steveP

Thanks for that did not realise that Large Fonts was selected nor that it was a problem in that area. Has the shadow not yet been implimented in the lastest Beta?

I have not downloaded V5 Since an early beta, but have since downloaded 8R i am very impressed (frustrated as it is not finished adn i vcan really play) however I have one point of concern, which is common at the moment with lots of other donwloaded software. I mainly work on my laptop which is 1920x1200. The problem is with dialog box text being trunkated Eg. Project options Main Tab I can only see upto "Screen sa" on the second line The "and" in the Time interval for new slides is missing half the "d" In the Advanced tab the two buttons with long text have some characters missing at the beginning and end

Sorry Ken did not realise that there wasnt an attachement option in the members deatils section of the forum. As you can understand i try not to give out my email on an open basis. Steve

Ken i would be gratefull if you could email me the Layer Comps Zip as well, you can email me through the members section Steve

Thanks Lin Getting impatient I think, as I have been waiting to be able to use the timeline without sound for some time, having to add silence files was not the best. I create a lot of simple presentations through my job and have to do them quickly. Being able to add simple effects like shadow a smaller than full screen with gradient and adjust the slide times quickly has made life simple, this is especially true as all my exe files to date have been relatively resolution and aspect ratio independent when view on a large screen. But patience is a virtue and it looks like it will be well worth waiting for.

Will have to wait for the final version then. There are two reasons I always set my images to less than 100% is that i prefer a border all round and as many of my slide shows are used via a projector and screen I cannot guarantee that the projector is set correctly for the screen so 90% gives me a safety margin. For this same reason I always work within the 1024x768 aspect ration as most projects accept this but it is still ok on the few that are better and the many that are 800x600 the fact that the old PTE managed to handle this and still maintain a border was a great asset. I have also been playing with the Timeline and have been adjusting the slide duration and transition duration. When I preview from the time line the default transition I set in project options is changed to a Circle out transition if I have changed, by dragging, the transition duration. But none of my changes stay when I close the timeline. I hope this is another function not yet activated.

Finally found time to have a good look at Beta 5. So i created a folder placed some prepared images and sounds an started. I have a usual routine involves setting the project options to gradient background, Image size to "90% of screen to show images" and turn all Effects off except fade. When I previewed the image it was full screen and no matter what i did. The images are all within 1024x 768 I was playing on my laptop which is wide screen and 1920x1200. Is this a bug or am I missing something with the new tools etc.

Just downloaded 5 Beta 2 and tried to open an old show looked fine untill I clicked on the timeline and imediatly got lots of error message dialogs saying "Access Violation at address 0056E62DB IN Apr.exe etc. If left the program closes. The show has 49 slides but i get more than that in dialog boxes, there is also three sound tracks. Another thing I notices is a jpeg error message in blue "This jpeg cannotcannot be loaded ...." these are 1px images I use when I want a blank slide and the background is a gradient. I have not had a chance to read all through the postings so i dont know if this is a repeat is so sorry.

JRR Thanks for that I have been using that and Ctrl R in the main window to preview. It is the small preview window on the time line that would be most usefull when I am trying to balance transitions with each other and with audio. It would save the amount of opening and closing of the timeline So what i would like is to have the equivalent of Ctrl R in the timeline. I am hopeing it would not be to difficult as it is already implimented on the main window, but with all codeing what looks easy is usually the hardest.

I have been creating a slide show again and i am still finding the preview a real pain as when you click on play it starts from the beginning. As I only use this when i am refining a section of the timeline playing form the cursor would be so much easier. I know there is a work around Play Pause then locate cursor where you want to start then Play again. But to look at the last three slides of a 20 slide slideshow this is a lot of messing about. Also being able to use the timeline without sound would be really useful. It would save having to use a range of Silence files. Pity, for me the program is so close to perfect as i dont use a lot of fancy transitions as they blind the viewer more often than enhance the show. To make it perfect for me I would like to see the above and a way of positioning text relative to the image not the screen ( say relative to screen center) Steve

ronwill Yes it is the same question and your answer has made it easier. But last night i was working on the lead outs on a show of 121 slides, with no music for the last 3 slides. So having to use your method worked but was not "simple" as I wanted to test the lead out quickly oan often till I got it right. Unfortunatly I could not as the play did not run past the end of the music.

I have been looking at the play button in the timeline seeing what the quickest way to use it is. Especially to preview just some slides in the middle or the end. I have found that it will not play beyond the end of music marker so I am unable to optimise my lead out slides. I could do it with silence but. Is there any way that the play can be made to start from a selected point or slide and have it paly right to the end. If that was possible then running a preview from the beginning would still be easy you would just have to Ctrl -Home first

Just been playing with the transitions and like alrobin I will have to write it down so i have a procedure to follow. I am very impressed with the program and have used in on and off for some time It is only recently that i have used it in anger so to speak. Many of the people who have seen the presentations are extemely impressed and think I am very clever (so thanks Igor) I must however agree with other though, the time line is not that intuitive. But great program, please dont do what many really good programs do and become to much and too fancy that the main purpose is lost.

alrobin Thanks that solved It. the ctrl must be a funny that sort of works

Sorry just tested properly and it is not slected until the music it is that the last slide is never selected. To test this i moved 3 slides outside the music and ctrl +shift + end form slide 2 and all but the first slide and last slide were selected. Repeated test with all slides within music duration and still all but last slide selected. It does not matter where you start. This is also true of ctrl+shift+home it always selects to slide 2 not slide 1

Some maybe silly questions, What does the update button do. Why can i change the time next to the update button. What is the shift all slides to the right for. But mainly a comment on the function of the Beta I wanted to shift all but the first two slides to the right by 3 seconds, so I thought i would select slides 4 to 47 by selecting slide 4 then ctrl + shift + end this initailly did what i thought although the cursor still jumped to the end. Although it turned out not to be the end slide but the end of the music. I have two slides that are after the music as a lead out nad they were not selected. Is this expected behaviouror a Bug.

Ronwill, JJR Thanks, discovered the first by accident after the post. Works well with small shows but it is not easy with my 55 Slide show and I am just testing the last 4 slide, or a small part in the middle where I want a slide to appear then quicky fade out ( 3 identical slides, the middle one has text that i want to only just appear then striaght away fade out). Getting them to look correct involved a lot of previews. Steve

I have just finished 4 shows that cover a recent trip to South Africa, and the shows were very easy to do using the timetime, once I have some music to add. One of the problems i encountered is the Play button always starts from the beginning which was annoying as I was realy trying to preview and watch the timeline for my end slides which fade in with credits and information. I do the same at the beginning but that is OK with the system as is. I know I can use the preview button and it will play from the selected slide, but i cannot the the timeline. SteveP

I have been trying to follow the discussion on customise settings, project setting, timeline settings and syncronise in the project options. Although I cannot get get my head around the discussion, I will have to experiment using some of the discussion threads, I spent about three hours on saturday trying to use the timeline and some of the other settings. If Ihad not saved the project on a very regular basis I would have lost my presentaion as things happened that I did not expect nor do I fully understand. 1. You have Synchronise to Music duration in project options plus slide show duration or neither checked, what is neither checked. 2. Use own time in Customize Slide. 3. The three options to the left on the time line. Sometimes I would tick a box in the timeline and it would automatically revert to another state when re opened. I solved the problem but I cannot rememebr what I did nor understand what happened. Personally I think linking the timeline to the music does not help, the timeline should be linked to the slide show and the music added. Yes I understand the need for, and would use, Synchronize to music. That would still be possible if the music duration could be (as is currently) known but to me logic links the timeline to the slide show and the music is appended to that. With this there would a lot less discussion about syncronization and more about timeing, adjusting timeing and transistions.

JRR: Thanks that sounds similar to the one pixel jpg I have used to give me a blank slide so i can control it with the background and object editor for quick credits etc. Pity we cannot have a one "pixel" sound that can be stretched to any length, therfore defining the the final show length at the start and arranging slides to fit. I have just found that Shift end Selects all slides to the end which is what I want when adjusting a slide duration in the middle and maintaing all other durations. I missed it at first as it appears to do the same as Ctl end and Alt end in that it moves to the last slide. It would be good if Shift End selected all slides to the End but stayed focused on the first selected slide. This would enable easy rippling of slides along.

This may be a bit of a silly question, but can I use the time line without music. I have and am creating alot of slideshow some with comments and qustions. the slide is often repeated with either a continuation or an answer (mainly fun comments). So I often want the answer or the question to apear for a short time compared to the rest of the show. The timeline was the easiest way to do this with music added but i could not do it via the timeline without music. Also with music I was trying to play from the current slide and I got some stange results, depending on which box on the left hand side was checked. Could we have a simple way of adjusting the duration of one slide and shuffelling the others along. This is something I have just done alot of and also it was easy when I selected all the following slides, I could not find just a quick click method. Some of these questions may be due to lack of familiarisation, so if i have missed something a quick answer would be appreciated.

Just downloaded the Beta really impressed with the time line as others are by the sound of it. So decided to use it in anger and went to the object editor and my machine froze. Had to use task manager to close it. repeated 3 or 4 time using different projects including new and still i froze. Any comments? Win XP SP2