Barry Beckham

I find that the style I use for making slide shows I am continually selecting Size position in Pixels > Original Mode to set an object to its original 100% size. If not it will be enlarged way beyond what I intended. I appreciate that once selected, this option palette will float on the screen, but I wonder if those parameters could be slotted into the window bar at the top right of the O&A screen. Alternatively a simple button placed somewhere in the O&A screen so I can make any inset image, or text made in Photoshop appear at the exact size I created it with a simple click.

Mike I think that if you are creating a zoom on a full screen image, the zoom, or in fact any animation, looks far better and is much more acceptable to the eye (in a pictorial slide show) if the animation starts with the image appearing on screen and is still moving when the next image removes it. In other words the start and end flags for the animation are at the extreme right and left hand end of the time line when viewed in the objects and animation screen. I feel the use of the different speed modes only come into play for me when I am using animation with picture in picture, objects or text, where you sometimes need the animation to come to a rest, before the next image appears. Then the accelerate or slow down seem more relevant to me. However, for full screen images, I feel the animation is far better when you don't see anything start or stop. Assuming you are working on a pictorial slide show and by that I mean one where you are trying to capture a mood and a flow to your images, then having an image appear fully and then start to zoom looks a little amateurish. In my view of course

Maureen A very nice sequence and a pleasure to see such good quality images, why don't we see more images of this quality in AV? I wish I knew. I was also pleased to see the sequence just as you created it, not stretched to fill my large monitor where the quality is then shot to pieces. You have ticked all the right boxes. One thought came to mind while viewing, you had some lovely weather while in Ireland. I assume you never shot all those images in one day, so the AV gods must have been looking down on you Great sequence, well put together B

Are you putting your music into PTE via the Project Options > Music tab? Do it this way and you should be OK

Well, from a purely selfish attitude I don't need any sound editing in PTE, but most people do and I know because I demonstrate PTE to hundreds of them, in fact thousands by now. The average user doesn't find the ending of a slide show easy, it's only easy in a sound editor when you have done it a dozen times. My point, that I have made many times is the forum doesn't reflect the average user at all and we should be aware of that. Xaver, you need to be aware that what most people say is often just a figure of speach, it doesn't always need to be taken literally.

What really is the point of polling a forum full of enthusiasts? Won't the result just tell us what we already know. That you can't please all of the people all of the time. Every one of us could have predicted the sort of responses we have seen. PTE is a commercial product, it is hardly going to be supported financially by any of us who already have it. Its the newer user and the user who hasn't even heard of PTE yet, that I am sure Igor has in mind. Igor has created some software that seems to lead the field, his decisions up to now seem to be pretty sound and they have kept PTE at the top, so I am sure he will make the upgrade choices he thinks are right at the time.

I think I know what Ron is trying to do here. With PTE4, the buttons didn't have the same neat look as they do now. However, they were much easier to create and they looked pretty neat too all lined up and the same size. I used them for all my DVD menus, but when PTE5 appeared I lost the ability to create the buttons in the way I liked. (Small price to pay for the improvements in PTE5 I might add) Anyway, at that time I moved over to a dedicated and simple piece of software called Multi-Media Builder, which allows me to create simple, yet slylish menus for any project.

I am using Multi Media Builder for all my needs now

Good colourful pictures and great music, watched it all the way through and wasn't even tempted to reach for the escape key Nice one

I don't think that will meet your needs will it Ron, the button still grows if you put a longer title on it. In fact the buttons in PTE worked better in PTE4 I now use a separate bit of software to create multi media buttons

Lin That is all I did, zipped the .app file and sent it to mac users and the response has been positive every time. That was the slide show played perfectly on their Mac

Lin A typo, I should have typed 1920*1080 I have only ever converted 2 slide shows to DVD and the last one I did at 1920*1080 and it not only filled my 60in screen edge to edge, but the quality was darn good too. I don't have the ability to make a blue-ray yet

The resolution you settle on is more of a personal choice, but the HD res (1920*1028) is not a bad size to settle on. It looks good on a large flat screen, cropping to that format doesn't generally hurt the composition of the image and it is perfect if you want a DVD. I have sttled on 1920*1200 to match my monitor as I don't make DVD's myself, but if I chose to, s isn't a great problem to re-rop images to 1920*1028 Large images show much better on small screens than small images do on lae screens, particularl if the smaller images get enlarged beyond their physical size

Mark As someone who wants to visit New Zealand your slide show was a nice one to watch. There certainly appears to be plently of photo opportunities there. Not sure when we will go, maybe 2010 and it is now only a short hop from Australia compared to what it would have been when we lived in the UK. The haunting quality of the music worked very well with the volcanic shots. Nice sequence and I wonder why tourist boards don't use PTE more, far better than those puny poor quality streaming videos. I did notice that your show suffered the same fate as many I watch in that your images were expanded to fill my 1920*1200 monitor and that badly affected the quality of your images. You may want to tick the box in the Project Options > Screen Tab that says "Fixed size of slide (in pixels)" to prevent your show being enlarged beyond the size you created it on higher resolution monitors. However, I took your show into another room and watched it on my laptop and there I saw the quality of your images, which were then presented just as you intended.

Igor That I can understand, I found myself regretting not making some shows larger now I also have a large flat screen, thank you for the explanation. B

When the PC works well its heaven, but when they start their nonsense it can be very annoying. Been there, done that, got the T shirt !

Goddi I am not technical expert at this, but from time to time virus software definitions pick up some PTE shows as a virus. I have had this happen to me personally with AVG and Avast and I have heard of others affecting the exe files too. The files affected are usually the older made PTE shows. Its not something like that is it? Usually in a couple of days the newer virus definistions put right the problem

Isabel It still looks to me like the problem I first mentioned. Look at my first screen grab called "end" The green line is within the transition of my last slide and any music playing at that point would come to an abrupt stop. By clicking and dragging that line to the end of the fade and music "End 2" all is resolved Thank you for recommending my tutorials, but perhaos I have a bit of work to do on ending a show

Isabel Have a look at your time line and see if the green line that says "End of the last slide" comes before the end of the music. If it does, click and drag it to the right Hope that helps

I don't think it matters how it is done, but something needs to be considered in my view. Generally speaking we on this forum have the best interests of PTE at heart and we strive for quality all round. What makes modern software difficult to learn is for every box we must tick, there are 20 other nice to have options that just confuse the hell out of us. I don't have all the answers, but I just think it is a shame that a slide show is posted and the image quality is compromised because the author is not aware of one little tick box. lets leave it to Igor, he is the programming expert and will decide what is best.

xaver You would have to select a resolution for your show in the options > screen tab and the size of the slide. But perhaps your right, there may be technical issues against this that I am over looking, it was a suggestion for Igor. However, it still doesn't change the fact that a new user of PTE will not know about this problem and may not do so some time and all the while their shows will be seen by others in poor quality because of it.

Xaver I don't quite understand sorry. If I make a show at 1920*1200 with animation it obviously looks good played back on a 1920*1200 screen, but when it is played on a smaller monitor that are no issues with animation that I have found at all. All the animation is retained within the format of the show. Zooms pans are all fine. I have a balloon AV made at 1920*1200 and it has some animation in it, download it and see how it looks to you on your monitor, if you have a smaller res monitor of course. On my demo PC the slide show runs perfectly OK and I even demonstrate this show via the PC projector too. That is a 1024*768 projector, but it all works fine. Link below if you want to try it Its called Forever Floating to be Free http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw4.htm

Ken we have this discussion many times when you recommend we change the screen resolution to what you want - as it is your shows generally do not fill my screen because i refuse to change my res to suit you. Well, firstly the request was as much to suit you ( and others) as well as me. I assumed that as a PTE enthusiast you (and others) would want to see top quality images, it seems some don't seem to care or appreciate what they are looking at. How many times do we say there are but two parts of AV and they both need to be spot on. Anyway, you don't have to change your resolution any more. Now that PTE has put right that annoying problem of a show made at one resolution looking awful on another, you don't have to worry. I am with DaveG on this, that probably the best course of action these days is to create your show at 1920*1200 or 1920*1080 no matter what screen you are using. Why? 1. Because when and if you ever move up to a larger screen, your slide show will look superb and not small in the middle of that large screen. (not the be all and end all, but worth considering) 2. The slide show will play fine on a 1024*768/1280*1024 monitors too, the only issue is a thin black band top and bottom and a thin line around the images tends to make that less obtrusive anyway. I appreciate that if you have issues with site, you need a biger icon, but the trend is towards larger screens. All this doesn't alter the fact the a new user of PTE puts a show together that looks great on their monitor (1024*768) and looks awful on mine and many others. If you don't want to reach a larger audience it doesn't matter a hoot, but if that show is put up here or beachbrook, the author obviously does want to reach a wider audience or they wouldn't have posted it.

Maureen, nothing has come in just yet, you can always use tech@beckhamdigital.co.uk