fh1805

Robert, Unfortunately, I don't think we can let the discussion end. Try and visualize yourself as a potential new user of PTE, doing your research by investigating the support forum. You see the great raft of debate about the confusion that arises if you tick one little box. What does that tell you about the product? It implies that it is a very complex product that even the experts don't fully understand. What do you do? You go and buy a competitor product. The presence of this "feature" and all the confusion that it can generate, in my opinion, carries a very high risk of losing potential new customers. That is not good for the long term future of either PTE or of WnSoft. I really do believe that Igor needs to reconsider the necessity of having this feature. regards, Peter

Dave, I'm not using v7.0.1 beta, I'm using the official release and the v6.5 template that I re-created yesterday during my investigations into this area of great confusion. regards, Peter

Daniel, I think it must be something you have done or are doing. In my installation of v7.0.1 the box is unticked and remains unticked across stop/start of PTE. Did you let the install process take all its defaults or did you make it conform to your own set-up? regards, Peter

Andrew, To have PTE behave as you want it to, all you have to do is download v7.0.1, make sure that "Keep full slide duration" is unticked and away you go just like good ol' v6.5. (The tick box is down in the bottom right corner of the main window). regards, Peter

Mick, If AVG have just the one set of databases across all versions of the software then AVG 2011 with database 4546 or higher will resolve this matter. It isn't the software version that's important, it's the database version. regards, Peter

I don't deny that there can be occasions when a "transition", with animation running across it, can be effective. My own sequence commemorating 50 Years of Manned Spaceflight had exactly that. But it was built using Quick changes to keep the animation flowing smoothly and the background "transitions" were done via opacity change in O&A in the middle of a slide. I didn't need a different timing system to allow me to achieve the end result. I accept, therefore, that a transition from a still image to video or from video to a still image could be effective - if the transition type and duration are carefully chosen. But does that require a new timing system? Does having such a timing system make the build process any easier? I digress from the artisticdebate, sorry. I still maintain, however, that the change from one video to another through a transition will, almost always, result in a very messy transition, as the two moving images overlap and visually conflict with one another. regards, Peter

Dave, This debate is entirely independent of your suggestion (a variant of which I have endorsed elsewhere). This topic is a perfectly valid discussion for the forum members to be having. It is about the artistic aspect of video clip inclusion rather than the technical implementations. Or are you suggesting that discussion about artistic matters has no place on this forum? regards, Peter

Igor, By all means retain the two systems but do please give serious consideration to the suggestion that the "Keep full slide duration" should be removed from the main screen and made a Project Option (factory-shipped default value = off). It will then become a setting similat to Hardware Acceleration: those who need to change it can do so and accept the consequences, those who don't can forget about it! regards, Peter

I wasn't suggesting that your statement was provocative, Dave. I was describing my own opening statements as being deliberately provocative - which they were. Peter

Dave, A provocative statement is a classic way of provoking a debate! Peter

There is a huge debate running elsewhere on the forum about the way in which the new slide duration timings are handled. The existing topics are the place to discuss the current implementation and it's perceived problems. But as one who has watched the discussions progress - and contributed occasionally - I think there is need for this separate topic. There will be benefit, I believe, in having a discussion here about a) why you might want to transition into and out of a video clip? and which transition type you might find the best? As I have stated elsewhere, I doubt that I will use video in my sequences (principally because none of my cameras has video capability). But that doesn't stop me considering how I would tackle it if I was to do so. I would start by studying the techniques adopted by movie film makers. They have been doing it for over 100 years. We would be foolish to ignore that wealth of experience. Now, I haven't done this methodically as yet; but my feeling is that 95% or more of the "transitions" from one scene to the next in a movie are what we would call "Quick" transitions. So why do we need to worry about the duration of the transitions around a video clip. If we think that the movie makers have got it right, all we will be using is the Quick - both for the in-bound and out-bound transitions. Ergo we do not need this new slide duration technique, do we? There, I've opened up the debate. What do others think? regards, Peter

I also agree with DaveG's suggestion to have the Keep full slide duration as an option that is chosen once at start of a new project and is then locked for that project. It is clear from the discussions that have taken place that changing this option mid-project is going to lead to all sorts of problems and confusion for the users. regards, Peter

Dave, You are right on one point: I will almost certainly not be using video and so will leave the box unticked all the time - and thus get no problems. But I'm not just thinking about how this affects me as a user of PTE, I'm looking to the wider audience. As a moderator, and one who answers lots of questions on this forum, I'm dreading having to try and explain what we see happening to new users. Just think how much time and energy you, me, Jill and others have expended on this subject, trying to understand what we see happening and then trying to explain it to one. Now multiply that by several dozen new users during the life of v7.0 and you might just begin to understand what my concerns are. regards, Peter

Dave, If that is the case then both the Slide and Timeline views need new designs. The Slides view should show the transition as a separate item between each slide. Then, when doing drag and drop, the user can decide whether to take one, both or none of the transitions with the slide. And this means that APLman's suggestion of three, totally independent timing values is the way to go. The Timeline should therefore have additional flags added to denote the beginning and end of each transition as well as the current one for the slide (which should be moved to the end of the inbound transition. regards, Peter

Igor, Consider this scenario: Step 1: I start a new project and add three slides. Because of Project Options settings they appear as follows (transition duration/slide duration): A - 1.5/4.0 B - 1.5/4.0 C - 1.5/4.0 Step 2: I change the transition time of C to be 3.0 Step 3: On the Timeline each slide has 4 seconds duration and the first two have 1.5 transition and the last has 3.0 transition. This doesn't change if the "Keep full slide duration" is ticked or unticked. Step 4: With the "Keep...duration" unticked, I now use the Slide view to drag C to sit between A and B; the values are now: A - 1.5/4.0 C - 3.0/4.0 B - 1.5/4.0 so far, this is all perfectly logical and rational behaviour. Step 5: I drag C back to be last slide and tick "Keep...duration". I now have: A - 1.5/5.5 B - 1.5/7.0 C - 3.0/4.0 and in the Timeline, each slide has a duration (from start of itself to start of the next slide) of 4 seconds. Step 6: In the Slides view I now drag C (which we have just seen has a duration of 4.0 seconds and a transition of 3.0 seconds) to sit before B. We have seen that B, before this change, also has a duration of 4.0 (from its start to the start of the next slide) and a transition of 1.5. What do we now see: A - 1.5/5.5 C - 3.0/4.5 B - 1.5/7.0 Only the transitions have remained as they were. The slide durations have changed in a manner that, to me as a human being rather than a piece of computer logic, is utterly illogical. N.B. In my mind these values are associated with the slide image and not with the slide relative position in the sequence. Your computer logic seems to apply some values to the actual image and others to its relative position in the sequence. What is happening may be "correct" in terms of how you have designed it to be. But it is far from "logical or rational behaviour" as the user is going to perceive it. I really do believe that the need for this code behaviour needs to be given some very serious re-thinking. Is it really necessary to have the two ways of working? As far as I can see it is simply causing lots of mis-understanding and confusion in the minds of the users. Is this code solving any real problems for real users? regards, Peter

For anyone who read my two previous, and now deleted, posts: I committed a fundamental user error - identical to the one that I unjustifiably criticised Igor for. My apologies to Igor for that criticism - it was totally out of order of me. I must take more time to test carefully instead of rushing things. regards, Peter

I've just downloaded this latest beta and installed it over the top of the previous beta. The "Keep full slide duration" value is now remembered across PTE stop/start. And with that value unticked, behaviour seems to be exactly as v6.5 used to be. All we need now is for Jill to try it and report back on her batch of problems. regards, Peter

I have just downloaded and installed this latest v7.0.1 beta over the top of my previous v7.0.1 beta - and the setting of "Keep full slide duration" is now remembered across a stop-start of PTE. With it unticked the behaviour of the code seems to be exactly the same as v6.5. Well done, Igor! regards, Peter

Stu, Yes, I installed it into its own (specified by me) directory so that it co-existed alongside both v6.5.7 aand v7.0.0. And I had no immediate problems!! The problems only appeared after I deleted my customized Template and created a new one. I have, since my last report, uninstalled both v7.0.0 and v7.0.1, deleted all my customized templates (one from v6.5.0, one from 6.5.7 and one from v7.0.1) used v6.5.7 to create my customized template and set it as default. I have then re-installed v7.0.1 into its default directory (note I did not first install v7.0.0). And everything is behaving predictably and consistently - and correctly as far as I am now concerned. BUT... I did note that, this time, the install of v7.0.1 asked me which version of PTE to take its default values from. It hadn't asked me this when I previously installed it (into a directory of my choosing). Previously I had both v6.5.7 and v7.0.0 available. This time I had only v6.5.7 available. I'm not sure that the choice of directory is relevant - it may be. But the setting of default values certainly seems to have a bearing it. PTE still isn't remembering the last setting for "Keep full slide duration". So this option is not behaving like either a Project Option or a System setting. The code for this feature is not like the code for all the other features. It behaves abnormally. As an ex-programmer, that worries me! regards, Peter

I do live to regret it!!! Having re-built my template (using v6.5.7 = the version in which it had been built) I saved it and then closed down v6.5.7. After launching v7.0.1, I found that PTE did not recognise that the template existed. I used "File...Manage Templates" to make that template the default for all new projects and told PTE v7.0.1 to create a new project. F6 key now toggles the tick box for "Keep full slide duration". This suggests to me that the root cause of this problem is that the "Keep full slide duration" is neither a Project Option saved with each PTE project file, nor a System Option saved in an ini file. It seems to be some other kind of option (possibly hardcoded into the program software) with a behaviour all of its own. Or possibly is, in some way, dependent on some other system parameter or system behaviour. In anycase, the aberrant behaviour is, in some way, tied into the use/non-use of templates. As far as I am concerned this is either a bug in PTE or a serious design flaw. Either way, the only person who can get it resolved once and for all is Igor. I would recommend that we all stop investigating this any further. We've narrowed down the area where the problem is and the conditions that can trigger it (and for some lucky people, those that can circumvent it). From the info that we have, collectively, published in this topic, I'm sure Igor and his team of wizards can quickly find the weak spot in their code and get it fixed so that behaviour is predictable. Whether we like that predictable behaviour or not will be a matter of personal preference. regards, Peter

I can confirm that the problems Jill is encountering are directly attributable to not using Templates. I have just deleted my customised Template (I might live to regret this!) and have been able to recreate her problems with the ticked/unticked status changing on Win 7. regards, Peter

Further to this discussion about the effect of "Keep full slide duration" in v7.0.1 beta. PTE does not hold this value across PTE close/re-launch. On my system, it always comes up unticked at every PTE restart. If it was a project option, it would come up with its previous value set. If it was a system option it would come up with its value set. It doesn't come up with its previous value set; so, what kind of option is it? regards, Peter

Dave, That's very interesting. However, all my tests have been done using my normal customized template and I have failed magnificently to reproduce any of the problems that you and Jill have been having. So why should my template work for me without change but yours not work for you until after you change it? N.B. My customized template was created June this year using v6.5.7 regards, Peter

Jill, What exactly do you mean by this? In which view are you when you do this? Which "box" are you clicking? Whatever I try, I end up with the "Customize Slide" window open and the mouse wheel just scrolls through the various effect possibilities. Your statement implies that you have found a way of changing the values without leaving the PTE main window. regards, Peter

Jill, I am not seeing this behaviour on my system. regards, Peter