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Linda, If it is a bug, it is a bug in your anti-virus product, not in Pictures-to-Exe; so you will need to contact whoever supplies your anti-virus software. During an anti-virus scan, the target of that scan is a totally passive player. You haven't said which Anti-Virus software you are using. Over the years, the forum members have had problems with almost all of the major products and with many of the minor products, too. Of late, the one that seems to be giving fewest problems, is Microsoft Security Essentials. regards, Peter

Jan, You need to be aware of the possibility that following Yachtsman1's suggestion has the potential to destroy the "lip synch" associated with filming people talking or singing. Once you separate the video from the audio it is no longer possible to "guarantee" that they will run to precisely the same time rate. You may well achieve what you want, but there is a chance that you will have new problems to deal with. I'll be interested to hear how you get on with this. Please do keep the forum updated with your progress. Peter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFrame_%28video_format%29 Peter

The more you chain USB hubs together, the more you are likely to create a performance bottleneck. Eventually it will cause performance problems, such as you have encountered with your "stuttering". Storage devices connected to USB hubs should not be used to hold data that will be used by real-time-critical software. Peter

I attended an RPS AV Day event yesterday and, prior to the session start, was accosted (in a friendly manner!) by an attendee who was having difficulties getting the colours to be the same in Photoshop and in PTE. I explained that PTE doesn't support colour profiles and that all images needed converting to sRGB before presenting them to PTE. I also explained that using "Save for Web" in Photoshop would do the conversion for him. He went on to say that he was running PTE on a Mac under Bootcamp and that he had done a small test as follows: he had created a short PTE sequence (using images in Adobe RGB colour profile) and then Published as Executable for PC and followed that immediately with Publish as Executable for Mac. The colours of the images, when the PC version was run on a Windows PC, were wrong (and he now understood why); but the colours of the images, when the Mac executable was run on a Mac, were correct!!! So does PTE support colour profiles, or not? And if not, how is it that the colours show correctly on the Mac? I am unable to provide any supporting evidence of my own because: a) I do not use colour profiles at all (I'm 100% sRGB) and I do not have a Mac. Perhaps one of you dual-hardware folks could check this out and report back, please. I'd like to know what's going on so that I have an answer for him when I next see him later this year. regards, Peter

I don't see any Moire anywhere. Peter

Eric, Smudge tool is part of the "Blur" tool - just right click that tool to see the others. Peter

Gary, The images, as you have them sized for use in PTE are 1920x1272: this is not 16:9. PTE's default option is "Fit to Slide". Your images are being "Fitted to Slide". Think of it like this: PTE positions the image centrally in your Slide (in a space of 1920x1080); it sets a notional zoom to 1% and then increases it until one pair of edges of the image reach the edges of the Slide. In your case, the height will fill the Slide before the width does. Result: black bands at each side when the image is deemed to "Fit to Slide". The only way to have a 16:9 Slide filled with all of an image, with no black bands and no overlaps beyond the edge of the Slide is to use an image that is, itself, an exact 16:9 aspect ratio. Yours aren't. Peter

I, too, am ambivalent about the result of the poll because I don't work in a way that would benefit from any change. I voted Yes on a point of principle. If an Object can have an attribute set for it, that attribute should be settable as a "global" default that applies to all objects when first added; but the value should then be changeable at the individual object level. The analogy would be with Effects, where we can set a "global" value in Project Options but can pick a different value for an individual slide via Customize Slide. Anything which has the benefit of streamlining the production process without sacrificing the control at the detailed level has to be good for the user. Peter

Xaver, I think that that is what Dave intends. A "global" setting that can then be changed on an object-by-object basis. There are other settings that would benefit from a simple and consistent "global vs individual" approach but I do not want to hijack this topic.

Gary, In your reply to Barry, you wrote: 4928x3264 is an aspect ration of 3:2. Well, almost! It sounds like your camera is a Nikon which, like mine, has some "extra pixels" over and above the 3:2 ratio (my D70 has 3008x2000). 1920x1080 is an exact 16:9 aspect ratio. As you have discovered, you cannot fit a 3:2 image to a 16:9 hole and have a perfect fit side-to-side AND top-to-bottom. If you want your image to fill the 1920x1080 area (i.e. to be seen as 16:9) you must do one of three things: - zoom every image a little bit to get it to fit the screen from top to bottom (as you are doing now) - mark every main image as "Cover screen" (which you know about but don't do because it's too time consuming) - "crop" your images in some way to get them to be 1920x1080 There is a technique that I use in Photoshop Elements to do just that cropping. The technique also allows me to assess the "third image" - the one that forms briefly as the two slide transition from one to the other. I'll try and describe it briefly here. 1 - File...Create...New... a new image of size 1920x1080 with a background colour of transparent (I'm going to refer to this as the dummy image). 2 - File...Open... a handful of your images (not too many, you don't want to overload the PC memory) 3 - Change the display to show these images tiled (part of every one visible at the same time) 4 - Use the Move tool to drag a copy of each real image onto the newly created 1920x1080 dummy image 5 - Once you have copied all of them you will have all the real images appearing, each in a layer, in the dummy image file. 6 - You should now "un-tile" the display back to showing just one file and select the dummy image file 7 - If you want to change the order of the layers just drag them up/down in the layer stack. I work with first image at bottom of stack just above the dummy image layer. 8 - Now hide all layers except the dummy image and the first real image. 9 - Select the real image and do Ctrl+0 to show this image filling the available space in Photoshop. 10 - Click on the drag handles and bring the edges closer to the edge of the dummy image area. If you need to or want to, use Ctrl+0 again to enlarge the image as seen in the display area. This will allow you to refine the re-sizing. What are doing here is re-composing your image in a 1920x1080 "viewfinder". Now unhide the second real image and repeat steps 8 an 9 on it. To assess the "third image", use the Photoshop opacity control on the second real image so that you can see the first image through it. You may find that you then want to make further adjsutments to the size and placement of the second image. Don't forget to return the opacity to 100 after you do this! As you process each real image file to your satisfaction, you can close down its original file copy. I recommend that you periodically save this assembly as a PSD file. Add more real images using the same technique until you have all your images processed. I usually work with a maximum of thirty layers in each PSD file - no good reason for that, it just seemed a reasonable file size to ask my PC to handle. For a large sequence I have multiple PSD files. To achieve continuity of the design in that large sequence, each new PSD file is created from the previous one by deleting all layers except the dummy image layer and the top-most real image layer. To create the JPEGs for the sequence you then hide everything except the dummy layer and the first real layer, select the dummy layer and do Ctrl+0 to give it one final visual check, then do File...Save As... giving it the name that you want and choosing your JPEG quality. The beauty of this approach, to my mind, is that it is "non-destructive" until the final File...Save As... At any point, including months later, you can re-open the PSD file and re-adjust the sizing and positioning of any of the layers and produce a slightly different version of that image. I don't claim to have thought of this technique all by myself. I was shown it at an AV day in the UK by another of the forum members - Jill K B. Thanks, Jill! regards, Peter

Jeff, As I recall, it was down at the bottom right of the main PTE window. Peter

Doug, That's what the forum is here for! And with regards to the support ticket, you cannot supply a ticket number until you have sent in your question via the support route and been given the ticket number to use in subsequent communications via that route. Peter

What operating systems on each machine? Peter

Are you using "Run application..." or "Run Slideshow..." actions? And what operating system are you using: XP, Vista or Win 7? "Run application..." on Vista gave this kind of "flashback" problem. "Run Slideshow..." solves the problem on all operating systems but requires that all the EXE files (menu sequence and all sequences launched from it) be "Published" using the exact same version of PTE. Peter

Ah, now I understand the point you were making. On that I agree with you. I don't think PTE should become an image editing product, or a sound editing product either. At present, the only manipulations that it does are "non-destructive": by which I mean that, from within PTE it is not possible to save directly either a modified copy of a JPEG or a modified copy of an MP3 nor any other image or sound file format. I firmly believe that, to change an image file one should use a dedicated and well-featured image file editor; and to change a sound file, one should use a dedicated and well-featured sound file editor. However, I do recognize that there could be advantages in being able to "capture" a good quality image file copy of a PTE slide that contains several PTE-added objects. So, in that instance, there is a conflict with what I've just said. Peter

Contradicting yourself there, methinks Peter

Using masks could we replicate the effect of a Photoshop Layer Mask and bring just part of the colour image through the sepia one? regards, Peter

Gary, Your suggestions have some merit, especially as Igor has indicated that he will be re-working the audio interface in v7.5 But you could have achieved what you wanted in v7.0 if you had placed each MP3 in its own Track. You could then have applied offsets to each of the last four to delay their start until the desired point on the timeline. Peter I

I would approach this problem as follows: - I would use the Windows Run command (on Win 7 that's in the Start...All programs...Accessories folder) to find out how to launch that particular DVD file from the DVD drive on my desktop - I would then check that the same command (with just the drive letter altered) did the same job on my laptop. - Then I would set up a test PTE project and program the Action in the Common tab to be "xxxxxxx" (the full string of the working command as used on the laptop and enclosed in a pair of double quotes); and test that that did what I wanted it to on the laptop If it did, then I would prepare the final Menu on the desktop. Knowing that I couldn't test that particular button, I would ensure that I gave the entire Menu a run through on the laptop before taking it out to give the show to the folks. Please note I have never tried "fully qualified commands"; but I understand that enclosing them in the double-quotes is the rightthing to do. I'll learn from your feedback. regards, Peter

Hi Dom, Great to have you back -we've missed you! Peter

Just after I posted I had a further thought. The manual control involves many actions of the "Go to Slide with Name..." type. The last slide in the sequence (the final black slide) is not advanced to from its immediate predecessor, it is accessed by "Go To" from an earlier slide. Upon checking that earlier slide I found that the slide named as the target of the Go To was "Blank" - but there is no slide called "Blank" in my sequence. Because both the open black slide and closing black slide are PTE-generated Blank slides, they were both called "Blank" when they were created; and realising the potential for confusion, I had renamed them to Blank-Start and Blank-End. Having re-programmed the Go To to point to Blank-End, the sequence now does what it should. However, the project, in its faulty state, does highlight a bug. There was a "Go To Slide with Name...Blank" coded but no slide called "Blank". I have done a test in which I changed the slide name in the Go To action to a random jumble of letters (i.e. a slide that does not exist at all, not even a close match) and the actual action was to go to the first slide of the sequence. In this situation, PTE should be reporting an error: "Unable to find target slide of Go To" or something similar. regards, Peter

I have a sequence (ProjectA) that has been built to be controlled manually (i.e. Wait for a keypress is ticked) and which is set to close after the last slide. When I Preview this sequence, or Publish the EXE and play the EXE, the sequence behaves as though the control option for closure is "Loop until Esc is pressed". I have tried to re-create this situation in a test sequence (ProjectB) and have failed. If I Publish a new EXE file (ProjectA2) from the ProjectA project file, it also behaves as though "Loop until Esc" had been selected. Soemthing isn't right here but I cannot get a repeatable creation of the fault in a controlled environment. regards, Peter

Windows has associated the .pte file extension with your v5 installation. A file extension can be associated only with one specific program (one specific .exe file from a particular drive/folder path). As davegee says, there is no point in retaining v5 and v6 if you have v7 installed.

That's it! It toggles through Full colour --> De-saturated (B&W) --> Sepia --> Full colour