adding txt to a slide

[jerome]

Hi All, I have just come on board and im new to this forum. So apologies in advance if i sound like a novice, because i am. I have just purchased the full version of PTX as a friend of mine who is very sick at the moment has asked me to Make a slideshow of some personal photos of theirs so they can show it on DVD at some point. I have around 140 photos which are all around 1.50MB. I would like to add music maybe two or three tracks depending on how long the slide will be and i would like to zoom or pan on a couple of the photos. I want to section the photos into groups of 20 or 30 and i would like to add some Txt (a little story) before each Group of photos. I would be grateful of any help or assistance on this my first attempt at a slide show. Time is of the essence here, so any help would be gratefully appreciated.

Jerome.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jerome,

What you want to do is pretty straight-forward, but there may be a little learning curve so let's break it down into basic blocks.

First just put all your slides into the slide list and they will automatically be assigned a display time of about 5 seconds. This can be changed later either individually, or as a group.

Next create the number of blank jpg's in a solid color or gradient to use as text slides between the groups of slides. On these you will write the text (story) before each group of photos. You can either create these in PTE or in your favorite image editor such as Photoshop, Elements or even the very excellent freeware PixBuilder which you can download from the wnsoft.com forum.

Add these blank slides at the appropriate position. You can drag and drop them where your wish.

Next decide on approximately how long you want each slide to be viewed. Multiply this by the number of slides including the spacer slides for text and you will have approximately the number of minutes of background music you will want.

Select the music and add via the Project Options Music Tab. Just add them, don't create new tracks. Put them in the order you want them to play.

Next go to the Project Options Main Tab and click on Synchronize Slides and Music and Auto Spread Slides Along Music. Next click on the Timeline Tab at the bottom right of your screen.

Next click on Timed Points and then click on Arrange All Points.

At this time you will have a slideshow with random transitions which you can either change universally or individually. Personally, I think for a first slideshow I would use all Fades and let PTE put the time in. These things you can always fine tune later.

To get out of the Timeline, click on the Slides Tab.

Now you can go to Objects And Animations and use the Navigation Arrows in the top right corner to go to your blank slides and enter Text. You have a wide choice of fonts, sizes and such and all text will be automatically rasterized so that on any system whether or not that system has the font you chose, the correct font will appear because the "text" will automatically be changed to a graphical representation.

Text is treated like any other object. You can make it larger or smaller either by changing font size or by simply dragging the surrounding text box to fit and place it. It can be made to scroll if there is too much to fit the space. I'll provide a link to tutorials a bit later.

Once you have the text as you want it. The final step is to decide whether or not you want navigation controls. Since you indicated that you will probably put this on a DVD, you may want to omit navigation controls because once you create a DVD there is no "computer brain" to allow the navigation controls used in executable slideshows.

The tutorials can help you easily learn to zoom, pan, etc.,

Here's a link:

http://www.picturest...uously-updated/ (these are AVI video tutorials) If you don't already have it, you may want to download the freeware Kantaris Media Player. Kantaris has all the necessary codecs to play the tutorials. You can download it here:

http://www.winportal...0Media%20Player

I suggest you start with PZR (Pan Zoom Rotate) and this will probably be enough to get you through this first slideshow.

Don't be afraid to ask for help if you get lost somewhere - there is always someone on the forum to help.

Another suggestion is for you to first create a little show with about four slides so you can get used to all the features before you embark on the big project. I think this will help you greatly and it will make the large show "much" easier once you are comfortable.

Best regards,

Lin

[jerome]

Thank you Very, Very Much Lin, I will try everything you have suggested and see how i get on. Just one question, When i make a blank jpeg image should it be the same dimensions/size as the rest of the photos? or does this matter.

Thanks Again, this means so much to my Friend and I.

[jerome]

And one more question! Do i need to change my aspect ratio which is currently set to 4:3 for DVD viewing?

[Lin Evans]

Yes, the aspect ratio is fine and the blanks should be the same size as the other photos. If you make the blanks with Photoshop, etc., you don't need to save them at a low compression because they are only backgrounds for the text. Just save them at about compression level 4 to save storage space.

Once you get the show completed, then creating a DVD will lower the quality of the display a good deal because NTSC resolution is much lower than your computer screen resolution. If you can give some more details about your project and physical proximity to where the show will be seen, there are some other ways of showing your slideshow depending on the type of display, television, etc., which will be used. For example, it's possible to make a high resolution show, put it on a USB storage card and display directly on some modern flat screen LCD televisions which have provisions for such. It's also possible if the show is to be seen on a computer, to just send a PC or Native MacIntosh executable format show. More details will help us give you better suggestions.

Best regards,

Lin

And one more question! Do i need to change my aspect ratio which is currently set to 4:3 for DVD viewing?

[jerome]

Thanks for that Lin.

My friend would like to give a few copy's of the finished slide show to her friends. I'm not sure if they will be viewing it on their TV's or just on their PC. I had just suggested to her that she could put it on DVD as it would be handy for everyone to get a copy and it would be easy to reproduce?

I would hate to loose any quality in the Images. If you can suggest what would work best for PC viewing and TV viewing that would be great. Is it possible to copy the finished slideshow to various storage devices DVD's, CD's etc? So when the show is finished if someone says that they will be watching it on their PC or TV can i copy it to the correct storage device for their chosen viewing device.

[davegee]

Jerome,

Lin has given some great advice but what you are asking about is a big subject with no single answer.

Lin mentioned NTSC so I guess that he might have some inside info about where you are? If you are in the UK substitute PAL for NTSC.

If you are going down the DVD route you are almost certainly going to lose quality COMPARED TO THE EQUIVALENT PTE EXE SHOW.

However you might not think that it is that big a deal.

You have mentioned File size and Aspect Ratio but the other very important parameter is the resolution of your images and your screen resolution of YOUR monitor.

To quote an example:

Let's say that your images are 1024x768 or 1440x1080 (4:3).

These will be reduced to 720x576 (PAL) to make the DVD and then interpolated back up to 1080 high to fit to your TV screen.

Unless you have an intelligent Player /TV you might find that the 4:3 format will be STRETCHED to fit the TV width maintaing the TV height. Setting 4:3 aspect ratio on the TV will then be necessary.

The two BEST options are the MP4 option on a memory key or card (1440x1080 in a 1920x1080 show for WS TV) providing that the TV is suitably equipped with a Media Player, or the PTE EXE file (1600x1200 4:3 to cater for most computer monitors).

Give Lin some figures so that he can address your specific requirements.

DG

[jerome]

Thanks for that Davegee. The res of the images are 250 and the Image size are 4752X3168. My monitors res is 1280x1024. Loosing quality would be a big Deal as its a slide show, with photographs, so if there not right i might as well throw my hat at it!

I have spoken to my friend and she has said the best option would be to have the slide show ready for viewing on a PC or laptop monitor. so if you can advise me on the appropriate way to go about this i would be very happy. Thanks again.

Signed, Novice.

I currently reside in the Irish Republic.

[fh1805]

Jerome,

If a PC monitor is going to be the primary viewing technology then simply build a PTE EXE file of your sequence - forget DVD-Video and all the other Publish options. You can still distribute your EXE file by uploading it to a file hosting service such as MediaFire or DropBox (to name just two) and then sending everybody the URL that those sites will provide.

For the moment, I suggest you stop worrying about the delivery of the sequence and concentrate on getting it built.

regards,

Peter

[davegee]

Jerome,

Your images are 3:2 and YOUR monitor is 5:4. Forget the 250 figure - it is irrelevant.

My suggestion:

Batch resize you images to 1800x1200 at an appropriate quality level. This will provide best quality on monitors up to 1920x1200 and reduce the file size of your show to a manageable level. You CAN use the originals but be prepared for a large file size and the POSSIBILITY of some hesitancy in transitions if your computer (or the viewer's computer) is "not up to it".

In PROJECT OPTIONS set ASPECT RATIO 15:10 (3:2) and Size of slide to 1620x1200. Fixed Size...and Hardware Acceleration are best left ticked.

Navigate to the folder containing your resized images and drag all of them into the Slide Panel and you have the basis of a show.

Click on Preview (bottom left) to see the show from slide one. Click on the icon to the right of Preview to start from a selected slide.

On your 5:4 monitor you will have black bars top and bottom. On a 16:9 or 16:10 monitor the lines will be to the sides. You can't avoid that.

You create the EXE by going to PUBLISH and choose the EXE option.

Come back if you want to refine the show?

DG

Edited: I'm not sure about your 4752X3168 images being 1.5Mb - that seems a low file size for that pixel dimension and might already have been compressed a bit (quality 8-9).

[jerome]

Thanks every one, Peter,Davegee. I will get there sometime. Question... my slide show is 11.22 mins long and i have three songs on it, but the songs finish 1.20mins before the slide show. Now i don't want to add a forth song as three is enough for this slide show, so is there a way that i can shorten one of the songs already on the slide show? Thanks again.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Jerome,

I'm not clear on why shortening a song would help you? It seems that you would either shorten the display time of the slides or have longer songs things would work out better. If you "shorten" a song, then the music will just end more than 1 minute and twenty seconds before the slide show ends?

How long are you displaying each slide ? With the number of slides than you have, it seems like a better solution would be to slightly shorten the display time for each slide.

The easiest way to make the background music and slides end together is to click on the timeline then on the Timed Points tab then choose "Arrange All Points." This will cause your slides to be evenly spaced along the music so that music and slide display ends together.

Best regards,

Lin

[jerome]

Hi Lin, each slide is 6 seconds long and then i have 9 other jpegs with (a story)on each one, these are various lengths to give time to the viewer to read the txt/story. I was thinking of fading one songs into another as a DJ would do.

[Lin Evans]

Are you stopping the sound for the duration of each of the other nine jpgs while the viewer reads the text? If so, you probably should look at my tutorial on inserting a video and fading out slide sound and resuming.

Even though you have no video, if you are trying to stop the sound while the audience views the text slides, you can use the same technique of adding the same song multiple times (there is no resource hit for doing this) then stopping and resuming the sound via the technique described in my tutorial.

You can always stop the sound on a music selection at any given time on the timeline by setting the duration field number for that particular time. You can also fade out sound and even use the waveform for this purpose. It's quite flexible.

Best regards,

Lin

Hi Lin, each slide is 6 seconds long and then i have 9 other jpegs with (a story)on each one, these are various lengths to give time to the viewer to read the txt/story. I was thinking of fading one songs into another as a DJ would do.

[jerome]

Hi Lin, No i wasn't stopping he sound for the text jpegs. I have let the music run. I have the slide show finished so Thanks to everyone for your input and advice. The finished show isn't that Bad for a first timer, but i must say when i copied it to a DVD and played it back on a TV and and a PC the quality wasn't great, the once very sharp images are not so sharp now. A Question Would the quality be any better if i use memory sticks instead of DVD's to give out to friends?

[jerome]

One more Question. When i added the extra jpegs for the Text(story) using Photo Shop, i wanted to add some bullet characters to some of the text but i couldn't find a way of doing this in PS. If i type my story out in word or open office, which makes it much easier then PS to add (bullet characters) Is there a way of adding this document to the slide show? and would it be the same size as my jpegs?

[davegee]

The finished show isn't that Bad for a first timer, but i must say when i copied it to a DVD and played it back on a TV and and a PC the quality wasn't great, the once very sharp images are not so sharp now. A Question Would the quality be any better if i use memory sticks instead of DVD's to give out to friends?

One more Question. When i added the extra jpegs for the Text(story) using Photo Shop, i wanted to add some bullet characters to some of the text but i couldn't find a way of doing this in PS. If i type my story out in word or open office, which makes it much easier then PS to add (bullet characters) Is there a way of adding this document to the slide show? and would it be the same size as my jpegs?

Using memory sticks would improve the quality but perhaps there is more to it than you realise.

You could add both the PTE EXE file and an MPEG4 file to a stick for maximum versatility.

The PTE EXE (at 1920x1080) is playable on a Computer and would have to be played either on the computer's monitor or be connected to the TV (VIA HDMI) to acheive max quality. Playing into the TV via VGA connection would bring you back down in quality (analogue vs digital albeit at a higher resolution).

To play the MPEG4 into the TV via a memory stick the TV must be equipped with a Media Player. That is almost indistinguishable from the EXE via HDMI (at the same resolution).

On the TEXT question - if you want to explore using Microsoft products (and POSSIBLY Open Office) your best option is to use POWERPOINT (or equivalent) which will export as either JPEG or PNG. I would suggest that you need the PNG version for use in PTE. The transparency will allow you to lay the text over your images. Having created the PNGs in POWERPOINT you could refine them in Photoshop using the layer BLENDING OPTIONS.

I haven't tried this in a LONG time but it has worked for me in the past.

DG

[westonphoto]

One more Question. When i added the extra jpegs for the Text(story) using Photo Shop, i wanted to add some bullet characters to some of the text but i couldn't find a way of doing this in PS.

Jerome: You can easily add a bullet point in either Pictures to Exe text or in Photoshop using the extended character sets which are available in many (though by no means all) fount/font families.

Simply hold down the ALT key and enter 0149 then release ALT to get the bullet mark •. The same applies to, for example, a ¼, ½ or ¾ (ALT+0188 / 0189 / 0190 respectively), the Euro sign € (ALT+0128), the degree sign ° (ALT+0176) or the Copyright sign © (ALT+0169). There are also wide-ranging sets of accented characters available (in many languages). Take a look in CHARACTER MAP, a standard feature of every Windows since v3.1, and you'll find just about anything you can think of - and loads you never even imagined. NOT in every fount/font though - that's down to the designer/type foundry.

Already ⅞ of the way to ◘

[ContaxMan]

Hello Phil

good to read you here!

Roger

[jerome]

Thanks again everyone!