MikeL117

Hi Caroline There is a pointer to the lame files on the Audacity site which was http://mitiok.free.fr/ the last time I looked. These are essential to produce the MP3 files from within Audacity. MP3 or Ogg files are preferable to WAV files for PTE projects. I find that with Audacity you have to do a little bit of pre-planning as it does use a huge amount of RAM. When it is convenient it is best to combine some of the audio tracks to reduce the load. Try to still give yourself plenty of flexability in future editing. Another tip. always keep a full backup of the Audacity project files. It does have a nasty habit of occasionally losing the odd internal file. Easy to fix if you have a separate copy. Good luck

I think it an excellent idea that should warrant its own forum. This would prevent these pearls of wisdom getting lost amongst the other more general posts. I expect, though, that after the initial spate of offerings the number could be too small to sustain itself so if they were in with other non-technical discussions it might help to keep the theme alive. Even when the same ideas keep reappearing they will have a slightly different twist each time around. I suggest a thread is started (by someone with rather more expreience than I) in the presentations forum (advertise it in the other fora) and if it proves to be self sustaining then try to get it moved it to its own slot. I could certainly benefit from any ideas there and would love to be able to contribute as my experience grows.

Hi Chris Audacity is great for small projects and it is free. Be aware though that if you intend to keep the tracks separate it is Very demanding of RAM. In my experience 15 to 20 tracks needs 1GB RAM. Also keep a backup of the Audacity working files as it can loose track of the odd file in complicated projects. For smaller projects with only a few separate tracks it is hard to beat. Audition (ex Cool Edit) seems to be well liked.

'Save for Web' in PhotoShop or ImageReady is excellent for compression as it gives you a clear indication of the amount of degradation caused by the JPEG compression. Select what you are happy with, but don't look for perfection or even look too close as in the few seconds the image is likely to be on screen slight artefacts will not be seen. Text and fine detail give bigger files and show more problems for the same quality setting. Be careful about sharpening images that are to be JPEG compressed. Use the minimum that gives an improvement. It is always a temptation (I know, I fall for it many times) to add a little more sharpening than the image needs. This causes much bigger files and the increase in JPEG artefacts may make the image look worse than if it was much less sharp.

Hi Dave I have to guess that when you had built your show in the first instance you had 118 slides then you went to the Main tab in the project options and selected the 'Customize Synchronization' button. This will have automatically added all the slides to the timeline. Some time later you added some more slides to the slide list and these are the slides that are not playing. IF this is something like what happened then simply adding the extra transitions to the timeline will fix this. Go back into Project Option select the Main tab and click on the 'Customize Synchronization' button. This will reveal the timeline. Scroll allong the timeline with the scroll bar at the bottom until you find the 'to118' marker which should be near the end. If you click on the timeline after this point (a small blue triangle will appear) then click on the 'New Transition' button it should add another transition point for the next slide already on the slide list. It may be that there is no more room on the timeline to add any more transitions. In which case there is not enough music and you need to add another track to the music list or replace the exsisting tracks with a longer track. Repeat the above until all the new slides are added to the timeline. They should all now play I hope this is a little clearer and will help you to find your way around. It will all become clear with a little practice. If it is no clearer then I do apologise for the confusion and I have probably made a host of wrong assumptions. I am sure that one of us will get hold of the right end of the stick. Good luck

Hi Dave If you are (as I am assuming) using sync mode you need to add transition points to the appropriate places in the time line when you add new slides to the list. They are not added automatically. So if you add ten slides to the end of the show after slide 118 you need to go to slide 118 in the time line and add ten more transition points where you want the slides to appear. Igor is (I believe) working on improving this area now (or soon). Hope this helps

Hi As far as I am aware PTE does not re-compress your original files which gives you the choice of how much of a trade off between quality and file size. From your figures you look to be using uncompressed image files at SXGA resolution. This ia a lot of information for your poor computer to process (dragging the files off the CD or even hard disk is a slow process). If you were to save them as JPEG you should be able to get a good 10:1 compression before you see any significant degradation on screen for most images. It would appear that the other software is automatically applying this level of JPEG compression which may be fine for most images but some you may want at higher quality. The above are guesses. If you could get back with a little more details perhaps we could be more specific in guidance.

Hi Pete A definite YES. As Guru says it is better not to force PTE to resize. The only problem then comes if you the decide to re-purpose for higher or lower resolution, but as 1024x768 is the optimum resolution for PTE to generate DVD files it is a good choice for most uses. If your slides are produced as Photoshop (or Paint Shop Pro) layers you could start at a higher size (say 1280x960 or similar) and resize there. If you then save the layers to the same names you can produce versions at different resolutions.

Hi Lenbartz As Guido said it is very simple. The one point that he missed is that when the duration of slide is set to zero then that slide is manually advanced via the spacebar. You can set the duration to zero (or un-select the "display each slide for:" option) for all slides in the "Project options" and use "customize slide" to set a time for the automatic slides. The other option that Guido suggested are very useful to controll the show from the mouse as well as the spacebar and arrow buttons. Alan's suggestions give you a lot more scope to controll the show and add extra features which may be very useful when you wish to extend the training show. Good luck

While you are looking at global adjustments and things. Can you consider the possability of copying and pasting attributes and/or applying a different 'user' set of attributes to a slide. Another useful facility on the same lines would be to drag another file onto an exsisting slide and replace just the image while retaining the attributes and timing in a similar maner to After Effects. Very useful when updating a slide show. Thanks Mike

I find this feature invaluable in Premier, but I have to agree with Ed that it is essential to listen to the music to find the exact point to position the transition. Once you have the relative offset from the beat by ear, though, it is much quicker to see the beat to position the transition and it is a good reminder of the beat position when fine tuning. I would give it a slightly higher priority but still not an essential. The block moves and light table etc. will be more valuable enhancements for the majority of users. Thanks for the opportunity to air our views. Mike

Hi Ray Flicker on thin horizontal lines is an inherent problem with video caused by the interlaced nature of video. It can be reduced by, as you surmised, making the lines thicker. Moving the line up or down by a pixel may sometimes reduce the flicker. The best cure is to avoid sharp horizontal lines altogether.

Ken The space is probably added to the baseline and the top position does not use this as an anchor. If you need it to work at the top put a space on the first line then the comment on the second line (as you will know hitting enter brings up the text edit box). The line space will then add to the second line. Igor Denwell just reminded me of another very useful feature. The ability to copy the cutomized option from one slide and paste into another would save considerable time in developing a sequence. Or even a set of various customizable options that could be applied as styles. That would help with developing and dramatically speed up modifications. Happy New Year Mike

Thanks Al I knew I had read of such a utility. I tracked it down, downloaded and tried it. Very comprehensive and useful. I can see this saving me several hours. Thanks again

It works for me in all the options I have tried except top position. It's not a lot but quite noticeable on screen. I haven't tried it on video yet. If you can get it to work it might get you through until Trusty Igor can fit a more versatile option into his schedule.

Hi Ken There is a quick way to change the position vertically at the moment for single line comments (within limits). Set the position to bottom and alter the line spacing until the comment is within the text safe area. Igor I have been doing some changes to an AV of mine and found a few limitations with the present timeline that you may consider doing something about. I had to add another title slide at the begining, what would have been very useful would have been a facility to add some time and push all subsequent transition points to the later time. Also adding and deleting slides to the show requires moving back and forth between the timeline and the slide list to add or delete transitions at the correct point in the timeline before I forget which I have just changed. Could adding or deleting a slide add or delete a transition at the correct position on the timeline? One other observation. I converted a none-synched show into a synched show and lost all the timings I had manually set up. Could there be an option to base the arrangement of timed points on the cusomized and default timing preferences instead of the duration of the music? Keep up the good work Mike

Peaceful greatings to one and all whatever beliefs you hold from Oldham, near Manchester in England

Hi Just to add my bit. Flash would be good, but something simpler like animated GIFs would do almost as well for animated titles. It would make me very happy (but it doesn't take much) Sophisticated titles do lend an air of professionalism.

I have tried this excellent feature and the 'pause' facility is very useful although the next and previous slide options are rather less so. What would be a worthwhile extension is the jump to a named slide which could be used as a 'Next Section'/'Previous section'. When sound is playing it would be good if the sound could fade out and back in to make the jump much smoother. If there is time to sample the input a couple of times during a long fade it would help make it more responsive. Keyboard shortcuts would enable a show to be driven transparently. Possible typing a number will jump to that slide as in PowerPoint Thanks again Igor

Hi Harry A lot depends on the format of the video file as to which software will extract the audio. Sound Forge is very good at reading the sound stream from avi files, but this is a fairly expensive piece of software. One of the best pieces of sound editing software available at the moment is Audacity and it is free. It does make a valiant attempt to read the sound stream but is limited in what it can recognse. It is worth trying. If it works - great. I am sure that others more experienced than I in this field will be able to point you in another direction. Audacity can be found at: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Good Luck MikeL

An update on the 'crash with BMP' bugette. PTE also crashes occasionally when looking in the drive panel at the BMP from PhotoShop that does work. I haven't managed to crash PTE with you supplied files although they do not display a correct thumbnail. Hope this is of use. Just had another play and I think I may have messed-up my working BMP file. Now I have regenerated it PTE is happy with it. Thanks MikeL

Hi Igor A point of interest. Photoshop 7 can generate 32 bit BMP files with alpha channel. Produce your image with alpha channel (layer mask will not do), save as BMP, select 32 bit and Windows format, click "Advanced Modes" and select 32 bit A8 R8 G8 B8. This seems to work with Beta 4. Thank you Igor this will be a wonderful time saver. (I am also guessing that this is a test for greater things to come ) I have also found a little bug associated with this feature. When I first tried this I was hoping the layer mask would generate the correct alpha channel so the correct option was not available I selected the X8 R8 G8 B8 option. When PTE looked at the file in the drive panel and tried to show a thumbnail it crashed. One of those I've gone with no goodbyes type. I am running on a Win 2000 with twin PIII processors. Thanks MikeL