Sound in start-menu

[Tripstrilles]

Hi friends, I´ve created a start-menu with music. When I start another pte-presentation from it, the music doesn´t stop. Is there any possibility to stop the music for this time and start it once again after finishing the presentation?

Greetings, T

[nobeefstu]

Tripstrilles,

Use PTE's new features of run applications.

PTE v4.10

+ Added "Run application after last slide" option (Project options | "Advanced" tab)

Have your SHOW.exe run your MENU.exe after its last slide. Make sure your Menu.exe closes after SHOW.exe execution ... then the SHOW.exe will reopen your MENU.exe automatically at it end.

[Guest Techman1]

Greetings,

I just completed a similar project. What I found out on this forum is that if you want your menu to play music, then when another slideshow section is selected, you will need to end/exit the menu show and restart the menu from your last slide of the selected section. This will basically loop back to the menu at the end of each section.

I wanted the menu to remain in the background in case someone hit the ESC key so they could view a different section. As a result, I opted to NOT include the music in my menu. So when a client selects a section, I run that slideshow WITHOUT exiting the menu program. For now, I believe those are your options.

Maybe one of the more senior members will chime in with a workaround, but I couldn't find one recently.

Good luck on your project!

Fred

[nobeefstu]

Techman1,

You bring up a good point ... alot of users are click/key happy. So hiiting the ESC would or could create some MENU reopen issues.

I recall a suggestion as to expand the NEW FEATURES to RUN application if application closes before last page. This would solve your current MENU issue.

However, I belive it will only create other new issues. If you create lots of linked Shows ... you could be all day hitting ESC to get to the last link and finally close. I would expect there have to be a another hot key to terninate all links in that case senario.

The more features the more to learn ... it no longer becomes a easy process .

[Guest Techman1]

nobeefstu,

I had suggested adding another option in either the left or right click advanced options to "run an application & exit" - e.g., "run the menu again" which would solve this problem or have this same "run" option added to the navigation menu options. This could also allow us to pop open other programs like the volume control utility during a show if a phone call came in, etc. These additions could be used for advanced slideshows and others could ignore these functions until they are ready to use them. I think it would simply add even more functionality to this already incredible program. Hopefully the AVI video functions will also be strongly considered for an upcoming release. I could use both of these now for three projects I'm working on.

Hopefully these enhancements will be considered for the next release when Igor starts again. He really worked a lot of hours on this recent release and I'm sure truly deserves some time off. Hopefully he's off this weekend!

Thanks and take care.

Fred

[think(box)]

Greetings to all,

Now that caption of show is available in PTE you have another option: The window title, that you now fully control, may be used to control all shows from a central script. All PTE shows can have a known window title from caption of show, for fullscreen or windowed shows. Search the forum for notes about AutoIt, a free windows scriptiing application that makes custom scripts in universal .exe form, always 40 to 50KB in .exe size. It is fairly easy to learn and the help file is very well done and includes examples.

I have been making shows already that capitalize on Window title captioning that I now fully control. It works great!

You can have any conditional combinations, detection, running and stopping of shows, menu shows etc. and you can decide what show to place "on top" (in view). A click-happy user is no longer a problem. If you need it, the script .exe file can be hidden and encrypted against tampering users by a simple command in your script file and in the script to exe converter that is provided with AutoIt.

I believe that the many new features of PTE are great because they allow me to make shows that are more simple than ever to the person watching it. I make it a breeze for the novice computer user, and no operating manual is required. With AutoIt I am making linked shows that require no clicking of the mouse, have independent music control and mouse-over activation of anything. All thanks to PTE advances and AutoIt.

[alrobin]

Maybe one of the more senior members will chime in with a workaround, but I couldn't find one recently.

I just set up a work-around for cutting off the sound when going from the menu to other selected shows. It uses the feature in PTE "Customize slide" where if "Play new background music ..." is selected, where the list of music selections is left blank, the sound from the earlier slide(s) is cut off.

This feature is invoked automatically each time one clicks on a menu button, just before calling the external application (slide show). The menu show is set to "keep last slide on screen" so that one will return to it either when the next show ends, or if the "Esc" button is pressed during the next show. The new feature whereby one can "run an application after last slide" is not used in this procedure.

The main limitation in the procedure is that it will only work satisfactorily if the length of time the viewer will be viewing the entire set of menu show and other shows is shorter than 83 minutes (5000 sec), as that is the longest time one can set a slide to stay on-screen.

The second limitation is that the music in the intro show will not restart after returning to it from another show.

The procedure itself is a little long and tricky, but seems to be quite effective. If anyone is interested in the gory details I will spell them out either here or in a separate email.

[Guest Techman1]

With AutoIt I am making linked shows that require no clicking of the mouse, have independent music control and mouse-over activation of anything. All thanks to PTE advances and AutoIt.

Bill,

Would you be willing to email me a few of these scripts for AutoIt. I downloaded it tonight and would like to try a few of the things that you have already worked out. I'm hoping that I don't have to reinvent the wheel "only enhance it a little" ;-)

Thanks in advance if you could share any of these (especially the music control and mouse-over activations).

Fred

[think(box)]

Sure Fred - I'll send email with a baby step music control example and then the giant step mouse-over sound control built-in to a P2E music player show. We can't send attachments through forum email, so just reply to my email so I will have your reply email address. I'll use ZIP so there is only one attachment. If you use AOL then ZIP can be the least trouble.

If you want to customize to your specific needs it will take some study to understand Windows' coordinates for mouse, window positions and the changeover between application focus changes. The script command syntax is exceedingly simple, but I frequently trip over the difference between a variable name argument and a value argument, accidentally using the wrong type. Seeing the AutoIt help command syntax definitions/examples and a few examples from me should be enough for you to start. The FAQ section of AutoIt help has also been a great source of examples to tough questions.

It could have saved me a lot of time seeing coding examples for various Windows controls etc. Hopefully it will do the same for you. It becomes second nature quickly enough.