Mary & Jeff's Russian Cruise

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Preamble. If you just want the mechanics, skip to the end.

Mary & Jeff are a couple living in our retirement block, he is 96 she is 94 & in the early stages of alzheimers. They have both attended my AV evenings, after Wednedays show I mentioned to the audience we had enough material to do a Remembrance day show, a Christmas show & hopefully after our holiday week after next, a Spring show. Jeff approached me saying he had a few DVD's produced in the early 90's by a friend, do I think they may be of any use. So I took the Russian Cruise disc & had a quick look. Firstly it was 58 minutes long, the picture quality ropey to say the least. However never looking a gift horse in the mouth, it gave me the bones to work with, particularly the voice over, which had no musical backing. So I split the DVD into 5 separate clips using PTE's video editor, stripped off the VO using Audacity, then scoured the internet for suitable video & still pics. Out of the original DVD I used 3 stills, the rest are from the internet, some are distictly dodgy, but better than the originals. So that is basically how I came to produce "Mary & Jeff's Russian Cruise Part 1, which is concentrated in St Petersburg.

Mechanics

Mediafire 58MB download, 50 slides, 2 video clips, 12m 41s run time, PTE V7.07, Audacity 2.0.2. Keyboard enabled, slide size fixed at 1920x1080, 5 music tracks & 1 VO.

Yachtsman1.

link removed by author, PM me if you want the link.

[David Porter]

Eric, that was just first class! Not sure how much of the original you used and how much input there was from you but it does not matter. I thoroughly enjoyed it - but you are not saying we have to wait another year for part two are you?

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Mick

Maybe you didn't read the preamble?. I used 3 images & the voice over from the original, the view from the interior of the bus with Jeff on the right, the fancy dessert & the twin beds, the rest were mainly too small & wouldn't stretch, luckily I was able to decipher where the images were from & got most of the replacements from Flickr.. The reason for the time scale is that it won't be shown until our last spring show 2013. The next show after that will be autumn 2013, thin curtains in the communal lounge, so it needs to be darkish. I will however be compiling the shows so may post them as & when I complete them, just something to keep my hand in when our pictures are sparse.

Glad you liked it.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1.

PS Had a quick look at the 2nd section of the original DVD & it's mainly artifacts & paintings from the Hermitage museum. Listening to the VO, the hermitage contains an astronomical amount of exhibits, that would take 11 years to see them all at 1 minute per item.

[David Porter]

Hi Eric,

Your right, I did not read the last sentence in your preamble, just wanted to get on and see the show. The fact that I am the only one to respond to your excellent show points up the fact that this forum is not for people who make shows but for people interested in software and computers. I am looking around for an active Slideshow or A/V forum where constructive comments can help improvement but have not found one yet. I may be faced with joining a camera club with an active A/V section but then comments once a month is not ideal. Any ideas.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Mick

I don't post shows on here for the comments I get, if I want comments I ask for them. I to thought the Russian Cruise was someting a bit different, particularly as the software comes from Russia, however the current download count from Mediafire tops 40 so somebody else has seen it. I think at the moment I'm in the naughty corner complaining about "bugs" I've found with the current "stable" version 7.07, but that is just my impression as answers to requests for help are at a minimum. The main comments I get is "Download 7.5" but I can't see the point if it won't do what I expect, such as create a menu that will accept exe files from any past PTE versions, which in my eyes is a basic necessity. I use the software to create shows, I don't have the time to play about with beta versions of new issue's. Rant over.

I looked for an AV group when we moved to Southport, found one that had died the death, my enquiries persuaded the leader to resurect it, but that has fizzled out again. I miss going to the Middlesborough AV group, even if it was a drag getting there. The only other AV groups I know of on-line are the Foriegn ones & BB's, but I never go there for obvious reasons. I am currently in a Sailing forum which combines all the UK boating magazines & gets around 100 posts a day, so it's a bit difficult to keep up with & wouldn't interest you. I currently use a reasonably local camera club forum which was supposedly going to start an AV section, that was 9 months ago, still no signs of it. Why not start your own???

Keep taking the tablets so to speak.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1