PGA

Joy, That doesn't surprise me. "Project Options | Main > Synchronize music and slides" doesn't do what most people expect it to. It doesn't do something clever to match slide changes with appropriate parts of the music. What it does do comes into play if you do a "Preview from current slide" (which is the little icon to the right of the Preview button). With "Synchronize music and slides" ticked, PTE will position both the visuals (images) and the audio (soundtrack) to the correct point on the timeline before starting the playback. With "Synchronize music and slides" unticked, PTE will position the visuals but start the audio from the very beginning. Why anyone would want that is beyond me, but that's what it does! "Project Options | Main > Auto-spread slides along music" also doesn't do quite what folks might expect. It does spread the slides evenly along the piece of music but only in a kind of temporary sense. At any time you can untick this option and your previous manual programming of durations will be restored. To get the slides evenly spread on a permanent basis you need to go to the Timeline view and then do "Timed Points | Arrange All Points" Peter

Sheila, If I have envisaged what you are doing on slide 1 correctly from your description, you can achieve the same effect by alternating your text and black slide and doing: black -> fade to text -> fade to black and repeat. I do not know whether that will make a difference to how PTE uses your computer's resources - but I suspect that it might.

Xaver, that was in association with animation, where PTE has to render several frames every second. Sheila hasn't mentioned animation - yet!

Looking carefully at your timeline screen grab I would say that slides 2-9 are all coming in between 0.1 and 0.2 seconds too early. I find that, for a Quick change, the slide really does have to come in spot on the beat. I would suggest that you need to position the slides with greater accuracy in order to achieve the result that you seek. Try adding somewhere around 0.1 - 0.15 seconds to slide 1's duration. That should "nudge" everything along a bit. You might then need to find a slide further into the show where you need to take the same amount off its duration in order to bring the rest of the show back to where you want it. Remember, in PTE you have precision down to the millisecond (0.001s). Be prepared to make small changes to get the precision that you seek. Are you aware that you can zoom in to the Timeline? Use Ctrl+F11. You can also zoom out using Ctrl+F12.

Snapcam, The PTE Main window title bar doesn't change from 7.0. However, as Yachtsman1 has pointed out, the full version details can be found by doing Help|About PTE from the command bar of the main window.

Neil, Thank you for reminding me of that. I had forgotten that it didn't start life on the main window. Snapcam, You might want to update PTE to the latest version (7.0.6). I don't expect it will miraculously solve your problem but it means your system will have the same screen layout and features as those of the forum experts who are trying to help you.

Running your show from the Preview button and Publishing an EXE should give identical results because the Preview button "publishes" a temporary EXE file and then runs that for you. I know of many AV workers who use Audition (and many who use Audacity). There should be nothing wrong with an MP3 created by either software. Can you describe the "out of synchronization" more precisely? Is it out by a fixed amount all the way through the show? Is sound running ahead or behind the images? Is it creeping further out of sync the longer the show runs? How much is it out? We cannot see your screen or hear your speakers, so lots of detail, please!

If I follow the steps of your script using two video clips of my own I do not see the behaviour that you see. The name changes as I would expect it to. I am using PTE v7.0.6. Is it possible that having so many dots in the filename is causing this problem? In Windows the dot is usually seen as the separator between the file name and its file extension. Some software products do not behave properly if presented with filenames that include embedded dots before the separator dot.

Are you using v7 of PTE? If so, what status does "Keep full slide duration" have? (That's the little tick box down in the bottom right hand corner of the main window) If it is ticked, try unticking it.

You need to have the original PTE project file and all the images and sounds. You also need, as Ken says, the full Deluxe version - which includes Video Builder. You then open your project in PTE and do either Create|HD Video or Publish|HD Video - whichever of the two commands is present in the version that you use (Create prior to v7, Publish from v7 onwards).

Yachtsman1, Any editing done to a video file (whether to the image or the sound) has to work to whole frames. Therefore, there is always going to be the possibility that the final result will not be EXACTLY equal to the length that you specified. One solution is to always have a little bit more video length than the slide duration that you specify, so that any slight mis-match will be lost in the outgoing transition. That doesn't work if you are using "Quick" transitions, of course. regards, Peter

Joy, Robert's solution is the one to go for. Lin, Dave and myself had mis-understood what you were trying to achieve. Peter

Joy, Provided that your line border image is saved as a PNG file, then yes. Go into the O&A window on your first image. Add the line border as a child of the main image. Adjust the size (Zoom) of the line border until it is as you want it to be. Select the line border object in the Object list and copy it to the clipboard (use the icon on the toolbar or do Ctrl+C). Advance to the next slide. Select the main image and paste the line border as a child of that image. Advance to the next slide... and so on. There is no "one click does all" option for this, I'm afraid; but you will quickly establish a rhythm and pattern of mouse activity. If you do not want the border to participate in the animation you have set on your main image then add the line border as an independent object on each slide. I recommend you do a sample of perhaps five or so to confirm that things happen as you want before you do all 100. Saves a lot of rework if you choose the wrong technique! regards, Peter

What a superb demonstration of the capability of PTE in the hands of an expert user!