Commentary

[John Puzey]

I have version 4.5 of Pictures to Exe. How do I put music and commentary to play together in a Pictures to Exe slide show?

I have tried using Cool Edit but the Cool Edit files are not accepted by Pictures to Exe.

John Puzey

[LumenLux]

Hi John, welcome to this forum. You must have a real "in" with Igor - if you indeed are using version 4.5. The rest of us are just very greatful to have received now version 4.30.

As for cool edit, you likely need simply to "save as" your sound work as an .mp3 file. Then you can easily enjoy the fruits of your labor.

[dagrace]

Welcome to the forum, John.

Point of clarification. 4.3 was just released, so you probably have 4.2 or 4.3.

I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that PTE will play a sound file or a series of sound files. Most of the advice on this forum is to make one sound file if you are putting several songs together, for example. In your case, you will want to have the music track and the commentary overdubbed on it.

Again, there are many ways to accomplish this, but many of the folks on this forum are okeased with Audacity, which is free. You mix the tracks in that and save it off to a single file, then reference it in the PTE show.

I'm not sure of the entire list of file types that PTE will recognize, but I'm sure it will recognize .mp3, .mid, .wav, and others. I'm surprised that Cool Edit cant' save in one of those formats. I suspect that there might be some other snag, because, while I don't own it, I know Cool Edit is a substantial program.

Give these suggestions a try and if you're still stuck, don't hesitate to post again!

[dagrace]

Oops! Looks like Lumenlux was a bit less long-winded than I. He posted while I was typing.

[alrobin]

John,

Welcome to the Forum!

Please tell us a little more about your music files (type, how many used in your show, synch or non-synch mode, applied in "Project Options" or "Customize slide" or via the "Sound" line on the main screen, etc.) and if you are synching, a little about the size of image files, how close togther, etc. Watch also for overlapping transitions. Mp3 files created in my copy of Cool Edit work fine in PTE.

[Alan Lyons]

Hi John,

Welcome aboard, as some have already said, the best way is to make one sound file for the show. MP3 flies are small when compered to wav. ect.

Just a little bit of techinal now, when you mix a voice over with music you need to do a few things to seperate the voice from the music.

1. All parts should be recorded peaking at around +3db.

This prevents hiss ect. from getting onto the recording

2. In mix down the musick should be lowered to peak 20db below the voice

peak.

It may sound a bit low but through the speekers it will be ok.

3. Adjust the voice towards trebble and the music towards bass.

This will help with the seperation and make for a cleaner sound.

4. Never use headphones no matter how good to check the sound mix.

Play back will be through speekers into a room so check this way too.

Sound is like photography, you need to expose right, adjust the focus and have good composition, and perhaps bt the time we are all 80, wewill still be learning

Best of luck

Alan

[John Puzey]

My thanks to all who replied. It is Version 4.3 that I have; not 4.5 as I said at first.

I have now found out how to get the two tracks I created in Cool Edit 2000 into Pictures to Exe.

I had to create them in the four track mode of Cool Edit but could not convert to a wav file or an mp3 file. "Save as---" just changed the name. I have now found that if I select both tracks and "Mix Down" I can convert to wav or to mp3 and Pictures to Exe will accept them..

I will now concentrate on finer adjustment of the levels etc.

Many thanks again to all.

John

[JohnFeg]

When creating slideshows in PTE I'm using the following procedure for background music and dialogue:

a) Create individual dialogue tracks in Cool Edit Pro. These later to be "hooked" onto designated slides.

Create a music background track.

c) Assemble (a) & ( in Cool Edit multitrack mode, in separate tracks ,but, withe the individual dialogue tracks in the position, relative to time and the music track, that they will occupy in the finished slideshow.

Listen to all tracks.

If I need to make a local amplification reduction, in the music track, in order that the dialogue is not swamped; the best method I've come up with is:

i) Select that section of the music track to be reduced, make a 2Db cut, expand the selection 0.5 seconds each way, then a futher 2Db cut. Repeat until the levels are what I want.

This does achieve a nice fade in and out, but it's mighty tedious.

Grateful to hear from anyone who has a more professional system.

Regards

John

[JRR]

This does achieve a nice fade in and out, but it's mighty tedious.

John:

I agree it is tedious, but short of having a sound editor built into PTE (which has been discussed several times before) I don't see anyway around it.

There are AV softwares available that will allow many sound tracks within the software, but I prefer PTE over them for many reasons. So tedious yes, but I get the quality I want in PTE.

It will be nicer too when the sound bites attached to individual slides can be heard while previewing in the TIMELINE. Igor has that one on his to do list, I think it might even be in ver 5.0 but not sure and I am not pushing for it either if it is not