Barry Beckham

Igor I often find I have a need to know the length of my exe file, but unless I am missing something it doesn't display anywhere in the properties of that exe file. If I right click and exe in Explorer I cannot find any reference to the slide show length. I appreciate that I can find out from the project file, but that is now stored off the PC and inconveneinet to locate. it would be quicker to play the slide show and time it. Can this information be put into properties like it is with Videos?

Kim If your more familiar with an image editor, there is another way to do this. You can create each image added to the pile as a separate picture. I wouldn't like to say which way is the easiest to understand http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/downloads/pte6/birthday/birthday.htm If the demo on this page meets your needs, let me know and I will provide you a link to the video

Judy No problem, I jumped in rather quickly myself. No offence taken The forum sometimes seems like an old boys club of self congratulations and we rarely see any attempt to move the bar up. There are some exceptions of course. I fully agree with what Xaver said :- Positive comments may be encouraging, but it will not increase the quality of the productions. But then I have been saying this for some time.

Mick I did say, that it didn't have enough interest for me to stay in there. The music is good, but I feel the slide show falls between two stools. Its is not graphics and its not photography. I just don't find the kaleidoscope type effect has enough interest to keep my attention and I want to reach for the escape key after 4-5 images. Animation doesn't help either. If the content doesn't keep a viewer watching, moving the subjects around won't either. I like graphics and you see lots of them in pictures we hang on our walls, but they will have to be very good to maintain interest in a slide show and these don't do it for me. I have no problem that others like it much better than I and respect their view. But how does it help Gilio if all those feel the same as I do stay silent.

Hang on, what is it with this forum, can't I make any comment at all without some comment on my comment? What the hell is the point of giving feedback, when anything said that doesn't backslap is jumped on.

Gilio My appologies, but it doesn't do it for me. I don't find enough interest to stay in there, sorry. The only graphics AV's that I have seen that I find inspiring are the ones done by Greg.

The spacing issue is something you see when montages are made. The elements of the picture are sometimes put in the four corners and look as though they don't belong to one another. In a slide show like yours, even a tilt and overlap if inset images has a degree of charm

Colin Great show and the music is perfect for Africa. I have a couple of thoughts for you:- Your opening titles lack a little style due to the vivid royal blue colour. Have you thought of cloning a colour from within the image the title appears over. Usually there is a harmony when we do that and I think your titles would become more stylish. You may have to try a few different tones, but I would start with those in the middle distance hills. The Inset images are a nice touch too, but they are tucked too near the edge of the frame. There are too widely spaced and there is a feeling they are not connected, your losing a little appeal there.

Mark I think you have moved the pendulem much further towards AV with your changes, but the out of focus backgrounds you have used, now thrown up some strong highlights that compete with your Black and whites Images. Those strong white areas need burning in and taking right down so your monochromes stand out with no distractions.

Mark You have some great images in your show and I found the music fine for the images. I am not so sure about the monochromes and colour mix, but its not the colour mono mix that I don't feel is right, its the presentation of the monochromes. It feels like I am moving into another show when the first one comes up and I was surprised when it went back to full screen and colour. I don't know why, but the main full screen images look good edge to edge on a 16:10 monitor, but the square black and whites don't look so good to me. I feel I want to see a gap around the edge of each one at the top and bottom. Upright images that touch the edge of the frame never look quite right to me. I would have them coming up over the top of the previous image, maybe with that image blurred and/or monochrome too. If you did make the mono images smaller and place them over the preceeding image, then you might need some type of framing to present the images well. It falls a little bit between two stools. Is it an AV or a presentation of your images. I think it will sway back more towards AV if you do something a little different with the square monochrome images.

With the greatest of respect to Igor, adding video to a stills slide show doesn't have the same appeal for me as it does for others, but I have always accepted that PTE should have this facility for those who want it. I have seen video used in PSG , where the output was destined for a DVD and the result on the TV was pretty good. It was an action sequence of cars on a track. There were dramtaic stills of the cars, that cut to fast video taken from very low angle on the cars. The author used a bullet cam stuck to the outside of the car, so the ground was rushing past. That had lots of impact and the mix of video and still worked. I don't have any need to make DVD's, so I would want to use HD video, so that the quality of the video matches the stills images. As the Dom says I find my appeal leans more towards the classic AV, but I willing to be convinced otherwise. I will see what others do and hope to be inspired by some good ideas. Never say never or you can look a fool. I just don't fancy small videos moving about the frame in front of stills. I can visualise a shot of still water that fades from a still crisp image to a gentle flow for a few seconds, but only if it is HD. I watch with interest.

DavyC Are you sure your name isn't really Gary

Jan Nice slide show and the effects looked good too. Love to see the full size exe file, the images looked great quality even in the vimeo video. Fast moving animation is not something I have done, but I have an idea about it. If you shoot your time lapse images from a tripod, perhaps you could use inset images, smaller pictures, via the Objects and Animation screen for the time lapse. So, you use the whole picture as a base, (1629*1080) but those parts that move, make them much smaller and overlay them over the base image. They could be far smaller and maybe easier and quicker to display. Registration may be an issue, but I suspect it won't be too difficult, given what you did with your slide show. If you don't shoot from a tripod, but want to try this idea, you could try the Align Images option in Photoshop, which I have found very good at aligning a series of hand held images. If you take care and shoot on continuous, the slight movements we make can often be handled by the Align Images option. I have used it a lot.

Yes, I agree. To add images on the fly, one of the best ways to work in my view, you have to highlight the images added to the time line and cut transitions. The images just get pushed to the right and after a while they are in your way again, so you have to cut again and again. I would love to see those pictures that are selected into the slide list, but then cut in the time line, put into limbo so to speak. So we can hit the new transition button and they just appear. What I have to do is another work around that makes life tedious when you have more than one slide show to make. I would also love to be able to see the next image that hasn't been added as a new transition too. Quite often with a complicated show or a tutorial, you forget what slide is coming up, to see an inset somewhere would be great. This may help those who would like to use PTE in place of Powerpoint too. I could go on, but I suspect you know many yourself

If you could try to use your talent to help,guide and encourage others,I'm sure it would be appreciated. Yeah, your right, never thought of doing that before I'll try it next time and we will see what the result is. What is it about someone making tutorials for sale that upsets you so much.

Ken I don't really know if my system is OK, I assume it is, but you know how PC's can behave. I have had my share of problems with this 64 bit machine. Only had it 8 months, but its been formatted 4 times. I have moved on now from that Rainforest slide show, water under the bridge as they say, but as Igor points out, unless you can recreae a problem yourself, how can you even start to address it.

Ken Thats a little bit unfair, I tried to recreate what you saw on three different PC's and couldn't do it. If I can't recreate it, I can't fix it, but then you had much bigger fish to fry and I dropped it for very obvious reasons. Davy My word, you are a angry chap all of a sudden, or is it your humour. I think I misread your intentions before and you told me you had been joking. You sound pretty angry to me this time.

Xaver but it does not take into account that it will overburden the typical member of this forum to write significantly more than just "I like it" or "I don't like it" Yes, your right, perhaps those who are over burdened should put the time into making their slide shows, we wouldn't want to over burden anyone would we.

These settings probably don't appear as much of an issue to most PTE users, but in the past weeks I have made 28 slide shows that are tutorials on a disk on how to use an SLR, so I am beginning to find those areas that really get on your nerves after a while. This is one of them. Text effects will be expanded in the future I am sure, so perhaps it and all that goes with text needs its own tab.

I get frustrated that when I add text I get a shadow like it or not, then have to go to another tab to edit the shadow. I would like all text effects in one place

Yes I agree and wouldn't it be great if the Objects list in the O&A screen worked like Photoshops layers. You could change the stacking order by dragging and dropping the relavent layer, or lock them to prevent movement.

Colin Please relax a little, my post wasn't in reference to the content of your slide show, I posted while downloading your show, then forgot it all about it until I spotted it on the desktop a day or so later. I posted because I feel there is a problem on the forum with regard to feedback on our slide shows. Those who would be prepared offer feedback are frightened off by those who wish to jump all over anyone who do not share their views. If you need evidence of that you only have to read this post again. I am not sure this is very good for the poster, because in most cases they don't get a fair response, all they get are those who are willing to back slap. We all hope for a positive comments when we post a slide show. Or we wouldn't post them would we. It can be disapoointing when things are not as positive as we like, but thats the nature of photography. Now before you all start trolling through every post finding examples of less than perfect comments, I remind you this is a general observation. You will always find some exceptions. And while I am on my soap box, if a member doesn't understand a post, why not ask the writer of it to clarify, rather than filling in all the blanks themselves and then spitting feathers. I say again guys, relax. Surely we are all here to get better at what we enjoy arn't we?

Colin You havn't had many replies, do you ever wonder why?

Ian It sounds like you will need to find them yourself, at least for the first time. Later versions of PTE do now remember where the images are, so when you open the project file, the images you used (if kept in one folder) will be located for you. If you open up your project file, the slide show should run OK via your preview button. If that is OK, then use the file tree to navigate to where you stored the pictures for that slide show. Once you have them showing in PTE, resave your project file, probably a good idea to renaim the project file too, keep it identifyable from your old one, at least until your sure all is OK. Next time you open that project file the images will be located for you.

Easy answer, you did something wrong without realizing it. It happens to me sometimes.