Barry Beckham

Igor. I think Daniel has a point here. I did raise this myself a long time ago and I think it got lost in some hysterics on the forum. Its not an uncommon way to work and I find myself having to go through what Daniel describes a lot of the time. It is tedious to have to do this and if it is possible to do, I would love to see a setting where I could import an image and not have it made 300% of the size I originally made it.

Orizaba Its a quirk of PTE, change the video, then close PTE and relaunch and all will be well

Lin I think the PTE Manual is a great thing, but those of you who made it have your work cut out, if its to reflect every current version. I have almost stopped making tutorials for Photoshop Elements because they change it so fast, as soon as I complete a reasonable range of videos, they are out of date. For many users, these changes would not make the videos useless, but some people do need to be taken to the button they have to press or they cant cope. Move the button and they are lost. I always say its like getting into a car and there is no handbrake in the usual place. We know it has to be there somewhere, just need to look. I think the manual should cover as few subjects as possible, because its better to have 10 pages fully up to date, than 100 where 90 are not. The trouble is, we like to help and we feel as though we should include detail that then makes the whole thing unmanageable. No easy answer?

However I believe when one buys software there should be a comprehensive manual included. Its not that simple and I would bet the manual would then become far more of a problem to produce than the software itself. What does the manual writer include, the basics of how to do things? Something a bit more creative ? Or, the top end of any software ? How can a manual help creativity or how you creatively use the software. I will bet that Igor sees his software used in many ways he never imagined as he developed it. How does that get included in any comprehensive manual. Thinking about it, it would take more than one person to cover a wide enough latitude. Then the biggest part of all, keeping it up to date. It would be an almost full time job for something that comprehensive and still you would have some people who could not fathom how to do things. Its like buying some woodworking tools. In my unpractised hands they would be as good as useless, but in another pair of hands beautiful furniture can be produced. What is it that I lack and the Carpenter has. Experience, skill, creativity, a flair for working with wood. You have to practice to get good at anything and a comprehensive manual on your set of woodworking tools would not help you one bit. I see some people so scared up upgrading their software that they allow a number of versions to pass them by. When they inevitably have to upgrade, they now have a small mountain to climb when it could have been a steady walk through smaller less significant changes. Manuals or tutorials cannot remain fully up to date all the time. There isn't enough time to produce them so that every button they refer to is in exactly the place they said it was. The user has to use their eyes and common sense to bridge these little gaps themselves. A manual can only ever be a rough guide to point the user in the right direction, the rest is up to you.

Tom I used PTE for the vast majority of what you saw because that was the purpose of the Promo. To show what PTE can do, although to make a show like that without an image editor would be impossible. I used a background slide, along with a piece of artwork in the shape of a long film strip and the rectangle options. The effects are just delicate 3D animations with some opacity to get them to look appealing. I needed to spice up the screens that were showing mainly text and that did the trick quite well.

Check your PM

Glad many of you seemed to like the promo. As a PicturesToExe promotion, members should feel free to show it where they feel it will benefit PTE. Camera clubs or other places. All the images are mine and Igor has the copyright to use the music so there are no copyright issues. Of course I would like a plug for my web site if you play it, but that's all www.beckhamdigital.com.au

Well I have done demos for years, first with twin Kodak Carousel projectors, disolve unit, 4 track tape deck, amplifier speakers and cables galore. Now the same with laptops and speakers, desktops and speakers, keyboards personbal mike and all the myriad of cables that are required. Never had a cable let me down, so you have to put these things into perpective don't you. I once had two punctures in my car, but I don't carry two spares just in case.

I think cables are a rip off to be honest, over priced and you would never tell the difference between one that cost $80 and one for &10. I know because I have both and now know how I was fleeced when I bought the $80 one. The cheeper one does the same job and how often does a cable fail???

The cost of this Projector in Australia is $3700 and that converts to £2371. No doubt due to the strength of the Aussie currency at the moment. Our Camera Club was fortunate to get a grant for the projector, which makes the purchase even less painful A couple of years and they will be half the price, but then we will want whatever replaces them won't we?

Yesterday I visited Aussi HiFi close to Brisbane where this http://www.epson.com.au/products/projector/EH-TW9000W.asp projector was set up in a darkened room. We watched a movie for a while and it was so good the wife wanted to dump our TV and buy one of these for our TV room. I was also able to plug in my laptop and the images looked perfect to me. Great contrast, great colours, miles above anything we have now. Our club will definately be buying this model.

Jeb IMHO, 4:3 format doesn't look that attractive in comparison to 16:9/16:10. Make your shows widescreen format and live with a black band top and bottom on the iPad. Its no great shakes really and who wants to make a 16:9 show for TV and/or monitors and another at 4:3. Its not always a simple conversion.

I have seen a Canon in operation with one of our Nikon sponsored speakers recently and it was impressive, but a bit out of our range. I will have another look at what is on offer with the Canon icos range later though, because the Aussie dollar is strong at the moment, it does make kit like this a bit more affordable Been looking at this one http://www.epson.com.au/products/projector/EH-TW9000W.asp Anyone know of it, have experience of it. My thoughts are that you can't go too far wrong with Canon or Epson. Thanks for all your suggestions, keep them coming if you can

I know this topic has been discussed many times, but its difficult to get very interested until your about to buy, as our photo club now is. Can I ask anyone who uses a HD format Digital Projector in their own club to tell me what you purchased and your views on the projector for club competitions. I suppose I am most interested in the make and model (although the models change so fast) and also how it handles the colour balance between the club laptop and what you see on screen. Any other views/suggestions gratefully received.

I think my knowledge of PTE was the cause of me not understanding the auto spread of images. I expected to see the same thing as you would if you used the times points method which is what I have used for years. That is the images all spread evenly along the time line Perhaps a newer user of would take the label at face value and not have any issues because they would not know about the other method. Gary, you have to ignor what your seeing and play the show, that was Peters first explanation which is right. The show will spread the slides along the time line, it just doesn't display them that way. It works a treat, but hard to fathom

Xaver Sometimes to be able to make a very quick automatic show has its appeal. After all PTE is not only used to carefully sync images to music in a traditional AV. I have a slide show playing in a local printers and framers for customers to view images, so this option is perfect for that. I am not the most intuative person and I miss the abvious sometimes, but you have to ask the question :- If an experienced user of PTE cannot make head nor tail of an option it needs some changes made to make it better to understand.

Peter Thank you for enlightening me, but how confusing is that? I expected to see the images spread along the time line.

In the Project Option > Main Tab >there is a tick box that says Autospread slides along music, but I can't get it to do anything. Iexpected Auto spread slides along music to take my 60 images and my 3minute music track and spread the slides evenly through the length ofthe music. Or, if there was a need, spread 4 images evenly through a10 minute music track, but it doesn't appear to do that, or if it does I can't seem to find out how. We CAN auto spread slides along the music,but we have to do it via the time line, selecting all the images andgoing to the Timed Points button. Then we can choose Arrange allPoints. I must be missing the obvious here and perhaps someone can assist me, but I cannot see any use for the Project Option > Main Tab Autospread slides along music option. Does anyone use it and for what purpose please?

Mary I downloaded your short clip and I found it was imported into PTE without any issues at all. PTE asked if I wanted to optimize the clip as usual and it ran perfectly OK in a full screen preview. I am using Windows 7 on a 64 bit machine

Yes I agree John, but I notice that my CD/DVD authoring software (Autorun Pro) and some others all work in the same way. I have always assumed that there must be some technical difficulties for Igor to program it in a better way. It would be nice if he could though and also place the drop shadow options for text on the same tab.

Igor I find with the work I do, that very often I forget to tick that tiny box in the Project Options >Music tab that says Do not interrupt sound comments when the next slide appears Every time I do go back in to tick the box, a question comes to mind. When would anyone want a sound comment cut off ubruptly when the next slide appears anyway. Be that a sound effect, bit of music or commentary. Can I ask you to consider either having it ticked by default or do away with it altogether. It must be a source of frustration for some users.

Peter Exactly what I have said time and time again, they are rules for rules sake. I have entered a few AV competitions in the past three years and all sequences were submitted at 1920*1200. When I went to a screening, my show was around 30MB, but a similer length one that came next was160MB, so image size is meaningless, but it doesn't stop the rulemakers. One rule I saw here said that images must be saved at jpeg level 12 for any entered slide shows. What a load of nonsense, like you said, they have no way of knowing once its made so why make the rules. We have to forgive these numbnuts for they know not what they do. I suppose It all rather depends on what type/style of Audio Visual that you like to create, but there is a case to say, make your slide show 16:9, but make it even higher resolution than 1920*1080. So you build in some protection for when resolutions increase further. ( I already have a Dell monitor running 2560 x 1440 ). Then our older shows will not look quite so puny as the 1024 pixels ones did when we saw them on large flat screens. Having said that we all move on usually and gradually increase size over time.

Why not make the DVD using PTE and then do a disk copy in the disk copy software your using. Tell it how many copies you want and everytime the draw pops out with a finished disk, you put in a fresh disk and close the draw.

Lee PicturesToExe is a completely different animal all together when compared to PPP. Its not designed to do what PPP does. Yes it can do all you want and far better than PPP, but you can't come home with a batch of images, open up what is a relatively new bit of software to you (PTE) and create a complex show. You have to do some learning of PTE first and if there are any time constraints on what you need to produce, then you may become frustrated.On this occasion you may be better off using the software your familiar with (PPP) and then spending a bit of time learning PTE when the pressure is off. There are many guidance notes about PTE on the forum and I have lots of video tutorials via the links below, but as I said, perhaps PPP is your best option for this project and then you can take a look at PTE in more detail for your next.

Daniel Have you tried adding your images on the fly using the time line? That way you can allow the music to largely determine where the images are placed. This generally makes for a more measured pace for your slide show and certainly one that is in harmony with the music. On the time line you can hit Ctrl+A to select all the images, then click the Cut Transition button a few times. This has the effect of moving all your images way out to the right of the music timeline. Now you can press play on the mini player and insert images on the fly as you listen. Either use the New Transition button or the insert key on your keyboard. Try to change the images, with the ebbs and flows of your music.