Barry Beckham

JPD Well, now your talking and I am almost convinced. Make mine a double please I have never had a great desire to make DVD's because of the quality issues, I would rather watch on a PC screen. However, this year should see us leave the UK for a new life in Australia. When we set up home there a large flat screen HDTV is on the list, so when I see the quality I may even change my mind. There didn't seem a great deal of point in going for a HDTV when you know that in months you will be leaving and it will have to be shipped and possibly damaged. Remind me in a years time

JPD In order for what to run on HDTV, my slide shows? I have no desire to to that at all, but even if I did that wouldn't affect my choice of resolution for my monitor. Creating a HDTV show on DVD, which is what I think you mean would be just a tiny bit of what I do, I wouldn't structure everything around that. I have only ever made one show for DVD. I just don't have the need or inclination to do that. Perhaps that will change in the future, but it won't affect what monitor or res I use. or am I missing the point Peter I will give it some more thought, but would rather ndo something new, software and my techniques have changed over the years and an old tutorial may be a bit out of date. I have done something on montages for AV, but perhaps it could be re-done now

Davegee Who cares about the rules for Jessops competitions anyway, but I am not sure I see your point. Its not compulory to create images 1400*1050. All that means is you have to crop your images towards a square shape exactly as is now done with 1024*768. While the crop is OK sometimes, often it isn't acceptable and the native format from the camera is streets better. All my slide shows will project great on that 1400*1050 resolution monitor and in fact different resolution AV shows have less relavance on a PC projector than they do on a monitor. In a darkened room you havn't got any visible plastic around the screen as you do with a monitor, so the image size being slightly smaller than the PC screen projects fine. It doesn't matter a hoot surely if a slide show is presented filling an entire 6 foot screen or 5 feet in the middle, unless the AV competitions gives points now for size? My last show was presented 1200*798, it presents perfectly through a 1024*768 projector where the PC is set to 1280*1024. It will do just the same on a a PC projector running 1400*1050. I think my next screen purchase (I have a very old 21in CRT) will be a large flat screen and I sort of expect to be running that at 1600*1200 unless my eyes start to give out. Jeb I have thought about a tutorial on the montage technique, but I am not sure it would appeal to many.

Jeb No problem with changing the resolution back again after you have viewed the show. I often take a slide show up to my other machine to view it as the author intended at 104*768. However, many who do create shows at this resolution may not be aware that the quality of their images are reduced for those playing the slide show at 1280*1024. Unless you tell PTE5 to do something else it will stretch your images to fit the monitor. I see that a lot with shows I download and usually do the author the curtesy of playing their show at the resolution they intended ie 1024*768. I think the best method of putting togethera slide show using montages is to do it one picture at a time. I know that sounds a bit odd, but what I mean is I built that slide show one image at a time and when I could see how the first few looked, then I would decide what object would be removed from the montage and what added. You don't get it right all the time and I had a couple of false starts in sections where my chosen path didn't work. The trouble with that is you can't then just remove one image, you have to rework maybe 5-6 that link together. Saving layered files is essential Davegee What will you do when everyone upgrades to 1400x1050 projectors - will you offer a third option? No, I won't offer a third option or even a second come to that. My current shows will still project fine through a higher res projector and I will be moving on and making more.....I hope. I don't think I will create shows for 1024*768 monitors now, I only did that because I use many AV's at my demos and they work well on my PC projector running 1024*768. However, shows made for 1280*1024 monitors also project perfectly well through the projector too. I just change the resolution of the PC running the projector and change it back after the show ends. It only takes a few seconds. Ken Oh yes, I have seen that survey before, but I think that if you did the same survey and targeted amateur digital Photographers + AV enthusiasts I am not sure you would get the result. Talking to people at many camera clubs I am of the opinion that if 1280*1024 is not already the standard for photographers, its a lot closer than that survey suggests. For quite some time now PC's bought in the UK seem to be running 1280*1024

Hang on You people are AV experts compared to most and your going to huff and puff about changing resolution to watch a show. No surely not ??? But, Fair enough, can't argue with that, I have been well and truly chastised. Ken, your link doesn't seem to work for me, but I went to the main site. Oh my gawd, there is enough technical mumbo jumbo there to last the rest of my life. I could die before I finish reading all that. That's far to technical for me, I would rather spend my time creating some images

TCQ Try again tomorow, but if you get stuck downloading PTE5 email me at Beckham Digital and I will provide a link to PTE5.1 from my own site, that may help you. Actually you can download it now from http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/apr-deluxe.zip I have just uploaded it for you. Barry

Ah you like all your images almost square, you have been watching too much TV Yu should change resolution in my view to see what the author produced, if you don't like it hit the escape, but as an AV enthusuast you should resect what the author is trying to do and present. If people didn't push the boundaries we would all still be bored witless by the carved wooden pew ends of church seats. I seem to recal they where the highlight of the camera club at one time. Go on push the boat out onve in a while and watch at 1280*1024

Peter You will find the people in costume at both the Black Country Museum and at Blists Hill Museum. There are loads of those signs around the place. I am surprised more AV's are not produced from those places, they are a great source of images, you just have to dodge the crowds. Go on a wet day, no people and you get atmos

Alex I am not sure I can really pin down your problem, but I switched to Vista Business recently and have not experienced anything like you describe. It doesn't sound like a Vista issue to me, but one with a solution on your machine I expect. Does the show run OK on your new Vista Machine? Is you laptop old ? If so, it could be that it is just not up to the rigors of PTE5 and animation. Run your completed show on your Vista machine, if it runs OK on that, the laptop is your problem. If so try updating the graphics card drivers of you can locate some. That may not be easy if the laptop is old

D67 I am not particularily attracted by such a way of presenting a situation I don't really know what you mean here, can you elaborate a bit for me. Your resolution setting will badly affect how I wanted the slide show to be viewed. Its not only the text that would have looked odd. Perhaps you should change your resolution to match the audio visual being played. I did mark this as 1280*1024 on the web page and it only takes a few seconds to change resolution to play the show and back again afterwards. Who knows, you might find that 1280*1024 is more convenient for this type of work once you try it. Peter. Yes, it did take some time and there are one or two difficulties with Montages, especially peoples faces. They can get distorted to a degree that they look odd, but its not difficult to bring back some detail when its neede All the images are from our cameras, can I ask where you thought they may be from?

Old Timer No, you are completely off track here. Have you not seen any slide shows made with PTE yet. You do not need two projectors and you can't dim PC projectors anyway. They are not like a film projector. We create all the effects you used to get with two projectors with our image editing software. Download and run some of the slide shows that you will find on this site. There are plently of links in the other forum from various members.

Its a technique that needs some practice, you have to jump in and go for it. The more you do it the easier it becomes

No Mike your on the wrong track, no keypoints are used at all. You start by trying to create a good montage in Photoshop with 3,4 5 images, more if they all work well together. The technique works so much better if you have some texture as the base image to build upon. Then you save the texture as an image, switch on a layer that constitutes one part of the montage and save that, then the next part and so on. Sometimes you can leave all parts of the montage in place and just change the texture image at the base, that can be quite appealing on screen. To get the delicate blends, try hard light in Photoshop's layers and layer masks to blend the images together. You have to control colour balance and the compositiuon of the montage and where people and text is concerned there can be a conflict. The old saying that people and text will fight for top billing in an image is largley true. Some colours are just too colourful, but are easily addressed with the saturation tools or the layer opacity. Once you have the first 5-6 images saved, now you need to leave some aspects of the montage in place, but change others, so that the whole thing flows on from there. You have to be prepared to be quite self critical and throw out what doesn't work. The vital part is to save all the images as high res files in their layered form as you will almost certainly have to rework some aspects as the whole thing takes shape. That is not such a chore if you save the layered files. The problem is that if you choose to change one image, that could impact on the next 5 too if they are linked.

Yes, this was the Black Country museum and Blists Hill along with IronBridge Gorge. I had already done a Black country slide show a few years ago and on further visits I had a load more new shots to use. I wanted to stay away from the same presentation as last time and then the idea came to me to create a constantly moving montage. It took a fair bit of work and I discovered 2-3 free standing (montaged) images that I can have printed too. Not all montages work and you have to be prepared to chop and change. You also need a lot images to start with, but then thats the easy part at those places. Pictures are all around you.

The idea here was to retain format from the camera and have an almost constantly moving montage on screen. Having said that, no animation was used in this sequence. Its the top one of this page http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw3.htm

Old Timer You can do all you will ever need with PicturesToExe 5 and an image editor like Elements or Photoshop if you can run to it. You can create third images miles better than a twin projector setup, I have done both for years and would not go back to film and projectors even if you bought them for me. However, with the greatest respect to other forum members who offer great advice, you are taking on quite a job here. Scanning images from 30 traditional slide shows and getting them up to a reasonable standard is going to take you some considerable time. How many images per show 40-50 perhaps. Thats 1500 images and that will take you:- 1. A heap of time, to scan, adjust, clone, colour balance, but I appreciate some images cannot easily be recreated and that will be the only alternative. 2. You will experience a very steep learning curve to master all you need to get your head around. Image editing, scanning and PTE5 The problem is that these days that scans of 35mm slides generally don't stand up (quality wise) very well to modern digital images unless you have a very good film scanner. The acceptability of the scanning results are going to be in the eye of the beholder, but if it were me and I wanted to keep using those old slide shows I would stay with the old kit while slowly switching over to digital output using new images. If not, then your first priority is to master what FH says and adjust your scaned images to bring back the quality you want. Dust is going to be a big issue and applying the auto tools for this is likely to soften your images. Even with those tools you will have a lot of spotting to do, but that will depend on how fussy you are. Most AV workers are very fussy about their images. I suppose you need to try one sequence as you suggest and see if that produces results that you are happy to live with, but don't underestimate the task your taking on. Good luck

One way to send large files is to get your own web space. Its not an expensive thing to do to gain some storage on line although I have not researched this recently. As long as your band width traffic is not high it used to be reasonably cheap. Even if you don't want to create a web site, you can use the space for file transfer. Upload your slide show and give the link to whoever you want to download it. The web space people will create a link address and you would put /myslideshow.zip on the end of it. Thats what I did recently with that Robin sound effect as shown below. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/robin.zip

Pam Even with PTE5.1 your slide shows will not retain the same quality on DVD that they have as an exe file, especially when you view those DVD files on your PC. At least with a TV we view from about 10 feet away. See here http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/audiovisual/dvd/dvd.htm Many people think they are doing something wrong when they compare the Exe file and DVD file and only yesterday I had a call from a wedding photographer with the same concerns.

JFA I wrote to Tony O'connor for permission to use his music after buying a CD of his while in Australia in 2005/6. I have noticed with the music supplied to me by Medwyn Goodall that the artists change the names of tracks from time time. I found it quite confusing at times and with your AV I thought I have got my credits all wrong. I tried some forest recordings with our Pixman and got a reasonable recording of the Bell Birds and background noise, that I now know I can clean up considerably using Audition. Those I try in the UK always seem to pick up noise you don't seem to hear at the time.

Sergio, Here is another alternative 5 hours of videos covering all you need to know http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/editingsou...oundediting.htm

FH I tried some noise removal in Audition and increased the volume and managed to get the attached from your basic Robin recording. I didn't realise Audition was so good at this ! http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/robin.zip Jfa Your recordings made in Australia are great and I assume you are a bit further from the road than we can get in the UK. When there is no raod noise the quality is very very good. Ron The voice is in the H4 samples

Ifa The sounds were pretty good for tape and I suspect they would be much better now with digital. Funny you should choose that track by Tony Oconnor for the flight part. I used that too for a balloon show. Its called Artisrty of Balloons and its here if your interested, no sound effects though http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw2.htm I notice you had quite a loud hiss on the Gentle Wind track. Not sure how that has occurred, its not in the original music.

FH Well, that was interesting and thanks for doing that. We are going to suffer a bit with ambient noise from roads etc I suppose, but even so the quality sounded pretty good to me. What made me sit up and really listen was the voiceover. The quality there is superb and I truggle to match quite that crispness in my DVD recordings. I think Ron has a point that some ambient noice may be able to be filtered out, but your right too that often that is exactly what you want left in. Many thanks for those examples Barry

Denwell Couldn't have put it better myself. That all I want, Just what you describe, nothing complicated. Conflow Well, yes I do expect the same from my camera, but that is a little different. I have had 30 years to learn all about those. I don't want to have to do that with sound recording. Denwell, has summed up just what I want and I would love to hear some samples.

If you can give me a week or so, I'll take a walk down on the seashore and into the wooded valley not far from where I live and record some "natural sound" for you on the H4. That would be very nice of you, thanks. I really would like to hear what they produce. I would also like to state that I had no wish to offend you or any other forum member with my choice of the phrase "Sound wallpaper". It's just that I firmly believe that A-V is more than just images set to music. To me it should include, when appropriate to the content and theme, voice-over and sounds (natural or otherwise). I am not offended, I am too stupid and thick skinned for that. However, I can't really agree with your paragraph above. AV is whatever you make it and at any level. What is basic AV to one person, is advanced to another and we all have to start somewhere. I hear that term or something like it too often and I don't think it is helpful to send out a message that putting images to music is not real AV. That is what comes over when that phrase is used and it can put people off, especially beginners. I encourage newer users of PTE to do just that, hang some images to music, becuase I know that once they have made a show or two they will be hooked. Then later they may move onto to something more adventurous, but many are quite happy to hang images to music. For about twenty years I made sequences involving one projector, music and voice-over - and that was enough complexity for me. With the advent of software such as PTE and Audacity I am now moving slowly into more complex sequences. I bought the H4 because I was struggling to get a noise-free voice-over recording. Now, using the H4 I can get a noise-free voice-over. The surprise came when I walked around the nature reserve and pointed the H4 at the birds singing, or just left it to record the sounds coming from all around me. For such a compact little box it delivered what, to me, was absolutely brilliant sound quality. Be back when I've got some sound captured for you. Well, if it can create noiseless voice recordings that a great start. I will look forward to whatever you can post.