Barry Beckham

If your a Photoshop user, CS-4 or 5, (not sure if this was included in CS-3) there is a great tool to line up hand held sequence shots that I use all the time, even for print purposes. It works in my experience 95% of the time, as long as reasonable care is taken to hold the camera as steady as possible when taking the shots. Start with the high res files, before you crop them to 1920*1080 Open both versions of your image in Photoshop and drag on onto the other to create a layer. Unlock the Background layer and holding the Ctrl key, highlight both layers. Go to Edit > Auto Align Layers and select Auto from the attached screen Grab Crop and save each layer and generally they will be spot on.

Ken I wil probably upset some members here, but needs must. Many AV enthusiasts, including many here miss the obvious in my view when making slide shows. They do not match their images to the music they have chosen. Its rather like a visual track running alongside a sound track, but where they line up is trusted to luck. I have lost count of how many people have said to me why don't you leave your images on screen longer. Well, you can't if your matching the images to the music, which is the point, surely. Imagine standing next to someone who is clapping to music, but they are clapping out of time, that is what many people do with their slide shows. Attending to just that one thing will make their show, so much more appealing. In the timeline view, you can make your slide show on the fly, in other words you press play on the mini player and add the images/video when the music's ups and downs dictate that you should. This is difficult to put into words, but there are some places in a piece of music that you just can't have an image in screen doing nothing. The style of the music will be crying out for the image to change and if it doesn't the flow of the slide show is lost. Its the music that largely dictates when the slides should change. Try the timeline and work that way for a short while. I can't see how you can effectively put a slide show together without the timeline to be honest. Its what it was designed for or there is little point in having it.

Ken (APLman) When your putting a slide show together, what is it that determines for you how long your slide/video will be enjoyed (assuming we are talking here of the image once its fully revealed and before fade out) Can I also ask, do you use the time line at all when putting together a slide show?

Those who are confused by the slide time need to try adding video and then you will see that it is the logical choice. That time value must me no greater than the length of your video clip, unless you want the clip to come to a crashing stop before the video leaves the screen. A video clip of 15s needs 15s from when it starts to appear, until it is fully gone. This is what is currently shown to us INHO there is no point whatsoever in adding a video clip of 15s and a value in the box under discusstion of 20s, or your video sits there doing nothing for 5s. Now the art of AV is creating a smooth flow from image to image, be they stills or video. So, the setting works when you start to use video

Dave I think you use templates and pte may be hanging on to that old setting prior to beta 19. I noticed the same thing when I used the structure of an old slide show to test this. The sharper smoother still showed zero untill I did a file new and cleared the memory.

I just tried Beta 19 and its still doing the same thing for me. Windows 7 64 Bit machine

Igor Thank you for that explanation. I can now speak about this tool with a degree of confidence in that I know what it does. With the tests I have tried in the past few days, I don't think the Moire effect is a problem any more. I think your right in what you say that in a rare occurrence of the Moire effect, the smoother tool should deal with it. In most demos it helps to be able to show the problem and then demonstrate a solution, but if you cannot produce the problem any more, then it ceases to be an issue. Many thanks

No, I am havn't taken offence, nor have I missed the point. There are many PTE users with a Canon 5D with 20 million pixels, but that isn't the pont at all. In my experience the Moire effect is what the sharper/smoother tools were designed to fix. To see the moire effect you can use a high resolution image and squeeze that into a small slide show, and/or you can sharpen it a bit too much. So using a high resolution image, I was first expecting to generate the moire effect, then use the tool to get rid of it. If I cannot generate the moire effect with a 6000*4000 image then I am delighted, seeing as it was hard to avoid with much smaller images only a short while ago.

Igor OK and thanks for the explanation _________________________________________ New Bug perhaps - PTE 7 beta 18 Today I opened a new project and added 4 images. I went into the project options main tab and reduced the 7s slide duration time to 1s and hit the set for existing slides and OK. I got an error message. It seems that if you select a slide duration time that is within the transition length of the images this happens, the time line also disappears too

OK, by putting 2 identical huge images into O&A and adding 128 to one and -128 to the other I can now see some effect, but to be honest it appears that I can ignore the setting for my own work because I can't seem to create any problems at the default settings. The moire effect is/was made worse by contrast/sharpness. Thats the shimmy you referred to, and to combat it, we would soften the image a little either global or locally. Igor must have done something to improve the moire effect, because at one point in time it was hard to avoid the moire effect when animating, now its hard to create it. Not that I want it of course, but I do need to inderstand the practicalities of the tools on offer and with this one I can't really.

Dave Well if you look at the dimensions of my starting file and take into account it was confined mostly to a 1920*1200 format, you would expect to see the moire effect. In addition I kept the image small and looked at rotation and panning rather than zooming, all to add to the effect, but there is no sign of the moire effect or any softening or sharpening effect. Igor does say that this feature dramatically increases sharpness of picture. I just want to be able to see that. I have just done the same test and set a 800*600 pixel slide show size with 6000*4000 images. Then I can just see some softness showing on the 128 setting, but who would be doing that.

Igor Ref: Objects and Animation > Properties > Sharper/Smoother My appologies if you have already covered this, because I seem to recal reading something, but now cannot find it. I need your guidance on these settings. I understand what it does, at least I thought I did. However, I cannot create anything in PTE to demo what this does, I can't see any difference Today I thought I would prepare a tutorial on the use of this control and prepared an image with the pixel dimensions 6144*4096. I squeezed that image into a 1920 *1200 monitor and added animation. I put two copies of the same image and same animation on PTE and set them at the extremes of -128 and 128. I tried a few images, but I cannot see any differerence. Can you offer some more guidance please.

Sorry Eric, it breaks my 40mb limit and I can't risk the cost of any more band width. What a shame, I would have loved to have seen it.

PTE 7 Beta 18 Today I made a demo slide show with a small zoomed video, inset over a static image. The video (taken with a Canon 5D) was converted in PTE and reduced in length from about 20s to 10s and also the size down to 950*540. The video name was adjusted with the word converted which does make things easier to keep track of. In practical use, I found that I had overdone the crop in regard to the length of the clip and the video didn't have time to zoom up to the size I wanted witout coming to a stop. (nothing worse than a video that suddenly grinds to a stop before the next image is fully faded in. It has to stay moving over the fade out in my view) No, problem, because I have the original video, so I converted the file again making it slightly longer this time. PTE over wrote my originally converted 10s video with my new conversion to a 20s video. However, PTE still displayed the video for 10s, although it had been over written with a 20s version. I used the replace video option from the properties tab of the Objects and animation screen, but PTE still reflected the old 10s video. I had to remove the video completely and reselect it before it would work correctly, but that meant setting up the animation and edge effects again. Not a problem for the initiated, but it will blow the mind of many users.

Ken Its the usual thing with computers, easy when you know how, baffling when you don't, with too many possible causes and solutions to tie you up in knots. I went to the Sound card and found nothing, but in the control panel under sound, there was a HDMI option that I had to set on default to make it work. When I want to use the laptop sound out of the mini jack socket, I will have to set it back to headphones and speakers

Someone has pointed me in the right direction and I have selected the HDMI from control panel, when I expected it all to be automatic. Its all now working fine. The thread is now resolved

Perhaps I can make it clear what I want to do We always have a laoptop when we are away in the caravan and we also have a flat screen TV. I don't want to buy or have to carry any more gadgets, I want to be able to show what I have on the laptop on TV. That may be a WM Video, an Mp4 Videp or a PTE slide show. When I plug in my 1.5mtr HDMI cable I get picture but no sound when I select HDMI from the TV imput menu I tried taking a minijack from the laptop to the TV input, but that dodn't work either.

The HDMI cable is a new one, no convertors from DVI and I had already thought about a small speaker system. The volume on the caravan speakers is not good and in rain conditions it can easily overpower the sound volume, so that may not be a bad option. I think I need to bring the TV inside and have a play. I have plenty of USB cables. I will also take a closer look at the settings, but I admit I have little tolerance for all this detective work just to get a result that others seem to get easily. Thanks for the tips so far, I will follow up on them as soon as possible

Well, I have looked at the sound setting of the laptop isolated from the TV and I can't see anything that gives me a clue what the problem is. The picture quality is great but I don't get sound on anything when connected to the TV, be they videos or a PTE slide show.

I know many of you on this site are old hands at this, but today I tried for the first time to link my new laptop to the flatscreen TV in our caravan via a HDMI cable. I find I can get a picture OK, but no sound. I asssume that sound does not travel down a HDMI cable. I therefore took a mini jack cable from the output of the laptop to the input of the TV, but try as I might, I cannot get sound out of the TV and its just too quiet from the PC alone. Has anyone else experenced this and can point me in the right direction please

I know many PTE users have one of these Digital Recorders and I bought one, but find I carry it everywhere in my camera bag, but have hardly used it. It seems a shame for it to just sit here doing nothing. If anyone is interested and wants to PM me with an offer, its yours. Details below and I still have the original box and all the bits that came with it. http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h4/

Igor Many thanks

Xaver There is almost always a work around and I already thought of that, but it adds a number of related files and you only need a problem with one and the whole thing is spoilt As the thread is suggestions for the future it seems to me a way to add even more appeal to PTE. Allowing a border to be added to a frame would go along nicely with my first suggestion too.

Lin I am aware of that, but you really need a Png for the purpose I have in mind, because the viewer needs to be able to see where to click to get the info. As far as I am aware you can't add a line around the edge of a frame. On a PTE screen for example, I am unlikely to add information to cover absolutely every option that is abailable. So, what I had in mind was something that highlights only what is available to the viewer and therefore holds information. I can do this with WMP, but then that is another program that pops up and while simple to some, it will require explanation for others and probably cause issues with file associations too. If the option was included in PTE to link to sound files, it would be a one screen self contained slide show. Simple to make and easy to use

Yes, that makes it as clear as mud. Sorry all, but your talking in Geek mode and I still don't know why we have it and what advantage it has. Do I ever decompress an exe file? What purpose does this do and how is it done? What is Aspack?