lathompson
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Posts posted by lathompson
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Just when you think it can't get any better, it gets better! Will be anxious to work with the new beta. Thanks Igor.
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Okay, thanks. I didn't know that.
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About the re-validating of license for Videobuilder.... I didn't think that was necessary. I thought once purchased, it was forever. I've had it for some time and have not received anything to let me know I needed to reaffirm the license. Can anyone explain this please?
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In Audacity, change the sample rate to 44,100. Resave and all should be good. As mentioned before, it's quicker to make it right sometimes, rather than try to understand it. I do know this, Pictures to Exe is not to blame. This is just one of those little miseries that PC's have a way of throwing at us from time to time.
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I'm using 64bit and have not had problems with PTE vers 6 beta 20. Have no other versions installed on this new machine.
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essentially you want to 'paste'
the Music Tracks into a Box which will show the Track-Title plus Track-Time and at the end
of a list of Tracks it shows the Total-Running Time.
Almost... The most important thing I need is speed. With my music window open, I can grab an approximate number of tracks, drop them into the calculator basket, the total track time displays somewhere. If the total time is less than the target time by 2-3 minutes, I have what I want. If I'm short or long on time, I can see the times of each track and quickly select and delete to shorten, or drop some new tracks into it. This will take about 1 minute or less. I then select all from the calculator basket, drag them to my video-edit working folder to await the final touch, the customized exact-length ending (or beginning, if I want) to bring my soundtrack to a perfect length. This custom procedure takes relatively no time to accomplish.
-larry
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Yes, WMA. Sometimes the fingers get ahead of the brain.....
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I mentioned it in the other thread but I'll mention it here as well. Your calculator is a very useful tool for those that need to put soundtracks together and timing is a factor. My Excel calculator does basically the same thing, but also deals with some other timing issues at the same time. Like you, I always save my music titles with the running time at the end. I don't use the dot, but simply use 4 digits. 0433 is 4min, 33sec.
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Larry,
Post all music file extentions are you expecting to load ... it would be greatly helpful to know.
Actually there are only three types of files I use. MP3, WMV & WAV. MP3 and WAV are the most important.
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Yes, Lennart, I did try it. Sorry I haven't reported back. Spent the day with an ailing 90 year old father. Just got back to normal around here this morning. The MP3STATS program is really very nice, but only works on mp3 files. Many of my files are wav or some other format. Also, there is no ability to drag and drop once a list is compiled. I also tried the other suggestions. The CD burner xp program was a nice lite burner software but did not do anything I needed done. On the other hand, Burnaware Free was great for dropping music into in bunches and then culling songs out until the timing was right. The only problem with that is once the songs are in the list, they cannot be group selected and dropped into my audio folder for the video I'm working on. I suppose, I could simply drag & drop from the music folder, but that requires checking one window and selecting from the other. Certainly faster than my current method, but easier to make errors that will cause giant slowdowns in the process later. I'm going to work with that program for a few days and see what happens.
Brian posted a nice little program for calculating music compilations, however it is not as useful for me since I already have a time calculator that does that, plus a few other time relevant calculations as well. The offering is much appreciated anyway and I hope that others will use it! Thanks Brian.
nobeefstu, I'll be watching. Remember, no big rush on this.
-larry
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I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Brian offered a time calculator in another thread. It's a really good little tool for those who have not yet used one. I have a time calculator already using Excel and it does a variety of things when planning a video or slide show. Problem is, like Brian's offering, it requires the entering of times, one by one; and it doesn't have any interaction with the actual music files so although it is very useful, it does not save time on a budget project. Budget projects come in at a pace of 20 to 1 over complex and more profitable ones. My idea will allow me to do 5 times more in a given time frame.
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If you cannot find something that fills your needs anytime soon ... I can probably custom make something to meet your needs.
What I propose is to have an empty list with drag-n-drop calculations from the music folder list items. Possibly add music playback to help preview the selection(s), save the final to list or copy final selections to it own directory. Once I get started I will be more able to sort the details.
Not too soon ... maybe if Iam freed up this weekend.
You can do that? That's a pretty nice thing to do for a guy, I must say. Let me nose around with a few of the suggested programs first. I don't want you to do such a project if it's not necessary. The offer is greatly appreciated!! Thank you!
-larry
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Hi,
Would it be possible just to drop the music files into a cd burning program?
Not to burn,but just to see the time taken up by the files.
If music isn't that important,maybe organize music into duration segments as well.
Would save on the maths and the last track can be selected from a track of suitable
size in a duration segment.
DavyC
I tried that in Nero and Acid Pro with no luck and it doesn't give the total time in Windows Media player when you compile a playlist or to burn. The suggestion to organize is a good one. I currently save every custom track I make in order to reuse it when it's length is appropriate for another job. There is a need to keep the music fresh by not using exact combinations over and over. I have a system now to make different choices in patterns. This way, music may be repeated in different soundtracks, but it won't be repeated with the same tunes. Sometimes, I can eyeball it with short durations. I have customized most of my music by making the time part of the title (example: Summertime_Ripples-0314.mp3 is a song that is 3min 14sec in length.)
I suspect strongly that no such program exists but I thought it worth a try. Thanks for your suggestion, DavyC
-larry
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Hi!
Maybe I´m on thin ice - but why not try PtE.
Open any PtE-project and add musik. The time is
calculated by default...
/Lennart
Lennart, that was a good suggestion but I have already tried working with the music selection in PTE. There are various little things that happen (or can't be made to happen) when PTE's music selection window is open. It's true, it's a great place to dump a lot of music tracks for a quick read of the total time, but once that is done, the productive flow breaks down. I could go into detail on that, but would rather not bore everyone with all the little reasons. Suffice it to say, I can't use that beautiful little feature in PTE. If only I could do a CTRL-A for a mass selection and drag the music to a working folder for my video. (And NO Igor, I'm not putting that on a wish list. You have enough to do now)
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I put old home movies onto DVDs for clients. Once the footage is finished and I determine a run time for the final video, I then create a musical soundtrack from my collection of RF music and add it to the video. The problem is, I want to speed up the process of gathering the music to fit the length needed for the video. Right now, I must look at the run time of each song and add the times up as I go along. I use a special template in Excel to automate the math right now, but that's still a very slow process. Once I get the run time of my music within approximately 3 minutes of the video's length, I then create a custom track from scratch using Sonicfire Pro.
I need to automate the music selection process more. I do not want to do this work on a time line, I'm not custom editing sound on a project that is budget minded. I'm setting up simple background music for old 8mm home movies. The music comes from a large collection and it does not need to be listened to for content. It is all appropriate for the videos. With the right program, I could throw say, 20 (or so) songs into the folder, see how close it is to the video run time, then add or subtract a few songs to meet the length requirements. Right now, that's a 20 minute job. With an ideal program, it could be a 20 second job.
So, my question is this: Does anyone know of a program that would allow me to drag and drop tracks into a folder and have that folder instantly show me exactly what the combined run time is for the tracks I have just dropped into it? I will still need to create the custom ending with Sonicfire Pro, I know, but that's something that I don't want to eliminate.
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CTRL + or - works for me in Firefox 3.5.2
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Cool, new look! Easier to read.
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I will stand with others that do not wish audio to become a PTE feature. If it does, I can live with it, but does it need it? Not for me. I fear programs that do too many things.
I also prepare my music in Audacity first, to control the length, the beginning and the end. So maybe my vote shouldn't count. I wouldn't use the audio feature anyway.
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Wideangle beat me to it. That is a perfect and fast way to make silence. You create it once, it's available forever.
One more thing: Sometimes, I find an irritatingly quite or quirky start to a piece of music that otherwise, would be great for a show. If I can find a good spot to do it, I clip the irritating part from the beginning so the music starts precisely where I want. Sometimes, this is not possible, but when it is, it improves the impact at the start. On the other end, when I get a piece of music that has too much silence at the end, and a lot of my RF music does, I use audacity to clip it off as close to the end of the music as I can, thereby allowing me full control of the impact music brings to the end of the show.
-larry
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Hi Larry try avast free antivirus constant updates and a good replacement for AVG across all flavours of windows.
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
Geoff
Geoff, I downloaded avast and loaded it. Works great! Thank you for your suggestion.
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Sorry about being off topic, but I have the need to put an old machine into daily use in my network in order to use an old, but very useful editing program. This customized program I'm using requires Windows 98 SE. and will not operate in a virtual operation. It requires a dedicated setup. Previously, I used AVG on this machine, however after booting up for the 1st time in a couple of years, I see that AVG has since discontinued support and updates for windows 98. Does anyone have a suggestion for a free anti virus software that will do the trick?
-larry
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Is not an image saved at level 6 on a 22mp camera bigger than one from a 12mp camera?
I have no idea, never had reason to find out to be honest. All I know is that if you start out with great quality, that quality is still evident when the image is reduced in size. I noticed that years ago when a friend bought a really top of the range film scanner. You could see the difference in his images even at 8in by 6in email images.
With regards the Moire effect, that is a battle that each individual has to deal with and I do seem to experience it quite a bit whenever I animate an image. That is why you don't see too much animation from me. As you probably know there are lots of ways to deal with the moire effect, but they all effect image quality in some way. I have had many occasions where an animation seemed appropriate, but I had to give up the idea, because I could not get rid of the moire effect and was not prepared to accept a soft image just to use animation.
Of course the best way to defeat the moire effect is not to animate
DaveG
I have just created a crop from an original image and saved it at different Jpg compressions 12,6 etc and I cannot see any difference and I am looking at images from a 22mp camera on a brand new flat screen. I have three other people here with me and they can't tell either, so that rules out my eyesight.
Don't you think there is an obsession with this potential loss of quality? I happen to like and agree with your particular obsession, because I rather think it is the same obsession as mine. Image quality ! It is essentail in my view to what we do, but how come that in about 15 years of working with Photoshop I have not seen evidence of this loss of quality?
We save our images for a slide show, they will not be enlarged, they will not be printed, what we see is what we get. I even tried to re-create this loss of quality once by repeatingly saving the image and couldn't do it. For general advice to those who ask, why not keep the answer simple. Save a level 6 and you will retain a good balance between image quality and image size for the slide show. Many of the problems experienced by newer users are caused by the images being too large, which we have seen in this forum.
I am not suggesting that it is wrong to save images for a show at Level 12 and for those who know what they are doing and they PC will handle the files fair enough, but I do believe that it would cause more problems than it would solve if that is passed on as the best advice for all. I am sure that time will change this and in a few years we will be dropping 20meg files into our slide shows, well perhaps
I agree with you Barry. Well said.
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Larry,
I've no disagreement with what you say but...
Please read Andrew's original post. He wants advice in respect of projecting his sequence at his local camera club. If I have understood Andrew's post correctly, the club appears to offer either computer/projector playback or DVD-Player/projector playback. I stand by my assertion that the computer/projector playback of an EXE file (with his sequence on a USB memory stick) will present his sequence to best advantage. The DVD-Player/Projector combo is, for Andrew, a route best avoided.
I'm simply trying to keep my advice focussed on my perception of Andrew's needs. Some of the above posts have wandered away from that.
regards,
Peter
Peter, I did understand Andrew's original questions and you guys gave excellent advice. Excellent! I agreed with everything including the fact that dvd is a terrible choice for Andrew.
I felt that statements concerning dvds and quality of dvds needed some clarification. I provided the asterisk.
larry
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Peter,
I agree that there are certainly limitations when a PTE show is burned to DVD and yes, the quality cannot compare with a show from an EXE version, but if you want to circulate the show to people that don't have a computer or don't have a laptop to feed it to their tv, the DVD is about as good as you can expect. And viewed on a tv, at a normal viewing distance, quality is very nice indeed, particularly if the viewer has never seen the higher quality version to compare with.
I find that given a choice of messing with a computer/TV feed, most consumers prefer the convenience of the plain old freestanding dvd player. Not advanced hobbyists like most of the forum members. Not AV professionals, but everyday consumers. For the past 2 years, all of my customers have requested dvds. Previously, the shows were delivered on Cds as an executable, but when dvds became common, people began to ask if the CDs would play on the dvd players and didn't like it that they didn't. I got strange looks when I suggested viewing on the computer. The result was to switch to producing dvds. I still offered the CDs and explained that the EXE could be played through a computer to their new TV monitor for superior quality. Surprisingly, not one single client, commercial or not, has wanted the EXE version. Seriously. Every customer has gone for the dvd version. Quality is what they wanted but convenience is what they buy and they tell me they love it. I do about 1500 slide shows annually. I have no complaints on quality and my business on referrals is fantastic. Quality is what it is to the consumers. It's weird! Remember BETA vs VHS? And where the hell did SVHS ever get to? Never saw an SVHS rental movie.
Hobbyists settle for nothing but top quality and smart professional presenters do it right as well, that's the way it is and the way it should be, but to the average consumer, it's the message of the show, the music, the flow and the convenience of viewing.
You are right, Peter, but for those that belong to this forum and new to the world of PTE, and will not produce for a club or present a formal presentation beyond family and friends, the choice to burn to dvd is a viable one with it's own advantages and quality range. I think that PTE's video burner does great work if compared to other dvds, viewed at proper distance on regular and/or new plasma/lcd screens. To brand it as poor quality against a beautiful EXE version is not fair. That comparison should always come with an astrisk.
larry
SUPERAntiSpyware Free Version
in General Discussion
Posted
Today, I scanned my system with SUPERAntiSpyware Free Version and it detected videoinet.dll as:
Trojan.Agent/Gen-Cryptor[Virut] located at:
C:\program files\wnsoft picturestoexe\6.0\videobuilder\videoinet.dll
Thought you might like to know this updated false id, as I have not had this happen in prior scans using this really fine free software. I also reported it through their "false positive report" section.