aplman

We don't need new names! SLIDE is a fundamental concept in PTE, and is the right name for the "container". SCREEN is totally different. There is only one screen (or maybe two). There may be multiple WINDOWS within a screen. A slideshow does not have many screens, it has many slides. PARENT/CHILD is a fundamentsl concept in computing and software generally. It's what gives PTE so much of it's flexibility, compared to layers etc. It's worth learning! Igor, please let us have both ways of changing between "Fit to Slide" and "Cover Slide" - default for new slides, and ability to apply the change to selected slides. Thanks Igor for guiding us in the best direction. Ken (APLman)

This may be a more up-to-date view of the PC standards: Click here Seems 1920 x 1080 is known as "HD 1080". Ken T. (APLman)

Thank you Anthony for your interest. I am using version 6.5.7, so I'm up-to-date with the latest sound capabilities. I like what has been done so far, but my suggestion seeks to make life easier for those of us who are frequently changing and improving their shows. I feel we have to be able to add or remove slides, change durations, change voice comments, and so on, without having to make detailed individual changes to volume levels every time. I want to be able to specify that the background sound should be reduced to a desirable level whenever a sound comment comes along. I think the concept is simple enough, and I trust Igor and his team to make the right decisions as to detail. It has already been agreed and promised that this facility will be in PTE in due course, and I for one will be delighted when it's available. Ken T. (APLman)

I have previously suggested a very desirable enhancement: the ability to cause background sound volume to be reduced when a sound comment (attached to a particular slide) is played. Some months ago, Igor indicated that this feature would be implemented, but it has not appeared yet. Now I would like to improve my suggestion. Previously I suggested that in Project Options, a volume adjustment factor could be specified, to be applied to the background volume level whenever a sound comment is encountered. I now think I have a better suggestion. For clarity, let's call the background sound "music", and let's call the sound comment "voice". I would dearly love the ability to specify the desirable music level in relation to the actual volume level of the voice ... for example, to say that music volume should be no more than 15 percent of the voice volume. Even better might be to be able to specify the factor for individual sound comments. Naturally we would expect to specify fading down/up before/after the voice passage. I realise this is a bigger challenge for the programmers, but it would allow us to make changes to music or voice passages without having to re-work the other. Thank you Igor for giving this your consideration. Regards Ken T. (APLman)

Mick, I think you can achieve your aim by (1) Untick "Synchronize Music and Slides" (2) rather than setting your background music in Project Options, use Customise Slide and the Music tab. Each of your background pieces can then be set to begin playing at a particular slide, and moving sections of slides with their music should be possible. Regards Ken T. (APLman)

Apologies - I found it quite difficult to express this problem in a few words for the topic title. In making a DVD with Video Builder, I initially had the captions under each menu picture in the default font. I changed the font of each to my preferred font (Comic Sans MS). The screen showing my menu thereafter showed the captions in my desired font ... but with a blackish image underneath, which I think was left over from the previous font. Even after saving and later reopening the ptv file, the bad image was still present. I suspected it was time to do Accessories / System Tools / Cleanup, so I did that. Trouble is, (a) sure, the bad image has gone ... but ( my font changes have been lost. Could there perhaps be a need to store the menu details in a more permanent place? Or have I done something wrong? Ken T. (APLman)

Thank you very much, Igor - this is good news! I appreciate very much your attention to ideas from your users! Ken T (APLman)

Edwin, if you have a steady hand, try this method of moving one or more images beyond the screen limits. Drag to the left or right edge, then (still holding the mouse button down), come back just a little from the edge. I think I stumbled on this by accident - now I use it all the time. Good luck! Ken T. (APLman)

Oh, dear! I don't imagine Mr Elgar would like to hear Nimrod mentioned in the context of "Background Music"! Not a piece deserving of voice commentary over the top! Seriously, though, I have a new idea, an improvement, I believe, on my original suggestion. I will put it in the "Ideas for Next Version". Ken T.

Peter ... I appreciate your advice, based on much experience - thank you. In my own case, much as I love classical music, I am happy to use as background pieces with relatively level volume ... Andean flutes in my current project (after spending all of September in Peru). So finding the appropriate volume reduction for a project would be easy enough. The background volume adjustment during voice commentary passages should of course be a Project Option, not a "one Size Fits All" figure chosen by Wnsoft. I should have started this discussion in the "Ideas for Next Version" forum. Thank you for getting involved here. Ken T.

This is a wonderful idea, and deserves more response. I'm here to add my enthusiastic support, provided it's not too huge a job for the developers. As one simple example, I would use it in every project to add my usual set of keyframes to every slide - and save myself many hours and mouse-clicks. Ken T.

Peter ... Thank you for your thoughtful reply. It is instructive to see how experienced users adapt their work process to the software provided. However, as an experienced programmer, I tend to look for situations where a one-off effort in software development can save many time-consuming and/or tediously repetitive steps across hundreds of users or thousands of projects. An option to turn the music down when the narrator starts talking seemed to me to be just such a situation. Apparently, Igor had already accepted that it's a good idea. I am hoping to ensure that the promised facility is not about to be lost in the next round of changes. Thanks again, your posts are always good reading. Ken T.

If I may add to my suggestion above - it seems that some re-working of the audio facilities is likely in the near future. I would therefore like to make my suggestion less specific with regard to the existing implementation. What I would really like to see is a provision for separate RUN-TIME control of background sound level (usually music) and foreground sound level (typically commentary). In the context of my travel shows, this would make possible: * Running a show without my commentary ... other members of the travel party could enjoy showing my pics but give their own verbal spin; * Reducing the background to make the commentary clearer. The same facilities, if available in Preview, would facilitate development of a show with minimal repetitive annoyance to housemates. Ken T.

When a slide has a sound comment, and we click on the file name, the sound duration displayed is truncated (not rounded) to the second. I would like to suggest that the three decimal places could easily be shown, and that would be more useful. Ken T.

Whilst there is much to admire and much to enjoy in the new sound features, I am puzzled at the absence of an "Offset" parameter when using "Add sound" - Customize. May I request that it be implemented please? Ken T

Peter, thank you for confirming my suspicion that the oreshadowed feature "Reduce background music volume during sound comments" has not materialised yet. I am very eager to see it provided, as manual adjustment it a tedious and almost impractical option. We have to be able to add or delete slides, change slide or transition durations, and so on, without disturbing the relationship between slides and comments. At the moment, in a project that has voice commentary on the majority of slides, I simply set all my background music to a very low volume. I really want to be able to feature the music a little more when there is no voice. Thanks again .. Ken T

Igor, am I right in thinking that the first of those features has not been implemented yet? Regards Ken T

I would like to suggest that the version matching requirement would have much less impact on users like bwat if we had a facility of updating all our slideshows (creating updated exes from pte files) in a single operation. For example, a command-line PTE that could be used in a batch file to do any number of creates. ... or a batch facility invokable from the Create menu. I would certainly use such a feature, no matter how it might be offered. Ken T (APLman)

In the User Guide for PTE 6.5, there is this statement on page 28, in the section on Customize Slide / Music Tab: "You should remember, that if you add music file in this way, the music will be stopped after the slide is shown." I find that this is not the case ... the music continues on subsequent slides, as long as they do not have "Play new background music file(s)" ticked. Perhaps the next version of the Guide might reflect this? Ken T (APLman)

Congratulations and thanks for the updated User Guide for PTE 6.5. I think the index needs to be rebuilt - there is a discrepancy of up to 5 pages in the later entries. I hope it doesn't mean that some sections have been accidentally lost! Ken T (APLman)

That's fine now, Igor. Thank you so much for your fantastic support! Ken T (APLman)

Lovely idea! Yes please. Ken T (APLman)

Peter, there seems to be an easy way ... simple drag and drop upward or downward. Igor has anticipated your need! Ken T (APLman)

I'm not sure whether my attachment got attached. Trying again ... Ken T (APLman) AudioChopped_Aug7-2010_16-15-37.zip

I have had a strange occurrence in PTE 6.5. My apologies for not finding this during the beta phase. The attached project is a severely chopped-down version of a real one -- it is sufficient to illustrate the problem. Slide 3 has a duration of 8 seconds. It has a sound comment whose duration is 2.372 seconds. Preview plays the sound comment in full, but when I create and play an HD video file, the sound on slide 3 is truncated. Any ideas please? Ken T (APLman)