stonemason

Hi Peter stick with it once you get your head around lightroom you will not use any other software for image editing. Contaxman posted a link to a pdf tutorial on av and lightroom at www.bishopthorpe-camera-club.com Just click on Resources and follow the Pictures to Exe (or Lightroom) link. Well worth a read. Lightroom killertips have excellent movie tutorials download as many as you can and watch them, they will soon get you up and running. The url is http://lightroomkillertips.com/ scroll down the page and get the tutorials that you are interested in, then at the bottom of each page is a "previous page "link just keep going back until you run out of pages. You should by then have a library of tutorials from basic use to advanced. If I can be of further help let me know. Geoff

nobeefstu you may well be right as my laptop which doesn't go on the internet for automatic updates (same OS) has yet to encounter the problem I will keep an eye and come back if I find a solution. In the meantime I'll try your suggestion about the firewalls next time I run a show from an external source for the first time. Geoff

Hi Jim The major problem this causes me is that it stops the slideshow in it's tracks, until I tell the firewall to block connection. It only happens once with each slideshow as on subsequent showings the firewall automatically blocks it and does not intervene. Is this the same for you? Regards Geoff

Hi Peter thanks for the offer but I think we are at cross purposes, as far as I know there is no such thing as a "false positive" with a firewall either a programme is trying to connect to the internet or it's not. I would have thought that if there was a problem on my PC my own slideshow .exe files would demonstrate the same behaviour, which they don't. It would seem from Eric's reply that I am not alone in experiancing this, but I will carry out a full virus scan on my PC just to be on the safe side. Regards Geoff

Just recently every slideshow I download from an external source ie beechbrook, media fire etc. causes my firewall to pop up a warning part way through the show to say that slideshow.exe is attempting to access the internet. Can anyone throw any light on why this should happen and more importantly how to stop it. The firewall is pctools firewall plus and windows 7 ultimate operating system. Thanks Geoff

Hi Paul enjoyed your slideshow however part way through my firewall threw up a warning that Winter wonderland.exe was attempting to access the internet, not sure why but thought I'd let you know. Regards Geoff

Hi Ron I have a Western Digital media player and have nothing but praise for it. I use a Western Digital mybook 500gb usb external drive plugged into the player which in turn is connected to my TV using HDMI. The playback quality of .mp4 high definition files created by PTE is excellent, plus of course my entire music collection is now available by a couple of button presses. The Western Digital media player has two usb ports so it is easy to put a few slideshows onto a usb stick and play them should you not need them to be always available. I think personally that there are advantages in having the hard drive and the player seperate in that there can be more choice available in how you set up various forms of media ie. possibly 1 drive for music, and one for video should that suit your needs. Sorry can't help with the Lacie but I hope the above is of some use. Regards Geoff

I agree Barry but just trying it helps eliminate the source of interference with the audio system. Regards Geoff

Hi JRR try playing your slideshows with the laptop on battery power, as I had similar problems which proved to be static noise caused by the power suppy. Swapped the power supply with the one on my wife's laptop, and the static disapeared. Do a google search on laptop power supply noise and it will throw up some interesting reading. Hope this is of some help. For info my laptop is a duel-core dell studio running windows 7. Geoff

Thanks Barry I agree keystrokes are better when possible. However it would be nice to be able to copy a basic text object to a block of slides at one go on the few occasions when it's needed, such as showing names of plants or birds etc in illustrated talks. The basic object can then be edited with the individual names, ensuring consistancy throughout the show. Hope life is treating you well down under. Best regrds Geoff

Thanks Peter it would be useful at times if this was possible, perhaps we can ask Igor to add it to his never ending "to do" list Regards Geoff

Is it possible to copy a text object in the O&A window and then paste it to multiple slides all in one go? Geoff

Jean-Pierre your english is fine I wish I was as competent in another language. Regards Geoff

JPD the spread box is in the customise drop-shadow tools. You are correct in saying it does not create "child of a text" but it does solve the problem I faced when I first started this thread namely creating a rectangle which could be varied in opacity and resizes with the text. regards Geoff

JPD see my post above for solution this done using V6 beta 20 Geoff

Thanks for all the info and thanks to your help I have now found a way to do it all in one. Select the image that needs a title and photographers name, go to the objects and animations window. Add text, size, format and position as you want it to appear. Click text in the objects panel, go to common tab, click drop shadow radio button, and then customize. In the drop shadow window I left the default colour, set opacity to 60, angle 45 distance 50 and size 15. Then in the spread box I dropped down the list and chose cove-shallow clicked OK and low and behold I had a rectangle which fitted the text perfectly and also resized with it if the title for subsequent images was longer or shorter. Give it a try and let me know how you get on or if I've failed to explain clearly. Once again thanks for the guidence which pointed me in the right direction. Regards Geoff

Hi Lin What I want is a background box which is semi transparent that I can sit text in which gives picture title, photographers name, and any award it may have won. Because the text will vary in length but not depth I need the box scaleable in one direction only ie lengthwise. I usually do this in photoshop, creating a copy slide with the title on. I am trying to do it all in PTE because the sequence for each image is picture > picture with title > picture > next image and so on. Using the photoshop method this involves two copies of each image, and because each slideshow consists of around 80 images there is quite a size overhead. Being able to do it all in PTE would reduce the size of the slideshows by some margin. Hope this all makes sense to you. regards Geoff

Is there any way of making a rectangle of specific length and width and with rounded corners in the objects and animations window. For example a rectangle of say 200 x 50 pixels with rounded corners. The reason for this is to use a semi transparent background for text. Geoff

Sorry Peter I disagree I always found this a very uesful feature in some of the larger slideshows I have to do annualy so I'll have to keep an older copy of PTE to do the initial layout, then move it to a later version for final editing. Geoff

I have been trying to copy and paste a slide on the timeline in V6 beta 18 using ctrl+c & ctrl+v, but it does not seem to work. Can someone else please confirm this bug. It worked fine in V5 as I've used this method many hundreds of times. Geoff

Could anyone give me an opinion as to the suitability of this projector http://www.projectorpoint.co.uk/projectors...oma_DX650.html# for PTE slideshows. I have no desire to make the slideshows I project anything other than 1024 x 768, as all my Hi definition work will go to mp4 files for use on HD TV. many thanks Geoff

Thanks Igor, does that mean that in the full version of PTE 5.7 menu driven slideshows for the mac will be possible? Regards Geoff

Thanks for the info nobeefstu, I'll look into the autorun issues. My biggest concern is the menu part of the question so hopefully someone will come up with some info on that soon. Geoff

Does anyone know if it will be possible to make mac compatible auto run CD's using PTE 5.7 on which the slideshows are menu driven? I posted this in a reply elswhere, http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....showtopic=10176 but I do need an answer quite quickly because of forward planning so please accept my apologies for the repetition. Regards Geoff

Igor will it be possible to make mac compatible auto run CD's on which the slideshows are menu driven? Congratulations to you and your team for the constant improvements to PTE. Regards Geoff