fh1805

I Like it!

Tony, Your logic is correct: Preview and Preview from Selected Slide buttons both trigger the creation of a temporary EXE file. Both the mini-player and the playback in the O&A window "build as they go". Peter

Eric, I had assumed your music was added via Project Options...Music. My solution works in that scenario. Peter

Eric, Try - Project Options...Main and untick "Synchronize music and slides" then check things out carefully for any new unwanted behaviour. Peter

How about a little zimmer frame? Peter P.S. No offence intended, Eric!

Arthur, It ran fine on my nVidia GeForce 210 which is rated lower than my old 8600GS but newer technology and has 1GB memory compared to the old 8600's 256MB. However, I noticed that you have a lot of really "heavy" images: there's a lot of 1920x1080 PNG files. I took my system a noticeable amount of time to build up the slide image when I took any of your slides into the O&A window. It also took a long time to build the temporary EXE file when I ran a Preview of it. I think you need to try and reduce the size of those PNGs. All you really need is the card area; you do not need all the empty space around the card. regards, Peter

Eric, Please convey my best wishes for success to the Southport AV Group. regards, Peter

Think of your images as layers in Photoshop. In PTE you need to add them as independent objects (not as parent-child objects). To do this, click repeatedly in the Object List area until the contents of the Tabs above disappear, then Add your next image. Keep a close eye on which object is selected before you add the enxt one. In your case you do not want any of the objects selected. Having got all the objects added, select one in the Objects List and use Ctrl+Page-up or Ctrl+Page-Down to move it into its correct relative position. Your end game is an Objects List that reads (from top to bottom): Arch, CurtainA, CurtainB. Then add the animation to the curtain objects. Peter

Spock, If you read the details of the name panels at the left of each of their posts, you will see that one lives in Suffolk and the other in Oxfordshire. That's a bit like expecting it to be the same person when one lives on the Azores and the other on the Canaries. Peter

Ken, That is a very arrogant attitude to take! You have, yourself, on numerous occasions recommended that people use online translation tools. So, on the one hand you say they don't have to learn English, they can let the computer translate; and on the other hand you say they have to learn English. Make your mind up! I think you owe Spock an apology for that remark. Peter

The basic system licence (which is no longer sold) is a "free for life" licence. You can upgrade whenever you want. You will get the Videobuilder code but it will remain in "Trial" mode. Peter

Igor, I've sent you a PM Peter

Ray, It might be that the horizontal and vertical controls on the TV need a little tweak? Peter

Daniel, It is my understanding that 44100Hz is the standard sample rate for commercially produced CDs and 48000Hz is, for some reason that I do not understand, the rate used by commercially produced DVDs. It is not, as far as I know, a matter of geography, for examaple: American CDs use 44100Hz and so do European ones. Peter

Gary, I like your idea of "Overlap" (= Crossfade without the fades) I think some users might find that very useful. My statement about "ALL" items is, I now realise, lacking one extra piece of explanation. I envisage the Crossfading button on the Music tab as providing a new or inexperienced user with a way of achieving a smooth blend of all their sound items, including a nice smooth fade-in to the start of the show and a smooth fade out to the end of the show - with just one click. To me, as a more experienced AV worker, who is comfortable using Audacity to assemble complex soundtracks, that looks like a "quick and dirty" solution. However, we need to make PTE easy to use, so that a novice user can achieve satisfactory results with the minimu of effort. The hope, then, is that they realise they can achieve even better results by taking more control over what is going on. In this particular case that would be switching to use the Audio clip properties and building the exact crossovers that they actually need. Hope this clarifies what was in my mind - but didn't make it into that previous post. Peter

I'd just like to clarify the reason for my abandoning the "opening lid" animation (as indicated in post #15 above). After studying the various examples supplied by the likes of Dave, Xaver and Howard, I tried to achieve the result that I had in my mind - and failed. After further thought I realised that what I was envisaging was something akin to a good quality video clip. Of course, that was never going to be achievable for a reasonable amount of effort. I have since investigated how to achieve a similar effect (but one that merely suggests the lid opening rather than depicts it actually opening). I now use a 1-second Advanced Hour Hand Center-Bottom transition, with the default Offset of 20% and a 20% smoothing line. This, combined with a Quick transition to close the lid works very well indeed. I'm much happier with the suggestion/illusion of opening and closing than I was with trying to actually depict the lid opening and closing. Once again though, thanks to everyone for the suggestions, ideas and examples. Peter

Lin, Sorry I didn't make it clearer. What I disagreed with was your concept that something was "off" even though the radio button was "on". Part of the discussion has been about consistency. To be consistent, either the radio button should be "off" and the time value should be zero or the radio button should be "on" and a non-zero time value should be presented. Right now if you go via Project Options...Music...Customize to the Audio clip properties we find that the radio button is "on" (implying that crossfading is "on") but the time value is zero (implying that crossfading is "off") It cannot be both "off" and "on". For true consistency, and correct logical presentation, in Audio clip properties the radio button should be greyed out until the user has selected which two items in the Track to crossfade. To implement crossfading the user would then click the radio button "on" and add their desired overlap time. The Crossfading button on the Project Options...Music tab should be greyed out unless there are two or more items in the Track. Its use should then result in the same time duration being applied to the start and end of ALL tracks (including a fade-in at the start of the first item and a fade-out at the end of the last item). This is another instance where a Tool Tip would be really useful. It would explain what that button is going to do and hyperlink to the detailed explanation of Crossfading in the Help manual. regards, Peter

For some time now I have been of the opinion that PTE is getting too complicated for the new user. One aspect that could be changed to benefit the new user is the system of Help. I envisage a Help system that works as follows: Every icon on a Tool Bar, the text on every button and the labels beside every radio button, every tick box and every field would all have a "Tool Tip" associated with them. By this I mean a little pop-up box with just a few words describing what that item is. The text of that Tool Tip would serve as a hyperlink into the relevant section of the Help manual/User Guide manual. This is known as "context-sensitive help". I have opened this topic to solicit the views of the forum members. I would be especially interested in the views of those who do the language translation. I realise that such a change would possibly mean a massive increase in the workload of the translators. regards, Peter

Lin, Not true! If you do Project Options...Music...Customize, then irrespective of how many items of sound there are in that Track, Crossfading is a pre-selected radio button showing a default value of zero. Gary is right in one respect: the display of the Crossfading option is inconsistent in its values. I firmly believe that the implementation of the Crossfading function needs an overhaul so that it is only available when there are two or more items in a Track, and the user must consciously choose which two adjacent items the cross-fade is to be applied to. The only time the software makes the decision for the user is when there are just two items in just one Track. This whole subject is, to my mind, a classic example of when a vastly improved Help interface would be a great benefit. What I envisage would be that hovering the mouse pointer over the word Crossfading would result in a "Tool Tip" pop-up giving a brief description of what Crossfading was (e.g. overlaps two items of sound and applies a fade-out/fade-in at the overlap). That text would, itself, be a hyperlink to a full description of this function in the Help files. Every single button, every single option, every single field label should have the Tool Tip, with many of them also having that text act as a hyperlink into the Help manual. But this would have to be a whole new project for Igor and the team - and would have major implications for the translators. I think I'll open a new topic under Ideas and Suggestions so that this topic doesn't get hi-jacked. Peter

I'm going to be a little pedantic here: a BUG is when code is not working as designed. We do not know precisely what Igor and the team designed the code to do. It may be a bug; it is certainly working in an unusual manner. Igor should give some serious thought to making it behave in a more logical (to the user) manner; hence my topic in the Ideas and Suggestions section. Peter

Lin, Like you, if I am using my own background image it is generally a JPEG at full size. So I would certainly support a change to 100% size as the default size. However, we need to remember that anything that can be set in Project Options can then be made into a Template and used as our own personalized default template for all new projects. As for the name of this feature, why not simply "Background image"? And wouldn't the purpose of the 20% field be easier to understand if it was actually two fields: "Number of tiles across" and "Number of tiles down" that were both defaulted to 1 and greyed-out unless a "Tiled image" tick box/radio button was activated? As for your borders, if you set the border on the first slide you add to the slide list, and then click on "Save and use by default" in the Properties tab of the O&A window, PTE will then apply the same border to every image you subsequently add to the Slide List or as a picture-in-picture object. Note: you must drop one slide only at first and get this set as you want it, then add the remainder. I'm not aware that the drop shadow can be pre-defined for each slide. I think the tick/no tick for Drop Shadow should be a Project Option that can then be over-ridden at the individual object level when so desired. Peter

Dave, I've already opened a new topic in "Ideas and suggestions" linked back to this one. See here. Peter

Dave, I missed your post #20 at bottom of page 1 which mentioned this button. Sorry! Peter

Igor, There has been some significant confusion over the subject of crossfading (see here). The confusion came about because the Crossfading button on the Project Options...Music tab worked differently to the use of the Audio clip properties pop-up window accessed via Customize on the Project Options...Music tab. Using the Crossfading button, a fade-in was applied to the start of the first piece of music. Using the Audio clip properties, if only one piece of music was present in that Track, the same happened. In neither case was the user forced to select two adjacent pieces of music in the same Track. Cross-fading has meaning only when there are two or more pieces chosen and these pieces follow one another on the timeline. I suggest that both the Crossfading button on the Music tab and the Crossfading radio button in Audio clip properties should be greyed-out until there are two or more sound files present in at least one of the Tracks. In either case, unless there are only two sound files in just one track, the user should be prompted to select the two tracks to which the crossfade is to be applied. (If there are only two sound files and both in the same track, then the software can make the obvious logical assumption that it is those two that are to be cross-faded). regards, Peter

Gary, I'd never noticed that "Crossfading" button on the music tab (but, there again, as I indicated in my response to Greg), I use Audacity for anything complicated. What we are up against here is a result of Igor's desire to make PTE as easy as possible for a novice to use. So we have more than one way of applying "Crossfading". Unfortunately, one way of doing it applies a fade-in to the wrong end of the wrong piece. I firmly believe that the software, whilst being easy to use, should also steer the novice user in the correct direction. For a cross-fade, that means selecting which two pieces you want to crossfade. I'll open a new topic in the "Ideas and suggestions" section and link it back to this topic. regards, Peter