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Xaver, In my vision of the future product, if Object A was visible at a fixed opacity, its children could have independent opacity values (varying between keyframes if desired). But as soon as Object A's opacity began to vary between a pair of keyframes, that rate of change and "direction of change" (fade up/fade down) would be applied to all the children. regards, Peter

Jean-Cyprien, No harm done! I know only too well from my occasional participation on the diapositif.net forum that communicating in a foreign language (written or spoken) is very difficult. And when someone points out to me that a particular feature already is possible, it means I am adding to my knowledge. That can never be a bad thing for any of us. Dave, The possible translation problems are the reason why I tend to write in full: no abbreviations, no mnemonics, no idiomatic English - except when I am replying directly to an individual whom I know uses English as their first language. regards, Peter

Jean-Cyprien, Rest assured, I have not taken offence at what you said, nor at the way you said it. If my choice of words in post #6 has given you that impression, I apologise most sincerely. Like you, I use masks only when I must because of the significant additional processing resource that they impose. I had not thought of using one for that purpose, so thank you very much for that suggestion. regards, Peter

The suggestion given by Xaver is very pertinent. However, when I go to do so I see the attached pop-up window. The advice which it gives is, in my opinion, too simplistic. The advice is true when working on just one PC. But if, for any reason, the project is transferred to a different PC, then the problem of "missing fonts" will remain and will need to be resolved (e.g. by locating a copy of the missing font and installing it). I still maintain that it would be useful for PTE to highlight the "missing font" situation when the project file is opened. Perhaps a colour coded warning is required: Amber - font is missing but has been rasterized Red - font is missing and has not been rasterized As I have indicated, this only a problem for me because I make extensive use of "Run Slideshow with Return" from menu sequences - and so have to do a fresh "Create Exe" every time I build a new menu (because I have to be certain that all the EXEs are created using the same version of PTE). This problem only came to light because my old PC failed and the new one has a different set of fonts installed. regards, Peter

Whilst I can accept that the mask offers a way of achieving the desired result, it is most certainly not the most intuitive way. It is, however, an excellent example of what is wrong with PTE. The capability exists within the product but requires the use of a complex and totally unrelated function. Consider the novice user for a moment. He or she has learned to change pan, zoom, rotate and 3D transform on a single object using a pair of keyframes. They also have learned about the parent-child relationship and discovered that these attributes can be inherited by a child object. They also learned that opacity of a single object could be changed between a pair of key frames - but this could not be inherited. To them, that is totally illogical. I feel it is wrong of us "experts" to accept the workarounds and not push for the more obvious and more logical solution. On any object, the user should be allowed to nominate that its opacity setting is to be passed down to all its children. One little tick box on the Properties tab: "Opacity is inherited by all child objects" - totally intuitive, totally flexible in its deployment. regards, Peter

Dave, I think you need to switch to Full Editor to get at the Attachments features. regards, Peter

I've opened a new topic in the "Ideas and suggestions" section. Peter

In the current versions of PTE, opacity is the one keyframe-controllable property that cannot be inherited via the parent-child relationship. And part of the reason is that the frame is not really a frame, it's a zero opacity rectangle. This can readily be demonstrated: in the O&A window add a rectangle and note its icon in the Objects list, then change its opacity to zero and now note its icon. Do the same with a Frame, changing its opacity to 100%. When the v5.0 animation came out I campaigned unsuccessfully for opacity to be inheritable in a selectable manner. I do not want to change the default behaviour of PTE; I realise the immense benefits of being able to fade in/out the individual objects. But for those who sometimes build complex animations, there is often no easy way to fade out a complex structure whilst retaining all the animation of all the other objects. Using version 5, I produced an animated sequence called "Kaleidoscope" which involved over 700 objects on the slide at any one time. Ideally, I would have loved to fade out the various structures one after another. But that would have meant programming 1400+ keyframes to control the opacity of each of the individual objects. Whilst v6.5 was in beta, I produced my "Rubik's Cube" sequence: it had 54 facet images. To programme the fade out of these on the last slide required 108 keyframes. But that cube sat under a master controller frame. Now imagine a version of PTE that allows the user to say: "for this parent (a PNG image of nothing), I want you to impose inheritance of opacity on all its children and children's children - to the bottom of the stack". I could have faded out the entire cube with just one pair of keyframes on the master frame. I have no idea what the programming complexity of this feature would be for the team, but I think it would add immensely to the ease of coding complex animations. regards, Peter

Geoff, Sorry I've not replied sooner. Been out all day. Opacity is the one keyframe-controllable property that cannot be inherited via the parent-child relationship. And the reason is that the frame is not really a frame, it's a zero opacity rectangle. Check it out for yourself. Make a rectangle at zero opacity and note its icon in the object list. Make a frame at 100% opacity and note its icon in the opacity list. When the v5.0 animation came out I campaigned unsuccessfully for opacity to be inheritable in a selectable manner. I realise the immense benefits of being able to fade in/out the individual objects. But think how much simpler it would have been for me in the Rubik's cube show if I could have faded out the entire cube with just one pair of keyframes on the master frame -instead of 54 pairs of keyframes on the individual facets of the cube. All I was asking for was the ability to nominate that, for this parent, its opacity setting is to be forced onto its children, and their children, and their children, etc. I still think it would add immensely to the ease of coding complex animations. But I seem to be a voice crying in the wilderness. regards, Peter

Andrew, Dave's suggestion is the way to go. It gives great flexibility. You can order the video and still in either manner (Video over Still, Still over Video). You can apply animation to them both by animating on the Frame. And yet, if you really want to, you can apply different animations to the individual objects. All options are open to you. I would further recommend that, if you want to have, say, some zoom animation and some 3D transform, that you nest one Frame inside another, with the video and still objects as children of the lowest frame in the nest. In this way you ensure that the parameters for each kind of animation are separate from those of any other kind of animation. In practice, you can think about one kind of animation at a time, without worrying about the impact on the others. regaards, Peter

Ken, I couldn't agree more! I have one rule that I never break when it comes to accepting bookings: either I provide everything or I provide only a USB memory stick. That way, if I've provided everything, any technical glitches are my problem to resolve and apologise for. If I provide only a memory stick, any technical glitches are then the hosts to resolve and apologise for. I rarely have problems with my own laptop/projector setup these days because it is used for little else. All I have to do is remember to boot up the laptop onto the wireless network at home once a week to download and install anti-virus and Windows updates. If anything does get installed, then I check that all the sequences for the next week will start OK. I am amazed at how many organisations cannot get their own gear set up and working without hitting some sort of problem. And then some of them have the cheek to ask me to help resolve their problems! regards, Peter

There is a separate topic on the forum specifically for bug reports in v7 beta. See here If you post the details there Igor and his team will see it and respond to it. regards, Peter

Harold, I've just sent you a PM via the forum. regards, Peter

Robert, I suspect it's the latter. Bearing in mind that the majority of AV workers come from the field of still photography, I suspect that video has, thus far, been just a diversion , if it has been dabbled in at all. Just as photographers have to learn all about the audio side to become AV workers, I think that most AV workers will now have to go through the learning curve to become skilled movie cameramen or camerawomen - with the additional audio challenge of obtaining high-quality perfectly synchronised sound. We will no longer be AV workers (where it was possible for a single individual to do everything); we will have to be become movie-makers - and that will require more skills than a single individual can reasonably be expected to master. Team-working will be the way forward. I've been monitoring this thread (and other video related threads) with interest. I am by no means a "Luddite" but I struggle to visualize how I might make effective use of video in an AV sequence without turning it into a true video. My preferred subject matter is history - and especially local history. I can visualize that the most likely way of using video would be by including some historic film clips; but that just opens up a whole new can of worms of copyright clearance issues. I do this for fun: do I really want that hassle? Like Dave, I have created a H264 MP4 video out of PTE (via Create...HD Video for PC and Mac) and then added this as a video object to a slide. On my previous desktop system I did a test run adding two, then three and finally four instances of the video stream onto the same slide (like tiled windows on the PC). The system handled two OK, showed signs of struggling on three and just couldn't hack it with four. Igor suggested converting the video to MPEG2 which I did using the recoder that Xaver (userid = xahu) recommended. This reduced the resource demand to the level where the four-up was running with barely any hint of any problems. I did these tests with both a 1024x768 project and a 1920x1080 project as the source for the video. The playback symptoms were the same which ever I used. regards, Peter

Brian, Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, it was the hard drive that failed. So recovery of the font files from the old desktop system is a non-starter. Thankfully, when its power stack failed about a year ago, I moved all my data off drive C: onto paired external hard drives. At least, I thought I'd moved everything! Some items have slipped the net. I operate these external disk pairs as a form of "RAID" set up, using Vice Versa software to synchronise the backup disk with the main data disk each night. I discovered an additional benefit of this approach. If I get asked to give a demonstration of PTE, Audacity, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. I can unplug the backup data drive and take that with the laptop - and have all my data files with me, and in their usual folder structure. regards, Peter

The fonts will probably have come from Microsoft Office. The XP laptop had Office 2003, the Vista laptop had Office 2007 and the new Win7 PC has Office 2010. I will, from now on, be trying to remember to take a copy, onto an external hard drive, of any font that I use in a PTE project. Peter

Dave, Then you will probably never have any problems - except for bored audiences! I found all three "missing" fonts on the Vista laptop and have now successfully copied them across to my new system. One point of interest: the Vista PC would not let me do a Copy from the Windows/Fonts folder and then Paste onto a USB memory device - but it would let me do a right-click drag-and-drop Copy here operation. Weird or what? Anyhow, immediate problem solved - but the suggestion remains as I feel it would be a useful feature for anyone else who finds themselves in my position. regards, Peter

Dave/Xaver, Thanks for the suggestions for actions that will "shut the stable door after the horse has bolted". I've already bitten on the bullet and trawled through the PTE project files for all 50 of my sequences, in Notepad, and have identified all the fonts that I have used - all 23 of them. The vast majority of the text uses one of: Arial, Monotype Corsiva, Nyala or Times New Roman. However, I found that I tended to use a specially chosen font on the title slides. What I am suggesting is, that PTE should have added to it, a way to help other people who find themselves in my recent position: an easy means of identifying which fonts they need to track down. After 2-3 hours work I am down to just three missing fonts: two I think I will find on my Vista laptop and the other on my old XP laptop. If I cannot find them there, or as free downloads on the web, I may well come back to this topic and seek further assistance. regards, Peter

Having had to buy a new PC system (to replace my Vista-based desktop system following its sudden demise) I now find that Windows 7's font collection doesn't include all the fonts that Windows Vista's collection had. That, in turn, didn't have all the fonts that XP's collection had. By opening the PTE project file into Notepad and doing Edit...Find for the text font I have been able to establish the font names that I used in each sequence. I am now having to check every single sequence I have ever built (over 50 of them totalling in excess of 5 hours of running time) in order to identify all instances of "missing fonts" - and then make a decision as to the replacement font. PTE uses some rule or other to select a font to replace the missing one - but that font often is of a size that is different to my originally selected one. I feel that it would be useful for PTE to draw our attention to missing fonts in the same way it draws our attention to missing image files and missing sound files. Further, I feel it would be helpful if PTE showed the font name from the project file in the O&A Properties tab, even when that font is missing on the system. This font name should be either highlighted or greyed out to indicate that the font was missing on this system. I would also welcome some advice from Igor on the exact "rule" that PTE uses to select a font to replace one that it finds is missing? N.B. I know that the original exe files don't have a problem. However, I always run off a menu sequence using "Run Slideshow with Return" to launch each sequence. Each menu is customised to suit that specific audience; and so I have to redo the Create of the EXE files using the latest PTE version. Following the PC system replacement I have had to re-build two forthcoming evening's entertainments. This has highlighted the problem of "missing fonts". regards, Peter

I have been convinced for some time now that there is a real need for a new user interface that, for the novice user, "holds their hand" and guides them step-by-step through the complexities of this fantastically feature-rich product. regards, Peter

Fergy, That could point to having unwittingly corrupted the sound card drivers or settings via a recent software upgrade. Glad to know that you have circumvented the problem. Peter

I've used Norton for the past ten years or more and the only problem was a rash of "false positives" on PTE exe files shortly after they introduced their SONAR technology. But I found that, once Norton had learned to recognise the PTE kernel code for each of the different PTE releases, it gave no more false positives. My main PC crashed (terminally) on Friday and the new system has AVG pre-installed - so I'm letting it show me what it can do (mindful of the fact that it, too, can be prone to giving "false positives" on PTE sequences). regards, Peter

Fergy, The fact that the problem is confined to your main PC strongly suggests that there is some kind of fault (hardware/software/settings) in that system. To assist in isolating the area that is at fault can I suggest the following approach: - find a short piece of sound (an mp3 file, NOT a WAV, OGG, WMA or anything else) which plays correctly through your usual media player software on the same PC that is giving you problems - then open PTE and create a new project, just one slide and just this one sound file added via Project Options|Music - what length of sound does PTE think this file is as shown in the Project Options|Music tab? - how does that compare to the length as shown by hovering the mouse over the mp3 file in Windows Explorer? - does this little project preview correctly: i.e. with sound audible? Knowing this will give us a "baseline" upon which we can make further deductions and inferences; and hopefully move the diagnosis along to a successful conclusion. regards, Peter

I have to say that I think you acted unwisely in taking on a new piece of software with a critical deadline so close. To my way of looking at it, that is a most unprofessional thing to do. regards, Peter

Does the WAV play OK in a media player? Are you sure you are doing File...Export... and not File...Export...Selection in Audacity? regards, Peter