LES

I have been able to successfully bring a PTE generated avi file into Sonic MyDVD, Sony's ScreenBlast Movie Studio and also Pinnacle's Studio 8. I haven't burned any DVDs yet but I don't foresee any problems. Les

Sorry, wrong Lester.

Truelight, I don't know whether I'm answering your question but I was able to play a .mid with the "Use internal WAV/MP3 player" option selected and unselected. Therefore, I guess I'm making the same assumption as you. Also note that .mid files cannot be used for individual slide sound; only for background music. Lester

Try downloading "imuspro.exe" which is listed under MS Music Producer on the page. You must also download the patch ("pc_msmp1.zip") and install both as instructed or the program will not work. As or running on Windows 98, I don't know but I would think it would.

If you want to have some fun generating royalty free music, try Microsoft Music Producer. It's easy, flexible, and free. You can even generate music the length of your choice. It worked fine for me in Windows 98 SE and I'm now trying it in XP. Appears it does not work in Windows ME. http://www.musicmachines.net/faqmp.htm Lester

Eddie, Many of us have made suggestions regarding enhancements we would like in PTE. Discussion of features in other products, in my opinion, provided good information of what many loyal PTE users want, need or might like to see in future versions of PTE. Discussion of other products in this forum might also help PTE developers stay abreast of competing products so that PTE itself can remain competitive. We all know that PTE is an excellent product for what it does. It generates the best executable slideshows, in my opinion. We also know that PTE does not generate VCD or SVCD shows. I would like to know if PTE is going to remain a product that generates exe shows only. Knowing the answer to that question would probably limit discussions of VCD, SVCD, DVD, etc., and other competing products. We would only need to discuss in this forum how PTE can remain the best product on the market for generating exe slideshows.

The best option for me at this time is to use video DVD software to record true DVD slideshow movies. DVD media is getting cheaper as more DVD drive recorders and standalone DVD recorders are sold. I have already read where you can get DVD media farely cheap. I currently us a Video software that makes good still image slideshows, with menus. It has a storyboard, timeline and text views. The timeline has tracks for video clips or images, text (titles), background music, and sound-effect voiceover. Transitions are accepted directly on the video/images track. You can output to camera, tape, DVD, VCD or SVCD. In addition, you can save your movie to MPEG, AVI, RealVideo or WindowsMedia. And guess what? The DVD movies are pretty good. What it can't do is create an exe and that's where PTE excels. If PTE does not embrace DVD, I feel they will eventually cater only to those of us who will need a PC to see the best quality of images in a slideshow. The masses will want to view slideshows on TV and DVD is where the masses will be. Just look at the sales of DVD players to VCRs and PCs.

Danabw, The Philips DVD Recorder will record directly from a TV. Therefore, it appears it is possible to play a show on your PC and at the same time, use a scan converter to send the signal to a TV. The TV Out feature on some video cards would do the same thing, right? Then, output from the TV to the DVD Recorder. The key is what quality picture you get on your TV and that would probably depend on how good a scan converter or video card you use. I have recorded some slideshows to VHS using a scan converter but the quality was lacking, but it was VHS also. I would think recording to DVD would provide better quality although probably still not as good as on a PC.

Rick, I too have been looking forward to this update. I agree this forum would not be the place to engage in a lot of discussion regarding XatShow. Would the PC Tools forum at DPReview be a good place to get feedback re: this update? Many of us frequent that site also.

You can download Xatshow 5.0 eng ver at: http://www.xat.com/xatshow/eng.html

I don't do a lot of posting but I do read the threads of this and some other forums quite a bit. I too, am finding it very difficult to find the topics and posts that are meaningful to me. There was mention of the DPReview forum in the original post. Well, I personally think that is one of the best structures for a forum I have seen. You can navigate to various topics, see in a glance who has originated new posts, responded to the posts and any sub-topics to the original topic. It's very slick but it must be proprietary since I have not seen that structure anyplace else. Anyway, something similar here would solve a lot of our problems.

What are the benefits of making a movie in PicToExe from images extracted from an original movie?

I would like to see frame objects so that additional images on a page can be added and sized within P2E. Currently, additional images must be sized outside of the program.

Very good to see the site and forum back. It was surely missed.