[Utility 4 PTE] ShowVideoPTE

[nobeefstu]

Jose,

Hi,

I didn't try it yet, but I should very much appreciate if someone could "put on the air" a slideshow showing this feature, in order to see it working in a practical way. Would it be possible?

Please note that this video tool is an external application function ... and not a PTE program feature. The ShowVideoPTE tool and avi movie files are all external file components and are not packaged or packed into the PTE slideshow executable. This video tool provides a visibly cleaner way of running external avi files using PTE's Run External Application function without invoking any windows players which may normally play the movie file.

[backpack45scb]

Granot and nobeefstu, Sucess! Thank you.

I upgraded from 5.60 to 5.63, put the hidetaskbar in the 2nd slide and everything works.

Notes to others who may use this utility.

I have a vertical office toolbar on the right side of my screen. The hidetoolbar exe doesn't deal with that, so I just have to remember to drag it into my windows toolbar before running the show.

Do not have a 0 movie file such as 0.avi - it will shift your movie sequence.

Spaces matter. After the showvideopte.exe statement have one space between each parameter.

I've used pte in a simple form for several years, but I had never thought until someone mentioned it in this thread to look at the pte file with notepad. I did, and got a whole new understanding of pte.

[backpack45scb]

Granot, Nobeefstu - I spoke too soon - still some sequence problems with 5.6.3

I haven't pinned down exact problem point yet. I started to build my real show, which has 19 video clips, mixed avi and wmv

I put all the videos in the Movies folder, and then setup the first 3 videos in the pte file. I also had some zooms and pans in the pte file. On preview from the front of show, or from first video slide, 1st video was ok. When I got to 2nd video it played video 10 even though exe statement was setup with 2 1

The immediately following slide after the one that was supposed to exe 2 1 was an exe 2 2 just so I could compare the appearance of the video in the two sizes. The sizing worked i.e. full screen then center screen. At that point I moved all the movies except 1,2,3 into a separate folder and out of the Movies folder and tried it again. It worked. I will continue to test, adding movies to the folder only when I have a corresponding slide exe statement.

[backpack45scb]

I continued testing, adding movies one at a time. When I added:

ShowVideoPTE.exe 10 1

and added 10.avi

the sequence problem started again. It didn't play video 10, it played 9 instead, and when I played earlier slides with videos, the wrong movie executed - always 1 less than the correct movie.

So, maybe two digit numbers cause a problem? I guess for now I will limit my videos to 9 per show. If I felt I had to have more, I could split the show into two shows, and have one show kick off the next.

[boxig]

RalphA

Try to rename video 10 to be 11, it might be the zero makes problem, who knows.

Granot

[backpack45scb]

That sounded like a good theory, but tried it with both 11 and 21 with same results as 10. I found on this last test that just having a video of 10 or above in the Movies folder causes the problem. You don't need to have a slide containing the ShowVideoPTE.exe

[backpack45scb]

P.S. I'm thinking that because the problem occurs as soon as a movie greater than 9 is put in the Movies folder, that the problem would be in ShowVideoPTE, not in the way PTE 5.6.3 handles parameters. PTE will run slides including movies 1 through 9 without a problem, and as soon as movie 10 is put into the Movies folder, the next execution of the show will fail, even there was no change to PTE, just to the Movies folder.

[Conflow]

Hi All,

Unknown to many users, PCs' do not like numbers sequenced in the order,viz:-

1, 2, 3, 4, 5,.....8, 9, 10, then followed by 11, 12, etc, etc. This sequence is not

logical to a PC as the numbers are singular sequential and not decadic cadence

(decimal) which a PC understands.

The correct sequence should be,viz:-

01, 02, 03, 04,.....08, 09, 10 then 11 to 20 onward to 100, 101, and so on and on.

Hope this little 'Tip' sorts out this numeric problem.

Brian (Conflow.

[backpack45scb]

Brian, Thank you for that insight. I renumbered my videos to 01,...10,11, and so far is working fine. I assume that if you had 100 or more clips you would start with 001.

[xahu34]

... The correct sequence should be,viz:-

01, 02, 03, 04,.....08, 09, 10 then 11 to 20 onward to 100, 101, and so on and on ...

If you go up to 100 (3 digits), you better count 001, 002, 003, ... , 010, 011, ... , 077, ... , 099, 100 ! This is obvious from the point of view of a lexicographical order which Windows seems to use.

Regards,

Xaver

[xahu34]

Brian, Thank you for that insight. I renumbered my videos to 01,...10,11, and so far is working fine. I assume that if you had 100 or more clips you would start with 001.

Congratulations Ralph for being a bit faster than I was!

Regards,

xaver

[Conflow]

Ralph & Xaver,

Ralph thats correct, Windows wants to count in decadic ranges or as Xaver calls it 'lexicographical'.

Another way of doing this if you have large Image-Libraries is as follows,viz:-

A-01 to A-99

B-01 to B-99

C-01 to C-99

D-01 to D-99

We arrange all our Engineering Image-Libraries to a 4 character Alpha/Numeric Code as above

and of course that can be expanded to 5 character set ~ above that defeats the simplicity purpose.

It offers many advantages in keeping Libraries simple and very easy to re-name and re-index Images

in 26 Groups which can be further expanded to additional groups by adding another 'alpha' such as AA-01.

Also if you want to introduce an 'orphan image' you can use a suffix such as A-87a (small letter a,b,c etc).

So now you can have 01-99 to the power of 26 minus 1 which is a vast but simple numeric sequence indeed.

The above is a simple 4 Character code which we developed a few years ago to replace the 8/9 Digit Code used

by Fuji, Canon, Nikon, Kodak and others which are very cumbersome and give no 'indexing' whatsoever.

(The vast majority of 'Renamer-Programs' work very well with this simple 4 character code).

Brian (Conflow).

[backpack45scb]

Back late in the afternoon here and I have yet another problem, probably due to a senior moment. I created the show exe file on my desktop in the same folder that has the pte file and the exe file ran fine, showing all the movies.

I then moved the exe file to my laptop and ran it there. The movies did not run, slides with a movie ran just like normal slides, no error indication.

I thought for a moment, and realized that the Movies folder wouldn't be in the exe file, so I created a folder for my exe file, and within that put my movies folder from the desktop. Still no movies when I ran the exe file. How does showvideopte know where to find the Movies folder?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[backpack45scb]

Nevermind, I forgot the obvious - I have to copy the the showvideopte and hidetoolbar exe files to my laptop folder as well as the movie file.