probem about half the time...

[loftphoto]

I've used PTE for many years and love it. I am, however, having a problem with a show I've been working on for about a week. It has three exe files all created in PTE. The first file is the equivalent of a "video busniess card". It has an opening slide and then a slide that I've set to stay on the screen for a long time. The second slide has links to pdf's, websites and the two other exe files I've created. These two other exe files are galleries of portraits. When I run the gallery shows directly, that is alone or independant of the first file, they each always run great - every time. However, much of the time but not always, when I run them by clicking on the links I've created to them on the busniess card they operate very poorly. They run very very slowly and almost lock up my system. Other times they quickly load and play great. My video business card file is about 3mb in size as it inlcudes a music file. The two galleries are about about 6mb each; they have no music.

Am I missing something? Would I have better luck creating this show with an older version of PTE? I am using pte v5 and windows xp media center edition 2004. I'd appreciate any help as I've got a deadline in about a week...

[Lin Evans]

The "clue" to the problem is that the executables run fine when you don't call them from the "video business card."

Your problem is that you have hardware acceleration turned on for the "business card". Go to the "Project Options" in your menu (business card) then "screen tab". Uncheck the "hardware acceleration" and re-save the file and that should take care of your problem.

You can't run hardware acceleration on two shows simultaneously which is what is actually happening because the business card is still runing in memory while the other is also playing.

Best regards,

Lin

I've used PTE for many years and love it. I am, however, having a problem with a show I've been working on for about a week. It has three exe files all created in PTE. The first file is the equivalent of a "video busniess card". It has an opening slide and then a slide that I've set to stay on the screen for a long time. The second slide has links to pdf's, websites and the two other exe files I've created. These two other exe files are galleries of portraits. When I run the gallery shows directly, that is alone or independant of the first file, they each always run great - every time. However, much of the time but not always, when I run them by clicking on the links I've created to them on the busniess card they operate very poorly. They run very very slowly and almost lock up my system. Other times they quickly load and play great. My video business card file is about 3mb in size as it inlcudes a music file. The two galleries are about about 6mb each; they have no music.

Am I missing something? Would I have better luck creating this show with an older version of PTE? I am using pte v5 and windows xp media center edition 2004. I'd appreciate any help as I've got a deadline in about a week...

[JEB]

The two galleries sound very big and as you don’t state that there is music associated with them I wonder if you have not downsized your images.

John

[ksf]

Lin,

Quite interested in your reply regarding Hardware Acceleration.

Can you please give some guidelines as to:

- what this does?

- when should we, and when shouldn't we, be using this setting?

and

- what problems may we experience if we use it incorrectly?

Thanks,

[Lin Evans]

Hi Keith,

Actually, there was a good bit of discussion about this earlier on which prompted me to write a quick note in the "tips & tutorial's" section here:

http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6604

Essentially the way PTE works is that it gives Exclusive access to hardware acceleration to a slide show to insure smooth animations. So when two slideshows are both running simultneously, one must have hardware acceleration unchecked or "off" to allow the other to run smoothly. For menus, etc., where we really don't necessarily "need" hardware acceleration because we "usually" don't use a lot of animation, we can just turn it off via the check then the slideshows it calls will run smoothly. The only present way around this is to create a menu which defacto "dies" or closes after calling the menu choice, then reopens via a call to run it from the last slide in the show being executed. Of course then the menu slide must have the "run this and exit" command.

The easiest way is to simply turn off hardware acceleration in the calling menu slide and avoid the issues, but if you really need animation in the menu program you can set it up as per above.

Best regards,

Lin

Lin,

Quite interested in your reply regarding Hardware Acceleration.

Can you please give some guidelines as to:

- what this does?

- when should we, and when shouldn't we, be using this setting?

and

- what problems may we experience if we use it incorrectly?

Thanks,

[loftphoto]

Your problem is that you have hardware acceleration turned on for the "business card". Go to the "Project Options" in your menu (business card) then "screen tab". Uncheck the "hardware acceleration" and re-save the file and that should take care of your problem.

Lin, thanks for the suggestion. As best I can tell your idea has corrected my issue. I did have some minor animation running on my business card but I can live without it. The galleries now now play flawlessly both inside and outside the main file on my laptop which is pretty quick.

They do however load very slowly and play slowly, sometimes freezing up, on my old and slow 7 year old desktop with only 256 mb RAM and integrated video. This isn't too suprising but if I remove all animation and have just a simple fade from one slide to the next will this improve permormance?

JEB asked about the size of my files - I think I will downsize them a little more if I can't improve performance by removing animation. Im using this project to display my high school senior photography so I do need them to be of nice quality however. I'm hopeful that most of my end users will have hardware better than my old computer!

Thanks again.