Creating and Saving a Show

[dcjohan]

I'm a total newby to PTE and have been trying to create a slide show for the past week with some difficulty. Hopefully someone can explain what I'm doing wrong. For the past several days I have been trying to alter the timing and placement of the slides to sync with the music but until yesterday I have been unsuccesful. What I found out yesterday is that, at least on 3 boxes in which I've installed ver 4.43, two win2k and one xp, after I've made ANY change, I have to, in order, save the file using save as, exit the program completely, and then restart the program. Doing anything else results in no changes being saved. I find this to be very frustrating and am wondering why this is.

And another frustration. After compiling the show on my Win2K box, I tried playing it from both the box and off a CD onto which I had copied it. Ran smoothly to completion just as advertised. I took it into work today and ran it on three different boxes, one 2K and two XP. On both XP boxes the program was very difficult to start, but when it finally happened, by having to shut down EVERYTHING running on them, the program played to completion but there were several instances where slide "y" would start to load, then jump backwards to slide "x", the after re-showing it jump back to slide "y", show it briefly, and then move forward again. This was random and happened 4-5 times during the show. However, the last slide and music synced properly by the end. On the Win2K box the music ran to completion and was finished by roughly slide 150 of 228. Slides kept dissolving after that but not to any music. I find this all very interesting although XP misbehaving is no surprise, but the Win2K is a bit unusual.

I've tried running the exe file on both my son's and wife's win2k boxes and it (the compiled program) runs just fine on both. Now my laptop has XP on it and it also runs the program without any "jitters", unlike the boxes at work, but the music ends 80% of the way through the show. So we have 4 boxes that play it correctly, and 4, two each with jitters or shortened music play, that don't. Three of which are windows XP and one 2K. Sadly I don't see any specific trend here and I wish I could.

I'd sure appreciate any and all thoughts on these two issues. The Christmas party for which I'm trying to make this show will be on the 17th. I'm feeling a wee bit of pressure.

many thanks,

dave

[Ken Cox]

dave

welcome to the forum

in some instances it is best to try running it from the hard drive not from the cd

and for a newbie try running a straight synchronize show rather than a customized sync show

saveas and create as under different names when making major changes especially when syncing

ken

[dcjohan]

dave

welcome to the forum

in some instances it is best to try running it from the hard drive not from the cd

and for a newbie try running a straight synchronize show rather than a customized sync show

saveas and create as under different names when making major changes especially when syncing

ken

Hi Ken -

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think that address the problem. Running from a CD or from the HD makes no difference. If I run the script off my 2K box on which I created it it runs just fine in any mode be it compiled from the HD or copied to a CD, using either play or preview from the time line, or preview from the bottom bar of the PTE developement screen. ALL those approach work equally well with slide and music completing together.

Now, copy the folder holding all this stuff (slides, .pte script, and .exe) to a different machine. Now run the script, the executable, preview from the bottom bar, or play from the time line and the music ends prior to the slides completing by a considerable amount. O.K. you say, but that could be due to different timings between boxes. True, but select preview from the time line and it runs correctly. Better yet, edit the script in any way on the new box (in this case my laptop running XP (yuck) ) and replay. Timing still way off. Better yet, compile on the new box using the modified script and the same thing occurs, timing all messed up. In all this the ONLY thing I'm changing is versions of the OS and of course the proc and RAM speed on the different boxes, but compling on each box should take this into consideration and render a usable exe at least for the box on which it is compiled. Oh yes, I am, and have all along, been using the automatic sync option, that is, telling the program to divide the time evenly between the slides.

This is not only frustrating and unproductive, but I can't understand how a compiled program can be running the music and slide transition/dissolve at different rates. This would be akin to a stero sound recording playing the two channels at different rates, something I don't believe is possible, yet this is, in effect, exactly what PTE is doing, at least in my use of it.

Any other thoughts/ideas greatly appreciated.

dave

[alrobin]

Dave,

Welcome to the Forum!

As I mentioned to you in my email, I tested your show by substituting music and image files and everything seemed to be in order, and ran fine on my XP machine. Also, your pte file seemed to be OK too (the transitions were very evenly spaced on the timeline and of consistent length, with no conflicts due to not having enough space between them.

So, either it is your music file which is not good, or there is some other wierd bug showing up.

Just out of curiosity, do you have the same experience if you first create the exe file in Win XP and export it to your Win2000 pc? Also, have you tried to replace the music with another selection? What sound cards are you using in your machines?

If none of this helps, Igor may have to have a look at your files to see if he can spot anything amiss.

[dcjohan]

Dave,

Welcome to the Forum!

As I mentioned to you in my email, I tested your show by substituting music and image files and everything seemed to be in order, and ran fine on my XP machine. Also, your pte file seemed to be OK too (the transitions were very evenly spaced on the timeline and of consistent length, with no conflicts due to not having enough space between them.

So, either it is your music file which is not good, or there is some other wierd bug showing up.

Just out of curiosity, do you have the same experience if you first create the exe file in Win XP and export it to your Win2000 pc? Also, have you tried to replace the music with another selection? What sound cards are you using in your machines?

If none of this helps, Igor may have to have a look at your files to see if he can spot anything amiss.

Al -

If I create the file on the XP machine I have the problem on the XP machine to start with, so I haven't tried to run it on the 2K machines. I can try that but since it's not functioning properly on the XP machine I would doubt it would run properly on the 2K boxes but I'll try it out.

No, I haven't tried to use other audio files.

Sound cards are a Soundblaster Platinum Live card in the 2K box and on-board sound in the compaq Presario 1200 laptop running XP. Not certain about the Compaq but the hardware manager shows Via AC'97 under the sound section of hardware manager.

The strangeness of all this is that the file plays accurately on most 2K boxes and some XP boxes, but not all of of either kind. It just doesn't make sense. I'll keep digg'n.

dave

[dcjohan]

Dave,

Welcome to the Forum!

As I mentioned to you in my email, I tested your show by substituting music and image files and everything seemed to be in order, and ran fine on my XP machine. Also, your pte file seemed to be OK too (the transitions were very evenly spaced on the timeline and of consistent length, with no conflicts due to not having enough space between them.

So, either it is your music file which is not good, or there is some other wierd bug showing up.

Just out of curiosity, do you have the same experience if you first create the exe file in Win XP and export it to your Win2000 pc? Also, have you tried to replace the music with another selection? What sound cards are you using in your machines?

If none of this helps, Igor may have to have a look at your files to see if he can spot anything amiss.

Hi Al-

O.K., I took and recompiled the show on the XP laptop and ran it again. Once again the music ended long before the last slide was reached, about 3/4 of the way in fact. Then I copied it to a portable USB drive and connected it to my 2K box. It ran just fine, that is, compiled on the XP laptop and ran perfectly on the 2K box. Then, shortly after that, a camera club buddy came by with his new Dell laptop running XP and we loaded it onto his HD and tried to run it; it again ran just fine. That should give the sound file a clean bill of health.

I'm beginning to think that the problem is OS or computer specific. In any event, I have a version compiled on both 2K and XP and each one has shown that it can run as "written", so I think I'm good for the weekend party but now have to do so snooping/tinkering to find out what is happening. Even though I do have these two good copies of an executable, something is very odd and I'm not having all that good a feeling about being able to make a show and have it usable by others.

Any other ideas that come to mind I would welcome; in the meantime, once this party is done (17th) I want to try and figure out exactly what is causing this "weird" behavior. I'll keep posting what I find.

Thanks for all the help.

dave

[alrobin]

O.K., I took and recompiled the show on the XP laptop and ran it again. Once again the music ended long before the last slide was reached, about 3/4 of the way in fact. Then I copied it to a portable USB drive and connected it to my 2K box. It ran just fine, that is, compiled on the XP laptop and ran perfectly on the 2K box. Then, shortly after that, a camera club buddy came by with his new Dell laptop running XP and we loaded it onto his HD and tried to run it; it again ran just fine.

Could be the sound-card / music-file combination on your laptop, and something being incompatible.

At least your Dec 17 deadline is met! It would be interesting to know if you can replicate the problem with another slideshow using different sound and images. Good luck with your detective work.