Barry Beckham

DaveG Sorry, I misunderstood, but it still doesn't help as what newcomer is going to think about creating a slide show at 1920*1200/1920*1080 if their monitor runs at 1024*768 People at their Camera Club, if they are members, will all be saying create the show at 1024*768. Even throwing 1024*680 into the pot to retain format is enough for many to lose it.

I don't think that life is that easy. Consider the situation of a simple Ken Burns show. All images should have a size of 1500x1000. Each image should have individual animation parameters (slight, screen filling pans and zooms, maybe also rotations). Which screen resolution should PTE choose, if it were asked to do this automatically on a screen of size 1600x1200? I don't see why not, any animation still needs to be kept inside the overall resolution for the slide show, whatever that is. I don't see how any animation impacts on what I am saying at all. DaveG Your idea is no good either, when I suggested a monitor be changed in resolution to see a slide show at its best, I recall reedback from this very forum that was very hostile. You would think I had asked people to have a limb amputated. Forgive me for saying this, but your missing the point. You know the solution to this and so do I, but experts are not the purpose of this post. It shouldn't be almost a secret handshake that is needed to have a show play perfectly. Perhaps we are some of the cause of a reluctance to change resolutions, particulalry when making shows. There was a time when it was daft to create anything bigger than 1024*768 as the poower to run the show was often not there. We drummed into people they must make their showe at or within these resolutions and some I feel have got that cemented in their brain. We have moved on so far that those sizes are no longer the case. Like you I make shows large because one the most positive things about PTE is that it plays the shows on a smaller res monitors great, so I have the best of all worlds. Ken I havn't a clue what you mean about high res hiding sins, please can you explain? How does a low res protect your eyes. Eyes are amuscle like any in the body and when they get tired they tell you when to stop. If you mean to be able to see icons because of poor site, then that is different. However, you can use a 1024*768 screen to produce any size show you want, as you know. Howard You have it in one, thank you for understanding what I am talking about.

Ken The music has to feel right, but perhaps we could use some Chinese or Japanese music, maybe something from India or Tibet to a Lakeland Slide show. Wouldn't work would it?

Xaver Yes, fixing size of slide will do the job, but that isn't the point. You know that and I know that, but the vast majority of people do not and as I said earlier, many of those people are on this forum and would consider themselves way above a basic user of PTE, but they are unaware of this issue and fall into the trap. Why should you have to tick a box (that is by no means self explanitory) to get your slide show to display as you made it? It makes no sense unless there are some programming technical issues that I am not aware of. PTE's reputation comes to some degree from the image quality, it should not be via some secret setting that is known only by a chosen few enthusiasts. All I am saying is that from where I sit, the default is round the wrong way.

Igor Do you think this issue needs addressing at some stage. I can't quite understand why the default playback of a sequence has to expand the images to fit the monitor the show is being played on. Surely if a person makes a show at 1024*680 the images should display at that size on any monitor it is being played on as a default. I see lots of slide shows, many from this forum, where the author is unaware that those running a higher resolution monitor are seeing their images enlarged to the degree that image quality is not good. Shouldn't the default be the other way round, always display the show at the resolution of the images unless the author ticks a box to say different. i.e "expand show to fit monitor".

Reading this thread has prompted me to add something to it. I find myself agreeing with Jeb and his assessment of Maureens show. The images are great and the whole show with it's current music works pretty well and I enjoyed viewing it as have many others. However, I think it could work a whole lot better with a different choice of music. I was also transported to other parts of the world rather than Cumbria in the UK while watching it, but perhaps it doesn't help that I know The Lakes pretty well myself. Jeb made another point that there are only two aspects of AV, audio and visual and perhaps we do need to give the sound side more attention. Jeb is right that we mostly all come from a photography background and the quality of our images should be accepted. No matter how stunning the images are, the wrong music will kill the appeal of the show without a doubt. Once we have one show made and all the hard work is done, it isn't so hard to try a couple of different types or styles of music with the same images. We don't have to programe the whole show to get a flavour of how the new music will work, but worth a try. When more than one person gets the same feel from the show there is a chance that many others will too. The one thing I find over and over again is that to find the right peice of music you often need a lot of music to choose from. I try and listen to potential music for a show as I am getting the images prepared and that often helps. However, I have 36 copyright free albums at my disposal and there are times when I am struggling to find something that I think is perfect for the images and the mood.

What I meant was the resolution of the images 1024*768 ????

Maureen Can I ask what resolution you made your slide show please?

dadou Thank you, I wish I could see it on a Mac for myself. Igor should be pretty pleased with his work I expect.

You all need to remember that PTE is a commercial product and needs to keep developing so it stays ahead of the competition. As popular as the forum is, we don't put wages into the pockets of Igor and his team, new sales to new users do that. There are two choices I guess. 1. You keep a product different from the competition and play on that uniqueness ( I hope uniqueness is a valid word and not something I have jusdt invented ) 2. You develop the product and gradually make it better. The more basic slide show software users DO WANT SOUND EDITING in their software. That only needs to be basic like PSG, but it is inevitable that it should be included at some stage. Now, I say all this not needing it myself at all, but as I have said, we are not your average user. Yaughtsman, so you eat your eggs raw do you? I like mine fried, whereas my wife likes hers scambled. My son doesn't like eggs and my daughter likes them poached. See the problem, you can please all of the people etc etc etc

I was looking over the shoulder of a new user of PTE the other day who was becoming confused that the images chosen in the slide list where all still in the file list and my thoughts came back to this post !!

I think there are a number of interesting issues here and I would remind everyone of two things 1. You can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time. 2. Jack of all trades equal a master at none. (ie for most of us on this forum, sound editing in PTE would have to equal the capacity of Audacity for most of us to be happy with it) The majority of people who contribute to this forum are not typical PTE users, you are in the main PTE enthusiasts, so your needs are miles away from the average user. Some of you can often get very defensive of PTE, which can sometimes get in the way of a balanced debate . As enthusiasts don't we need to take a step back and think about how sound editing would impact into PTE for the average user, not us. Most of you don't need sound editing in PTE to do what you need to do, but then we are not typical users either. However, I do a lot of demos and I meet a lot of amateur photographers and there is not a shadow of a doubt that PSG is popular to some degree because is does allow basic sound editing. In time PTE has to adopt some form of sound editior, that will reduce music to the length of the show and fade it out over the number of seconds the author chooses. I would expect that would meet the needs of the PTE bulk users. If PTE was able to offer sound editing to the level Audacity does perhaps it should be via an add-on like Video Builder. That way the screen controlling the sound would be available to enthusiasts, but not clutter up the normal windows making it harder for newer users to learn PTE. One of the issues people have with practically all software these days is knowing what three essential buttons they need to press to get the job done from the other 999 other options that they just don't need, either for now or forever. The more that is put into PTE, the more complex it makes the software to learn and some will be driven away by that. You cannot use your own experences as a judge here, because you are not typical users, you have to stand back. Finally, to contradict my own waffling here, where is it written that we always have to follow the crowd anyway. Someone has to forge their own path and be different from the competition.

I have a 20" Imac with Apple and Vista (bootcamp) 2,6 GHz dual core 4GB mem. and 256 mB ATI video card. The specification you have quoted doesn't mean much to me never being a Mac user, but I am glad the shows run well on your Mac and thanks for the feedback.

Peter I just plugged in that drive that hasn't been running now for 3-4 weeks and its still working Barry

I tried it for 30 mins and that didn't work so I left it overnight and then plugged it straight in and it worked

I have put up on my web site a few slide shows that I have created in the past few months, but I have included the Mac version created with the PTE 5.7.3. Not being a Mac owner myself or access to one it would be interesting to hear any feedback on the technical aspect of the new Mac output. They can be found here http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw4.htm P.S Forever Floating is a show that many of you felt I made too small when it was first made for PC, it is now at 1920*1200 as are all the others on this page

close down, reboot and try again

Of course don't trust the drive after one failure, but what a great way to possibly redeem stuff that may be lost. You know how some are lack about backing up and only regret it after the horse has bolted

When we set up our computers after emmigrating to Australia I found one of our external drives refused to work. The lights came on, but there was no-one at home. None of my externals have unrepeatable stuff on them and this one was only a misc drive so I just used it as a backup of a backup for the trip. I tried a few things to get it going including different PC's, but nothing worked. I was about to call it a day and throw it out when something came up at the camera club here in Australia. Someone said they had heard about a tip pros use to get external drives working. It was to put them in the freezer for a while. Now when you hear that you look around for people chuckling, but no-one was. I tried it and it worked. I was able to gain full access to the drive and just double check that their wasn't anything on that I needed. The funny thing it has kept going even after it became warmed up. I am a bit nervous about using it for anything of worth, but as a back up of a backup, why not. So there is a solution that could be well worth putting into the gray matter for the time when we may need it.

Dom Super smooth this time and a great lesson in matching images to music too Great to see

I would be very nervous about PTE going down this particular road and I am glad that there do not seem to be any plans to do so. These effects should not be thrown into our slide shows on an ad hoc basis and if that is what is wanted there is another product that will do that for you. PTE stands apart from other similer products for all the right reasons and I hope it can remain that way.

Barry, I prefer to present my slideshows in full screen mode and not limit its resolution, even if I agree with you that people will not see it as it should be. I have not made the test but I wonder what happens if you fix size of slide to 1920 x 1200 by example and the user has a lower resolution ? The trouble with that is image quality as you know. If your going to set your images up at 1024*768 it doesn't make any sense at all to allow them to be stretched to a much higher resolution. 1. It could be what it putting more strain on my PC to run the demo, though I doubt it. 2. The images lose their quality. Something I see quite a lot in slide shows I watch, but how would those authors know that this is happening unless they see their show played back on a higher res monitor. I picked up this issue a long time ago, because I have a PC running 1024*768 for video recording and I also have my standard PC running a resolution of 1920*1200. I test my slide shows on both PC's and make sure they run correctly. I now make my shows and slide show demos at 1920*1200 and fix the size of the slides. They run perfectly on my machine running the same resolution and also the other one running 1024*768. Yes there is a black band top and bottom, but I have to live with that. The main issue as you know is that PTE can reduce size far better then increase size. I can't produce demos to show people what PTE can do if the demo that runs on their machine is poor. I have to know that they will see much the same as I see and this method appears to work very well. So, larger shows will project great on smaller monitors, I know that because I test everything I make at 1920*1200 on a 1024*768 res monitor The conclusion is that this slideshow requires a recent graphic card. But it's not a suprise. But as you already said it Barry, I don't understand why some people reports jerkiness with high specs computers and other with lesser computers have a very smooth animation I am sure your right about the card, but it's not as though the graphics card that I and others are using is ancient and it does everything else I ask of it. My original reply to you was because I know you make templates for sale and the issue then is they have to work on all machines, or the vast majority. I think your expertise with animation is a little ahead of the game and like I said before this last one is probably your most ambitious and its showing the weaknesses of some machines it's played on. I have long since given up trying to fathom PC's. I have experienced so many of these odd things where one PC will do something and another of a similar or identical spec will not, that now, I accept these problems as par for the course Either we need speedier machines or some way to slow you down a bit

Dom Your slide show made at 1024*768 is automatically stretched to fit my larger screen of 1920*1200. The height touches the top/bottom edges first, so your right, there are black bars left and right. However, when the three images finally becomes one, it shouldn't be stretched so that it touches the top and bottom of my screen should it? If you made it at 1024*768 it should show at that size on any monitor running a higher resolution. You need to tick the box in the Project Options > Screen Tab > Fixed size of slide (in Pixels) Then I will see it as you presented it and then it might run right. At the moment I am seeing your 768 high images shown at 1200

Dom This version is much better, just a small flicker as the images appear. The fade out is fine, but that slight flutter as images appear would annoy me no end though. For me a faded transition has to be perfect and I guess you would want that too. This puts me in mind of my experiences with PSG some time ago. Even with 1024*768 images I could not get smooth animations using PSG on all three of the machines I had at home. All three had a good specification and all were perfectly OK for everything else. Some people reported no problems at all from lesser machines and in the end I could not find a reason why some PC's play a slide show fine and anothers don't. Over a period of a year or two many PSG users approached me at demos saying they experienced the same issues as me and they thought they were doing something wrong, but I couldn't help them because I just could not fathom why PSG worked OK on some machines and not others. I think your probably working on the limits and pushing the boundaries, where I expect these sorts of things will come up from time to time. One thing though, what resolution did you make this at as it fills my screen top and bottom, but not edge to edge. Its like a 1280*1024 image stretched to match a larger screen, is that what I am seeing?