very impressed with the new user interface. The mini-viewer capability will save a huge amount of time scrolling to and fro through the sequence. One little problem I noticed with this feature; it doesn't recognise the "Wait for a key press..." setting (i.e. a manually controlled sequence). Personally I don't find this a major problem. In fact, I rather liked being able to check through the manual sequence at 4 seconds per slide (the default duration value from my template file). My thanks to Igor and his team for another step forward with this excellent product.

Henri, When you set up the text objects on your computer did you "Rasterize text to PNG image" (see Properties tab in O&A)? If you didn't then you've probably hit the problem because the other PC doesn't have the exact font on it that you chose when you created your sequence.

Dom, Thanks for the tip-off about WinRAR. I've downloaded and installed that and have now successfully downloaded and installed PTE 5.5 Beta1. Now I can set about exploring the new features.

I'm running Vista. I've downloaded and saved the zip file. When I Right-Click on it and take the "Extract All..." option the Compressed File wizard opens up and states that the archive file is empty. If I try and open with WinZip, that reports that the file is not a valid archive.