LumenLux

Ed, there may be some confusion here - possibly on my part. (Help Guido!) The size of photos of 6 MB, if reduced in size could certainly have helped solve the problem. But the way I understand the numbers, your changing any photos from 600 or 1200 dpi to 200 dpi would not have reduced your file sizes. Did you actually reduce the file size by reducing the dimmensions of the photo or saving at a higher compression ratio?

I think this would be true if, and only if, the show is accurately burned on the CD to begin with. But if that is the case, the normal copy from CD to HD should also put a working show back on the HD. Now Jim, have you tried copying the show from your CD onto a different PC. I am wondering if the Temp folders on your PC are possibly harboring some remnants that trouble the running of the show copied back from the CD. Maybe nobeefstu (or Al, or Bill or ?) can jump back in here and say whether that could be a factor.

Ken & jimnshell - it appears to me that the problems you are siteing are likely quite different. In Ken's case it seems that the 4 meg (LARGE) files are likely the most important & correctable factor. Ken you can probably search this forum and find lots of good advice regarding file size and software to reduce file size, individually or in batches. jimnshell's case seems to me to be a problem being introduced by the burning process. We' ll see if others here see it differently.

Granot, I just thought of a great idea for your utilitarian talent! You have a nifty little utility named All Pte, which finds and lists all the .pte files on a pc. I think it would be very useful to many of us if you did something similar that would find all the PTE compiled shows. That is all the EXE files that are actually the PTE Shows. What I need is a way to find all the PTE shows and distinguish them from all other .exe files. Maybe there is already a way to accomplish this with Explorer or other utility that exists but I am not using? My idea for you would to build a little search & organize utility to find only the PTE .EXE files. Perhaps you could make the search based first on the icon (if it is the old or new default PTE icon) and then secondly on some header info or something inside the exe files? Maybe if it is soley icon based search, then it would have to involve a "learning" module that would first find all exe files and then have the user check off the NON PTE icons so the utility would remember and EXclude them on on subsequent uses of the program. I don't know, but I am sure there are several of our friends here in the forum that could tell us what might be possible. What do you think?

You are right. Just carry on. Live long and prosper. And make PTE presentations and utilities and . . .

OK Granot - I can see it clearly now - the ultimate utility challenge - For you to create a utility for you and us to keep track of all the other utilities you have created! As for the scrolling text, which I too have not yet tried, only the creator can vary the speed of the scroll? Of course someone will want to have scroll speed be controlable by a slow reader. No end in sight. Citius, altius, fortius

Cheers indeed my friend. But I think every card in my machine would like that slot! I have (in past instances) spent days rotating six cards and rebooting until the leather wore out! I guess I should consider a new mother board but then some of my old cards might not work I guess I need to digest a little here. I do appreciate the info about the PCI IDE card. I had tried such a card on a machine at my office and could never determine any gain. I may have found the card was not compatible with the motherboard or bios or something at that time. So until your explanation, I had wondered if such cards were more gimmick. Good to know that is not so.

And mal might have thought he was joining a "normal" forum.

My latest problem/challenge has developed out of the earlier threads on DVD, SVCD, PTE in videos and video segments in PTE etc. I recently purchased an Adaptec Fire Connect 4300 card to get digital video into the system. (The card works fine, Ken, on the XP pc.) On my Win98 SE machine the card will work in PCI slot #3 but will not work in PCI slot #5 - which is really the only slot I have available. When I put the Firewire card in slot 5, it is seen in device manager as functioning properly, but the camera does not show up as an imaging device (as it needs to.) I think that the Adaptec Firewire card needs to be in a slot that uses an unshared IRQ. As best I understand, my slot 3 is unshared but slot 5 is shared IRQ and therefor won't do. If I put the Firewire card in slot 3, I have to move my SCSI adapter card from slot 3 to slot 5. Then the firewire card works but the SCSI card no longer works for my burner and two scanners. My specific question is, does my SCSI card also require a slot with unshared IRQ? Or should I be able to make the SCSI card run in slot 5 which would then allow me to run the Firewire in slot 3? Or which shell has the pea under it?

Aging motherboard (Abit BH6) manual does show maximum memory configuration as 768MB. I put in the 768 long ago and don't recall a noticeable slowdown. I am (was)aware the MS acknowledges error messages on some systems when 512K is exceded. I don't think I have ever run into such message. Things have been better just since cleaning up the autorun.inf icon hangup. Thanks again for all the info. Even when "perfection" is not achieved, the info helps me get over my periodic seasons of discontent.

think(box) Bill - what do you mean "hillarious"? - This is serious stuff. Do you realize how much good info you guys are trying to cram into my head in such short time! Thanks to everybody, I think the icon problem is under control. Now Bill, your Case studies #1 - #4 are causing a slight resurgence of the need to scratcha bald head again. My PC (PIII - 750 mhz, 768mb ram) doesn't even come close to the directory performance you recorded. I am talking directories with 300 files tops, not 8700 - and still my display times with Explorer are frequently (always?) longer than what you experience. I am now wondering if my aged graphics card could even be the culprit? In Win98, Win98SE (no others tested) once you've deleted hundreds (or more) files whether or not in same folder, things like deleting or renaming slow down dramatically. This is a known "feature" that Microsoft has chosen not to fix. To work around you do Ctrl-Alt-Delete ONCE, click on Explorer, click on End Task and then the shutdown screen appears. Click on Cancel, then wait until hard drive activity subsides. This restarts Explorer and empties the "Undo" list that had been getting oversized. A restart of the system will fix the delay "feature" as well. This is a nifty trick that I had not heard. In fact, I think I had been taught that the only two tasks that I could not shut down were systray and explorer. So I will now try your trick as I have noticed the problem that you describe. Now do you want to tell me what explorer is vs. exploring is when they appear in the task box?

Good work Bill. Thanks.

Gee Ken, you keep mighty good track of things. Thank you for being so organized. Now I am pleased to report progress. That is, the source of the wrong icon coming up was indeed, as nobeefstu had suggested, an autorun.inf in the root of my G drive. So THAT icon issue is solved. While everyone is so hot and helpful, let see if we can expand the local knowledge base a bit further - I have now determined that some of the "freezes" of the G drive may not be total freezes after all. It seems that G drive has many many PTE shows, that is .exe files with either the PTE icon, or custom icon by the show creators. When using Explorer, it sometimes takes so long to display files, that it seems the machine has frozen. I have observed that the other drive (F) which also has dozens of PTE (.exe) files, also takes VERY long to display the detailed contents in Explorer. Does anyone know if either the icons or the large number of .exe files causes the slowdown? I use McAfee virus software resident on the machine. Does that have anything to do with the large number of exe files being perhaps a problem?

The OS on this subject PC is Win98 SE. Progress on this problem has been limited today. Every direction relates to everything else. I have been rebooting and scandisking etc ever since the first post of the icon problem. Actually the icon became an issue as an aside as I am trying to determine why a new Adaptec "fire wire" adapter card and an un-related SCSII adapter will apparently only run in certain PCI slots! The merry go round began. Thank you for your input. The autorun.inf may turn out to be a factor. I did (do?) have an early version of your AutoLink for PTE running at one time on my root drive. Hmm. Thanks for the additional lead.

Thank you Kurt and Bart for the quick response. I'm glad Bart that you are still here. I know your own great web site takes a lot time. I will follow the instructions from both of you. I am only having a little trouble deciding who's bald head I am supposed to scratch.

Long long ago . . . an icon I created for a PTE show, suddenly appeared as the icon for my C drive. (I think it was "C.") Since that time I have added another drive and re-installed a bunch of stuff. Lots of "stuff" on my computer. My hard disks are: 8 gig C, 30 gig partitioned as D & F, 80 gig partitioned as E & G. Often when using Explorer, my PC freezes when I try to access drive G. It just so happens that the aforementioned icon is now (for many months) showing up as the icon for drive G. Is there any possible connection with this icon for the drive and the problems with my G portion of the drive? Can someone tell me how to remove the icon as a designation for the drive? It really is a great icon - but I've had my fill.

I like Irfanview a lot. It is my emotional favorite. That said, I was surprised with a recent experience. I had a group of digital originals 2304x1704, about 1500k average. I was downsizing them with Irfanview to be 50-100 K. I don't remember exact dimensions, but about 400x600 & 800x600. I was setting Irfanview jpg "quality" to 60. The result, on some photos, was visually apparent and somewhat displeasing. In an effort to improve results with same size output, I tried Photo Elements 2 with the "Save for web" option. I was amazed at the better pictures that resulted. I think perhaps Guido recently made some favorable reference to this "Save for web" option. I don't know if it uses some new smarter algorythm or what. But in at least my most recent use, it was impressive. If anyone else can share experience or shed light on this observation, I would certainly be interested.

Igor and Bill - congratulations. The "system" works again in incorporating the various talents of you smart people.!

OK Ken, we expect your personal test results within 48 hrs after you have your new camera in hand.

When your hot your hot. Boxig, I can't begin to keep up even trying all your great work. But I still dl and eventually try most. Thanks for the continued offerings. Just a thought now - As you are looking for ideas - What about combining two of your recent utilities: 1. The utility that offers a front end to run from CD or Harddrive - with - 2. The utility that installs, runs, uninstalls from viewers harddrive.

Regarding the sound handling method of Bill and the new mp3 player being built by Igor - With such implementation, can the sound track be paused and resumed simultaneously with the photo flow?

Where does "awe" end? I just came from an orchestra/vocal contata that left me in awe. Then I check in to the comfort of our PTE forum, and low and behold ... .another level of "awe"! Thank you Bill for letting us in on such a gargantuan project! Not just the Mega Show, but the mega effort you have performed. Talk about organized thought! Reaaaaly, I ran out of superlatives for admiration probably in the first half of your description. I hope you will keep in touch here in the forum. I suspect your input will evoke some thought from many of us. Thanks again.

And should we add - it may not be the music which is playing differently, but actually the slides appearing differently relative to the steady music?

I have yet to view an SVCD production. I actually tried first time today to create one using Pinnacle Studio 8 - unsucessfully. I may take you up on the offer soon. The question I have is: If you convert a PTE of mine to SVCD format, can that SVCD version be emailed to me and then burned like any data file with my CD burner?

The G3's biggest problem (along w/the Fuji) is size, it's bigger than I wanted. A camera that I have used and really like a lot is a digital Sony DSC-F700. As I contemplated one for myself, the salesman quickly dismissed it as "too big" and routed me to the G2(3). Size is relative to our needs I guess. a lively community of users w/a ton of expertise. Is this community part of a site that encompasses other brands? The digital I currently use is a choice based very much on the extremely small size. The Konica 400 is a tiny body 4.3 megapix that serves me well, but has lesser lens and fewer controls than your G3 or the Sony mentioned. I would like to see if there is a similarly good group of users for this model. Of course, in about a week 10 new models will be announced that make the G3 a piddling toy suitable only for children. But you always have to deal w/the god of obselence with technology ... Helping someone move the other day, I picked up a book from the discard pile. The well known book, Future Shock by Alvin Toffler was first published in 1970. I decided 33 years was a long enough wait for me to now read a book about the effects of rapid and accelerating change in the world. Should be interesting to see what it looked like in 1970 vs. what we all recognize as you cite above.