absolutely frustrated

[photographer2]

K,

I have P2E for a while now. I have been able to create a couple slide shows. I am annoyed that I can't have a moment of silence with the first or second slide before the music starts.

I am especially ready to throw my monitor out the window trying to find a way to upload a show to my site!

Yes, yes, yes, I have read all of the threads pertaining to doing it. I even downloaded that God Forsaken Riva piece of *&(*)(*)(*&)#@!

There is no help on that site and the forums suck. I lost a whold day of work trying to create a Flash Movie to put up on my site and still can't figure it out. Click on "Tutorials" there and you get a "coming soon". Everything there is coming soon. With my luck it'll be a day after my free trial is over.

Then my final Rant. I have NERO burning Rom. When I try to burn an AVI file to at least make a DVD for my clients, it can't find it. When I press Video, it says it has made my AVI file, but when I go to my desktop to find it, it's not there!!!!!

For a program that is supposed to be so great, I am completely at my wits end. I am not computer illiterate by any stretch. But this is ridiculous.

There is also a thread in here somewhere which almost seemed to help regarding prepping an AVI file for Riva. But I came to a loss when I was supposed to click on Microsoft MPEG4 or something of that sort. Someone raised that question as well, but the thread stopped.

Can someone anyone walk me through any kind of a step? I hate to ask for help with RIVA, but there is no support or help there.

I am really not a b*tch, but I am totally frustrated.

If you made it through, thanks for reading.

~TR

[Ronniebootwest]

Helo Photographer2, You really do sound frustrated but please don't take out your frustration on PTE - it really is an excellent program when you take the time to learn it. This forum is full of people who are only to willing to help you - all you need do is ask! (without all the moans)

Ron

[Ken Cox]

well TR

you are really upset but it you repost to the proper section "VIDEO" you may have better luck

and for the spot where we all started

see

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1408

when the program asks you where to save the avi direct it to the folder where you have all the files for the show

you have to import the tmp avi into nero

i personally have made many shows/dvd's with nero vision express with no problem,but have never tried nero burning rom route

now if you want to make a permanent avi see

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3992

you can also use tmpenc and make a permanent mpeg 2 that will have no menu etc but will play in most dvd/tv set ups

see

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....st=entry25577

ken

[jevans]

Well TR, I am not sure that I fully understand your problem, but here goes for an attempt at a reply.

Firstly PTE works very well if used properly so there is no problem with the program. Converting a slide show to video is a little more difficult but you can do it if you follow the rules. Regarding silence at the beginning of your show, you need a sound editor such as Adobe Audition or the free one Audacity. I use Audition and I make my commentary (or music) for the first slide and then use the command "generate silence" to add some silence at the beginning. I don't think you can do this in Audacity, but you can start recording and wait a short time to produce silence and then start the voice or music signal.

To produce video, there are many threads on the video forum which will help you. But just a short explanation may help. Click on the "video" button in PTE. Produce a temporary AVI file. Import this file into a DVD authoring program such as Ulead Movie Factory (the recommended one) or Nero Vision Express. Create your menus and then burn to your DVD. If you have trouble, just email me and I will try to give you more detailed instructions.

Jeff

[lathompson]

I would suggest creating a folder for special sound bites. I have pre-recorded the following SILENT TRACKS: 03 sec, 06 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec and 20 seconds. Add a editable title slide for generic titles to be created and create a BLACK SLIDE to place at the beginning and end of your show. That gives you a clean in/out situation for your music to begin/end smoothly. You can always double up on any of these setups.

If Audacity doesn't allow recording silence, there are several $50-70 audio editors out there that will.

Wish I could help you on that flash stuff. I'm screwing around with it too and it truely is totally exausting. I don't think I have the patience for it. OTOH, this program is super easy. And it doesn't take long to get good at it.

Good Luck!

Larry

[bharkins]

In Audacity, silence can be placed for any number of seconds in any part of an audio track. As I indicated in a prior message, creating an "all silent" track allows the use of the timeline to start organizing the images in time before setting up actual music.

Incidentally, I have not seen much commentary about setting up multible audio tracks in Audacity. It's a bit tricky to add another sound to the second (or n track) but it is possible. Then with the horizontal icon cursor you can slide the tracks into any position. When ready to save, click "Export as MP3" and you will get a window message stating the all the tracks will be mixed down to a single MP3 file - just what you need for PTE. Be sure to save the .aup project so you can get back to the original for adjustment as needed (and it will inevitably be needed!)

Bill

[photographer2]

I'm sorry.

I did read all of those links. Like I said, I still can't burn a DVD on my NERO Express (On Nero burning rom)

It's like the file named blahblahblah_vid just doesn't exist.

when the program asks you where to save the avi direct it to the folder where you have all the files for the show

you have to import the tmp avi into nero

This here is where my problem is. I don't think I am understanding these file formats. .exe is what? AVI? I'm asuming AVI is the video. But I don't understand about this "folder where have all the files for the show". Do you mean my photographs? My music is in one spot, my photos are in another folder. I thought my document.exe had everything in it, no?

And while I agree it is easy to make a slideshow as an exe, it is all useless to me if I can't make it a video to see on my clients televisions and a flash for my website. Am I missing something? What do you use the .exe show for? You only view the shows on your own computer?

I admit, I must be missing something. Something big. But I have been reading through these forums and still can't get this thing going. So what am I missing?

[Lin Evans]

I'm sorry.

I did read all of those links. Like I said, I still can't burn a DVD on my NERO Express (On Nero burning rom)

It's like the file named blahblahblah_vid just doesn't exist.

This here is where my problem is. I don't think I am understanding these file formats. .exe is what? AVI? I'm asuming AVI is the video. But I don't understand about this "folder where have all the files for the show". Do you mean my photographs? My music is in one spot, my photos are in another folder. I thought my document.exe had everything in it, no?

And while I agree it is easy to make a slideshow as an exe, it is all useless to me if I can't make it a video to see on my clients televisions and a flash for my website. Am I missing something? What do you use the .exe show for? You only view the shows on your own computer?

I admit, I must be missing something. Something big. But I have been reading through these forums and still can't get this thing going. So what am I missing?

Let's start with some of the basics:

First, Riva is an excellent program - It assumes you have some basic knowledge (just like PhotoShop) of what you are attempting to do. Try to call Adobe for basic support on how to use something like layers and learn about "real" frustration. There are some simple things you need to understand to use any program which converts an AVI file to Flash - I'll get into "how" a bit later here.

Second, it's quite easy to insert silence into places in your slideshow, but you also need to understand how to use a sound editor such as the freeware "Audacity". There have been some great suggestions already for you here so I'll not get into this part (audio) any more than just saying you should approach this by creating a variety of "silent" mp3's and name each according to length. You can create one file of extended length then cut it exactly where you wish in Audacity and save different length segments under names which are representative of the length. Something like silentfiveseconds.mp3, silenttwelveseconds.mp3, etc. Then simply insert the segments where you want the silence.

To use Riva you must create an AVI file rather than the default P2E AVI template. You do this by selecting the proper CODEC.

When you are ready to create the AVI click on the VIDEO tab (on the bottom of the screen) and from the resulting screen click the circle next to "Create a Custom AVI File". Next click on the Audio Codec tab and select an audio codec. It would be "nice" if the codec matched your mp3, but it's not absolutely necessary. Choose "mp3 128 kbits/s 44100 Htz stereo" for the trial. Next click on the Video Codec tab and choose "Microsoft MPEG-4 Video Codec" then click on "Create AVI". Tell the program where you want this file to be saved and let it create the AVI file. You can set the size the way you want, but I would suggest something common to video such as one of the defaults. The larger you make the screen size the longer it will take to create the AVI. Once this AVI has been completed you are now ready to "feed" this to Riva Producer Lite.-

Don't open Riva Producer Lite - rather open the Riva Encoder. If you don't have a desktop icon for this it's easy to make one just like you would for any other program by finding the program and right clicking on the Riva Encoder executable the sending it to the desktop. Once you have it opened browse the input window and click on the AVI file created by P2E (wherever you elected to put it). Choose an output folder (probably best to make this folder first) and then go to the Movie Size and choose the size you want. Try 768x576 or 640x480, etc. Set the framerate to 29.97 for best flicker free performance and pick a bitrate appropriate to your own system's (internet) capability. By this I mean that if you have a broadband and you will assume that most of your users will have broadband choose a decently high bitrate such as 1000. Don't mess with the start offset, duration, padding or crop - just leave them at their defaults. Go to the Audio section at the bottom ot the screen on the right and be sure "Enable Audio" is checked (assuming you have audio in your slideshow). Set the audio bitrate to 64 and the sampling rate to 44100 Hz and if you have a stereo MP3 then check stereo.

Finally click on "Encode" and the screen will go to a DOS script type mode while the encoding is taking place. The length of time will vary, but it will take probably less time than it did to create the AVI file in P2E. When everything is finished the Windows Riva Encoder screen will return and inform you that everything was successful. The file created will have your chosen filename with the addition of an underscore vid.fvl (filename_vid.fvl).

Now you are ready to send this to the web. You need to know how to place files on your website and how to create folders, etc. Assuming you know this it would be wise to make a place to put what is to come next....

Now that you have the "filename_vid.fvl" created, you open Riva Producer Lite and choose from the file menu to "Import a Video" and then choose the "filename_vid.fvl" file. When the file has been imported you can test it by "playing" it then the next step is to "publish".

Unfortunately I'm not on a computer at present with Riva installed so I can't give you exact steps but they are very intuitive. You need to know your password and user ID and your site and the folder you want to put the files into. Riva will export all necessary files including the player to the folder on your site where the files will be available. You provide a link for anyone who wants to play your slideshow and they simply click on that Link and the slideshow will play.

As for file formats:

P2E creates a file with the extension .exe which can be played on a hard disk, a CD or a DVD in a computer only. To play a file on the web do as instructed above.

I can't help you with the creation of a DVD but there are numerous links here on this forum where you can get detailed instructions on how to do that. I don't use Nero but rather Ulead Movie Factory to create my DVD slideshows. P2E in the default Video mode exports an AVI template. A template is simply instructions to inform Nero or Movie Factory, etc., HOW to create the DVD. The other program actually creates the DVD and burns it - P2E simply furnishes it with instructions as to all the transitions, times, sounds and music, which jpgs and which order, etc.

When you create an actual AVI file such as used to then create a Flash show with RIVA P2E actually outputs a true AVI video as I explained above. This video is then encoded as a Flash FLV file by the Riva Encoder and ported to your ISP's server via Riva Producer Lite. Producer also exports the necessary html code to make it run and the Riva Player which is necessary to allow the viewer to play the slideshow on the web. When you create the link to give to people to run your slideshow, you call the html file which Riva produces. The file will be named "yourfilename.html" (your file name being whatever you decided on as explained much earlier).

.........................................................

I'm actually home now and just quickly created a sample for you from some images I've just taken while testing a new camera. This is VERY basic - with default transitions and one song which has absolutely no relevance to the images. I used a 640x480 file size on the upload for the player and didn't add a background image so the show will be on a plain white background. You can always modify the html code which Riva generates to add a background, etc., if you have basic html coding knowledge. If you don't I will be glad to send you a sample which I modify so you can see it each way. When you upload allow the program to "detect" whether or not there is the proper software on the viewers computer to play Flash. If the program doesn't find what it needs it will prompt the viewer accordingly and link them to a site where they can quickly download and install MacroMedia Flash.

Just click the link below. I've set a 10 second delay (buffer time) which you can vary as you need within Riva Producer. The buffer is to allow those with slower connections some "lead time" for the download. The streaming is actually done from the user's computer but appears just as if it were streaming from the server. Expensive server side software is needed for true streaming - not something you want to get involved in I'm certain.

http://www.lin-evans.net/rivatest/fruit.html

Best regards,

Lin

[photographer2]

Lin, I posted a huge reply and then accidentilly lost it as I was running out the door. I'm running out again. That was a huge help. I think I might be still having a problem, but I want to sit down and work with it a bit. Then I can reply with a proper question.

I didn't want to wait any longer, without saying thanks. That took a lot of time to do. Thanks so much!!!

~TR

[EOSPete]

Why not use a silent sound file of the necessary length and add this to the music list at the top. This avoids the need to edit the music. Works a dream and is very easy to change afterwards.

P

[Lin Evans]

Why not use a silent sound file of the necessary length and add this to the music list at the top. This avoids the need to edit the music. Works a dream and is very easy to change afterwards.

P

You can certainly do that - but if you want to place silence at several places in the slideshow and for varying times for aesthetic purposes, then somtimes it works better to add the silence in a sound editor and create a single mp3 file rather than multiple files. You eliminate the possibility of hesitation during loading of a new mp3 which "can" become problematic when trying to precisely synchronize your show.

Once you get familiar with using a program like audacity, it takes only seconds to edit an change a file. It's a very simple "cut and paste" just like your would do if you were using a word processor. You see precisely where to the fraction of a second you want to change the sound and simply cut, paste, etc., and save the result as a new file without affecting the original.

Best regards,

Lin