PTE 101 Tutorial

[JRR]

I think anyone starting on PTE, or many of us who have been working with PTE for a long time, should all shuffle over to BeechBrook Cottage and download Al's PTE Tutorial 101.

I wish I had it when I started with PTE.

As great as it is, the even greater thing is the fact that Al is making it freely available to any and all. The work done on this show, and his very useful PTE ADJUSTOR utility represesent a very large investment of time and effort on Al's part.

By the way, this is not a paid commercial by me for Al's show. He does not know I am posting this. (he will now of course)

[alrobin]

Thanks, Jim. You're a good salesman!

The beauty of it all is, I enjoyed every minute of it! Nice to have hobbies like this, when retired, to make the days go by so happily!

Anyway, I am happy to help out any way I can to make this great program, PTE, even more successful, as in the end I will be the beneficiary, along with everyone else.

One drawback in adding to the success of PTE, though - the more features Igor adds to it, the more I will have to go back in and modify the tutorial.

[Phill]

Thanks JRR gone to beechbrook to download tutorial Then i might learn a lot more insted of asking simple questions

cheers and thanks to alrobin it looks as thourg it takes a long time to download, but it gives me time to type this thats how slow i am

[LumenLux]

Here, here, - an enthusiastic congratulations and thanks to Al.

YOU, have done a great service with this one. The talk from many has become a reality from you. I have only viewed a portion so far. Already I see it has great info for beginners and experienced users alike. From what I have seen/heard so far, this appears a must for everyone.

I admire your ability to keep a project like this so organized both in content and presentation.

Thank you.

[Gérard de Lux]

I've just fnished watching (and listening to) the demo/tutorial made by Al and I'm very impressed by the great job he's done. Very impressive, and useful too

Thank you !

[Guest guru]

A really wondeful work, Al! All of us must be grateful to you for such a tutorial so complete, detailed and well organized. At last we have a true tutorial of PTE, updated and very clear, that will be a great help not only to newbies but also to most "older" users (like me...), who sometimes forget some details of this superb software.

I am sure Igor and all WnSoft team agree with my enthusiastic appreciation of your great work.

Thank you very much, Al.

[alrobin]

Thanks, guys, you're making me blush!

I'm glad you find it useful, and I hope that newcomers to PTE will be able to learn from it and that it will help them shorten the "learning-curve". It will be a bonus if it works as a sort of reference for others, including myself, to brush up on different features.

Bob: re the organization, I wasn't so organized while I was getting started in the project, but I sure am now! It has been a real learning experience for me, too.

Thank you all for your kind remarks!

[Rooskidiver]

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.!

[quietstorm]

Al..

My congrads to a well documented tutorial!

Now I can get help "locally" instead of waiting for a

"long distance" answer from Guido!

Bart

[ronwil]

Al

I am delighted to be able to mark my 100th Post by adding to the congratulations rightly showered upon you for such an excellent programme.

Best wishes

Ron [uK]

[cici]

Hi Al

congratulations for your tutorial.

I don’t ask you how long it took to you, for sure you don’t know yourself.

But I understand that it needed many and many hours and only love for what you were doing led you to the end of your work.

[nobeefstu]

Al,

Wonderful ... a great piece of work !

Implementing naration into your tutorial greatly enhances the instructional value of this very informative tool ... making it much easier for users to learn.

I suspect now ... you may get requests to support other lanuages

[Igor]

Dear Al,

We're grateful for your great work you've done!

That's so wonderful to see such detailed and full tutorial for PicturesToExe and even created in PicturesToExe! Also I with pleasure watched and listened your advices and descriptions

We'll recommend to our customers (including our Web site) to use your tutorial.

With kindest regards!

[boxig]

AL

A really Great diamond !

I was very very impressed !

Wonderful tutorial for PicturesToExe !

We all members are lucky to have this one.

A MUST to every PTE user.

Now you will have to update it every week...

...or ask Igor not to make new versions so often

Granot

[alrobin]

Thanks, everyone, for your kind comments, and I'm glad you appreciate the effort in making this a useful tutorial.

Now for the bad news! Like every large work, there is always room for improvement. I found that I had left out two important features: using "new transition" to add slides to the timeline (how could I forget that one?? ), and setting the default slide duration time. I know they are obvious, when you look at the appropriate dialogue boxes, but still the tutorial was incomplete.

I have uploaded a revised tutorial, but I see no reason why one would have to download another copy just for these two additions. So, I have also included on my web site a separate copy of the script, with the changes highlighted, so you can use it as a sort of errata sheet for the show until such time as it is worthwhile downloading a new version (i.e. when Igor makes some more improvements to PTE ) You can access it HERE.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but this is probably not the last of the additions or improvements. I will try to keep you informed about them as they come along.

[Truelight]

I appreciate not only the tutorial, but the techniques used to create it. I think Al should post a "the making of Tutorial 101", a glimpse of how the show was put together. I've e-mailed him personally to ask a few questions and I don't think he'll mind if I post that exchange here as it's very insightful --

-- What was the procedure by which you recorded the narration track?

I have quite an elaborate sound setup in my basement "playpen". I have a professional mixer to which I input TV, stereo HI Fi, CD player, two of my pc's, a MIDI sound module, and a microphone. There is also a line from the mixer back into my desktop pc. So, for the narration, I simply turn on the mic input, and the output to the pc, where I use Adobe's "Audition" (formerly "Cool Edit") to pick up the sound and record it in digital ".wav" format.

Each sound clip (for each slide) is a separate wave file. In Audition I adjust (normalize) the loudness (amplitude) of each file to 0 db, run the routine to eliminate ambient noise, and then save it as monaural mp3 file (set at a sample rate of 22050 hz and a bit rate of 24 kbps).

-- Is this one large track (.mp3? .wav?) to which the slides are synchronized or is it lots of small files, added as sounds to individual slides?

No, it is 143 individual mp3 files. I didn't use any synchronization, as I wanted the user to have freedom to move around on an iteractive basis.

The narration is added to the appropriate slides using the "Sound" line in the main window, under the slide list.

-- The menu is interesting in that it runs as an open to the show, but also is interactive, allowing one to jump ahead to any portion of the show while it is running. How is this achieved?

The menu ("directory") is created using "button objects" placed over the slides. They can be programmed to jump to specific slides, go back forward, etc. It is tricky using buttons due to the scaling problem in PTE, so I elected to set it up in "windowed mode" to partially get around this problem. It is still a problem if the tutorial is viewed in screen resolutions less than 800 x 600.

The intro uses around 7 or 8 different slides, over which all the "object" control buttons have been copied. Then, I used the "properties" menu for different buttons to change the appearance of the appropriate button for the specific topics being introduced by each slide.

Thanks again for your email - glad you liked the show. It helps illustrate the great versatility of PTE for all kinds of different applications.

--Al

--------------------

Al's show is not only helpful as a tutorial to PTE, it demonstrates the potential of the program for making --narrated-- shows, something I've seen only used rarely so far. The photo slideshows with music are pretty and we've all done them, but sometimes it's time to roll up one's sleeves and make a program that can be used for teaching, training, and demonstration. Al's program shows how that can be done. Kudos again Al for showing the potential of PTE!

-- Rick

[jeasco]

May I add my appreciation to you Al, for a superb job well done, and to you Truelight for sharing with us the questions you posed and the replies from Al that we all wanted to know.

As you might be aware I am one of the newcomers to PTE and I am grateful for all the help and insight generously provided by you knowledgeable contributors.

Thanks a million

John

[alrobin]

John & Rick,

You are most welcome!

And, thanks for the kind comments! Nice to hear the show will be useful.

Rick, I realized in glancing over your note that I left out one step in the narration clean-up process - after I "eliminate" the noise, I put the sound clips through a graphic equalizer filter (see Oleg's excellent description in his latest tutorial on Beechbrook for details).

In the case of my own voice, however, I tone down the high frequencies instead of emphasizing them. While I understand the process, I'm still fairly inexperienced at this, however, and experiment with the settings until I get something that sounds better. Nearly everything is an improvement!

[boxig]

Hey, what is going on here ?

I wrote my full impression and appreciation for this wonderful work few days ago ... and it disappeared (????) from the topic.

Wrote something about this being a real diamond and a MUST for all users.

Who erase my reply ?

Or maybe I wrote it by mistake in another topic ?

Al, may I a small suggestion that can help people with a bit of hearing problems like me ? - I saw the Doc but can you add a simple TXT file to each slide so we can open it if we want to read what you are saying ?

Thank you for your marvelous work

Granot

[alrobin]

................I saw the Doc but can you add a simple TXT file to each slide so we can open it if we want to read what you are saying ?

Thanks, Granot! And your previous note is still there - right above my second-last post. Maybe you need to do a "refresh"?

Re updating it every week, it will be worth it if Igor gives us a new feature every week!

Not sure I follow your request for text. Can you not follow along in the "doc" file? Do you mean adding the text in "Comments", or as a text "Object", or do you have a special utility to attach text files?

[boxig]

Al,

What I mean is a simple txt file to be opened by a button using "run external file" on each slide to open its relative txt. Or you can use my "Mini window utility" which is only 200 x 100 and has a text with scroll so you can put all your text in one file and user can open it or close it. If you need any modification to fit your needs better, let me know.

Granot

[alrobin]

Thanks, Granot.

I like the idea of an option where one could select text if he or she wanted it. But it is still quite a bit of work, and I am moving on to other projects at the moment.

Even better would be an option which one could select at the beginning of the show, and then whenever a new slide came up, a text frame would pop-up, too. (Never thought I would ever ask for "pop-ups"!!!) That would be less work than going back and modifying every slide where there is narration.

Let me think about it.

[boxig]

Al,

The simple way is to write all the text to the Help so user can click F1 and get in writing what you are saying. Just have to add the slides numbers before any text.

Granot

[alrobin]

Thanks, Granot.

Good idea!

Now if there was a "help" key for each slide separately ...........

[snapshots photo]

As a new member of PTE users, who had much difficulty trying to "figure it out myself" in the beginning... think this tutorial should be a must "see" when you download the program.

It would relieve all the advanced users of answering silly beginner questions! I wish I had seen it first!

I've now downloaded it and will keep it on my desktop for future reference!

Thanks Al!!

Terri Shaver