Commentary out of sync

[Barry Beckham]

Can anyone shed some light on this problem that was put to me, but I can't offer a solution

The synchronisation of an MP3 commentary track on picturesToExe is perfect when played on the PC. However, as soon as the exe file has been written to CD and that CD is replayed on the same computer (and tried another) via the CDROM, the commentary is about 4 seconds out of synch.

This guy sizes his images to 1024 x768 and writes CD's using win on cd, anyone any ideas please?

I thought a slow CDROM may have been the problem, but it is 52 speed and unlikely. I have suggested that the Exe file be written to a CD, then copied back to the PC to see what the result is then. If it runs slow the trouble is likley to be the CD writing software, if not, at least the writing to CD can be illiminated.

I would appreciate any ideas you may have so I can pass it back to him.

BBdigital

[Maureen]

Hi Barry

What size are his images?

Saw someone last week who was talking about a "bug" in PTE

But when I queried it & got him to check, some of his images were over 300kb and these were causing problems.

I always advise keeping images under 200kb - although now processors can cope with under 300kb.

When he resized the larger images all worked fine.

Just a thought.

Love to you both

Maureen

[ronwil]

I have just looked at one of my sequences in PTE and my final images vary between 81 and 320 Kb depending on the complexity of the image. I size at 1024 pixels width and save to *.jpg at compression 8 in Photoshop. The problem which you have posed, Barry, was something which was being experienced by many of us a couple of years ago and I thought all this had been ironed out of the system with improvements in PTE and in Graphics Cards.

One thing which might be looked at is that on the Timeline there is a gap between the fades (shaded portion) and the next change.

Regards

Ron [uK]

[Ed Overstreet]

When your friend says the show plays perfectly on the PC before burning to the CD, did he play the show from within PTE as a Preview or did he Create the show as an EXE file, save it to the hard drive, and then test-running it from the PC before burning to the CD?

I have found that sometimes synchronization will be correct on Preview within PTE but not from an EXE file created and then run stand-alone on the same PC, if some of the image files are too large, as others have mentioned, or if the transition to the second image occurs too early in the music track. To avoid the latter problem, I always begin every show with a black image and begin the transition to the second image (the first "real" photograph or title in the show) at about 5 seconds into the music file, inserting a few seconds of silence at the beginning of that file in a sound editor if necessary to get that second image to come up with the music, if that's what I want. I've found that by keeping my images under 200 KB and by always leaving a bit of "dead space" at the beginning of the show to give the operating system a few seconds to digest the exe file, the synchronization in the stand-alone exe version is identical with the Preview within PTE. If I don't do both these things, there can be a synchronization difference on my PC.

I suspect your friend may have found the difference between a Preview of the project in PTE and the EXE file, and the difference probably has little or nothing to do with the CD-burning process. I have trouble imagining what could cause synchronization differences with an EXE file on a CD as opposed to an EXE file on the hard drive on the PC, in fact I strongly suspect if your friend created the EXE file and tested it on the PC without even burning to a CD he'd likely discover the same problem. Though of course I could well be wrong, there are so many things in Windows computers that can mess you up ...

[Barry Beckham]

Thanks for such a rapid response I will make sure I point the guiy towards this thread. A good point Ed about playing as a preview as I found that at times too, I never thought of that while speaking to him last night.

I assumed he saved the file to a reasonable level, but didn't ask afetr he said he resized them to 1024, I assumed the rest.

I also use a blank slide at the start of my shows, now there is a throw back to the old days and I always add a period of silence to the music, just to allow everything to fire up and settle.

Thanks for the feedback, good as ever.

bbdigital

BTW I think I have a short reply to a readers question in the next issue of DP on how to burn PTE to DVD, that might stumlate a few more sales of PTE and spread the word further

[The Image Suite]

Hi Barry

Did your guy save to CD and use autorun to open the file and play it? If so the PC becomes confused as to which version to open - the one on the CD or the version still retained on hard disk....this will sometimes have a similar effect to the delay he is experiencing.

The Image Suite