New to PTE - Little League Project

[sperrinejr]

My name is Bob, 48 yrs old, married, I live in New Jersey and have two great kids.

I recently purchased a Canon EOS Rebel XT (two lenses, Ef-S 17-85 and an EF 70-300). I have a lot to learn but I'm willing.

Now that I have some nice digital photos I would like to make some slide shows with them. After using Google many times I downloaded 5 different trial programs and tried all of them, keep in mind I am very much a novice at this. I enjoy playing with computers and build my own, so I am somewhat technically capable of using the great technology that is out there.

After finding this forum, it made the choice to use and learn how to use PTE pretty simple. The support here is great.

I just finished coaching a Little League All Star team and would like to make a slide show for the kids (7 and 8 year olds) so they have something to remember the great time they had.

1. My digital photos are 3456 x 2304. I use Adobe Elements 4 and can use that to reduce their size. I have read trhough the topics in this forum and see that there is quite a debate on the "perfect" size. My problem is these photos are in a ratio of 1.5:1. If I convert them to say 1024 x 768, that distorts the photos due to the different ratio. How do I handle this? Is there a better program to convert digital photos?

2. I have 84 photos I would like to include in the slide show. The music I want to use is 3:50 long. If I sync the slide show to this music I realize this makes for quick transitions and quick viewing of photos. The one project I had the transitions about 0.32 seconds and the slides showed around 2.5 Seconds (round figures). I have never used a wave editor for sound. If I need to lengthen a song, can someone suggest a wave editor? My computer is a dual core AMD, so I have plenty of processing power. When I tried to run my project on my laptop......well I am sure you know what happened. It did not work. Everything was out of sync (I had reduced the photos to 1280 x 683, 150 dpi, max quality, jpeg format). Is it just impossible to run this from a CD?

3. I am having trouble understanding how to synchronize music to a slide show. I realize it can be done automatically, but in PTE version 4.48, I see there is the possibility to customize the synchronization. I just have not firured out how this works. When I used the auto sync, the music stopped about 3 seconds too soon. I was wondering if I can adjust this and how?

A question for Al Robinson, how long did it take you to make the "PTE 101" tutorial? That has been a big help (as have all the other tutorials I have had a chance to look at). It must have taken many many hours.

I have spent about 8 hours so far on this project and I still can't get it to run from a CD on all computers. That is a real problem. The last thing I want is to give one of the kids a CD and it does not work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

[JohnFeg]

My name is Bob, 48 yrs old, married, I live in New Jersey and have two great kids.

Bob,

to avoid the distortion when resizing use the crop tool. For slides you intend to display with no PZR effect, set the crop to 1024 X 768 pixels. Obviously, you will loose a bit of the image, but generally, you can make an acceptable picture, of the important elements, within the limits of these dimensions.

If you really need all the picture, make a backgound slide 1024 X 768px and set your appropriately resized image onto it.

If you intend to use PZR effects, make your image bigger in some ratio of 1024 X 768.

For most effects you'll probably find 2000 X 1500 px will give satisfactory results.

Come back if you need any more detailled explanation.

Looking foreward to seeing your results.

John

[Ronniebootwest]

Hello Bob,

Welcome to our Forum. You will find all the help you need here. There are also some good places where you can find tutorials to assist you. I can recommend the following:

Barry Beckham

My Webpage

Hope this helps.

Ron West

[alrobin]

1. My digital photos are 3456 x 2304. I use Adobe Elements 4 and can use that to reduce their size. I have read trhough the topics in this forum and see that there is quite a debate on the "perfect" size. My problem is these photos are in a ratio of 1.5:1. If I convert them to say 1024 x 768, that distorts the photos due to the different ratio. How do I handle this? Is there a better program to convert digital photos?

2. I have 84 photos I would like to include in the slide show. The music I want to use is 3:50 long. If I sync the slide show to this music I realize this makes for quick transitions and quick viewing of photos. The one project I had the transitions about 0.32 seconds and the slides showed around 2.5 Seconds (round figures). I have never used a wave editor for sound. If I need to lengthen a song, can someone suggest a wave editor? My computer is a dual core AMD, so I have plenty of processing power. When I tried to run my project on my laptop......well I am sure you know what happened. It did not work. Everything was out of sync (I had reduced the photos to 1280 x 683, 150 dpi, max quality, jpeg format). Is it just impossible to run this from a CD?

3. I am having trouble understanding how to synchronize music to a slide show. I realize it can be done automatically, but in PTE version 4.48, I see there is the possibility to customize the synchronization. I just have not firured out how this works. When I used the auto sync, the music stopped about 3 seconds too soon. I was wondering if I can adjust this and how?

A question for Al Robinson, how long did it take you to make the "PTE 101" tutorial? That has been a big help (as have all the other tutorials I have had a chance to look at). It must have taken many many hours.

Bob,

Welcome to the Forum!

As you are finding out, this is a great place to learn, not only the technical aspects of PTE, but also some of the not-so-obvious considerations and techniques of slide-show creation.

To address your questions in order, in addition to what John & Ron have already mentioned:

1. PS Elements is an excellent program for image editing, and you will use it a lot in creating your shows in PTE. You will also need a good sound editor such as "Audacity" (free download), or Adobe "Audition" (medium-priced, but excellent), or Steinberg's "Cubase" (expensive professional editor, both for sound and MIDI). There are other good sound editors, too. Do some searches in Google to find these and other programs. It really doesn't matter what resolution you use for your images, PTE will accommodate all formats, and modify them to suit the monitor used for viewing. You may end up with some horizontal or vertical bars above or beside them, and then you can try a different resolution until you eliminate them, or achieve the fit you want on the designated monitor. To make it easier, in the top right corner of the Object Editor you will find a menu which gives you the opportunity to test your images and objects under different monitor resolutions.

2. It's best to transfer the finished "exe" file from the CD to your laptop, but yes, it is possible to set things up so the show will autostart and run directly from the CD (or DVD). A lot depends on the quality of the CD/DVD player (how fast it the computer accesses it, etc.) and the size of the music and image files (this determines how fast the computer can pull the images into memory and have them ready for viewing in the show). You are best to use an "autorun" utility such as that available from RJL software (see Google), or you can try setting up an "autorun.inf" file (search for instructions and discussion about this on this forum.)

3. To manually sync the show to your music, click on "Timeline" and use the menus and buttons available there. (A little experimenting will help you learn what each of the options is for). You can open up a waveform to help you move the transition markers to the beats in the music. You can also preview the show on the timeline to see where you want certain images to start. My tutorial covers basic operation of the timeline. However, it does not include instructions for all of the recent additions in later versions of PTE, such as the effect of adding and deleting images under different options.

As far as PTE-101 is concerned, it did take a number of hours to put together (entirely in PTE), but it was also a learning exercise for me, so I enjoyed the effort it took to complete it. I don't remember how many hours it took - probably over 100. However, having done it once, I could probably do it again in half the time.

Hope this helps some. Don't hesitate to come back with specific questions after you have experimented some more with the various options and features. PTE is loaded with features, many of which remain hidden until you become more familiar with the software.