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Andrew, That's clear enough and quite right. On re-investigating I now see that the Delete key doesn't do what is required. I didn't study the outcome carefully enough. Thanks for catching this and correcting me. Gary, Ignore my initial response. I've given incorrect advice - unusual for me, I know, but it proves that I'm human. regards, Peter

Gary, Just hit the Delete key whilst you are viewing the slide in O&A. regards, Peter

Linda, I agree with Gary's suggestion. That is certainly worth a try. regards, Peter

Leona, It has been known for a piece of music that has been ripped from CD to play OK in a media player but not when given to PTE. It might be worth while opening the second piece of music in an audio editor (such as Audacity) and then creating a fresh WAV or MP3 file from it and trying that copy instead. regards, Peter

The existing text feature allows the user to set the text to any size - not constrained by fixed font sizes. It is a much more flexible option; one that even allows the size of the text to be changed in real-time. To ensure that all text is of the same font and size across all images simply set up the first one as you want it and then copy and paste the text object on to the next slide - and change the words of the text. I agree that direct, on-screen editing would be a nice touch. I do find myself sometimes trying to edit directly into the onscreen text item - a la Photoshop. regards, Peter

Ken, Since Tom is using Pan, Zoom and Rotate on his images, turning off Hardware Acceleration is NOT a good idea. regards, Peter

Tom, Thanks for the additional information. I see nothing unusual in anything you've said. There is certainly nothing "over engineered" in those image sizes; they're the size that I would probably use if doing an edge to edge pan. The hardware issue identified by Yachtsman1 must have been the only cause of your problems. Good luck with your presentation. regards, Peter

Leona, The simplest way to get two pieces of music to play one after the other is to put them both in Project Options|Music. I personally find confusing all the interactions of the various settings available when you add Customize Slide|Music into the mix as well. regards, Peter

Ian, I was demonstrating the traditional north-country greeting used especially when a Yorkshireman meets a Lancastrian. You, being a southerner, wouldn't understand such things! All punches were pulled and no bystanders were injured during this demonstration. regards, Peter

Tom, Pleased to hear that your immediate problem is resolved. However, it is possible that you might still be "over engineering" your images. I'd like to explore this further with you if you are willing. You used the phrase "panning from one image to the next". Could you please explain this a little more? I feel that you cannot mean the Pan operation in the O&A window as this works only within a single slide. Could you also please let us know the size of your images (expressed in pixels by pixels)? regards, Peter

Gary, I've no idea on that but my Norton Internet Security has never complained about this website. I think you can trust it: but that's your decision! regards, Peter

Hi Laszlo, The audio tracks run parallel to one another (all start at time=zero). The items within a track run one after each other. However, as PTE, in v6.5, shows only one audio item at a time in its audio editing windows, the manipulation of multiple tracks is, in my opinion, not easy to manage. I would suggest using an external audio editor such as Audacity or Audition to compile a complex sound-track. regards, Peter

Some older projectors just cannot cope with large images at the frame rate that a typical modern PC delivers and experience "buffer overrun" conditions. Older projectors that have been designed for video streams (e.g from DVD playback) expect to handle 24-25 frames per second. A modern PC delivering video stream could be working at between 60 and 200 frames per second. If the projector has insufficient buffer memory it cannot keep up with this higher frame rate. A couple of years ago there were two or three very long threads here on the forum about this subject. The conclusions of those discussions was that this sort of problem will sometimes turn out to be a hardware limitation with the projector. You may not be able to resolve this via changes to your PTE project. regards, Peter

I have sent an e-mail to the personal e-mail addresses of two members of staff at Wnsoft to try and get things moving for you. However, I note that you have written that you have contacted winsoft. This company has no connection whatever to Wnsoft. And as Barry pointed out in his post, these automated systems can throw up glitches that defy all attempts to identify the root cause. regards, Peter

Jeff, The results can be found here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12407 regards, Peter

The results of the RPS AV Festival can be found here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12407 A summary of Igor's presentation can be found here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12402 regards, Peter

The results of the festival that took place at Cirencester over the weekend 17-19 September 2010 are attached. In total, there were 74 sequences from entrants representing 12 different nationalities that were enjoyed by about 130 members of the audience. regards, Peter Results 2010.doc

Xaver, I think Andrew might have a non-rectangular image. In his original post he spoke of a PNG file. I have assumed this to mean it is of an irregular shape and that Andrew wants the shadow to conform to this irregular shape. I agree that your suggestion is ideal for a solid (JPEG) image but I do not think it would give the best result for an irregular shaped image (PNG). regards, Peter

Andrew, Just a further thought: Try using two copies of your PNG object: one with a drop shadow and one without. Fade the one with drop shadow out completely to start with and when you want the shadow to appear, fade this copy up. regards, Peter

Andrew, Dave's suggestion is how I would approach it, too. In PTE you can animate only objects. The "Drop Shadow" item is a "Property" of your PNG object and not an object in its own right. regards, Peter

Jeff, Give Ian Bateman a chance to get back home! I feel sure that they will appear there in due course. regards, Peter

On the evening of Friday 17th September I, and approximately 100 other attendees at the Royal Photographic Society's 19th International Audio-Visual Festival, listened to Igor Kokarev as he gave a brief insight into the features that are being worked on by the WnSoft developers for v7.0 of PTE. I spoke with Igor several times over the course of the Festival weekend and he agreed that I should post this summary on the forum: Video clips It will be possible to include video clips in a PTE project. The development team have set themselves the objective of us being able to include a video clip just as we do any other object, with all the O&A capability that we have for single objects: pan, zoom, rotate, 3D transforms, etc. - and to do this in a manner that will run with the lowest possible requirement for hardware capability. An immense challenge for the Wnsoft team! Blur It will be possible to apply blur to an object in a smooth manner between two keyframes on the object's timeline. Igor demonstrated a simple example of this Blur feature. The creative possibilities of this are almost limitless. Enhanced timeline The timeline display will be given a major re-write so that it can support the display of multiple audio files. Release date The current target that WnSoft are working towards is to release v7.0 approximately 7-8 months after v6.5's release. If they can keep to that schedule I think we could see the first beta release in late-November or early-December (what a wonderful Christmas present for us all to play with!) Mac version Igor also spoke briefly about the Mac version. It is coming along but the scale of the project is very large for such a small company. Their desire is to have just one set of source code that is common to both the Windows version and the Mac version. To make this possible they have had to learn a new programming language and are having to totally re-write all of PTE in this new language. Another major challenge for the team! The native Mac version will not be part of PTE v7.0. In our private conversations Igor expressed his gratitude to everyone on the forum for their ideas and suggestions and for the contributions that the forum members make to the beta testing of each new PTE version. He really does appreciate all that we do to help WnSoft develop this wonderful product. I pass his thanks on to you all. On an entirely unrelated matter I can report that Igor is enjoying his vacation in the UK. He has spent the first week in the English Lake District and will be spending the second week in the Snowdonia area of North Wales. He expects to be back home on Sunday 26th September. regards, Peter

I have investigated this problem and found that his old account had been set to "ban indefinitely" with no reason given. I have therefore reset his old account and asked George via PM to try it again and report back. regards, Peter

John, Although I have no experience of Windows 7, I offer you this general observation, for what it may be worth, based on my experiences with Vista. When Vista uses the word "application" in a warning it can mean an application program (i.e. something which can be seen running in the Applications tab of Windows Task Manager) or it can actually mean an application's process (which can be seen running only in the Processes tab of WTM). Furthermore, sometimes these processes are not running under my logged in userid; they are running under the "System" userid. To see them I have to do a "Show processes from all users" in WTM. regards, Peter

Touché! Peter