Rooskidiver

I just wanted to share some ideas on creating the VCD's, DVD's, etc. thanks to the help I got from Ken Cox. I had tried several downloaded programs to convert the PTE .avi file to .mpeg. I was then taking that file into Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator 6.0 to burn to DVD. All my results were pretty bad. Ken suggested importing the .avi file directly into Roxio and letting that program do the encoding and then the burning. The resulting DVD show was spectacular on my son's 42" LCD tv. It was still pretty darn good on my 50" big screen but not quite as clear. I also did a VCD with the same show and it looked good on both tv's. I think by using the Roxio program I probably cut the entire process down by at least 2/3's. When I used TMPGEnc it took about two hours just to convert the .avi to .mpeg and I was confused the entire time about which settings to use each step of the way. With Roxio I only had to let the program know I was going to use DVD or VCD and the program did the rest. I'm not sure what the program cost because it came with the DVD burner that I bought but it's an excellent alternative to what I had been doing. Now for the problems. The entire outer edges of the pictures do not show up in either the DVD or VCD finished products. I had made each slide in Photoshop and there were outer frames around each slide which are just cropped off. One slide had some writing near the bottom and this too was chopped off. I had sized these slides at 1024x768. I can't think of any way to correct this situation so will probably just allow for the outer cropping in my next show. It was strange too because I previewed the .avi show in both PTE and Roxio before going on with the encoding and burning and the outer frames showed up in the previews. I had one other problem with the DVD show not stopping at the end of the show but I think that's something I did wrong when I burned it. Well that's about all I have. Thanks Ken for the topic and your help and suggestions.

Thank you so much Olga! I consider your comments very high praise and it is very special considering how wonderful your pictures are! I have watched Oleg's slideshows of your photos over and over. Your pictures are just spectacular. My favorite picture is the catepillar but I love them all . Thank you for watching my show and tell Oleg to make some more shows with your pictures! Ñ óâàæåíèåì, Carol

Thank you very much, Oleg! You are a wonderful teacher and I am lucky you graciously decided to teach me. I will never be as good as you but I will keep trying! The forum and Beechbrook Cottage are lucky you have so generously contributed your work, time, and advice. And I am lucky to have seen it! Ñ óâàæåíèåì, Carol

Thank you for your compliments! I posted you some answers in the other forum. Carol

Thank you all for your kind remarks! I will be glad to share all I can with the members of the forum. I have learned so much here! First to John: The plant is a wax plant or hoya. They are fairly hardy and don't have to be watered too often which is perfect for me . Most of my ideas for transitions and creating individual slides came from Oleg. I highly recommend watching ALL of his shows ... they truly are works of art. I had been working with PTE for two years and thought my shows were good until I saw his shows! The main technique is making individual slides in Photoshop and then putting them together in PTE with appropriate transitions. For this show I set the timing for the transitions under Project Options>Effects for 3000 seconds. For certain slides at the end of the show I made them a little longer. Second to Thx: I checked the boxes for Fit to Screen, Use smoothing, 100% of the screen, and full screen mode. I left the background checked at black because it doesn't really show. And yes, I used Photoshop 7.0. I also used some VM Filters that I downloaded and they are freeware. Third to Ron: Thank you! If you need more specifics feel free to email me: rooski11@insightbb.com Carol

I have uploaded a slideshow to Beechbrook Cottage and just wanted to explain some things about the show. First, I could not have made it without Oleg's help. He has posted some wonderful shows at Beechbrook Cottage and we have been corresponding by email. I have been unable to reach him for several days and want to thank him here for all his help. This show contains a series of photos that I took of a bloom on a plant that I have had for about ten years. It blooms every spring and fall and is beautiful when the bloom process is completed which takes about three weeks. I know flowers won't appeal to a lot of folks but in place of a variety of different pictures I used different filters, backgrounds, and techniques that I have learned, mainly from Oleg. All slides were made in PhotoShop 7.0. The music was compressed using the technique that I learned from Oleg's wonderful slideshow. Without his help this show would probably have been three times as big. I hope you all enjoy my first public PTE slideshow. PTE is the best computer program that I ever purchased! Thank you to Oleg, a patient and great teacher! Carol

Another super job, Oleg! I do not understand how any of it works but it does work. This should make my slideshows a lot smaller and easier to share. Thank you!! Carol

Super terrific job, Al! I am in agreement with the other members ... I wish I could have watched it when I first started out. I think the "bread" icon was in the program for months before I found out it's purpose at this forum. Until then I had no idea you could preview the show from anywhere but the beginning and am glad you pointed that out. After making changes and rewatching my shows all the way through for the hundreth time I got sick of most of them! Now when I recommend PTE to my family and friends, I will also have them download your tutorial and they won't need to call or email me with questions. Thank you for sharing your hard work and knowledge.!

He doesn't do much on the computer except for emailing and word processing so I'm not sure he has anything else he could test in the drive. I will have him try an audio CD, Ken to see if it works. And he's going to my sister's this weekend to see if it plays on her computer. Thanks!

Hi Ken! Yep it played from the CD ... at least on my computer and my laptop and my neighbor's computer. But he gets the same error message when trying to play it from the CD and also after trying it from his hard drive. I've told him to try and find another computer where he lives to try it on and make sure it's not the CD.

I have a question about my slideshow that my dad is having trouble getting to work on his computer. In the past he had trouble getting it from the CD to his hard drive because it wouldn't read the CD's. Now he can get it to the hard drive but the show won't play. He gets this message "Exception EAccess Violation in Module UMV Core. CLL @ 000074E3. Access violation at address 7391174E3 in module WMV Core. DLL. Read of address FFFFFFFF". Does anyone have any idea what is going on? He is using Windows ME. Thanks!

Oleg, my friend! Exceptional work as always. You are a gifted, multi-talented genius and it is so generous of you and Olga to share your skills with the rest of us who are using this wonderful program, PTE. The graphics are superlative, Olga. It is nice that you can find a passion aside from medicine that gives you and now us so much pleasure. Oleg, thank you for sharing your work and also for permitting us to experience the beauty of Olga's creations. Have a double vodka on me Carol

Excellent! Thank you so much!! The slideshows that I make of our travels are the only way that some of my family and friends get to see our pictures. With every new version that you create it just makes it easier to produce the show and easier for everyone else to watch it!

I had been pulling out my hair trying to get a slideshow to work on my son's computer. At first it was playing but I had the music starting at individual slides and only every other song played. So at the suggestions from the forum I put the music under project options and then auto synched it. That slideshow locked up the screen after the first song played. Btw, he has Windows 98. So I made sure he had the latest version of Windows Media Player but still no luck. Then I read somewhere here that you needed to have DirectX and Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher. I downloaded and installed the latest version of DirectX and it worked like a charm! Now I can stop pulling out my hair!

Well Ken graciously sent me a copy of the newer version 4.01 and it took care of all my problems. My main issue was not being able to start the preview on an individual slide when I was using the music synch option. I'm only making slideshows of our travels ... and now my children's travels ... but most of the shows have at least 100 pictures and it took me hours to get everything in synch since I was watching the entire show over and over. I don't see how the program could be made any better now! Thanks to everyone!

Well I'm getting the same error message at the WnSoft site. "Something like there's been a temporary network error preventing the download of your file" .... I've been having trouble in general with getting to this site too. Maybe updating it?

The PTE window title bar and the help window both say version 4.00. I had to download my last version from a mirror site because when I tried to get it from the WnSoft site it wouldn't download. Maybe that's the difference? I'll try again today to download it from WnSoft and see if they have the 4.01 version. Thanks.

Well Al ... I can't seem to find version 4.1! Where is it hiding??

Hmmm ... nope. I'm using version 4.0. Guess I'd better go get the latest! Thanks!

Thanks for your help Al. The "loaf of bread" only works in the shows that I've created earlier when I did not use the automatic synchronization. On this last when where I did use the auto synch the "loaf of bread" only works on the first slide in the show. I'll work with your other suggestions and see if I can make any progress there. Maybe I'm just making this too hard! Thanks again. :-)

Does this feature not work if you have used music synchronization? One of my biggest headaches since I started using PTE is having to sit through the entire slide show numerous times to get the music right. Some of the songs started to drive me up the wall and I even changed many after listening to them for a couple of dozen times. Does any one have any tips for a longer show (15 minutes or more) when using music and also being able to use the preview from the current slide option? Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestions. I think I'll try showing the last slide twice with no transition and see if that works. It seems like the easiest thing to do and I'm a little pressed for time. I've been using PTE for several years and have always stopped and started new music on individual slides. But more and more folks are having sound problems when playing my slideshows so I thought I'd try the synchronization for this one and see if that helped. Thanks again!

I'm trying to time a slideshow and am just not understanding how to use the music synchronization feature. Right now I have it set in project options to play five songs and each slide is showing for about 6 seconds. I would like to be able to have the last slide play for 8 seconds but can't get it to work. Thanks for any help.