Barry Beckham

One issue with the sound editing within PTE is that the whole sound file is stored in the exe file no matter how little you have used of it. Well, at least I think that is happening. I made a demo using two tracks of 8 and 9 minutes plus a sound effect and was suprised that the demo size was 17MB Thinking about it, I assume that both these long tracks are embedded into my slide show even though only a couple of minutes of them was used. That is a pain for me as it prevents me from including a short demo with my downloadable videos, the file sizes get too big. So, if I am right, perhaps there is a way when the exe file is created for the music to be treated like it is in Audacity. Anything you cut off is disgarded and the file size becomes smaller. I also thought a logical next step is to allow us to record commentary within PTE too.

There is probably little Igor can do. I have experienced the same sort of problems where some people say they never got the link for my download videos. Assuming it didn't go into their spam folder, it must have gone somewhere. Perhaps it is stripped out of the email by the provider, they do that sometimes. We still experience this from time to time while all other customers receive the link OK. Given that the on line shop software is automatic, all we can do is react quickly and send a manual link.

I am putting together a batch of camera club competition images and wish to put a recorded comment with every image. I have no problem applying the commentary for each slide in the normal way and I have no reason to want to hear it at that point. Once all the sound comments have been added along with intro titles and blanks I want to start the mini player and add each slide while listening to the sound comment. Untill the sound comment of slide 1 ends I cannot know where to add the next, but while working on the fly in the time line you cannot do this. When you hit New Transition, the slide will appear, but the sound will not play until you stop, back up and play the slide again. Working on the fly is the best way to work in my view as you see and hear what your doing, but not with sound comments and this makes a simple job tedious.

Gary One of my strengths is I am never embarrassed to say I don't understand and I don't understand this thread at all. Where is the benefit of moving a group of slides to match the beat of music? Surely only one slide can match the beat of the music, so why do you need to move them all. Can you explain please

Perhaps its me, but I don't have a clue what your talking about All I want when I click the New Transition is for the image to start to appear and any sound comment is played

I originally used PTE to create menus for my tutorial disks, but always had the issues of format and resolution on the computer the exe file was played on. The menus would vary and be seen differently by different resolutions, which was OK when everyone was using either 1024*768 or 1280*1024. Then when PTE changed to another version (5 I think), the buttons changed too and that gave me additional problems I could not overcome. I turned to a program called Multi Media Builder (MMB) and I did create a video tutoral on how to use the program to make user activated CD's and DVD's, but looking back I can see it was some time ago now, but that hasn't changed anything and the software works fine and the tutorial is still valid http://www.beckhamdi...1&idproduct=772 You will find this software available here http://mmb.mediachance.com/index.html The trouble is that MMB has reached the end of its life and is no longer being kept up to date. However, at this address you can still download the last version created. I used this for some years on Windows XP, later Windows Vista, but found it does not work with my latest PC. I am unable to tell if that is a Windows 7 issue or the fact this PC is 64 bit. There are alternatives and one I found is called AutoRun Pro Enterprise II These programs just need a little time to get your head around, but if you have the need to author CD's DVD's or even downloads as I do then they are pretty neat. They will fire up anything you want from a PTE show, video, exe file of any type, web pages, etc etc

Nobeefstu Phew. thanks I thought I was alone there for a minute

I am not sure how popular my views may be, but as much as I think PTE is great at what it does, I long since moved away from the buttons and menu making side of the software because there are other programs that....gulp do it a lot better. There I have said the un thinkable and expect the wrath of the faithful Ducks for cover I suppose one of the dangers of any software is that while trying to meet everyones needs it becomes a "Jack of all Trades but Master of None" That is an English saying that I hope most will understand. Now I don't think PTE is guilty of this, apart from the menu system. You either have slide show software or a multi media builder software perhaps. I have found that the multimedia builder software packages are much better at presenting multiple slide shows, videos, links to the web and more.

Now that we have sound editing in PTE I am using sound comments a lot more. (adding commentary to an individual slide) However, when you do this on the fly using the time line you cannot hear the sound comment as you add the slide. After clicking to add a new transition you have to stop the time line, move the pointer back before the image you have just placed and then start it again to be able to hear the commentary. It is time consuming and a little frustrating if you have a lot of images to place comments on. Is it possible to have the commentary start as we hit the new transition button so we can hear it as we create the slide show. It would be very helpful and speed up the process. Is there any plans to add the recording of commentary when a mike is attached. That seems a logical next step to me. I also find it hit and miss to end a show that has used 2 or more pieces of music. To do that easy you need to know where to trim the last track, but with more than one track and crossfades it isn't always that easy. The time line may say the slide show needs to end at 5 minutes 30 seconds, but trinmming the last track to achieve that is not so straight forward. I would like to see this made a bit easier if possible too.

David You will find it in the Objects and Animation screen under the Common Tab You can create/select a button image/frame and apply a go to a page command when clicked. Go to the button just below Action on mouse click and you will find the options

Jan I assume when you say The height of the slides is oke but the width not. It's to small on the projector? that the images via the projector look like the attached example ?? That is not a great problem is it to see black bars either side? You cannot make one format fit another no matter what you do. If you do what DG suggests the images will fill the screen, but you will then enlarge the height of your images and lose a bit top and bottom. That may or may not be acceptable and will depend on your views and the images. On a projector it isn't a great problem to see the show not quite stretching edge to edge with black bars either side as they are not hemmed in as they are with the plastic edge of the monitor. Presumably you will be in a darkened room and the show should look fine. You could make a backup to zip of your 16:10 format slide show and then use that second version to make a 16:9 version. Unzip the copy and crop the images to 16:9, but that will depend again on your personal view and the content of the images.

This does not sound logical in my ears. If (many?) people go to some places, make pictures, open the camera and throw these images into PTE, add some music, and finally think that they have produced AV: Isn't that fine? Yes of course it is fine and am not saying anything about that at all and you have misunderstood me, perhaps something is being lost in translation. What got me reaching for the keyboard was the suggestion from an Audio Visual forum that music and transitions can be left out because they are not important. Sorry, I have no wish to offend, but that is a crackpot suggestion. If that is the case why are we all using PicturesToExe. We certainly don't need PTE to show a few pictures especially if we don't need music and we don't need transitions. If members of this forum are quite HAPPY to just look at pictures you may as well go to any old web gallery or any browser will do. What about trying to raise the bar just a little and produce an Audio Visual that is not just a few pictures thrown together. Surely we have the potential to create at least one show like that. A show that does need to be seen in it's entirety and not stopped every few seconds by the viewer. Audio Visual is a way to present images and the charm of this technique is the smooth flow of image to image, enhanced with music and/or sound. The transitions and speed of the AV is vital to it's success along with the right choice of images that follow each other perfectly. To take an authors work like this and want to first discard the music and then play it one image at a time. Well, words fail me

Ken I would love to have a face to face discussion with you, so I could call you a fruit cake and you would know I said it with a big grin. An Audio Visual is not an art gallery ( it could be) but in its truest form it captures a mood and can generate an emotion in the viewer. The very LAST thing that should happen to that show is for the viewer to stop and start it and destroy the flow of the Audio Visual. In a book style show it can be either way, authors choice. Yes, of course in the past I suggested people temporarily changed their resolutions to view a slide show, but not just mine. It is absolute nonsense to create images at one resolution and have them played back at another that destroys the quality. So, far you have dispensed with the A in AV and back then some of you were dispensing with the V too. Absolutely crazy. I even had one member pushing pins in a dummy of me when I stupidly suggested that resolution and format of an AV is important. Fortunately we don't have to adjust resolution any more because the PTE program has moved on, but I am really surprised that you of all people are unaware of of the need to do that at the time. I wasn't asking people to cut off a finger, or poke their eye out with a sharp stick, just temporarily change the resolution so they saw the slide show as the author intended. How daft of me to want to see a good quality image when I could watch it broken up with artifacts. I didn't criticise Ron's book show at all, where did you get that from? Perhaps you are confused and mean Trailertrash, but I didn't criticise that either. I suggested a change of the settings because you you either have a manual show or an automatic one. If you leave the settings so it is neither one or the other the result is exactly what happened. The viewer changes the slides manually before the author intended (why would he have made it automatic) and the sound is then out of synch. Part of me hopes that your just poking fun at me and I have stupidly risen and taken your bait, but something tells me that isn't the case. Xaver If your right, I think I will give up AV and take up knitting, I am already halfway there having thrown away the A already. I have just posted my latest V here and the good news is they can be knocked out at 4-5 shows a day http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/newv.zip

Ken turning off manual control is a big mistake I want to look at the author's picts unless there is speech involved sound is of little importance I assume you have your tongue firmly in your cheek when you say that and If your not joking, then.....Quite frankly I am amazed, shocked even. If your serious, It would indicate to me that you don't understand AV at all and from the Grand Daddy of the PTE forum its like being told there is no father christmas. Please tell me that in the forum of the best AV software around, your not telling people that the A in AV isn't important. Come on Ken, you of all people can't say such a daft thing as that on a forum like this.

Because I have watched your show a few times and the first time I used the buttons to tun the pages, the synch of slides to music goes astray. If you let the show play in its entirety it does play fine, so you need to synch your music to slides and/or prevent viewers skipping through the images. As it is now, everyone who does help the pages turn quicker using the keyboard will hear the music end at a different point. Try it yourself, start your show and hit the right arrow button quickly and you can be at the end of the show before the first music has really got part the way through. In most shows if you do that the music and images stay together as the author intended.

Ron I watched the show again and unless I am going daft the show has been programmed and by that I mean it has been set to run automatically. It has not been designed as a viewer controlled show. Especially as Trailertrash mentions we wanted a DVD. Because your aware of the book template I think you assumed it was a user controlled show and because Trailertrash has not prevented user control you were able to turn the pages, probably quicker than it was designed to run. TrailerTrash The pipe music at the end finishes abruptly and there is no problem with that. I wouldn't fade that as the abrupt stop of the pipes sounds great, but then another piece of music starts as the book cover leaves the screen and it's that piece of music that ends suddenly ? It almost seems as though that last piece is in error? Can I also ask why you would want to make a DVD for your Camera Club? I assume you mean to show the DVD at the camera club and if so, why a DVD? Why not show the original exe file that would be infinately better quality Addition Just watched it again and the penny has dropped. The template was designed to allow the viewer to turn the pages and if that mode of operation was used, then you would need one or two pieces of music and there would be no way to fade the music out. Here, the show has been programmed, so I think the box to prevent user control should be unticked or it just confuses matters. The music and images don't seem to be in sync, so if you use the arrow keys to skip along the slides the music doesn't stay with the slides and plays independantly. In that case it will end in all different places depending how quick the viewer skips through. So, in the project options main tab you should tick the box to Synchronize music and slides. In the advanced tab untick the box that says permit control of the show using keyboard. Now you can program your show so the music ends when your slides end and the viewer can't screw things up by skipping through quicker than you intended.

I thought that show was a programmed one, but I may be mistaken,

Somewhere I always said I wanted to attend and never did, not likely to now being so far away. It all works quite well in the book form, just a nice balance of information with the images. Just fade your music out gently at the end and your done. As it is, it stops rather abruptly Its easy to do in version 6.5

George You can govern speed in two ways, one is to give a longer gap between slides. You have to do that to some degree with animation of any type. You can also adjust speed by going into the Objects and Animation screen and reducing the movement of the clouds between the blue animation start flag on the left and the end flag on the right. Your trying to capture the charm of gently moving clouds, they actucally don't have to move that much to achieve that.

Sorry, but you have gone too far the other way. Its now far too slow. You shouldn't have to massively increase the slide show length to accomodate slower animations, just restrict the movement of each sky a bit in the Objects and animation screen, The speed of any animation has to balance with your music and it now lags behind. The main title is on the screen for ages and I thought the slide show had stopped. It also seems that you may have used the same images from your previous show for a much larger slide show because on my 1920*1200 monitor the image quality is not so good. I am not sure what resolution you made your images but if your going to target a 1920*1200 or 1280*800 resolution (16:10) Then your going to need the images somewhere around 2400*1200 or 1680*800. You need that extra width to create your gentle animation and retain the quality. Your drawing attention to the clouds so they need to be reasonable quality. It could be that your images are being enlarged to fit my screen, to fix that, go to the Project options > Screen tab and tick the fixed size of slide box

That was much better seeing it as an executable file. Moving clouds are one of the few natural occurrences that I think are convincing in a slide show, but the animation must be slow and I think yours was just marginally too fast in places. This technique involves making a number of cutouts so the clouds can be animated behind the foreground rocks. The problem is that when we do this we are drawing attention to where the clouds meet the rocks and the cutout needs to be good. It looks like you have used an automatic or semi automatic technique to select the clouds and you have missed a clean edge in a number of areas. Once spotted they draw the eye and the only way (generally) to get good enough cutouts is to either do it manually or finish the cutout off manually. You need to take off those liitle areas still clinging to the rocks that shouldn't be there. If your familiar with layer masks use one of those and a soft edged brush. Alternatively the eraser with a soft edged brush. The rock edges will then look clean and natural. Do you think a sequence like this may look better in a wider format? The shape of 16:10, 16:9 or 3:2 may enhance the skies and the animation.

I made an attempt to watch it on Youtube, but found it too small and too painful to wait for the download to catch up, why not post it in all its glorious exe quality via mediafire or Beachbrook You do need to make a correction, you have a spelling mistake on your opening title. Its easy done, I once made a small show of a place in Yorkshire and never spotted I left the K out of yourshire:blink:.

Sorry for being daft Ken, but what have you done?

Well, why not give it a go, we will never know until its tried

Andrew Well, put up your shows and ask for constructive comments, test the water and see what you get back Ken That idea was too clinical, OK for a competition, but not here and it was never taken up which indicates others had similar thoughts. When I first joined a Camera Club I sought out a couple of people whose images inspired me and I went to them for some advice to see what they did to get the quality I wanted to achieve. I still think that is the best option. Forums are great at their best, but dire at their worst. Too many cooks etc