fh1805

Gary, You can set your 120% for all slides very simply. Just go to Project Options|More and change "% of slide to show main images" from 100% to 120%. If you already have slides in the slide list you will need to Set for existing slides. Then go to the images that you don't want to have this size and set your preferred size on each of those (via O&A Animations Zoom values. regards, Peter P.S. In PTE v6.5 you will find the "% of slide" option under Project Options|Screen

Igor, The problem with the Installation that Barry reported has NOT been fixed for Windows Vista Home Premium SP2. I experienced it on all previous beta releases - and I still got it when I installed beta 6. regards, Peter P.S. Just as I was about to send this reply I noticed that the Attached File feature of the forum now shows a single file size limit of 64MB. This is a big jump up from the old 2MB limit. When did this change happen? If this is new "standard" it means we can attach PTE sequences of a fair old size without the need to use a File Hosting Service. Wonderful news for all forum users!

Barry, My desktop's monitor is 1920x1080. regards, Peter

Barry, How very true that is. And on a forum such as this where English is not the first language for many of the members, the challenges of getting across the feedback without offending or confusing are even greater. Andrew, Consider this for a moment, and this is only my opinion,... To do a thorough job of providing feedback I find it necessary to watch a sequence several times; because some points strike me only after repeated viewing. I also need to prepare several drafts of my comments, partly for the reason I've mentioned above in my response to Barry and partly to ensure that I cover all the points that I want to in the depth that I want to. It can take up to an hour for me to prepare feedback on just one sequence. That is a big slice of time. I can rarely make that level of commitment. If I'm standing in front of the audience and commenting unscripted, after just one viewing, on a selection of their work, I can spread out the points I want to make across all the sequences; and I can use body language, humour, even a quick demonstration to get my messages across. It's a totally different ball game. Bear in mind, also, that some members (those for whom English is not their native tongue) may be reluctant to express their views about a sequence because of the need, on this forum, to post in English. Having occasionally participated on the Diapostif.net forum in French, (a language in which I am far from fluent) I know how big a challenge it is simply reading and understanding a foreign language forum - let alone trying to reply with meaningful responses. regards, Peter

In v6.5 it is File...Templates...Create Template from this Show to save the template and then File...Templates...Manage Templates to select and set your default template. Peter

Ok, having stood on my soap-box and got that off my chest, now to some specific suggestions. 1 Bring all of the options (Project Options, View...Advanced Options, View...Timeline Options, etc.) into one place (Igor, I think your idea of a tree structure for the options is a very good one) 2 Ensure that a clear distinction is made between: System Options - those that determine how PTE behaves as piece of software and Project Options - those that determine how the sequence behaves. 3 Ensure that every option, every icon, every command, every button has a "tool-tip" pop-up that appears whenever the mouse hovers over that item 4 Ensure that each tool-tip is a hyperlink to an expanded piece of "context sensitive help" I accept that this will impose a big workload on the translators. But, I firmly believe that PTE is now so complex that it needs some kind of context-sensitive help. I also believe, perhaps naively and wrongly, that PTE now has all the major function that it will ever have: single images, video clips, audio files, transitions, 2D animation, 3D animation. If I am right, then it should mean that the help will need to be written only once and translated only once (per language, of course!). Thereafter, the maintenance effort on the help files should be relatively low. I also like nobeefstu's idea. Why not add a "Wizard" to guide a new user through the steps needed to produce a simple sequence: choose the images (i.e. bring them into the project folder) choose the video clips (i.e. bring them into the project folder) choose the sound files (i.e. bring them into the project folder) order the images and video add the sounds adjust the timing add transitions add animation (if desired) preview refine publish save If I think of other suggestions, I'll add more posts. regards, Peter

Rather than make some specific suggestions now, I'd like to discuss the topic in a more general manner. As I see it, there will, essentially, be two possible ways forward for Igor: option 1 - to simply tinker with the existing user interface, moving items from A to B, dropping redundant items, etc; or option 2 - doing a complete re-design and re-write of the user interface. Before embarking on such a re-work, one question needs to be answered: Who is this improved usability going to be aimed at? Is it aimed at the existing loyal user base or is it aimed at attracting and retaining new users (who may be from a younger age profile than many of us active on this forum)? If the latter, there are some implications for us all. Those of us who have used the product for any length of time have found a way of using it that suits us. If the product is going to become easier for a new user to learn, it seems to follow that the user interface is going to change - perhaps radically. That might mean it no longer works the way that we are used to. Therefore, if we agree with the need to make it easier for the new user, it follows that we have to be prepared to change our ways of working - and not insist that Igor preserves the old ways alongside the new. I believe we need to give him a free hand - to produce a new user interface that is cleaner, slicker, more up-to-date in appearance; but behind which is all the function and power of the product that we know and love. I don't know what exactly is behind Igor's creation of this topic but I would suggest to him that the next version of PTE (the one after v7.0) should have only minimal new function added. I believe he and his team should focus all their attention on a complete re-design of the user interface. regards, Peter

Dave, This is available already. I've been using a customized template as my default template ever since v4.42. Just open a new project, set your Project Options to your own preferences, create a template from the show then set that as your default for all new projects. regards, Peter

Greg, Your proposal will work fine if the object's keyframes are relatively few, and relatively well spaced out. But some complex animations can require several keyframes each within a few millisecs of one another. In this scenario it is impossible to separate them visually with sufficient accuracy in order to get the mouse click on precisely the ones wanted. To get a screen grab of your desktop you first need software to do the grabbing. This will capture the screen image as a JPEG file. Then you attach that file to your post. Which part of the process are you struggling with? regards, Peter

Greg, Read my post #5. My suggestion, if implemented, would give you what you ask for. I have proposed a simple way to gather together all the keypoints for a selected object and then move them "en bloc" a time interval of your choice, either to the left or the right, whilst preserving their time relationships with one another. I do not believe a "drag and drop" solution will be suitable for this. It is impossible to get the placement on the timeline to the necessary accuracy; especially as we cannot see the waveform of the soundtrack in the O&A window. With my proposal the accuracy will be to within one millisecond. And even without a visible waveform, a little trial and error will get the positioning that we require. Peter

Graham, Just to add further detail to Igor's post above... I have an old laptop with the same video spec. It can run PTE exe files successfully IF they have no animation (no pan/zoom/rotate or 3D transform), no video and only one or two static objects (additional images placed "picture in picture"). With animation or several additional static image objects, there is very obvious "flickering" and "stuttering" of the image. With video, the playback is very, very jerky. I had to pension off this laptop when PTE v5 was released. I am now seeing that I may have to pension off its successor if I want to add video to my slide shows. regards, Peter

To clarify what Dave has said: I had previously created H264 MP4 files from some of my PTE sequences in order to play them via a USB memory device plugged into my TV set. I tried one of these sequences as a video object embedded on a static slide image. It ran successfully at, to me, an acceptable quality. I then tried to stress my nVidia graphics card (8400 GS) to its limit by first doubling the number of video objects on the slide, then adding a third copy and finally a fourth copy. All copies were subject to 2D Pan and Rotate plus 3D transformation (rotate about both X and Y). With just one or two copies, the card managed to deliver smooth, stutter-free video. With three copies it showed some very slight stutter. At four copies it was clearly struggling to cope, some of the video missing several frames and then "jumping" as it caught up. I then converted the MP4 video file into an MPEG2 file using XMedia Recode software. With this *.mpeg2 file used instead of the *.mp4 file even the four-up test ran smoothly, with no visible stuttering on my system. regards, Peter

Yachtsman1, I don't want this thread to be hijacked but I have to say that, if you think the parent/child term is irrelevant to PTE's function, then I'm very much afraid that you still do not understand it. In human terms the child inherits attributes from its parents (DNA, genes, all that sort of thing). In PTE terms a child object "inherits" the attributes of its parent object. Specifically, if the parent object is zoomed, panned, rotated or 3D transformed, then the child inherits these actions and will move in time with and in spatial relation to its parent. For animation within a sequence, this feature is very useful since it allows the use of a Frame (which is simply a zero-opacity rectangle) as a parent for several child objects. So we can program the animation keyframes on the Frame object rather than on each of the individual child objects. This greatly reduces the complexity of the animation programming - just one set of keyframes rather than dozens of sets. The only attribute that cannot be inherited is that of opacity. And speaking purely personally I think this is a big "negative" for PTE animation. I understand the flexibility of having opacity not included as an inheritable attribute - but there are times when it would really simplify the programming of animation if there was an option to declare that the children of this object on this slide did inherit the opacity of their parent. regards, Peter

I have no particular preference in this matter as I never change from the defaults. However, if two new and unambiguous phrases really are required wouldn't "Fit to parent" and "Cover parent" be the most appropriate? After all, the slide is the parent of all independent objects, and the screen is the parent of the slide. Peter

John, Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post, and for raising this matter with iWisoft; but from my point of view this is now academic. I have found a product that does what I want and that did it very well at the first attempt, as you will see at post #9 above. This is an irrelevance as I don't use Windows 7 - I'm using Vista. If by this you are referring to PTE, there's no chance I'll abandon it. If you were referring to the iWisoft product, it's already abandoned. It failed at the first time of asking to do what I wanted it to do. I didn't give any great detail here because this is a PTE forum and not an iWisoft forum. I wasn't seeking a solution to my problem with the iWisoft software. I was simply giving a "heads up" alert to the forum members based on my experience with this product. However, to give some more detail now; by atrocious I meant that, during playback the appearance was as if random parts of every video frame had been pixellated. And this happened during playback of the video file in more than one media player, PTE was not involved at this stage. In fact, the visual quality was so bad that I wasn't prepared to take the file anywhere near PTE. regards, Peter

Was replying to #10 but #11 shows the option I arrived at and took. Go for it! Peter

No, I followed the Download option out of the blue options at top-left. I had previously tried the Foxtab product and everything I asked it to do it simply "Failed". regards, Peter

This I would like to see. I would find it very useful to be able to right-click on the Object name in the list, select from the pop-up menu a new option to "Move all keyframes" and have that show a further pop-up in which we could supply an offset value (plus or minus, in milliseconds) that we wanted applying to all the keyframes for the chosen object. A further release of PTE could then add the extra flexibility of de-selecting one or more of the chosen keyframes before applying the offset. regards, Peter

DaveG/Denwell, I've just download, installed and tried XMedia Recode (the one mentioned by Xaver a few posts down in the topic that DaveG's link in post #7 above takes us to). I gave it the H264-MP4 file that I have been using to test v7 beta releases. It converted that to MPEG-2 without any problems (2m 25s of input video converted in 7m 20s). I let it use all its default values except: I changed the output audio codec from MP2 to MP3 and within that changed the bitrate from 128 to 192. This gave the same audio settings as the original EXE file of this test sequence, so I knew what sound quality I was expecting. The resulting output video file plays beautifully smoothly in Windows Media Player. When imported into my test sequence for PTE v7 (three copies of it, each being 2D and 3D animated) it also plays smoothly. So smooth was it that I was tempted to add a fourth copy. That version also plays smoothly. So, no disrespect to Denwell but I've found something that works for me and "if it ain't broke, why fix it?". And thanks to Xaver for bringing XMedia Recode to my attention. Just one word of warning: the website for XMedia is in the German language. My schoolboy German (now a 45 year memory) was just good enough to enable me to find the bits of the site that I wanted and to understand the essence of what I was being told there. The Help also seems to be only in German - but there may be an option to change languages that I haven't found yet (I admit, I haven't seriously looked for this). regards, Peter

I've recently tried this one. I wanted to convert an H264-MP4 file (that had been produced by PTE Videobuilder) to MPEG2 in order to reduce the CPU demand of the video when included in a PTE v7 beta sequence. The result of the conversion was atrocious! Peter

Mike, I never was a gambler so this challenge doesn't appeal to me like Rubik's Cube did. Dom, It's all yours. Bon chance! Peter

Derek, V7 is a beta release. This means that the code is still being developed and tested (the testing now being done by an increasing number of forum members). It is unwise to enter for anyone to use the beat code unless they understand the implications of the code being a "beta release". In a beta release it may be the case that not all function is active. Some parts wil be deliberately turned off. Those parts will be activated over a period of several weeks. You should continue to use v6.5 for the full set of functions. regards, Peter

I've no objection to the text object giving us a popup window in which to do the data entry. As you rightly say, it's not a big job to put the opacity to zero. However, I think I would prefer the real text object to allow us to key the text directly into the screen location (like a Photoshop or Powerpoint text field). regards, Peter

Ken, Received. Impressive! regards, Peter

And mine - Firefox 3.6.16 under Vista Home Premium Peter