Maureen

Igor Thank you once again for another brilliant upgrade. I would like to be able to use the template option and save the template to a location of my choosing. At present I always save the new PTE versions to their own folder. Then any templates by default are always saved into this folder. I then have to go to that folder and I copy the template to my existing project folder. It is a very minor irritation and I am delighted with all the new features. Apart from a very, very rare occasion (maybe) I don't think I'd be rushing to use pan and zoom. But I appreciate that others do enjoy using the many transition effects. Just hope I don't start to get seasick and develop lots of migraines when it suddenly arrives! Thank you a million times for all your hard work. Maureen Jim ......... I thought I could already do what you suggest ? Unless I've mis-read your request ? Will have to double check one of my "talk through lectures" again.

Hi Jeanie I'm going to Southport too, so see you there & run through this with you in a break. I also do a manually show interspersed with sequences and demos. PTE is excellent for this and easy to set up and use. BW Maureen

Thank you Igor! We are all impressed by your speed and talents. Now I'm off to play with this new version. I hope you have a holiday booked ! You deserve a long vacation. Best wishes Maureen

You can see it on the "big screen live" in competition in Cardiff on April 9th, Dublin and Aldbourne on April 16th ....and we also have an audience vote. So not only can you see all the sequences the judges are assessing it against, but you can come along and give it a well deserved vote! More info here Hope to see you there. I know we'll have friends over from Switzerland and Holland .......anyone coming over from France ? I'll put all the results straight up on the AV World web site as soon as I receive them BW Maureen

I was booked, packed and ready to go ............ until I realised I'd miss the big match on Saturday. So will just dust my "leek & daffodil " up and toast your disappointments on Saturday ! Maureen

This will be excellent for sending shows to friends who are not on a fast Broadband connection. Thank you Granot BW Maureen

Maybe when they gave out the "five loaves and three fishes" .... and there were lots to go around. We pay for one version of PTE and get all the upgrades we need. Thanks Igor !

If you have not put your cursor on the time line and obtained a cursor point, ( blue triangle,) PTE does not know where you want to place your slide so will drop it in as the first slide. When you first open the customize synchronization window your cursor point (blue triangle) is automatically at the beginning. Move it where you want the slide to appear and it all works prefectly. I hope this helps you. Good luck. Maureen

Thank You Igor This is exactly what I wanted! and I've had fun playing with changing the radius of the curling page today. You're a great star! Maureen

"When I get some free time" I'm planning to sort out all the tips & tricks and short cuts I've collected together to get them into a system where I can find them quickly. Will either stick them on my web site or print them out into a mini booklet. I do get lots of requests for help by e-mail and by the time I've typed it all out and done the screen savers to explain it to a beginner, I may as well re-use it on the web for someone else if they have the same query. There's also a great huge gold-mine of tips here in the Forum which are so hidden away, it's sometimes very hard to find them. Don't hold your breathe, I've a lot on my plate at the moment though !

Like the new sequence on your site Ian ! Wantage Camera Club Happy Saint David's Day for Tuesday folks

She's Welsh too Thank You Igor for EVERYTHING you do for us and especially the ability to test and check & let you know how we want it all to work ! Many of us work in different ways so what is wonderful and works for some is not so good for others. I'm in the same camp/ boat as Al .......... Sorry I'm too busy to do much testing at the moment. I do love having transitions locked but not when there is a risk of suddenly losing an important dissolve at a crucial point in the sequence, if I've spent lots of time deciding on exactly which millisecond I want it to happen. Think we all agree Igor is great !

I tried a test project with 5 images and a piece of music. I placed each image at intervals of 1 minute and then three black images at the end after the music ended. *** Then I tried to add a new transition at 30 seconds This moved the transition & image from 1 minute to 30 seconds and left nothing at 1 minute. All other images and transitions stayed put. Test 2 *** instead of adding a new transition at 30 seconds, I came away from the time line, I added a new image inbetween images 1 and 2 This appeared at point 1 minute and pushed the images along one place - the transition points stayed locked and the previous image at 4minute then slid beyond the end of the music Then when I clicked at 30 seconds I hoped everything would slide back at O, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2minutes 3minutes, 4 minutes with the extras still "over the end of the music line" But unfortunately there was a space at 1 minute, the others stayed at 2min, 3min etc the images had not "moved back" from the end I had great hopes reading Andrew's last post but I'm so sorry I didn't manage to obtain the same results or get everything to stay locked when I added the new transition and image. Igor THANK YOU for all your hard work. I appreciate it very much and now all the transitions do not move just the one. Is it possible to right click on an image make a copy of that image, paste it into the new halfway position. (next to its original same image, then create the new transition point. Leaving all the other images where they had been placed. Then I could create or find a new image to drop into the time line and delete the copy ? I was doing this simple test project while Al did his with more slides - the Welsh have a slower brain ! I agree with Al, I became so frustrated creating my latest AV I went back to an earlier version to make sure the transitions stayed put. I think PTE is brilliant and very much appreciate All the hard work in all the new versions. Thank you again Igor !

The digital Royale has the big advantage of portability and it also has the massive advantage of the great technical team at the Internationals & nationals who know its workings inside and out ! Shame Colin doesn't have a web site to tell more people about it all. M

Hi Ed I've been running a resource site for digital-av information for a while. Unfortunately recently other priorities have meant I haven't been able to update as often as I'd like and I'm currently doing a revamp to it (among other tasks). Buying suitable digital projectors was a major consideration for many people as they are a major purchasing item and need last a long while. I did lots of personal research when I was "shopping" around. I managed to get a sponsorship from BT Broadband for the purchase of a digital projector for our Royal Photographic Society Digital Group. I did do lots of research on the web, magazines, asked hundreds of people and this is something I always advise everyone to do. I decided I liked the information about a half a dozen suitable projectors (and in my case I'd been told not to worry about the price! Thank you BT Broadband !) The next step and one of the most important is to find a company who will demonstrate the models you pick and give you time to view them, without any stressful pushy sales talk. Again I found a company which specialises in this field, has a projecting suite and allowed me to take along my laptop and files to test them out. I took an image which contained a test strip with the whole range from black to white, a colour block, flesh tone portrait, landscape with clouds on a blue sky etc. I built up this test image which I then projected on all the projectors I'd asked to view. I also ran two short digital AVs on these machines. Ian Bateman had previously obtained a lottery grant and had also done a similar exercise so I am very grateful for his and all the other help and advice I received. We have had an incredible number of lecturers, who frequently prefer to bring along their own projectors, etc but often our members have remarked, of all the projectors they have seen projecting, ours is one of the most consistent in projecting the image quality both with stills and digital AVs. Our projector is the Optoma H56. As I mentioned, Ian had previously done his own research and surprise surprise they had "opted” for the earlier Optoma model to ours. The RPS recently purchased a new digital projector and again I gave the advice - do your own research, test several and make up your own mind what you want. They did so and have bought..............the latest Optoma model. I do not work for Optoma by the way or anyone else - I just think of myself as a housewife who is an AV Groupie ! ....... for the sequences not the authors so don't get excited folks! As I hate "housework", I play with my computer and taught myself to produce simple web sites (got fed up of trying to find the files on the computer). So www.digital-av.co.uk is my "filing system". When I started it, I asked those who owned digital projectors, to give me their feedback on the models they used. Would anyone mind if I linked this thread to that page too folks? My previous projector info page........ Hope this helps. I am sure you will get lots of wonderful technical advice from all our experts here too. Good luck with your choice- hope it brings you many hours of enjoyment. Better get back to the dusting now I suppose!!! Maureen PS still hoping for lots more PTE entries in our WWW-DAVE

I recently produced a very long show by a daisy chaining process but I did it deliberately. If your viewer is suddenly interupted while watching a long show. He or she then has to start from the beginning every time and it can be tedious to keep having to do this. I produced a "birthday sequence" where some people supplied simple text messages or one image while others supplied mini exe files. I constructed it in "chapters" each linked and all could be watched in one sitting or started from a different "chapter" - to view favourite sections later if necessary. I think this worked well. Sometimes watching one very long exe file can be tiring and I was always told 10 to 12 minutes is the maximum concentration anyone can cope with. I don't think it is necessarily confusing if the first start file/exe is well labelled and you include a read me file to explain. This is the overall effect I achieved. Hopefully without making it too long or complicated to run. Best wishes Maureen

I have been adding new pages to the site created for this small Festival. See here and you can send your entries in and pay via the web now with www.dropload.com and Paypal.co.uk But all info is up on the site, including the entries so far. Look forward to hopefully meeting many of you there. We've a super programme on the Sunday after the main Saturday competition too. If you feel too shy to enter the main comp, you can bring along sequences to show and share with us on Sunday. All very friendly and excellent opportunity for your work to be seen in Wales & Ireland too. BW Maureen

I tend to work on new projects in Beta stages adding #1, #2,#3 after the name so I can usually go back to the earlier version each time. I'm lucky to have the space using an external hard drive as this can save a lot of hair pulling. Same way I always save each PTE new version with its beta tag so I have the earlier ones to go back to if I wish. I never have though, as Igor is so fast he sorts out all the minor hiccups before we can blink ........and of course the wonderful Forum members come up with answers & work arounds quickly too. Maureen

Agree with Andrew, Ian & Bethan They have voiced my thoughts and misgivings very well. I am very uneasy using the new Betas as I also prefer my transitions to remain "glued" until I change them. I change slides around or import extra ones so often and now I can lose the whole pattern of the link between certain images appearing at set soundtrack points. I tried moving everything to the right at the beginning and then inserting points which worked fine, it's the risk of losing so much work in the final editing and "fine tuning" I worry about. However I am very grateful for all your hard work Igor THANK YOU ! .........and you've now given me an idea for my new Alexander CD ! I look forward to testing your solutions to this knotty problem. Maureen

Super site Guido Well Done ! I think I should be paying you lots of lira for all your nice comments about me - I'm blushing ! (and smiling too !) but my husband is rolling about on the floor laughing ! I am sure your site will be a wonderful useful asset for all PTE workers. I know it is very hard work creating and maintaining web sites... and trebly so in three languages! Congratulations Best wishes Maureen

I agree with Al's suggestions BW Maureen

Hi Igor Thanks once again for all your hard work and such a great product. Love using it. Unlike Ian and Barry (Hi guys !) I have created menu links with the object editor which works fine for me.(maybe my set up is OK for this Beta version or it just likes the Welsh accent when I talk to it - have you tried that Ian?) Can I please make a simple suggestion? When you put up the most recent Beta upgrades they are often "hidden" within all the e-mails. Would it be possible to pin just the Beta upgrades to the top of the pinned list, and then tell us that you have done so within the pinned E-mail comments? Hopefully no-one would then start putting comments tagged onto the latest upgrades, or the point would be missed. If we miss visiting for a while then we could miss the latest Beta upgrade, if it is hidden within the long string. Just a thought. Love playing with the new Betas....no problems found so far. I'd still like to see the transition points absolutely glued tight until we delete them with nothing moving either side if we delete or insert. I frequently create my shows with PTE, Photoshop and Audition open together. I'll start with a beta version of a show and as I put images into PTE I'll create new intermediate images between two earlier ones (gets more creative dissolves). I may create two or three new images inbetween the first two original images. By keeping PTE open, & testing the effect I can see quickly what I need to do. The big problem is the movement of transitions. Again if I edit the sound - same problems can occur. Thanks again for all you do and all those who help with the free utility programs. Best wishes Maureen

Thank You Igor This is wonderful ! We have been waiting excitedly for all these new developments. Best wishes Maureen

Sorry I haven't had time to enter this competition as I've been burning the midnight oil and beyond to get the info up on line about our new WWW-DAVE supercircuit. See my other posting for details of the new site for WWW-DAVE. Open to all, pay once, entrants can only enter one sequence but be judged by three panels of juries. Look forward to seeing all the work at www.creatingslideshows.com and taking a more active part in the next one. Best wishes Maureen

We are holding a new International Supercircuit of AV competitions in April. You only need to submit your work once and pay once and it will be shown and judged before three different judging panels at Cardiff, Dublin and Aldbourne. I finished the new web site at 4am this morning so it may need "tweaking " and I'd appreciate anyone letting me know if any thing doesn't work or is incorrect. You can view all the information about WWW-DAVE here After a little sleep, I'll be working on a mini sequence so you can all download it, view and enjoy images of our location and be tempted to join us all. We are accepting electronic entries via www.dropload.com Please send entries over 50mb by CD or check with me first, and also (when I get it all set up) electronic payment via Paypal. Please e-mail me first if you wish to take up this option. Hope you will all take part and we see lots of your work in the three competitions. Good Luck. Best wishes Maureen