Barry Beckham

Wideangle I have done a jigsaw effect a few times and took the view that lots of Png's and keyframes made it far too complicated. I chose to do the planning and prep in Photoshop so each change on screen was an individual jpg image. I have a short demo on this page This is very short, but may help You could use jpgs mostly to keep file sizes down and png's where you need or want to animate.

Have you thought about creating a blurred mask in your image editor

Thank you for that explanation. I think I understand now, silly me

Thanks

I am not trying to be difficult here, but surely if you can do that in Audacity, why can't you tap your finger in PTE and add the image to the timeline at the same time (Insert Key)

Me too, but it was very odd

Igor A graphics tablet as Peter has said does not have a wheel and I don't have a mouse attached to any computer I own. There are buttons on the Pen, but I need those set for double left click and right click operations. I don't want to have to change the tablet settings to achieve a scroll. That would defeat the whole object of what I am asking for. Currently a graphics tablet user has to go to Settings > Preferences > Timeline > Audio Track Height to make the adjustments they want To use the graphics tablet with a scroll option is Start > Control Panel > Wacom Preferences > Pen > pen Buttons > set one to scroll - Then back again later. Can anyone point out the benefit of first losing either a double left click option or right click option to achieve this or how there is any benefit at all. Can't the width of the sound file be adjusted by a click and drag like other aspects of the main screen? With silence, I mean like audacity does it. You can place your cursor into a sound file and decide to add 3 seconds of silence. It does make the sound already there silent, it just adds the 3 seconds of silence and the sound file increases length by 3 seconds.

Igor I have mentioned a couple of these thoughts before, but practical and extensive use of PTE over the past few days has reminded me of those suggestions. I am aware that ideas often get buried in the work around suggestions so I don't require any response here. I just offer them as ideas only 1. Audio Track Height. I am a graphic tablet user and already I am getting tired of having to go to Settings > Preferences > Timeline > Audio Track Height to make the adjustments I want. Then of course back again to return it to normal. I would really like a right click > Select Track Height, or a key stroke. 2. Fade Curve. I find the straight linear fade often in need of adjustment to bias the fade towards the beginning or end of that fade. It means I have to go through the above sequence to do that, but I would like a way to create my own fade curve and save that as a preference. 3. Insert Silence. I still find myself wishing for the ability to add silence into a sound track in any place I highlight.

OK, but I think we have to put this down to user error. Its just that usually we do eventually find out what the issue was, but this will have to remain a mystery. Never had that sort of issue before and may not ever again

I am a little baffled here, because I have found that you cannot always place an image directly on that one peak in the music without it being slightly off visually. While it's drifting off the point a little, if you use a long fade transition and try to match it to the peak/sweet point of the music, the image often needs to be half a second before that music peak. The reason is, that the longer fade and/or the two images are of a type that one image masks the other a little as they change. The image can require a fraction of a second to become visible and therefore register on our eyes. Many, many times I have had to move an image left a fraction so that my eyes and ears told me it was right, while looking at it visually, it looked wrong Am I the only person who has found this? I doubt it.

This issue now appears resolved, but I can't say I am any wiser with regard to the cause My last suggestion was to remove PicturesToExe from his PC and then re-install it. I suggested he did this as the administrator and then once it was re-installed the original product key be copied and pasted in. The customer has told me that this has worked ?????????????????????

Well, I have tried that by using the key myself, but to be sure I sent it to my wife and it is accepted on her PC no trouble with a copy and paste This is probably going to turn out as user error, but right now I can't think what

Your going to think I am taking the p___ here, but I am not. You have to use your eyes and ears to tell you when it's right. Use the time line and just move the image a fraction either way till it looks and sounds correct. Then watch what you have done a number of times over a few days to be sure.

We supply the key on the CD case for the customer to manually type in. The customer originally manually inserted the key and used an 1 instead of an I and that would have caused the first rejection. However, I then sent his key to him on an email and got him to copy and paste the key to avoid any operator error and he reported is was rejected. I even tried a second key and he said that was rejected too, but if I use these keys they are accepted without a problem. Given Igor's remarks above I am rather at a loss here. In my last contact I suggested the customer remove PTE and then do a clean install again as administrator and then copy and past his key. I am still awaiting his reply I have looked at the key again to make sure nothing odd crept into the copy and paste and I have even sent him another copy of PTE electronically via the internet. I did this, just in case some write error on our disk is the cause, but I am clutching at straws now and I am not confident that this will help

Nope a bang up to date one

Would an anti-virus program ever interfere with a product key being copied and pasted into the relevant location?

Never used that option myself Igor

Thank you. I will try and remember your advice for next time. I don't know why I didn't think of that

Claudio What about the matching of images to music? Assuming that your slide-show is of that style, (some presentation techniques are not so dependant on matching music and images) but if it is, how will you extend the duration (if you can) without upsetting the synchronisation? This is a task I would do manually with every image, or you may as well use the fit slides to music option.

Dave Well, you're right, but don't you think that misses the point just a bit? As I say, so many times, this sort of thing means little or nothing to the PTE experts like you, Lin, JT and others, but it's the sort of illogical thing that just makes software more complicated than it really should be. It went right over my head and I use the software extensively. Given that fact either I am stupid or the software isn't logical. If it's possible (and I accept not all things are) it should be tidied up.

Lin No I didn't download JT's file, but I have now and and I can see what you're getting at, but it doesn't seem to follow any logic to me. Do we really need to be Einstein to understand our slide show software? I create a 20 second show with 12 minutes of music: Created with No Mp3 conversion the file size is 15.8MB. Even though I hear no more than 20 seconds Created with Mp3 ticked the file size is 1.9MB - this is the issue that was driving me. I had no idea there was another complication as in I create a 10 minute show with just a small thunder roll at the start and at the end. Created with No Mp3 ticked and the file size is 1.4mb Created with Mp3 Ticked and the file size is 20MB What was driving me was to try and make things less complex for newer PTE users, which can only be a good thing. I had no idea it was even more complex than I first thought, but my intentions were still correct and honourable in my view. Things have to be simpler than this don't they? You have to be a technical boffin and have years of experience to understand all this and most of us just want to make a slide show.

I have to say I am beginning to lose the will to live here. Unless I am missing something it all seems simple to me, but I could be wrong and I am willing to stand corrected if I am missing something. Take a look at the attached screen grab Its a 2 blank, one image test with a 12 minute track used

The issue I raised right at the start was caused by simple inexperience of using PicturesToExe, a place we have all been at one time or another. Huge Jpgs were used, taken directly from the camera and hardly compressed resulting in file sizes 7, 8 and even 9 MB. Video wasn't an issue at all, just lots of huge images. The issue is now solved Robert Thank you for the support. I have raised this issue before about sound and what the exe contains, but often the suggestion gets lost in the thread and I wonder if that makes it hard for Igor to spot those suggestions which may have merit. just to be clear for anyone who doesn't quite follow what I was saying. If you made a 5 slide demo with images of 200k each, you will have a 1000k file for the images alone. If you used 20 seconds of a 10 minute track of music, you could be adding at least 10MB to a little demo lasting less than a minute. Total size 11MB. Picturestoexe retains the entire track within the exe file even though you only hear 20 seconds of it. You have to have the knowledge to know this, then find the command for it in the Project Options > Audio Tab. It's a small tick box, easily missed, but when selected the music is automatically trimmed back to just the 20 seconds you used. The resulting file size of your small slide show would now be around 2MB, probably less. If an author used three different music tracks of 10 minutes length each in a slide-show, but through editing cut each down to just 1 minute, (a distinct possibility in a three minute sequence). The file size could still be 30MB longer than it needed to be. Question 1. Why pad out an exe file size with any sound at all that we are not hearing, when we have it at our disposal in the Project file and couldn't get to it from the exe even if we wanted to. Question 2. Doesn't yet another tick box make the software just that little more complex for no reason I can possibly think of. (not for the initiated on this forum, but other users and those who haven't discovered PTE yet) Solution. All exe files should be set by default to trim sound back to only what is used. Remove any options for this from the audio tab.

To get up that sort of 4GB file size, I guess lots of tracks could have been used to make up the 44 minutes. Those tracks could add up to considerably more than 44 minutes and If they are wave, rather than Mp3, that could be an issue too. If the convert tracks to Mp3 tick box wasn't ticked (why do we need that anyway, all exe's should do this by default) and 1 minute of a 10 minute track was used, all 10 minutes would be included in the exe. (again why? I cannot see any possible advantage) Its the only way you could get a file size that huge. This is an interesting question though because it is an indicator of where a newer user of PTE is likely to fall into the AV pitfalls. Its those pitfalls that should be dealt with, within the software, if possible, so it doesn't happen or is less likely.

Just for info. The issue does not involve video and is a slide show containing 480 images and 44 minutes of music. I think the answer is almost certainly that the images were used at high resolution and maybe saved at too high a jpg compression. Even if 1MB was allowed per image and 100 MB for music, the file size would be under 600MB. Looking at my own files I am hard pressed to find images that are 500k in size, most are around 300k Ken Sorry mate he has had to make do with second hand info from me. No offence taken