Barry Beckham

Well, I am retired and have time to put into my projects, that helps of course. I don't have to work 10 hours a day anymore, thank goodness

Mick I don't think I would describe it as patience so much. You can have all the patience in the world, but it may not help you to achieve something your aiming for. If you think about what we are trying to achieve, its a combination of images and music where the end result is greater than those two parts. For that we must have our images in balance with the music style and the speed of the music too. In an image based slide show like this, I think much more effort must go into transitions too and that is what I try to do. I tried to make sure I didn't have any weak images in the set and it all looked good to me. By the time I post a show, I would have seen it myself dozens of times and if you can do that without tearing the slide show apart, then your probably on the right track. When I finish a show I put the exe on my desktop and play it at least twice a day for a week. Try it and you will find after 2 days you will start to see the weak areas. After those few days I always seem to find something to change. When that stops I tell myself it must be about right, but ofcourse others will not always agree.

Colin Some of those plugins do a good job, I have a black and white filter set from Alien Skin and one or two of those are nice too. I am sure they are similar to those you mention. Not sure I can quite recall the detailed differences between Black and White films now, but the filters do work well. I have changed my way of creating Black and White now though and do everything in Camera Raw. Rarely does an image need the same conversion techniques in all areas. So I manipulate every image as a monochrome through raw and quite often will use 2,3 or more versions of the same image. That way I I can apply a different Black and White conversion for different areas of the image. Every exposure we make is a compromise and working the way I do, I feel I don't have to give in to that compromise. Works for me, so when I get the image into Photoshop its more less complete. I did a lot of trial and error with transitions though. Threw out some good images, because they just didn't fade into the next good enough. I feel that if I am making a picture based slide show then that is a must to try and maintain interest. Good fun though

Davem It depends what you want to do, but with faces I would guess you want the ovals vertical. There is a lot you can do in CS-5 creating artwork for PTE. Can you try and explain in greater detail what you have in mind because there are lots of different ways to come at this. We can offer ideas, but I can only guess what it is you really want. PicturesToExe is a great program, but couple it with a good image editor and you can create almost anything.

Davem What image editor do you use?

Its hard to find good meeting halls that can be used through the day (can be blacked out) that don't cost an absolute fortune. The cost of the hire is normally enough to make any venture a no go before you start. At least at Chester we managed OK. Had a full days talk a few weeks ago in Brisbane where PTE was the subject, but while it was a sucessful day, the club that invited me were not able to black out the room sufficiently. It took the edge off the day. If people wish to learn, I think its important they are comfortable in the venue as well as with the speaker. Anthony, yes I remember...

Stonemason No problem, sorry to hear about your shoulder, thats going to slow you down a bit

Ray Sorry, I made the wrong assumption and should have known better. I remember Chester, I think !! Wasn't that the venue that had tiered seating and nowhere for me to sit. The place was set up for a lecturn presentation and I wasnt geared up for that. Somone rigged up a flat surface in amongst the seating and we managed OK. I am sure that was Chester, but wouldn't put any money on it.

Ray Can I assume that you don't belong to a camera club or photographic society by your comment. This is what clubs do at many meetings amongst other things of course. Competitions tap into our natural human competitive spirit, but the idea is that we gradually learn what makes a good picture by the comments made by the judge. Not, one single comment, but collectively over time. What I have posted is just one way to do it when you live in a country where travelling distances can be a problem. Many clubs in the UK have the judge attend on the night, but we can't always achieve that, but this method has some benefits over a live judge.

I wasn't aware of any problems with MediaFire not having experienced them myself. For anyone interested the file is here too http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/judging.zip

For PC and Mac top of the page http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/slideshows_3.html

Geoff I was surprised with what you said about MediaFire. At my end when I click the link from the forum, the MediaFire download comes up and operates fine. I can upload it elswhere later, but I am already uploading a couple of slide shows now

Igor Yes, I understand what you mean :-)

Dave I knew you would be upset, my appologies

Every time I select the Gates Vertical/Horizontal transitions I choose the wrong one every single time. Today I started to look more carefully why I always get it wrong and I wonder if it is me or the label is wrong. I asked my wife and she thinks I am wrorg (no change there ) Looking on the internet I am not sure she is right. One dictionary on the Internet said Horizontal is parallel to the ground,vertical is at right angles to the earth. This is a very small PTE file for you to see what I mean. Do I need to re-program my brain or does Igor need to swap the names of these transitions http://www.mediafire.com/?bu00r3p3xfyi01f

I mentioned in another thread how some camera clubs are using remote judges and PicturesToExe to present their competitions and I guess many of you can visualise how that would look. However, for anyone interested I have an example here. The file size is around 70mb because we now have a club image size limit within a maximum of 1920*1080 pixels. We also add a bit of music while showing the high scores again We can fit in a judges preamble or any comments they wish to make before starting, then include their comments and marks recorded word for word, then we show the 8,9 and 10 point images at the end with authors names. Its been done like this at our club for about 3 years now and I have heard of others doing the same. The judge is sent the image via Mediafire and all he/she sees are titles and no names. It does allow us to get judges from anywhere in the world and we know when we start the evening exactly how long the competition will last. This helps us to plan other things around it. http://www.mediafire.com/?cu4xkcuwvbdlolb

I do use a manual option and often I create two versions of the PTE show, but in a camera club situation a manual talk always lasts longer than a pre-recorded one. We all waffle a lot more when talking in a live situation. Many camera clubs are using PicturesToExe to present their competitions. In some parts of the world, getting a live judge to the clubroom is a problem due to travelling distances. We (Noosa Photo Club) for example have our competitions judged remotely and the judge returns their comment in writing. This is good for another reason. It stops them from dronning on an on . Written comments tend to keep them focused. It also allows us to use anyone in the world, which can be refreshing at times. The judges comments and marks are then recorded by us and made into a slide show. On club night we hit the PTE icon, sit back and the rest is automatic. It was while doing this that I needed an extra few seconds added at times. Its also something needed when putting together tutorials or guidance slide shows.

Dave Please don't take this the wrong way, but this section is for suggestions for future versions and that is what I made. It wasn't a cry fpr help on my part and I have no interest at all in workarounds. I can find those myself if and when I want them. I thought this section was where we can suggest ideas to Igor and as I have said before, I am quite happy to make my suggestion and let Igor consider their merits. What I want with sound editing is SIMPLE, every day of the week and twice on Sunday

You have made the wrong assumption. I said I could do with a couple of seconds of silence inserted into an already made soundtrack. I am not referring to a live commentary, but a recorded one. Using PTE rather like Powerpoint with a live commentary, I just use the wait for a button press option. I use PTE for tutorials a lot these days and the way I like to work is to write and record my commentary first. I can then usually add the images and it all works well, doesn't take an age to do and looks great when done. However, with the best laid plans there is always a time where you suddenly get an idea for another explanitory slide, but there is not enough time in the recorded commentary to allow that. I can go back to Camtasia and re stitch the takes and add the silence, but that takes time and later I might find the need to add another second or two. Or, in fact take out a few seconds of silence. Seeing as I have used this "add silence" option loads of times in Audacity, I thought a suggestion to igor was worth a mention.

Thats not what I asked for, I have no need for a pause, I want to add seconds of silence into an already made sound track. Like this

Igor I use PTE probably more than most for information purposes as well as presentations and I confess I have never used that main screen text field. So I vote for option B

Igor I wonder if you have thought about allowing the addition of silence anwhere in a sound track. To explain: I often use PTE for tutorials(commentary) and we also use it for our camera club competitions with the critique of our images being recorded from the judges comments. Its too time consuming to add the voice commentary to individual images, so I always mix the voice recordings together in Camtasia and bring it into PTE as one file. Its very convenient and quick to do that, but inevitably there are times when a slight miscalculation means I could do with a couple of seconds of silence inserted into an already made soundtrack. For example, between a short pause in the speech, I need to add a further 2 second pause to allow the image to be viewed longer.

Joy Please forgive what I am about to say in response to your last post, but................Its time for you to consider changing your anti-virus program, because it seems as good as useless in my view. Its there to protect us, not take over and prevent legit files being played. There are lots of good free anti virus programs available such as Microsoft Essentials that seem to protect us with out causing the problems you describe.You or your friend should not have to look for ways around your virus program to get a slide show to play.If you tell the forum what your using, I am sure you will get plenty of feedback of what others in the same situation as you are using.

All the tab needs is the word animated gif, but the post was a SUGGESTION because it was placed in the IDEAS AND SUGGESTIONS SECTION. It wasn't solely just about the animated gif options alone. Sorry, but I normally expect from a forum user to use his/her brain, and to practice some experimentation. Isn't it a pity that there was a need for post 4 at all What the hell is the matter with you people, can't you just accept a suggestion without starting the insults and inuendos. Leave your petty sniping to the other threads and please leave just one where we can make a suggestion to Igor and allow him to decide if it's something he wants to pursue.

Xaver To be honest I wasn't asking for help, but suggesting to Igor that this is an area that needs some thought as someone else suggested yesterday. I am quite happy to make a suggestion to Igor and allow him to decide on it's merits based on commercial and practical issues. I wonder sometimes how he ever sorts out good ideas from these threads.