Music file problem

[jimzipp]

Hi All, I'm new to the program and am putting together my first show. So far so good until I started playing around with the sound portion. I decided to remove the sound at one point and deleted the track from both the folder it was in and pointed to and deleted it from the control panal in PTX. Every time I now just try to preview the show I get an error box saying that "sound files not found" even though I have removed them from the program. There must be another place I need to do so but haven't been able to find it. I have gone into Project Options and cleared everything so no music files show there. Sorry for the basic question. Any help greatly appreciated. I'm using 5.1

Jim

[fh1805]

Hi Jim,

The sound file can be assigned in several different parts of the PTE program. I'm assuming in the advice that follows, that you want to remove all the sound file references from your project and start that aspect of building the show all over again.

First, go into "Project Options...Music tab" and ensure that there are no files listed at all in that area.

Second, select each of your images in turn and for each one do the following two things:

- ensure that there is no sound file mentioned in the Sound field that appears just above the "Customize Slide" and "Objects and Animation" buttons

- then do "Customize Slide...Music tab": and again ensure that there are no sound files mentioned.

If you find any soundfile references - remove them.

Then save the project again (File...Save...) and close PTE.

Finally re-launch PTE. It should open up the saved version of your project - which should now be free of sound file references.

I hope this has made sense to you.

[jimzipp]

Thanks for the quick reply Peter. I have done the Project Options part and none listed and looked at the sound line for each slide in the program and all are blank. Still have the error though. Then I decided to delete the final 50 images where the music had been but didn't show in the music field and deleted them and am doing them as a separate program instead and now all is well again! Must have been buried somewhere in one of those files. Thank you so much for your help.... I was pulling my hair out!!

[fh1805]

Jim,

Glad to know you've got past the problem. There should be no need to build your sequence as two separate projects. If deleting the last 50 slides has eliminated the problem then the sound file had to be associated with one of them somehow or other. You should now be OK to add these images to the original sequence. If you do that I would suggest that you always do a Preview (of the new material) before saving and always do File...Save As... and give each version of the project a unique name e.g. MyProjV1, MyProjV2.

In this way, if you do hit a problem, you can always close without saving and then re-launch PTE and do File...Open.. of an earlier version.

Finally, if you consider yourself a skilled computer user you can always open a *.pte file into Notepad. You could have done this with the file that was giving you problems and done a Find for the soundfile name. I would NOT recommend that you then delete that line from the project file. But you could browse the project file a few lines either side of that found item and try and pick up a clue as to which image it might have been associated with. If you do take a pte file into Notepad ALWAYS do a close without saving.

[jimzipp]

Thanks again Peter. What I have is a 300 image show that has about a 50 image "finale" with music. I suspect with some time with the program I could start the music with that image number 250 or whatever and then evenly space them out over the time frame of the track. There are a dozen images in the middle though that I want to have change much faster than the rest so I'm going to have some fun playing with it!

Jim

[fh1805]

Jim,

I can't help feeling that you've approached PTE the wrong way. To try and build a 300 image "magnum opus" as your very first foray into the software is not the best way of learning. I'll bet that when you learned to drive it wasn't in either a Ferrari Testarossa or a "big rig". You would have started off in something smaller and more manageable. The same principle holds good for learning PTE. Start small and work up.

However, given your admitted limited knowledge of the software and what you are trying to achieve, I think you would be best if you built two separate sequences. Your "finale" could then be built with the music track assigned via Project Options...Music tab. Doing this will allow you to see the waveform of the music track in the Timeline view and will allow you to get a feel for just where to place each image so that it synchronises well with the beat and other emphases in the music.

Your initial sequence can be set up to call the "finale" sequence off the final image of the initial sequence.

Whatever approach you adopt, have fun using the product.

[jimzipp]

You are right Peter but the first 200 or so images they will go along with talking and be advanced manually. It's only the final 50 that are to be automated with the music. I really appreciate your help here and already I've now got the ending "roughed" together and looking pretty good. I'm now toying with a few panning and zooming effects but plan to go very lightly with that anyway. What a great program and this forum is a treasure of knowledge and help. Thanks again. Jim