Gérard de Lux

This 'Cap de Quer' presentation is interesting in that it is full of mist, mystery and soft atmosphere, instead of all the (too) vivid colours that we have to see nowadays. The text (in French) isn't that important as it is rather an introduction into this 'unknown' valley in the deep South Frane (Pyreneans Mountains) but the images speak for themselves; the song/music fits very well with the pictures which are of a good quality, and very smooth dissolves. It's short but very meanigful. Altogether, it is a very pleasant and original show. As I enjoyed the presentation, I got in touch with the author (whom I didn't know) and he told me that he was working on a new - improved - version; its new title should be "The secret of Cap de Quer" - look for it on Beechbrook Cottage !

I'd say that the minimum time gap between 2 pictures in that size (1024x768) is around 300 ms (on the time-line, look at the grey bars, they shouldn't overlap or be closer than 300-500 ms)

It was the 'International Digital Diaporama Supercircuit' whose first stage was held in France last week. Next stage is in Holland. Next one again in France. Next and last one is in Argentina. The website is at this address but it is mainly in French. The full prizelist of the France first stage is here Congratulations !

Thanks, Ken, for referring to my pages, but these have not been translated and I would't advise to use any of the automatic translation tools as the results are dreadful The only pages of my website which are well translated are here, but they will not fully correspond to the original question. There is no 'ideal' picture size as this entirely depends on the device used for viewing ! As fo the 'weight', it depends also on the 'power' of the processor; but it's pretty safe to have images whose individual 'weight' is around 300 kb. Nevertheless, I would advise to use a 1024 basis (x 768 or x 683 depending on the image ratio) as this size will fit most of the screen resolutions used nowadays and all video projectors (beamers) in the semi-pro class (XGA resolution). If it is for personal use, then use the resolution of your screen/graphic output device; but if it is for 'sharing' - i.e. for distribution to many different people, then a 1024 basis is much safer. As concerns moire effects, these mainly, if not only, affect prints with offset printers because of the different angles of the grid (not sure of the correct word, sorry I'm French !) used for the different colours. It very rarely affects images on a monitor or projected through a beamer. Anyway, to be almost sure to avoid any of such moire problems, the best way I know is to scale the images using a :16 factor (in other words, the final size should be divisible by 16). This advice applies not only for avoiding moire problem, but mainly to obtain the best quality in JPEG compression. (Oh, by the way, JPEG stands in fact for "Joint Photographic Experts Group"). Sorry again for my English but, as said before, I'm French

Thanks Al and Mike for your replies which confirm what I've experienced. I'm not saying that this function doesn't work; it can even be very useful and I'm going to use it very soon in my next show. But people have to be aware of the way this works; i.e. if they want to end their show on the landscape in my fictive example, they'd need to add the image twice. Or if one wants to finish with a dark screen, one would have to add two black images : one to have the black screen, and one to make the smooth (or whatever) transition to the desktop. That's fine with me

Thank you for these improvements ! I have a question concerning the option 'Use last slide to show transition to the desktop'. According to my first trials, the transition settings for this last image are used to go back to the desktop but the image itself doesn't appear on screen. In other words, if the image before the last is a flower and the very last one is a landscape, the viewer will see the flower but not the landscape. Is it correct or am I doing something wrong?

No, Ken, you're right as was MikeL117. I had to do this today as I changed my PC. The important steps are to copy the whole string from : REGEDIT4 to, and inclusive, the last quotation mark (sometimes people forget this last " but it is part of the key string) in a neutral text editor like Notepad (and it is easier to save it in the PTE folder but not compulsory; it is also possible to save copies of this file in different locations just to be sure to retrieve it when needed) This file can be saved as pte.txt or pte.reg; if it is saved as .txt, the location (path) of this file has to be given when PTE asks for it after clicking on the registration button.

I don't know it this is a requirement but it's the way I, and many other colleagues, work. It is also much easier this way to have smooth transitions (fade out-fade in) between the different sound tracks.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm doing at the moment! I've just finished illustrating a song about the closing down of high furnaces, rolling mills, etc. If you want, you can download this project from this address; the song is in French but I think it is easy to understand at least the main theme (a worker reminiscing about when he was working and feeling useless nowadays; comparing the rusting mills with old battleships; etc.). Being a "special web" version (images have been reduced to 800x533 px), it is rather light : 10 MB only.

... and only 24 hours from home for me - very handy too ! But I'll be there and I'm already looking forward to see fellow AVers and their sequences

Don't worry David ! I also use a 17" LCD, and a 15" on my laptop But I'm not the only one in my environment to use a 21 or 22" monitor; in the design/graphics sphere it's quite a common size which is even becoming 'small'. I was just saying this to explain that the present cust. window can look very small under certain conditions and that it would be nice if it could be resizable, or at least a bit bigger. I have noted with great pleasure the previous post of Igor

I agree with Michel. Customization window should be bigger or resizable (I use a 22" monitor, and I can tell you that the cust. window looks really small and lost on that screen). The wave form should be clearly separated from the timeline (i.e. lowered) and, if possible, bigger; to be more explicit, I advise to have a look at this screenshot where one can see how a waveform soundtrack could appear (see n° 5 on the picture). As for the colour of it, I have no preference. But, as I said earlier, I'm already quite happy with PTE as it is !

Hi Maureen, I, too, switch very often from one computer to another (even to several) and the best way I've found is, as Techman1 said, to edit the .pte file and replace the 'old' path by the 'new' one. With the 'replace' function of Wordpad (there's no 'replace' function in Notepad) it's done in a snap and it's very safe. Hope to see you in Cirencester in September

I'm very happy with this release (except for the waveform of the soundtrack, but I know it is only provisional and will be improved). As for renaming, I don't really see the usefulness of this function because in my case I give meaningful names to the slides (= images). But if this would be an option that could help others, why not.

I put and install new versions in different/separate folders (named according to the release number). It doesn't take much space and I think that it is safer if, for any reason, one has to use an older version. I also keep the original .zip file just in case (in case of what? I don't know, I never had any trouble! )

Impressive work and very useful ! I've already "played" with the new features and everything works fine. Well done! Thank you

Yes, and it can be ennoying not to have control over the fade in and fade out of the first and last slides. Thus, I recommend a little trick : create a "blank" ou "dummy" picture of the same colour as your PTE background (tab "screen" in Project options); it has to be a solid background and not a gradient filling or a tiled image. This 'image' doesn't need to be full size; it can be a 2x2 pixels image as long as it is of the very same colour as the background. Using this 'image' in first and last positions will enable you to use the fade-in and fade-out effects of your choice for your real first and last slides.

ppi or dpi don't play any role for monitor display. The only thing that counts is the size of the picture (example: 1024x768); and in fact there is no real need to go beyond this size for presentations meant to be seen on other peoples' computers as most of the screens use this resolution and the extra pixels are unnecessary and it puts extra load on the machine to process too big images. There are several threads on this topic.

There's no change in .pte file size (a few bytes at the utmost) because the different transitions are coded as different figures in an ascii (text) file. You can open the .pte file (with Notepad or Wordpad, for example) and see what it looks like : plain text where the different options, transitions, etc. are expressed as characters or numbers for each slide.

For those of you who would be interested in having the English-French version of Al's narration document, here's the direct link to the zipped Word doc.

May be you'll find the answer in this post or, if you prefer French, on the page which I have sent to you by PM.

Hi Ken, not really hiding, on the contrary... since I manage a French forum like this one (but smaller) devoted to audio-visual matters, I'm very busy but not hiding as my name appears almost all day long on the main page

Hello Ken ! The link to "Venise..." is a direct link to the authors' web server. Bad luck if they have removed it - I'll get in touch with them. But this (very nice) slideshow is also available on Michel's website (Fanaphot ); it has also recently been announced on the forum here http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums//index...t=ST&f=3&t=1924 [edit] I've got the answer from the author of "Venise...": this show is hosted on an university network and the servers have been closed all of last week end for maintenance.

Hi Ron, Being the webmaster of "diapovision.com" where some PTE slideshows are hosted, I'm sorry to read that you had difficulties downloading NTBR. I've just checked and all small images on the right have links that are 'clickable'. Maybe a temporary connexion problem ? Anyway, here is the direct link to Polo's N.T.B.R. slideshow Another access to the page : mirror site

I fully agree ! It's shameful that people are allowed to inundate such a respectable forum as this ! ................................ ................................ But I'm very happy that the honour of having 1000 posts goes to Al who really does a wonderful job promoting PTE and helping the users ! And thanks to you, Guru-Guido for having brought this important event to our attention