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Igor, Sorry to bring more bad news to this topic, but I've just found another bug in 6.5beta. I have a manual sequence ("Wait for a key press or mouse click...) that uses a button on slide 11 to launch an automatic sequence using "Run Slideshow and Return". This all worked fine using v6.0. I was checking it out with v6.5b2 in preparation to give this talk and demonstration to an audience early next month and discovered the following: - the manual sequence operates correctly up to slide 11 - the button launches the automatic sequence correctly - the automatic sequence runs correctly up to its penultimate slide (15 of 16 - about 1m48s duration out of 2m23s) - the manual sequence then gets an error - the automatic sequence continues sound only, no visual until its end - the system locks up - it can be freed only by launching the windows task manager and using that to End Task the automatic sequence I have zipped up the manual task project in its entirety and included a screengrab of the error message. You already have the project file for the automated sequence: it's the same one that showed the problem with object tree collapse/expand. The problem is still present after installing v6.5b3 and doing a fresh Create of both exe files. Looking at the symptoms it seems to me as though control may be being returned prematurely to the manual sequence; but I'll leave it to your experts to get to the real answer. regards, Peter Introduction_May14-2010_17-15-13.zip

Igor, Many thanks for this news. I'm using that project in a series of "Animation Workshops" that I am running this year. Having precise control over the object tree structure display will be very welcome and will make the sessions a great advertisement for PTE v6.5 regards, Peter

Hi Dick, Not at present there isn't. But Igor recently canvassed opinions on text and other defaults, so it's definitely on his radar. But for v6.5...? who can say, we'll just have to wait. Try this method: - use O&A to place your first text object - set this first text's content,position, font, size and colour to suit your requirements - copy this text object to the clipboard - advance to the next slide that needs text - paste the text from the clipboard - change contents and position (size, too, if needed) - advance to next slide and repeat until done. regards, Peter

Eric, I think I must be missing something. How is minimize going to speed up your work flow? You'll need to click once to minimize it and once more to re-instate it. Right now you will need to click once on the Close button to close it and once more on the Fullscreen icon to re-instate it. I don't see where the time saving comes in. regards, Peter

Eric, The image files that are displayed in the File Panel are not "connected" to any PTE project. Before you can place them in a particular order they have to be added into a PTE project. Would this give you a work around? Simply drop all the images that you think you might use into a new project file. Then go into "Full screen view of Slide List" and shuffle them into the order that you want. Finally, select all the images that you don't want (Ctrl+Click on each) and, with one click on the Remove Slide button, take all the unwanted ones out of the project. regards, Peter

Barry, Sheila et al, I've posted a link to Barry's previous post under the PTE v6.5 beta topic. I don't know whether what we are seeing is a bug or not; but if it is Igor and his wizards might be able to resolve it as part of v6.5 beta programme. See here: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11802&view=findpost&p=76468 regards, Peter

I'm posting this to bring a post from another topic to the attention of Igor and the team. The post linked to below seems to suggest that there may be a bug in the way PTE processes changes made externally to image and sound files whilst the project file is open in PTE. See here for details: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11848&view=findpost&p=76462 regards, Peter

Igor, I confirm that beta 2 has resolved the problem with Project Options...Comments using the "Insert template" feature. Also, I'm now in e-mail dialogue with Dmitry abouit the Object Tree problem. regards, Peter

Sheila, Have you tried this method?: - Export your soundtrack from Audacity but give it a version number (e.g. AVProjectSoundv1, AVProjectSoundv2, etc) - Then Add the new version to the PTE project via Project Options...Music tab and remove the previous version In my experience, this will always result in PTE updating the waveform displayed in the Timeline view. Changing the sound file name, via a version number, makes PTE think that you've given it a totally different sound file (which, of course, you have!) and so it rebuilds the waveform. This method has the additional benefit of allowing you to go back to any previous version of your soundtrack if you decide that you didn't want to make those recent changes after all. regards, Peter

Igor, With regards to the problem I've got with the Object Tree expand/collapse function... I've been away on holiday for several days and have just picked up your posts, e-mail and messages and also those from Dmitry. I'll get myself caught up over the next day or two and then get back on to this problem and sort out some diagnostics for you. My current suspicion is that the problem occurs only on projects that have been created under an earlier version of PTE. When I have tried to build a new project with a similar structure then I, too, cannot re-create the problem! regards, Peter

Igor, There seems to be a bug in the code that processes the memorization of the expand/collapse state of the Object tree. I haven't yet been able to re-create it in a controlled test but it happens with maddening frequency on a big project file that was originally created using v6.0. This project has 16 slides and most of them have objects nested in parent-child relationships to 8 generations (one slide has a 10 generation deep nest). The trees of objects comprise image files only (some are JPEGs and some are PNGs). There are no frames, rectangles, text or mask containers. I open this project file in v6.5 beta 1 and go through it collapsing all the object trees down to just the top-most parents (nothing expanded) and save the project file under a new name. I then re-launch PTE v6.5b1 and open this new version and go into the O&A window and simply step through each of the slides. Some come up still fully collapsed, others come up partially expanded and some come up fully expanded. And if I close without saving and then launch PTE v6.5 beta 1 and open the project file again, I again get some collapsed, some partially expanded and some fully expanded - but not always the same slides as previously in the same state. There seems to be an element of randomness in this behaviour. regards, Peter

Eric, An alternative approach would be to bring a typical image into PTE and then play with the zoom setting until you find the limit of acceptability. Then use Project Options...Screen...Additional Options to set this zoom size on all images. regards, Peter

Ken (APLman), There's your answer: straight from the horse's mouth as we say. This is just the first beta release and is not yet complete. If you've not participated in a PTE beta programme before, this is how WnSoft do it. They release code which is usually very stable but might not yet have all the new features included; and might sometimes have old features temporarily disabled. The addition of the new audio support will have been a major extension of PTE. It has come at a time when WnSoft are also doing major re-writes of the entire product to produce a version of PTE that will run on both Windows and Mac from the same set of source code. It is, therefore, somewhat inevitable that the new audio support is not yet complete nor as polished in its interface as Igor would like. The key message for us all is: Patience! regards, Peter

Use the Project Options...More tab to chain each slide show to the next. If you want to be able to start either individual shows or the whole sequence, you will need to have two project files and two exe files for each sequence: one pair that is used to start the individual show and the other pair that is coded to start the next in the sequence. regards, Peter

Gordon, I suggest you first confirm for yourself that the project does still open correctly in your previous version of PTE. If it doesn't then the beta version might have no bearing on it. When you installed the beta version did you take all the default options during the install - or did you customize anything? Is the problem restricted to just this one project? What happens if you use your old version to create a little test project and then try and open that in v6.5 beta? Do you get the same error messages? Are you sure that the "missing" images have never resided on drive D:? regards, Peter

What a wonderful collection of new features! Well done to the whole team!!! However, the Project Options...Comments feature for setting text comments using the "Insert template" option does not seem to be working. regards, Peter

Does anybody else find themselves trying to use PTE's "Tree" panel to locate and open an existing PTE project file? Or is it just me having "senior moments" before my time? I know we have the File...Open... dialogue box and the File...Open Recent Project option to achieve the desired end-result but, to my mind using the Tree panel seems a natural thing to do. Certainly, I find myself trying to do it several times a week. I think it would be a nice little useability feature if we could open projects via the Tree panel. regards, Peter

The new audio features are controlled through the Project Options…Music tab. These brief notes are intended to help you grasp some of the concepts. You can have multiple tracks. Within each track you can have multiple sound files. The sound files within each track play one after the other (exactly like having two or more sound files in the Project Options…Music tab of previous versions of PTE). The tracks play in parallel and can be given a basic mix-down by using the Customize button for each sound file in the track and then setting a volume level for each sound file. The Offset value can be used to add silence to the front of a sound file in order to move it further along the timeline. You can apply fade in and/or fade out to any sound file by coding the duration of the fade in the appropriate field. You can apply a standard cross-fade for all sound files by ensuring that no sound items are selected and then clicking on the Crossfading button and keying in the desired duration of the cross-fade. This will be applied to the start and end of tracks and the tracks affected will be overlapped with each other. You can have different duration cross-fades by selecting a sound file, clicking on the Customize button, then clicking the Cross-fading radio button and finally keying the desired duration into the Cross-fading field. Note that using this technique you cannot have both an Offset and a Cross-fade on the same sound file. I hope these few words help you get to grips with the new audio features. regards, Peter

Eric, For a sequence that I am currently working on, and which had to draw upon historic photos sourced off the Internet, I had some success upsizing by about the amount you mentioned using Photoshop Elements v7. In the Image...Resize...Image Size...dialogue window I chose Bicubic Smoother instead of the more usual Bicubic as the resampling algorithm. regards, Peter

I think it would be a nice useability enhancement if, when a project is saved with the Timeline view active and a waveform displayed, that PTE showed the waveform automaticaly next time the project was opened. It currently opens the project into the Timeline view but the user has to re-show the waveform. regards, Peter

Joe, In the mean time you can use your 4.48 key with the new version - only the Video-builder feature will not work fully. regards, Peter

Thank you, everyone, for your advice. Collectively, you've given me many links to web-based resources that I'll now investigate; and also much food for thought about which products/combinations of products have been found useful to you. Just to clarify one point, though: I'm not dissatisfied with either my JPEG images or with Photoshop Elements 7. But everybody I come across at camera clubs, and here on the forum, talks about how using RAW files is a better way of working. It may well be better; it is certainly "different". And therein lies the problem: it is taking me out of my comfort zone. I agree entirely with Barry about the need to spend considerable time establishing ones own particular process flow with a piece of software. I've been using Photoshop Elements since 2005 and it's only in the last 6 months or so that I have settled on a particular process flow through it for the images that I take with the D70. If I switch to RAW files I don't know whether the same steps are required, whether there are some steps I should now omit, whether there are other steps that I must include; and I don't know how to drive either Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe Lightroom or any other software to do those things. The only thing I do know is that switching to RAW files is going to reduce the capacity of all my storage devices when expressed in the number of image files they can hold. So there will be additional costs associated with whatever benefits may come from using RAW files, over and above any software licences. As I said, lots of food for thought. I'll try and remember to come back and post an update after I make my decision as to the future of RAW and me. Once again, thanks to you all for your advice. regards, Peter

I could use some help in getting started with Lightroom. I currently have my Nikon D70 set to "JPEG Norm" but keep wondering what I am missing by not using RAW files (*.NEF files from the D70). Today I was given a copy of a 30-day trial licence of Lightroom v2.6. I have installed it and begun playing with it. I took two images with the D70 set to RAW so that I had a couple of images to play with. I have successfully imported these into Lightroom and am now faced with the "Develop" module's interface. All my image work is done for use in AV sequences. I have no interest in printing or web-publishing. If these images were JPEGs I would use Photoshop Elements v7 to adjust the levels using the histogram, possibly lighten the shadows a little more, (remove any unwanted elements using Spot Healing Brush, Clone Stamp, etc as required), resize to the desired size, apply some Unsharp Mask and do a File Save As into the folder for the AV sequence. What do I do using Lightroom? And how do I do it? Can somebody point me at a good set of online tutorials or an "idiot's guide" book that will get me started along the right lines? Right now this is a totally alien workflow. There are so many options that I don't know where to begin. regards, Peter

Colin, Does that mean you would be happy for me to delete this topic, and leave the original that you have now edited? regards, Peter

Fotofan, You need to download the PC version of the sequence to run under Windows under Parallel under Snow Leopard and download the Mac version of the sequence to run under Snow Leopard native. regards, Peter