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I think that line 243 indicates, that at some point during the build of this project or the build of the template on which it was based, this object has been subject to "Slide...Rotate...". Peter

Igor, As I stated, I cannot recreate it either. What I can do is send the PTE project file that gives the error for you and the team to inspect, to see if you spot anything unusual (see attached file). The problem slide is slide number 59. I have included the image for this slide in the zip. All the other slides will give error conditions of "Image not found". Hopefully this will exhibit the problem for you. Hmm. There isn't an attached file because I wasn't allowed to upload a zip file to the forum ("Error You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file"). Is this a new restriction? I've placed a copy in Dropbox. It should be available here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15623351/Skelton%20MkII%20v4-PTEBug.zip regards, Peter

The attached screen grabs show what I believe is a bug in PTE's handling of its Borders feature. Unfortunately, I cannot reproduce it. It seems to have arisen because of the sequence of steps that I have followed to get to here. The image is the 53rd in a sequence that I am building and was originally 3008x2000 pixels in size. It was cropped in Photoshop Elements to 1624x1080 and saved as a JPEG file. I took that into PTE and zoomed it to 90%, applied a drop shadow, and added a border of 1 pixel of white. As I developed the sequence I decided that this image and others related to it would work together better if presented in "letter-box" style. I therefore took the original image back into Photoshop and cropped it to the desired shape and size and saved it, over-writing the JPEG image that I was using. PTE had remained open with the project loaded whilst I did this. I then went back to the PTE window and took the 52nd image into O&A and repositioned it then advanced (with the arrow buttons) to the 53rd image, which now showed in its letter-box format. I decided I wanted a 2 pixel border instead of just the one pixel border. The two screenshots are the O&A window before I changed the border value and the same window immediately after keying the value 2 into the border size field. As can be seen, the image has changed shape and crop! It should not have done either. I have changed other images from 1624x1080 to a letter-box style and these, also, exhibit this strange, and wrong, behaviour if I now try and change their borders. This behaviour persists across a stop-start of PTE. I can circumvent the problem by deleting the offending slide and dragging a fresh copy of the image from the File List into the Slide List; and then resizing, repositioning, adding drop shadow and border. That's a bit of a pain but at least I can continue the build of the sequence. I have preserved a copy of the PTE project file in case Igor needs it for diagnosis purposes. regards, Peter

Stupid question: have you actually added any music? Peter

Gilio, Are you aware of Project Options...Screen...Colour outside slide area? It can be set only at the project level and cannot be customised on a slide by slide basis. Peter

The PTE licence certainly allows the program to be installed on two systems for personal use. Further, I seem to recall that Igor posted here on the forum that it could be installed on up to three which he described as: home desktop system, home laptop system and business system. However, I may be suffering from faulty memory on that. regards, Peter

Eric, It took about a dozen of us several weeks during the beta programme, and immediately after it, to agree that we didn't really understand it either. But we did agree that leaving it unticked made PTE behave as it always had done! You could try searching for KFSD to find some of the topics and posts. Peter

Is it, perhaps, associated with the status of "Keep full slide duration" (tick box in lower right hand corner of main window)? It is generally recommended to have this "unticked" unless you have the specific need for it to be ticked on. Peter

Hi Igor, All my checks indicate that there is no virus problem, so I guess it must have been a disk drive glitch. This is reinforced by the fact that the backup copy (taken on the evening that the file was created) is perfectly OK. I should have checked the backup copy sooner. It was only reading your post that made me think about doing that. Peter

Yes. I preserved the failing EXE by renaming it and then launched the Challenge v8.pte project file into PTE and did a fresh Publish...Executable File for PC to its original name (Challenge v8). This has the new style icon and plays OK. I'm now totally baffled as to what might have happened. The important thing is that I can move on with the development. But I would like to get to the bottom of this in case it is a symptom of something more fundamental starting to fail in the PC. Peter

OK, here's an update... I copied the EXE to the desktop and renamed it. The icon was still "old style", and I still get the error on trying to run the program. I then shut down the PC and left it powered down for about ten minutes. After re-booting the PC, the icon is still the old style and I still get the error when trying to run the program. Nice try, nobeefstu, but no coconut this time! Just to clarify matters: all versions of this particular sequence have been created using v7.0.3. I do also have v4.49 and v6.57 installed. However, the file associations for the .pte file are with the v7.0.3 program. The only way either of the other two versions could become active would be for me to launch that PTE version via Start...All Programs... and then do a File...Open... from within PTE on a .pte file. In any case, the problem isn't with a pte project file, it's with an EXE file created from that project file. The file sizes of Challenge v8 and Challenge v9 are: 3,544,168 and 3,544,174 respectively. Those are the numbers from Properties...General tab... Size field (not Size on disk). Six bytes difference in EXE files created from the same project file code. I wonder what those six bytes are? Peter

I've just been presented with the error below (see attached screen-grab) when trying to launch an EXE file (Challenge v8) that I created a few days ago. I am trying to launch it on the same PC that it was created on, from the same folder in which I saved it when I created it. A version of the file created the previous day (Challenge v7) and stored in the same folder launches correctly. I have taken the project file that was used to create Challenge v8 and opened that in PTE, saved it to a new name (Challenge v9) and published a new EXE. Challenge v9 EXE runs OK. The PC is Win 7 Home Premium 64-bit. The anti-virus is Microsoft Security Essentials. PTE is v7.0.3. Challenge 8's icon is the "old style" icon and not the "Blue and silver Play button" icon. Both Challenge v7 and Challenge v9 have the Play Button icon. Anybody able to shed any light on what's going on? regards, Peter

Thus demonstrating very clearly that, whatever the "measure" of Quality may be, it isn't file size! At Quality=80 the file size is 45.3% of the Quality 100 file; and at Quality=60 the file size is 27.6% of the Quality 100 file. (464/1024*100 and 283/1024*100 respectively) Peter

Gary, I think you have assumed that, in this context, Quality = File Size. File Size is measured in KB. What is the unit of measure of Quality? What does 80% Quality mean? For that matter, what does 100% Quality mean? To compare the Quality settings of two or more software products, without knowing the algorithms that they are using, is like comparing apples, to oranges, to bananas. The only things that matter are: are you happy with the visual quality of the resulting file? are you happy with the size of the resulting file? Everything else becomes academic. Peter

Eric, In the File List panel, use Click, Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click to make your selection (single slide, contiguous group of slides, non-contiguous collection of slides). As you select the final slide that you want, double-click it instead of single clicking it. Provided you keep the Shift or CTRL key pressed down, the double-click will copy them all in one go. Peetr

I've not noticed any different performance this week. It seems normal to me. Peter

Eric, Mip-mapping is ON permanently in v7. I've got slide numbers and names in my Slide List (Slides tab) and numbered flags in the Timeline view (just like all previous versions). Have you got View...Show captions in Slide List ticked? I cannot comment on the Add Slide button as I do not know what that was. I never used it, whatever it was. Peter

John, O&A window, Properties tab, Main image of slide (box will be ticked for the main image. If you then delete the main image, you should then choose a different object to become the main image. Peter

John, What version of PTE are you using? I'm working with v7.0.3. If I use the "Change Image File" icon to change a main image via the Slide List view, the names change as I would expect. If I go into the O&A view and use the Picture field of the Properties tab to select a different image for one of the image objects, the name of the object changes and if it was the Main Image object, then when I get back out to the Slide List, the name has changed there. I do not see any problem with this way of working in this version. Perhaps you could give a step-by-step account of what exactly you do that doesn't work as you thought it should? regards, Peter

I think the first question you need to answer is: Will this PC be used ONLY for showing AV sequences? If that is all it is going to do then you have the opportunity to customize it for that specific task. If, however, it is also going to be used as a first-choice workstation then the decisions about specification will/may need to be different. My experience of running other people's sequences on my laptop and of having my sequences run on other people's systems leads me to conclude that all of the following can influence the playback behaviour: - the capability of the graphics hardware (the amount of graphics memory is more important than the power of the graphics processor) - the size of the image files being processed (large files cause more problems than small ones) - the complexity of the slides being processed (a slide with many objects - and especially many masks - seems to place a greater strain on the graphics than does a slide with fewer and simpler objects) - the presence of unwanted (at times, unsuspected) background tasks taking resource away from the primary purpose tasks (especially true of anti-virus scans) - the software used to create the sequence (those built using Proshow will always appear to have less smooth transitions than those produced with PTE, especially to and from black) Those who organise regional, national and international festivals have a duty to provide the very best equipment possible so that, no matter how powerful the PC on which the entrant's sequence was built, that sequence is given every possible chance to perform flawlessly. That means, because the capability of the hardware/software is constantly rising, the organisers should be buying an absolute top-of-the-range PC every single year! I'll bet there isn't an organisation anywhere in the world that is doing that. regards, Peter

I don't! I have the legit CDs for Win 7, Office Suite, Roxio, Lightroom and Photoshop Elements. I have copies of the download files (stored on drive J:) for all the other software that I have added (e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird, Lightning, NEF viewer, PTE, Audacity, etc., etc). I'd accept the hit, get the PC repaired/replaced and then rebuild. That's what I did when the old failed last year! By tea-time of the day after I brought the new one home, I had all the products back up and running - with no loss of data. I also took the chance to prune the software portfolio back to the essentials. Things I no longer used were not re-installed (but I have kept their download files - in My Archives). Peter

Consequent upon a total crash of my desktop system last summer, I also now restrict drive C: to just Operating System and Software. I have all my RAW image files on one drive (J:) and all the rest of my data on another (L:). Those two are "mirrored" using Vice Versa software every night (onto K: and M: respectively). Each weekend, K: and M: are mirrored onto N: (under two separate folders), along with drive O: (which contains material that I don't want cluttering my main disks but which I am loathe to delete - I call this my Archives). Drives J:, K:, L: and M: are all external USB drives attached to a powered USB hub; drives N: and O: are also external USB drives attached to a second powered USB hub. So there are three copies of everything that's important and two copies of the Archives. At present rates of data growth, I have about 6 years capacity. However, having just bought a dSLR with video capability, I may need to review my capacity planning. The nightly "mirror" process takes 2-3 minutes to update the two drives with the day's changes; the weekly "mirror" process takes 5-6 minutes or so (depending upon how many different files I've worked on during the week). When I am taking a demonstration out to a camera club, I simply unhook the two backup copies (K: and M:), take them with me, and plug them into the laptop (as F: and G:). Thus I have all my data available for the demonstration. During the demo I can save onto them if I want to: Vice Vera will reset them to their proper "mirror" state when I next run it back at base. regards Peter

I cannot give a definitive answer but I would reckon the duration to be from leaving the "desktop" on double-click to launch the sequence through to the return to the "desktop" at the end of the sequence. So that would include the black slides at each end.

Thanks. I'll have to monitor their website for news of 2012 events. Peter

I wouldn't mind getting along to one of those. It would make a change from daffodils and bluebells. On what dates does that event usually take place, please? Peter