Chumba

Interesting! By bespoke music I meant especially written for you! I didn't realise there was a similiarly named website! The work I have been doing so far has been for funky portraits, family sots and also wedding presentations. A couple more quaestions 1) What format would you like the music in? Traditional audio CD or a data Cd, with the tracks already recorded as wav / mp3 etc ready for use? 2) What sort of length would you need the yracks to be? As far as high quality is concerned, I refer to the actual musical content, as opposed to the listening quality due to compression etc. A lot of royalty free music sounds quite "cheap", which is a shame when you are setting such beautifully shot photographs to it. Any further ideas / responses? Mark ps Thanks to those who have already replied. As far as some samples are concerned, I am trying to sort a webpage as we speak. I will post the URL here when it is ready...........

Glad you got it sorted! With the recording level, the meter in your software or mixer should show a couple of db below 0db. Often coloured, you should be seeing lots of green, some yellow/orange, but definitley no red! Good luck - look forward to seeing/hearing the fruits of your labour! Mark

Hi Isabel Do other recorded sounds play back fine through your soundcard? If so, then the "hiss" is being recorded along with your keyboard. Just an idea, but try muting the inputs that you aren't using when recording eg WAVE, MIC IN, CD IN etc. Even though you aren't recording from these at this point, they will still add noise into the recorded signal as the Santa Cruz is a consumer card (to be honest, this is common practice in a studio - you always mute the channels / inputs that you aren't using). Hiss, if it sounds like "tape" hiss, is interference. This could be due to the above, but could also be poor quality leads / connections or the PCI slot in which your soundcard is placed. Is it near your graphics card? This is a killer for clean recordings! HTH Mark

Hi All As you may know, I am a musician and composer. Whilst watching a lot of the slide-shows, I can see that the standard of royalty free music available to you all is very low. I was thinking of putting together a CD or two for use in slideshows, films etc. Just wanted your opinions on a couple of aspects first. 1) What genres of music do you guys need the most? 2) Would you be prepared to pay more for high quality music? 3) Would anyone use bespoke music in their presentations ie specially commissioned for them? I don't know how many of you do this on a pro basis, but it would seem to me that this would raise the profile of your slideshows considerably, as this is the area that usually lets them down the most. I don't mean to be critical of what you have all produced, rather I am just throwing out a couple of ideas to see what the reaction might be Look forward to your responses! Mark

Hi Isabel! What input are you using on the soundcard? Which software did you decide to use in the end? It sounds as though the level from the keyboard LINE OUTS is too high for the input on your soundcard. Two reasons spring to mind; 1) You are accidentally using the microphone input on your soundcard 2) The volume control in your soundcard control panel is set too high Both scenarios will cause the distortion that you hear. What soundcard EXCACTLY is it you are using? Can you tell me the names of the input sockets on the back of the card? This way I should be able to help you further Mark

Hi Isabel The cables you would need would be described as follows; 2 x 1/4 inch mono jack plugs to 1 x 2.5mm stereo mini jack plug. Get it as long as you need, but if really not then be careful not to get really thin cable, as this will result in loss of audio quality. If you can afford gold-plated plugs, so much the better! Then connect the large jack plugs into the Fantom; one in LEFT output, one in the RIGHT output. (use the MAIN outs if there is a choice.) Then plug the mini-jack end into the LINE-IN of your soundcard. As you are only recording the audio, forget programs such as Cubase and Cakewalk. They are MIDI and AUDIO sequencers, and they would be totally unecessary. All you need is a program to record the audio ( a bit like a tape recorder would). So a program like Windows Sound Recorder would do the trick. For more options, a shareware program such as Goldwave is also extremely good. This will be all you need, provided you remain sequencing on the Fantom. By the way, those are standard terms for the audio leads, so any music/electrical shop will know what you are talking about, even if you aren't sure Regards Mark

Isabel I see from your earlier post (thanks Al!) that you have a Roland Fantom. This will sound infinitley better than any soundcard you are likely to install inside your PC! I really would suggest making an audio recording of your arrangements from your keyboard. It is just as Al suggest; 1) LINE OUT (left & right) from your Fantom into LINE IN on your soundcard. This will probably be in the form of a 3.5mm mini stereo jack (the kind you get on headphones for personal stereos). You may already have this lead. 2) Use ANY audio app to record the output. You can even use Sound Recorder that is bundled with Win XP. 3) Use any of the freeware conversion tools to change the audio into the format you would like. It really is that easy! Mark Alrobin, I use Cubase SX 2.0 and various VSTi's for my compositions eg PRo 53, B4, Halion 2 & String Edition etc. I really only use my keyboard (an old SY77) as a controller. I also have a Roland RD150 digital piano for, surprisingly, playing the piano! This all runs through a Mackie 1604vlz mixer into my Terratec EWX 24/96 soundcard. I monitor using a pair of Tannoy Reveal Active monitors. I write all sorts, really, although I am happiest writing electronica. I enjoy writing for piano, and string arranging aswell. At the mo I am working on several presentation PTEs for a pro photographer, incorporating menu systems etc. They look (and sound) good, even if I do say so myself! What about you? Mark ps take this off list if necessary

Hi Isabel! What keyboard are you using? I assume it is of reasonable quality, bearing in mind it has a floppy drive! What is the problem with recording the output (audio) from the keyboard into the computer? Surely space doesn't matter - you may just need longer leads......... This way you can record it as a wav file, and use any of the many wav to mp3 converters to keep the file size down. Alternatively, if your keyboard has a General MIDI soundset, then providing you put program changes at the beginning of each track in the keyboard sequencer, even Win XP will interpret these correclty and use the in-built software synth in GM mode to select the correct sounds. Let me know if I can be of more help! (musician by trade, know a little about this stuff) Mark

Hi Sandee! Yes, you will have to redo the show, but it is well worth it! What you describe as far as overlapping may be because your effect transitions are too long. These show up in the timeline as a horizontal bar sticking out the right hand side of a transition point. If this bar runs into the next transition point, then that is why you get your problems. Using the timeline will increase consistency, and your music will not run short/long or whatever. However, on a slower machine, you may notice it playing catch-up - it will start and finish in exactly he right place, but some transitions may speed up beacause it took the pc longer to decompress the image etc. Most (if not all) of the inconsistency is a function of the processor in the pc. I find myself that playing from CD makes very little difference to the speed - after all, we are dealing with tiny file sizes, so the speed of the drive is not an issue here. Just my 2p - HTH Mark

I would scan at the highest resolution you can on your Epson! This way you only ever need to scan the original once. Then you can convert it to as many smaller / lo-res formats as you like, same in the knowledge that you started with the best possible image. This also gives the end user the options on enlarging their original without any extra work for you. Just my two-pence worth Mark

thanks for the reply! Have just found the timeline - does this work differently to setting up individual times for slides? I assumed the program would "count" the same way whether using individual timings or the timeline? Does the timeline fix the slide in time, whereas the other way the timings are relative to the previous slide eg first one opens late, all following slides will be at least that late in opening? Any views on this would be helpful - I dont want to waste time restructuring the slideshow to find it does exactly the same thing again! Thanks Mark

Hello everybody! I am new to the forum - what a revelation! much good info to be had here. So maybe you can help with a prob I am having..... I am a composer, and I was asked to write some music to accompany a pte project. The pte project uses many fast slides to fake animation etc. The problem I have is that if I compose a piece on my setup, timed to perfection to hit certain slides, when this is played on other sytems there can be a difference of up to 5 secs, behind or in front! I have optimised picture sizes - 682x512, jpegs well squashed!, and this lessens the problem, but it is by no means perfect. Is there a way around this? Or am I demanding too much of this program? I want to be able to use the menu sytems and navigation bar aswell. HELP!! Look forward to the replies Mark