Shows Playing Differently

[tkdphoto]

Hi all,

I have a question for the wonderful, helpful people in this group, yup, I'm buttering you up! Actually this has been the best posting site/BB I've ever been on, you all are so helpful.

I'm sure this has been covered before (tried a search, but came up with zip). I create my shows on an XP system. But I have noticed that, example my show Delaney. When downloaded to a different system, the text was on the pictures rather than above and below which is how I added the text on each slide. Now that show was my 1st, and I was "playing". I did not re-size my photos or add borders or do anything special, all I did was add the text on each slide, plus the music. My husband downloaded it to our laptop, and that also runs XP, but is it because the monitor is smaller that the text is on the photos? Also when trying to play it on a 98 system, it is slow, and the fade is chunky, and the music doesn't play to the end.

On my 2nd show TAEKWONDO, I noticed similar things regarding the fade and music.

When I am creating a new show, do I need to take into consideration what system my customer may be playing this on? I more than likely will be doing my shows like the TKD show. I build my slides in PhotoShop 7, convert to jpg.

I have had some requests to make shows for customers, and I would like them to be as they are created and run on my system, how do I accomplish this? Should I first ask my customer what operating system they use? or just hope for the best. I do put a lot of time into my shows because I'm a perfectionist (as I'm sure all of you are too) and would like my customers to see what I see. Is this possible?

Thank you in advance for your comments and help

[ronwil]

I cannot answer all of your questions, but two things I can say is firstly using Comments in P2E one has to rely on the fact that the recipient of your CD has the same matching fonts on his or her computer. The other is the way round this is to do your titling in Photoshop before finally saving the image. This way it is enbedded in the image with whatever effects you may have used.

Ron [uK]

[alrobin]

Hi, Sue,

Yes, you need to consider both the screen size and the "horsepower" (particularly processor speed) of your viewers when creating a PTE show.

The Object editor does not have a scaling capability which takes into consideration the resolution of the viewer's screen, so you have to be careful when positioning and sizing objects, and be sure to test the show with the monitor set at the minimum resolution you expect your viewers to be using. Maybe in the future, scaling of the objects will be added to PTE???

If you put your shows in "windowed mode", the scale will be preserved. However, some if not most shows are created as "full-screen".

To achieve the smoothest fades, use the smallest, but still satisfactory, images (usually less than 200 kb jpeg file size, and even smaller for older, slower pc's) You might even have limit the size to around 800 x 600, and file size no larger than 75 kb, for instance.

Digital AV is an area where pc and video-card horsepower really matter.

Hope this helps.

[tkdphoto]

Thanks for the info, I'm not a "hardware" person, as my husband says, I make things "pretty". Nice guy, huh?

I had reduced my photos in size for the TKD show, but apparently not enough. I'll be doing some testing on my systems on some shows. Luckily we run, XP, 2000 and 98 on different systems in our house. I'll try to find a "standard" that will work on all the systems. And when a customer orders a slide show, I'll make certain to ask what system they are running. Ok before anyone asks, we have 7 systems running at any given time. Most are XP, 1 is 2000 (until XP Pro is installed) and one is still on 98.

I really appreciate the helpful information.

Thanks

[alrobin]

Sue,

You're welcome. 7 systems for two people - wow! Or do you have kids occupying the other systems when they aren't in production?

It's good to keep an older-model pc around when making PTE shows, though, just for a "drop-test", as a final test of the show's ruggedness.

By the way, instead of applying text using objects, it's almost as easy, and a lot more reliable, to do it in Photoshop, or similar image editor, thus making a second image with the title applied. There is no noticeable transition from the first image to the second, except for the appearance of the text, and you can control where in the image the text will appear..