automatic slide aspect ratio

[brianloss]

I'm new to PTE and haven't been able to find a way to do this... I would like to build one exe slide show that I can give to anyone. I would like the images to be scaled (maintaining the image aspect) to fill the screen. If my PC monitor is, say, a 16:10 aspect ratio, I can choose that as the slide aspect ratio in project options and (along with the default "fit to slide" option) get the behavior I want when I view the show on my 16:10 monitor. However, if I take the same slide show and run it on a monitor that is 4:3, some of the slides have black on all sides because they are scaled to fit into a 16:10 slide area which is then scaled to fit in a 4:3 screen area. What I would like is an "automatic" option when choosing the slide aspect ratio. When the exe is run, I would like it to detect the aspect ratio of the current monitor and make that be the slide aspect ratio. This way, all of my images would fill the screen (in at least one dimension anyway) no matter what monitor they are viewed on. It seems right now, my only choice is to make several versions of my slide show and tell people to download the one that matches their monitor. That doesn't seem very portable to me, not to mention difficult to explain to non-technical people.

Am I missing something? Is there already a way to do this? Thanks for any info you have...

[Conflow]

SkiBum,

To the best of my knowledge there is no 'automatic way' of doing what you ask. Even domestic TV Sets

have to be set manually to show the default Program in its origional Image Format. The same applies to

Digital Camera's and Projectors and advanced PC Video Cards.

I note that your TV Format is 16:10 ~not Standard 16:9~ the best compromise for 4:3 and 16:9 ratio's

is actually 4:5, so in fact you already have the best compromise.

Brian.Conflow.

[brianloss]

SkiBum,

To the best of my knowledge there is no 'automatic way' of doing what you ask. Even domestic TV Sets

have to be set manually to show the default Program in its origional Image Format. The same applies to

Digital Camera's and Projectors and advanced PC Video Cards.

I note that your TV Format is 16:10 ~not Standard 16:9~ the best compromise for 4:3 and 16:9 ratio's

is actually 4:5, so in fact you already have the best compromise.

Brian.Conflow.

Sorry, I think I misspoke. I'm clear that there is no way to determine aspect ratio of the video display for a movie file or DVD and I'm fine with that. I am only interested in this behavior for a PTE-generated executable file that will be running on a PC. When I said monitor aspect ratio, I really meant the display aspect ratio (current video resolution width divided by height). PTE already calculates this and shows it on the project options dialog right next to the combo box showing the list of slide aspect ratios. In my case, since my display resolution is set to 1680 x 1050 (which also happens to be the native resolution of my widescreen LCD), PTE tells me "Your display - 16:10" on the project options dialog. I just want a single PTE-generated executable to make this calculation at runtime and automatically set the slide aspect ratio to the calculated display aspect ratio so that my images take up the maximum possible screen space whilst maintaining the original image aspect no matter what the display resolution of the computer on which the show is viewed.

[alrobin]

Skibum,

Welcome to the Forum!

In version 5 of PTE, you can elect to set your "Main Images" to one of three modes in "O&A / Common", thus dictating how they will be treated upon running the show:

1. Fit to slide (the preferred and "default" mode): the optimum amount of monitor area will be used to display the slides. If the aspect ratios are not compatible, black bars will be shown at the edges of the images.

2. Original: the original resolution of the images will be maintained, even if the viewer's display is "larger" than the images.

3. Cover slide: the images will be cropped until the viewer's monitor is completely covered.

For obvious reasons, there is no option to distort the image so that the monitor is completely covered without cropping the slide.

Note that in order to set all slides to option 2 or 3, you have to set each one separately in O&A (or use my "Adjustor" model, described elsewhere in another thread, and available on my website, to effect a global change).

Hope this helps!