Barry Beckham

With all the harping about video integration, Its not harping Ken, streaming video is just not good enough yet. Have a dabble if you like, but don't expect those of us who work hard at providing quality images to welcome it with open arms, it has a way to go yet. It takes so long to see a streaming video, holding it back until enough comes down to play that you may as well download the exe file. I see no advantage to the likes of us. i figgered the logical thing that would happen on a shoot would br to take some stills, then switch your camera to video record some action then revert back to still mode. Then make your show -- is this not the game plan? Possibly, but only with HD video and only then if there is a seemless change from the quality of the stills and the quality of the video. If the video stands out like a sore thumb in a stills AV then No. Of course there are always going to be some instances when using youtube or streaming video has a use and I guess the same will be with video in a stills slide show. However, for general AV use (the stuff we see mostly) the last thing we need to do is drag down the V side of AV just because we can use video. The inclusion of video for stills AV enthusiasts has hardly been a must have has it, if I want to use video I will buy a decent video camera. I just had a thought as I pressed the button to add this post. Am I out of step here? Are you all in the starting blocks with your videos made ready for the day you can insert them into an AV.? Are you not as concerned as me to make sure the V in your AV has good quality images? I will make a prediction now, long before we get video. If some of you think that adding video clips will add impact an appeal to your AV shows, you are going to be sadly mistaken. When we ARE able to add HD video it will need to be added delicately with thought and tatse, or it will do just the opposite, just as over animation does now.

Ken Its a video, how is that comparable to a stills slide show? The moving image hides a multitude of sins.

Ken Instead of turning their nose up at shows on youtube etc they should be thankful that they are put up No I shouldn't, youtube is OK for those who don't know any better, but for those of us who do, its not good enough. How can anyone into AV, which is solely about presentation of images, then present them badly?

I am not a lover of on screen videos and I cannot really understand the fascination of them for the high resolution slide shows we make. Even uTube HD isn't a patch on what was originally made. Maybe it's just me, but what is the point of spending all that money on equipment, spending hours manipulating images, producing a slide show your proud of and then deliberately presenting it within a format that is poor. Having said all that I suppose technology needs to start somewhere and sometime in the future we will see a completely different result, but until then, it just doesn't cut it for me.

;)Over the top of my simple head Peter sorry

JudyKay Thanks for the response, but as a new computer and 64 bit I didn't install the drivers I originally got on disk, I went to www.wacom.de and downloaded the latest drivers. I also did re-install them just in case installing some of my other software interferred with the Wacom. The thing is I have been using Wacom tablets for maybe 15 years and one thing about them, for me anyway, is they have always been faultless However, I have tried to recreate the fault today and find I cannot. Computers, they certainly know how to give the runaround

Peter I managed to watch it with your intructions, but its not quite the same as the Exe file. Yachtsman What do you mean when you say transitions weren't my cup of tea and didn't appear to have consistant times, I am not sure I understand what you mean here?

Peter. This is purely a personal thing with me, but I doubt that I am unique with these views. I just can't be bothered with uTube. We don't have super fast broadband here and it's just too tedious to wait and even HD shows don't seem the quality the exe files has. If I am going to watch a slide show made by a PTE enthusiast I want to see the exe and see it as they intended or I would rather not bother. I have no problem downloading large files, unzipping them and watching them when I am ready.

Peter I am about as non technical as you will ever find in Photography and much of what you said about camera clubs I fully agree with, but this..No No No No AV is all about presentation, image size and format is essential to that presentation. It is also very clear that this issue concerns people. Anyway, this is the way of a forum and subjects often drift and become of interest to a wider audience, they peter out of their own accord when they are exhausted. Relax

Mac Users Please help Our Camera Club uses remote judging and I record the judges comments and put the results into a simple PTE slide show. I did that this month using PTE Beta 10 and put a Mac and a PC version up on Media Fire for club members. One guy using a Mac book pro. 2.4 ghz. 4 gb ram. Mac osx snow leopard reported that neither of the two Mac versions I posted worked for him. I quickly made a second small 3 image test using PTE 6 and he reported that this DID work for him as did my There is no such thing as the Perfect Exposure Mac show made with PTE6. I have put two small demos on media Fire for Macs, can Mac users out there please try them and report back on how they play, just in case I have discovered a small bug. http://www.mediafire.com/file/mn2dcew2jtl/mactest.zip

Dave An interesting poll and speaking for myself I produce 16:10 shows and I havn't made a 4:3 show for just under two years and wish I had moved to the widescreen format sooner, but its not until you get a nice large monitor that the penny drops. There are plenty of large wide screen format slide shows available for anyone to try on their system, if they have concerns about their PC being able to handle the larger size. I think that generally speaking many will be pleasently surprised It will be interesting to do the same poll in a years time and perhaps this tells me that if I wanted, I could consider moving to a wide screen video format for tutorials.

Igor More practical work done today with the Envelope tool adding commentary and adjusting the music volume. I found it frustrating that every time I went back into the Envelope tool the magnification I needed to apply the settings in the first instance were reset and I had to enlarge the wave form and locate the area I was working again and again. In the practical world we will need to go back and forth to get things right and I think the magnification should remain until the user decides to change it.

This issue is probably down to me, but I am not sure I am using Windows 7 on a new PC running 64 bit. I also use a Wacom Bamboo graphics tablet. When working in the Objects and animation screen today I wanted to lose the green bounding box around the edge of the image and did what I always do. I clicked into the grey area. However, on this occasion it took me from the current OA screen/image the the preceding one. Another click took me back another image and so on. I have diabled the flicks in Windows, but it still jumps to the preceding image. On checking my older PC, using Vista and the same graphics tablet all is fine, which leeds me to belive that it is a setting somewhere. Does anyone have a similer setup and can try and repeat this.

Colin I have been making larger slide shows for almost two years now and I admit my style of animation is a lot more subtle than some I see. Having said that all our PC's handle what I make fine, but you could check your PC and monitor easily, by trying one of my sequences. Go HERE and you will find that Everlasting Home and Botanical Artistry both have animation, see how one or both of them perform on your current Computer/screen setup

Igor While doing some practical work today using Bets 10 a couple of issues came to me, not faults, just ideas. I was adding a sound comment (Commentary) to individual images on the slide list and got frustrated that I had to select the sound comment and then OK the Audio Clip Properties Window for every clip I added .Does that need to be the case and wouldn't it be better ( if possible) for the Audio Clip Properties to be either called up when needed. ( I doubt when adding sound like this we would want it every time) or perhaps it could float on screen and not have to be clicked every time a sound comment is added to a slide. I also needed to add text to a number of images in the Objects and Animation screen and found it frustrating that I have to select the properties tab to add the text and select the colour, but then have to move to the Common tab to remove the drop shadow, which I didn't want. Shouldn't the shadow controls be repeated in the properties tab for when we use text.

Colin A quick look at the file size as displayed in PTE for my 1920*1200 images they average around 250k. I think you may be pleasently surprised at how your PC handles the slide shows, even with animation. A PC I have just retired handled all my shows fine and that was about 7 years old, sinle core chip, but I can't recall what the graphics card is, but probably on par or even less then yours. Give it a try because a 1024*768 show on a large 1920*1080 monitor does look a little small these days, we have come a long way from those old 800*600 slide shows havn't we?

I have downloaded and installed in on a Windows 7 64 bit machine and it all seems to be working fine. I created a test doc and sent it to another PC running MS word and it read the Open Office Document just as it was. I think I will live with it for a while and see how it goes, but first impreseeions are that it will do all I ever want Thanks for the feedback

Thank you Crossfade. I will give it a go

I have need of a basic word processor and simple spreadsheet and I am considering Open office. I have heard of this "FREE" option before and always wondered about it. http://www.openoffice.us.com/openoffice/free-open-office-writer-download.php?brand=openoffice.us&s=google&country=INT&c=openoffice.us_writer_alotpf_pg&k={keywords}&pk=1549-4 Does anyone here use it or have used it and can give a bit of feedback and experiences please ?

Good rules, but 15 Euros to enter a sequence seems a bit steep

Maureen Here are the Experts, This small section from what 8321 posted about the Hayange AV competition instantly tells you those who set the rules here, know what they are talking about. TECHNICAL CONSIDERATIONS * The computer generated entries in our festival may be created by using various types of software (eg. Pictures to Exe. Wings Platinum, M-Objects, Flash, Pro-Show, Magic Lantern, etc.) in order to produce an auto-executable file. The organisers will accept productions using other software provided that a pre-supplied sample will prove that they are able to read these files. * We recommend formatting AVs with one of these resolutions: 1920X1080, 1600X1200, 1400x1050 or 1024x768 pixels. [To users of PTE, we recommend using a maximum resolution. The projector will fit the size if the author does not check the option "Fixed size of the view (in pixels)" (see menu "Project / Project Options, Tab Screen ")], * The maximum duration of each AV is limited to 12 minutes. However, this festival also offers a special section for short sequences not exceeding 90 seconds.

John although obviously the format varies where ever they are shown The format cannot vary, that is the whole point of a one size fits all. You can have confidence that what you have created will show at the same format on any monitor, but yes, you will see black bars around the edge depending on what screen you are showing it on.

Colin Yes, I don't disagree with what you say, I have just schooled myself over the years to fill the frame and can usually get away with a slight trim top and bottom for 16:10. I would use 16:9 if that was available at a good price. I don't think there are any rights and wrongs here, just preference. I did recently start to make a show at 3:2 and found it looked squashed me when viewed on the monitor. My eyes must be getting too used to the 16:10:blink: . The poll is showing some interesting results and there does not seem to be much in it between 16:9 and 16:10 I was thinking about making my tutorial videos larger for DVD use and going widescreen, but was not sure about the 1024*768 users who may then not see a crisp video. This poll seems to suggest that among enthusiasts, wide screen has been accepted.

Brian Absolutely right