lathompson

Okay, it is generally agreed that playing a show from the hard drive of a machine is better than playing it from a CD. So is there a simple way to write a small program to automatically dump the show to someone's hard drive as soon as the CD is played? We have autoruns to start the show, so why not include the dump? I cannot write programs and have to plead ignorance here, but wouldn't this be a really simple thing to do? lt

Thanks, I'll sleep better tonight. Ever since I watched the slideshow, I've been "Kazzooing" this tune. I'm driving my wife nuts. lt

Which brings up the question, what is the name of that piece of music? I've always wondered. I think it was used on the Benny Hill show. lt

April, perhaps you could burn a DVD instead of a CD, making it playable from a freestanding DVD player. If you have a DVD burner, that is. You say you don't want everyone sitting around the computer to watch the show but running the show from a CD requires that it be played on a computer, so the family has to sit around it anyway. Of course, you could have a TV OUT on your computer allowing it to be watched on the television, but again, the show will run from a hard drive much smoother than a CD player can do it. Why not give it a shot? lt

Ken, your jukebox was great. Sorry you couldn't do all the songs. I went wanting for more. You're memories are similar to mine, songwise. A perfect way to remember where you were when the songs were popular. Good job! lt

I'm glad you could smile at that post I made... I don't know why, but I was smiling while I wrote it. When I watched it, the first 8 seconds was kinda... well... neat, but I thought it was a warm up. I guess I expected too much. I'm a big Monty Python fan. Equally love the Marx Brothers, 3 Stooges and love everything Salvadore Dali made. I really love off-the-wall stuff, but your show? Oh, my! Well, you did provide a warning. I should have just shut up and let it ride. Well, it did bring something out of me I didn't know was there. Yes, maybe we should get together and make some pictures someday. You can laugh at mine. You might notice... I haven't posted anything ever. Matter of fact, I spend most of my time lurking. I don't post much. Got a very active business to run and when you are a mom & pop operation, you gotta do it all. Matter of fact, got a slide show to finish and only 15 minutes to get it done. Ado. lt

I have never given anyone a disparaging remark prior to this post in all my years in the business of photography and video, however the author of 'water' (assuming the show ran exactly as it was supposed to when I played it) has created a tremendously borish show; both a waste of bandwidth and time. 3 photos, eyes blinking on and off... repeated over and over. Each show and subshow, the same thing. Same music. God, that's just totally bad... Is it an April Fools joke? It's a few days late for that! I'm being as civil as I can about this. Never been so critical of anything but I apologize to the author if I'm wrong here. Your disclaimer is such an understatement. Unless of course, you are six years old. If so, kudoos for a great job. (Boy, I feel terrible about this post. I couldn't help myself) lt

I would suggest creating a folder for special sound bites. I have pre-recorded the following SILENT TRACKS: 03 sec, 06 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec and 20 seconds. Add a editable title slide for generic titles to be created and create a BLACK SLIDE to place at the beginning and end of your show. That gives you a clean in/out situation for your music to begin/end smoothly. You can always double up on any of these setups. If Audacity doesn't allow recording silence, there are several $50-70 audio editors out there that will. Wish I could help you on that flash stuff. I'm screwing around with it too and it truely is totally exausting. I don't think I have the patience for it. OTOH, this program is super easy. And it doesn't take long to get good at it. Good Luck! Larry

Hey D. I'm a pro photog too. Been lurking and learning from these fourm members for a few years now. P2E is just an extremely versatile program with great protection built in for us. I use it for all my proofing now. Although it is not for the MAC people, I've not ran into a customer that has had a problem with using it. Welcome to the group. Larry

One more thing Brian... When you make the show, be sure that you use a black slide as your first and last image. Make the 1st one 15 seconds or so long and start the music just before or same time as your title. This will give you time for the show to start and for your VTR to get up to speed recording nothing but black for a few seconds prior to the show begining. At the end, use the black slide, and perpare the show to keep the last image up and not end until you push the esc key. That gives you time to allow for a smooth ending with a few seconds of black at the end. If you don't do these things, you cannot keep from showing the computer's desktop before and after the show. Good luck! Larry

Granot, Professional photographers make their living selling images. If fair use included making your own copies, everyone would buy one 8x10, scan it and supply thier entire familly with photos. There would be minimal profits and very quickly, no professional photographers left in business. This is happening at a frightening rate in wedding photography right now. Where we used to have $500-$1000 in extra sales after proofs were delivered, we now experience almost $000 in extra sales. The law is quite clear. OTOH, what a person does with a photo in the privacy of their home is beyond policing, but it is done often and without remorse. Record companies pursue the offenders of their copyrights and they may only loose a few dollars while making millions on legal sales. Photographers have one set of images for one single client and if they don't buy them, they're worthless. The copyright law is really needed by photographers. For the most part, we can only rely on the personal need to be honest with one's self and hope clients give the owner of the copyright first opportunity to produce copies. LT

For great royalty free piano music, and at a great low price, try: http://www.gregmaroney.com/ I've been using his stuff for a while now and Greg's pieces have received many call backs by clients that weren't expecting the music to be so moving. It's kinda nice to get those call backs and especially nice that I can get positive response from royalty free music! Larry

Thanks for jumping in guys, but I think that some things weren't meant to be explained. I copied all the files for this show to a CD. I created a new folder on the root drive and dropped all images, the music and the .PTE file. I opened it, removed all the images from the timeline, then reinstated all images from the new folder locations. Erased all the previously set music and then reloaded the music from it's new location. Next, I when through the options one at a time and saw that for this particular show, I had changed the mouse button actions to NONE and NONE. I changed them back to PREV SLIDE and NEXT SLIDE where I normally have it set. All other settings remained the same. I saved the .pte and the .exe. I then built the video output and encoded with TMGEnc. It was a perfect mpg for my DVD burn. Absolutely no problem. I went back and changed the mouse buttons back to NONE and NONE. Repeated the encoding and... well, it was a perfect mpg again. I could not repeat the problem. It would appear that my picking all the files out and dropping them fresh from a CD into a new folder, took the hiccup out of my program. Now all is well, which just goes to show you that HAL is still alive and messing with us. I don't think the program had anything to do with this situation and I don't think anyone is going to explain it. It's just something to add to a vast, evergrowing little population of oddities, never to be solved by anyone. Oh well... Larry T

Well, I guess my problem is confusing everyone. Nobody wants to venture a guess... Oh, well... I'll just talk to myself... update: I just loaded an earlier version, version 4, beta 8, of P2E onto ANOTHER computer and the VID file produced a very perfect finished piece. Went back to the problem computer and brought up another slideshow .pte from a previous job and did a VID file for it. It was done flawlessly without a problem using the same setup as the problem show. So... What now?

Update: I just updated my P2E program to the latest version, 4.42 and rebuilt the show again. Same problem. Took each image into photoshop and resaved each image. Same problem ps: Accidently posted original message twice. when I posted, I received no message that the post was successful (both times actually). Larry T

I have built a great slideshow, it works fine playing on the computer and burned to a CD, it is fine also. My client also wants a DVD and after preparing the VID file from PTE, and with the same settings I have used for hundreds of successful burns, it doesn't play right. This is a simple show. 124 images, with my tried and true soundtrack. It opens with a first image coming up, music starts and all images are syncronized to my music. Just like I've done hundreds of times. When I make the video, using my standard settings, I am invited to view it before going to into the DVD process. I give it a go, and the first thing I see is an image that should be th 40th image to appear. It is split, with the bottom half on top, the top half on bottom, with a 1 inch band of black separating them. The colors are all reversed. The transitions are working but the images are not changing. The music plays on. Now this is before I ever get the file into Movie Factory 3. I did it again, using TMGenc and after it was done, I reviewed it. It was exactly the same. I've rebuilt the show 3 times. It is the same each time. Is this something that's happened to anyone? I mean, I make these shows 4 times a day at least. I never have a problem. I'm confused! Larry T

Yes Alan, I suppose I am a little excited about products that I deliver to my customers. Most are very dependant on things being simple. Behind the scenes, I try to provide as much simplicity in design as possible, as customers don't like to bring things back thinking it's broke. And explanations delivered after a complaint is given generally come off like it is an excuse instead of an explanation. Yes, since this has happened with the last 4 shows I've burned to DVD, I have provided an autorun CD along with a receipe for taking the .exe off the disc to their hard drive (in cases of CD playability problems). The only person to complain was the first customer I had this happen to. They had asked me to preview it with them before taking it home with them. It was a surprise when I demoed it at the front desk... The red title page was totally blue. Nothing I could say made them feel secure to play it the next evening at their party. I gave them a VHS copy as a backup. They called the next day and said it played just fine on their freestanding player. KEN... Thanks for the screen grab! Larry T

Ken, with all due respect, if I should adjust the colors in WMP just to play a DVD, what must my client do when I deliver it to him? I need to know that my DVD is burned correctly and that it will play right when delivered. Other DVDs play fine with WMP and all my P2Exe shows play without color problems as well, so I don't think this is a cure. I really need to know how to stop this from happening. My purpose of this question in the forum was to see if anyone else was experiencing this and whether it might be a bug in the latest version. It might well be a question to post in the CD-DVD Forum, as it might well be a function of the burn. I'm sure this is going to boil down to user error of some kind, but in the meantime, I have a client that is going to take a finished DVD to her mothers 50th wedding anniversary party. Another is buying multiple copies for his family as well as playing it at their family reunion party. These folks don't want to get there, play the show from their computer and have it play with reversed colors; and none of them know how to set the time on their VCRs, much less troubleshoot a color problem with their DVD, computer or player software. I do appreciate the suggestion, however, as I didn't know you could change color settings in WMP. Send that screen shot to larry@tphoto.net as I would like to see it. Thanks again, Larry

No Al, it doesn't have anything *directly* to do with the video card and definitely not the monitor. Playing the DVD through Ulead's player (and others) it is fine. Using Windows Media player it is not. It is predictable. Re-doing the full show from scratch doesn't affect anything. From a free standing DVD player, it is fine. The finished P2EXE file plays fine through everything. It is the finished DVD that has a problem. I've used 3 different blanks to burn onto, none of which have ever given me this problem. The only variable is using the latest version of P2Exe and, recently replacing my main HD on my main PC in the video dept. Larry

The last 3 shows I have created with the latest version of P2Exe have resulted in some strange results. I do the show, it plays fine. I make the temp AVI and go into Movie Factory 3 to make the DVD. Once completed, I take it to another machine and play it to see if it is okay. Using Windows Media Player, it plays lousy... Reds are dark blue and the overall coloration is a light blue. Nothing is right. Choosing another player, the DVD plays fine with all colors okay. Taking the disc to a freestanding DVD player (actually 4 different machines) the DVD plays fine. The DVD has been made the same way and with the same tools and programs used to make others in the past and this has not been a problem. I have not knowingly updated Microsofts media player lately and I don't even have the same version on all my computers, but before Tuesday, I have never experienced this problem. Anyone have any idea what might have started this? Larry

Wow... The contribution of information I have at this point, is more than I could have expected! Brian, Ron, Hawk, thanks for your tips, and Ken, your contribution of links, freeware and samplings is beyond my expectations. I have tested the two services mentioned and these seem to meet my needs perfectly at this time. I will now be able to get my demo shows to my clients quickly and for me, that's a big sales tool. My new (building right now) web host is going to offer much more space and I should not have this problem long, but for now, this is going to work really nice. Thanks again, Larry T

As a photographer, I get many requests for samples of my photography and I have built a nice collection of samples for the variety of photography we do. Unfortunately, many of my potential customers find me online and are not in the area of my studio that they might visit and see my work. Yes, I can make CDs and DVDs and send them, however it would be nicer and much more effective if I could simply return a demo show to them by attachment to a quick reply. I would prefer a full screen show and my for photographic quality, I need to use at least 300k images, a 2 minute mp3 and about 40 images. This can make a rather large download for dial-up clients, 10-=17megs. Many AOL (and other services as well) customers cannot get a 10meg file as an attachment, much less a 17meg file... And my website doesn't have enough storage to upload them all for download. What is the answer to this? Larry T

Apparently the mouse click sound is not part of the sounds controlled within the Control panel's options. I searched the sounds for the mouse and didn't find any... I'm sure it's there somewhere. Wonder why this came up during this stupid video board problem? Oh, well...

Update: The problem is fixed. I went to device manager and removed the ATI Radeon display device finding it installed twice. I removed both. Then rebooted and allowed Windows to find and reinstall the drivers on it's own as opposed to using the installation disc. When it did, I had everything back to normal again. Only problem I have now is a damned beep everytime I click the mouse. Wish it were quite again. It was the Radeon with the problem and how it got that way, we cannot figure out. The fix brought everything back to default and I had to reset my monitor's properties but when done, everything was back to normal. I love it when a plan comes together... (somebody famous said that once) Larry T

Well, a restoration did not work. I might point out Ken, there is nothing wrong with my computer's display... It is the TV monitor that the video board is outputing to that doesn't show the icons! And if I open a folder, it doesn't display on the monitor either. The monitor simply shows my wallpaper. I should say that the monitor shows all the actions of the computer from bootup (dos) and works fine as the black "Windows loading" screen comes up. Then, as the desktop starts to come up, the monitor and the computer's CRT display as previously mentioned. I'm totally lost here.