Barry Beckham

A great idea for any work, is as soon as you get the project/image started save it to a unique name. Then every couple of minutes hit Ctrl+S and your work will over write the last saved version. Barry

I recently bought a new laptop for use in digital lectures where PTE plays a large part. The machine came out well in maga zine comparisons and it had a 2 GHz porocessor and 2 gig of ram and a pretty good Radeon graphics card. Certainly one that should work well with PTE and Photoshop As soon as I unpacked the laptop (bought on the internet) I thought it looked a bit flimsy and cheap looking, but if it worked well I wasn't bothered with that. At my very first lecture when I conected the laptop to a PC projector it went haywire. The graphics flickered like a flourescent light and running a slide show was just impossible. I had to quickly revert to my old laptop and did the demo with that. My confidence was shot with that make as I don't weant that sort of nonsence at all. The upshot is that I am ditching laptops for my demos. My view is that I have to carry a car load of stuff anyway, so a small tower case will not make much difference. I use the PC projector to demo anyway and only need a small keyboard with the case Comparing the rough spec Laptop 2 GHz and 2 gig of Ram - Radeon Graphics card - 80 gig hard drive wiz bang DVD writer that I don't really need for this work. £1700 Tower Desktop 3.4 GHz and 2 gig of Ram + Top of the range graphics card, upgraded sound card - 2 * 160 gig sata drives - A DVD CD rom drive - £800 Twice the spec at half the price. Wouldn't want to have the desktop under my arm for ant length of time though. Barry

lyndongrove Once you have created your action and with the actions palette open look down the left side to the right of the ticks. If the little boxes to the right are highlighted remove them. These tell the action to stop and wait for user input. Try the action again and this may be the problem solved. Other than that re-record the action. You can make mistakes and I have done that lots of times. For example, if you create an action for a flattened layer and try to run the same action on a layered file it sometimes will not work. It depends on what you are asking it to do. There are two possibilities to try first. www.beckhamdigital.co.uk

I was asked to create a tutorial DVD for Wedding Photographers and did so a year or so ago and it has proved to be very popular. It covers all I could think of at the time and has 6 hours of videos and demos on it. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/weddigitalslide.htm Barry

Igor I had it in my mind from somewhere that you were considering an increase in price for version 5, the software is worth an increase? Barry

It sounds to me that this project needs the picture in picture technique so that you can standardise on 1024*768 and fit everything into that format no matter where it comes from. However, you would need software like Elements or Photoshop Barry www.beckhamdigital.co.uk

I would like to inform the forum users that I have been able to discount our copyright free CD's from 19.95 to 15.99. Once purchased you are free to use the music for any commercial or non commercial venture short of reproduction on TV Barry Our Music list is at the link below http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/royaltyfreemusic.htm

I don't think the download size is such an issue any more, not with regard to how long it takes. I would just start the download and let it continue working in the background, whats the rush. Alternatively hit the download when you don't need the PC. The issue is bandwidth and making sure you don't get unexpected bills from your web space provider. One I was with was very cheap for the space, but bandwidth was like gold dust. Barry

Amy Go to the time line and make sure there is a small gap between the numbered tag of an image on that timeline and the grey bar that signifies the transition time of the previous image. If they are too close those errors occur. Just leave the image on screen for a short time once the transition has ended and you will be fine Barry www.beckhamdigital.co.uk

Scott No, thats not as good as it gets. I project PTE shows at huge sizes using a Mitsubishi Digital projector and get great results, certainly no jaggies. Barry

Scott Is your projector set for a resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels or higher. If it is set at 800 by 600 that may not be helping. Are you resizing your images too small or compressing them too much. Try cropping to a resolution of 1024*768 @ 72 ppi and save them as a jpeg at compression 6. Hope that helps Barry

Jaycee Try here, with a video tutorial that will take you through the entire process Barry

Perhaps the answer is not to convert to mono, it won't save much size and I am not sure the slight difference in sound file size will have any impact on the show. Barry

I was hoping to download these slide shows, is that not going to be available? Barry

Where can we see the winning slide shows Barry

I have heard some music in the past from a music generator........................... It was worse than useless in that it was so orrid, it wouldn't matter how good your images were any viewer would be reaching for the stop button 10 seconds into the slide show. Unless of course there has been some miracle and it has improved about 10,000% Barry

Thanks Ken. I can't get any of those options at all, as I said the page just jumps to the bottom when I select options. Right down the bottom left of the screen I get a messade that sayd Done, but with errors on the page, perhaps it is something to do with this being a business machine that goes through a company shared Service Centre. Thanks for your help anyway Barry

Ken None of those options are opening up to me, any chance of sending the email to barry.beckham@stagecoachbus.com and I will get it at work. Ta Barry

No, that doesn't do anything to help Ken. When I hit the options the page jumps to the bottom and displays nothing. The tiny triangle indicates there are drop down options, but it doesn't work on this machine. Barry

The forum is like a rocket this morning, lets hope Igors problems are solved with this. Is there any way of having the posts all display as they did before. I don't find all the replies shown in a condensed form with just a few words from the entry that easy to read Barry

Well, the forum is beginning to be a right pain in the ..............whatsit For me 16.20 Wednesday 12th October it is eratic and often so slow its not usable. I was going to upgrade the one on my web site, but I don't think I will bother. Barry

This is an issue that you need to deal with Igor. If a panel comes on screen with finish in the bottom cormer 99% of people will click it without reading what is says. That panel needs to say. Don't close this panel or PTE untill your DVD has been written. Either that or you need another "Are you Sure?" panel popping up when the finish button is clicked. Practically everyone falls for this and then cannot find the avi. Me too the first time if I am being honest. Barry

Surely you can run a synchonised show and either go to a web site when the show ends or stop on a page containing buttons that have links to a web page. I do that all the time on my tutorial CD's Barry www.beckhamdigital.co.uk

John I think AlRobin has said it all, I demonstrate PTE all over the place and the problem isn't with that. Are you sure those who mentioned the word illegal were not referring to the old chestnut, music copyright. Barry

I had a call from a customer of my tutorial CD's who bought them some time ago and suddendly his system is picking up a virus when it didn't before. I explained the problem and referred him to this forum. Thanks for all the info, my reply to him sounded well informed and up to date thanks to you guys and Igor. These things happen Barry