goddi

==================== I was playing around with this question and it seems that the problem is that when you click on a slide, the vertical blue arrow returns to the end of the transition period, not to the actual beginning of the transition period. I added a Sound Comment to a slide, then dragged the vertical blue arrow back to the beginning of the transition (or start of the slide) and the Sound Comment played. So perhaps, if I understand the question, PTE should have the vertical blue arrow re-positioned at the beginning of the transition when you click on a slide or add a new transition to have the Sound Comment play as you want it to. I noticed this behavior when I click on slide #1 in the Timeline and want to play it from the start. It actually starts at the end of the transition period. So I have to go up to the mini-player and then drag the (what do you call it?) 'little blue knob' to the left to reposition it to the actual start of the show. Is there a reason for the vertical blue arrow to be positioned at the end of the transition period as opposed to the beginning of the slide??? Gary

=============== Peter... Ah....I didn't think of doing it backwards!!! Ok, that works to be in a better position to drag the block of slides. However, I still want to be able to preposition a guideline so I know exactly where to drag the group to (for example, the beat the music). I think this would be a good thing for Igor to add. Since he has it for the new Audio customization window, I hope he could add it to the Timeline. How about this idea??? Gary

Greetings, Thanks, Patrick and Snapcam... Talk about emotional attachment to pictures.... At first, I had put more images in the show but they might have needed some explanation or maybe they would not have an impact that I would want. So this time, less was more. Glad you enjoyed it. It is more of a cathartic experience for me. Gary

Greetings, I am now using the Timeline more frequently. First I use the Autospread function to arrange the images equally across the selected music. Then I want to be able to move a selected group of slides. However, when I do a Shift-End to select the slides, the screen shifts to the end of the Timeline and I visually lose the point where I want to shift the group of slides to. What I would like is to be able to do first is to input a guideline (like in the new Wave Form and Envelop Tool) at the point where I eventually want to shift the selected group of slides to. For example, say I want to move the group of slides to a specific point where a beat of the music is at. Is there anyway to put in a mark or a guideline in the Timeline before I do the Shift-End so I know exactly where I want to come back to??? Thanks... Gary

=================== Rick... The slides are about 40 years old. Had lots of dust and stuff. You should have seen the 'noise' on them before I spent hours and hours and hours just getting them to this point. I finally gave up and let them just look 'old'. Also, to get the file size down, I had to reduce them twice. Maybe this is the 'noise' you are talking about. But thanks for the comment. I know they were not sharp/clear as I'd like them to be but back then, I was a real novice in photography. Gary

===================== Igor, Will we get a PTE slideshow with voiceover of your speech??? :D I hope... Gary

================== Mary, Thanks for the comments. 62 and counting... Long time ago but sometimes seems like yesterday. We really had some great music back then. I think I got carried away with this font program!!! I wanted something different but maybe it was too different. Just experimenting. Thanks for the 'welcome home' Didn't get too many back then... Gary

Greetings, This is a slideshow of some slides I recently re-scanned of my time in Vietnam in 1971. Pardon the dust and scratch marks. I have already spent hours/days trying to clean it up. Just gave up. Anyway, also pardon this self-indulgent ‘it’s-all-about-me’ show. This was my first PTE slideshow years ago and I have learned much since and wanted to make it a bit better. It is long, but shorter than when I started. I tried to be brutal with the editing. For me, it contains the some of the best music of that time. 'I am still a boy and a man, I’m 18 and I don’t know what I’m talking about…got a baby’s brain and an old man’s heart…'. It really fit the experience. And caution, it contains a couple Playboy centerfold pin-ups in the background. 6:48; 48 Mb; 16x9; Nav Bar active. Comments/critiques welcomed. On Beechbrook: http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/downloadfile.asp?id=1877 Thanks... Gary

==================== Snapcam, After the record hot summer we have been having, it is a bit refreshing to watch your 'cool' slideshow. From a photographic standpoint, I noticed in the first few snow shots that the snow was not as white as it could be. When taking snow pictures, the camera tends to reduce the exposure because of the brightness of the snow. The result is the snow is not as white as it should be. So you have to compensate by opening the f/stop by one or two stops. Or, lock in the exposure on something that is closer to 15% gray which will get a better exposure to get whiter snow. Or it can be fixed, maybe, in Photoshop.... With a digital SLR, it is easier to do than with a Point and Shoot camera. I used to be more careful with exposure setting when I shot slidefilm, but I admit I tend to get forget these effects with digital, unfortunately. My other comment is about the lack of user controls. I know this is a very sensitive topic but let me bear my chest on this. Some say, let the slideshow run as the author intended with no user controls being available. The only control your show has is the right mouse button that allows advancing to the next slide. Not even a pause control was available. I always hope that if the NAV bar is not active in the slideshow, at least put in the next/previous/pause keyboard controls. This lets the viewer watch the show as created and also lets the viewer go back or pause during the show. If it is a long show, as I tend to make , it give the viewer a chance to get more popcorn, or answer the phone, without having to start all over again. It gives the viewer the best of both worlds. If we can pause/forward/rewind movies, why not slideshows??? Just my point of view... I am not telling everyone to do this but to keep this in mind. Gary

=============================== I see what you are talking about. I put together the sequence of my slideshows mostly as the images were taken. You can't really help getting pictures of the sea in many different locations. For example, we took the local bus from the Old City up to where the cruise boats come in. That's where the fish market is...and more sea. Then we walked back to the Old City...more sea pictures. We did the walk around the wall of the Old City...more sea pictures. Couldn't really group them. Then driving down to Kotor...more sea pictures. They are the same...but different. We were rushing to get to the entrance of the point where you start your walk around the city wall before it closed. These dancers/musicians came out of nowhere to put on a concert in the middle of the town. I wish I had taken better pictures, but I just stood there in their path and snapped away. Same thing with the concert pictures. We hear some music coming through a door and we poked our heads in and found it was a free concert given by the local high schools music class. It was like their final recital. You just never know when something will happen. I love these serendipity moments. Thanks... Gary

====================== nobeefstu, Yes, you are right. I was referring to an external audio editor like Audacity. I did not know you could edit the titles of menus. Cool. But I think Igor needs to review the names of many of the menu items. Many of them just don't tell me WHY I would want to use them and what they do. It would be a great help if mouseovers were developed for many of the items with a more detailed explanation as to what they would do. Thanks for the tip on editing titles, but that would come in handy only after I figured out what it did. Gary

=============== Greetings, Thanks for the comments. It is so very interesting how other people 'see' what I don't 'see'. I do appreciate the comments. Actually, I had already taken out some other aerial shots. The flight in, looking at the coast line, is so spectacular, hard to exclude. Yea, I thought of cutting one or two of the pageant images, and I should. The fish...Croatia is a place for fish. Being a coastal country, fish is king and I found it interesting to see their variety of catch. But, I don't share the feeling that verticals can't stand alone without some horizontal background. I will play around with your suggestion but sometimes I find the vertical overlaid over another image is distracting, at least to me. Interesting point, though. 25,000 images!!!! Ouch...you have a job for life. Thanks... Gary

=============== David, Yes, LONG seems to be the word. Before we invite people over for a viewing, I'll get out my machete and hack away!!! I see I am in big trouble now since I have about 20 more days of images from this trip to get into a slideshow(s). Excuse me now, I have to go find a knife sharpener. Glad you enjoyed it... Gary

================ Greetings, Actually, it would probably take me about 6 months or more after a trip to as brutal as I need to be to reduce it down to 10 minutes, and I can not argue with the need to do that. Less really is more...just hard to do it when, as I said before, having an emotional attachment to each image. Each one evokes a memory. I agree with your comments on change of pace and maybe more animations and formats. My problem is an inherent lack of creativity. But comments like yours will open my mind. I am not sure of what you mean by 'having a start and finish and not going back and forth'. It started in Dubrv. and ended in Kotor. Please explain. Thanks for the comments... Gary

=============== Greetings, Yes, I understand it was a bit long. It is always a bit difficult to get music that you can chop off or fade out to establish a particular length of a show. So I tend to fill in the music's length with images. The music is usually too long or too short. But I think music is just as important as the images for an enjoyable show. I really should make two shows...one for me, and one for the public. But that would make the decision to eliminate images even more difficult! And there is that emotional attachment to each image. And that is why I always put in the NAV bar--you can scoot through them at your speed or pause. And about the pace, it did not change at all, except for the map. It must have been a psychological effect of the different music types?? As far as your boat route, I would use the same technique that Lin and TheDom have demonstrated, and that I used. I would, however, instead of drawing a contiguous 'road' type route in the water, why not just use the round erase brush in Photoshop to make transparent dots in the water for the route??? Just select right sized eraser dot. Piece of cake! Gary

============ Thanks...Brain lock!!! I just added it. Gary

Greetings, This slideshow covers 3 days of our 23 day trip through Croatia and Slovenia this year. It shows our stay in Dubrovnik and a day trip down to Kotor, Montenegro. The show is in 16x9; 62.5Mb; NAV bar is active; 15:28 in length. Finding Croatian music that works in a slideshow was almost impossible. The show is long, but the that is what the Nav bar is for! I tried a few new 'tricks', like creating a font in 'old stone' and a route map. If you have been down that way, maybe it will provide some good memories. If you haven't been to Croatia and Slovenia, you have to put them on your list. I still have to work on the images of the remaining 20 days of the trip!!!! (over 1,500 images) Hope you enjoy the trip. Comments and critiques welcomed. Gary Beechbrook link: http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/downloadfile.asp?id=1874

====================== Ray, That bring back many memories. We drove from Nelson, down the west coast to Invercargil, and up to Christchurch, back in 1980. Beautiful country. Your pictures of the Moreaki Boulders reminded me where we almost got killed getting back on the road and forgetting that we should have been on the left side!!! I lost just about all of my pictures because my camera went on the fritz. Didn't know it until I got back. My first road map was done the way you did it and I think it is much more difficult then doing the transparent route as Lin and TheDom have demonstrated. But it is neat to use the car image. Thanks for the memories... I just uploaded my trip to Beechbrook with my route map in Dubrovnik and Kotor. Gary

================= Jan, After taking a look at TheDom's sample of his map-route, I see that my version of a map route was not as pristine as his. I made a boo-boo. In my last posting, I indicated that I had to rectify the black background that was showing through the map with the transparent route by changing the background to yellow to more closely match the other yellow routes on the map. I see that if I followed thedom's example (and Lin's), I should have just put in an original image of the map under the map with the transparent route (and under the red rectangles) so the original route would have just shown through the transparent route. I just did not get that point. This would really make it work so much better and easier. Gary

============== Igor... Thanks for your prompt response!!! Gary

================= Peter, It seems to me that your second proposal is just right. I hope Igor can do this programing, but I am sure he will have a solution. It seems to be a problem waiting to happen if you aren't aware of the potential conflict. I am surprised the lightbulb went off in my head to figure it out. Gary

================ Igor, I just figured out what the problem is. In addition to having the NAV bar, I configured the left mouse button to go to Previous Side (I never did this before). So when I use the left mouse in the NAV bar to go to Next Slide, I am confusing PTE and it doesn't know what to do. Sometimes it goes to the Previous, sometimes the Next Slide. So it is MY bug...sorry. But is there someway this can be fixed so this does not happen to someone else by mistake??? But I do notice that the NAV bar is not as responsive as it used to be. It takes several clicks and waiting for the slide to move to the next slide. Is that due to the larger image files I have, such as 200K to 300K? Though, using the keyboard arrows work much quicker to go to next or previous slides then the NAV bar. Thanks... Gary

================================ Igor, The original file is very large so I chopped it down to just a few images and it does show the problem. Here are the links to the exe and to the PTE files on MediaFire: http://www.mediafire.com/file/gyl8ha9hst34boo/Test%20Nav%20Bar.exe http://www.mediafire.com/file/9oo635dtu85r033/Test%20Nav%20Bar_Sep1-2010_15-31-12.zip I just looked at another show I have made with 6.5.2, and the NAV bar seems to be working OK. Maybe it is just a glich in this other example. Thanks for looking at it. Gary

============ Ken, If I read those links correctly, they are about looping back from the first slide to the last slide, using Previous Slide. That is not what I am talking about. When I am anywhere in the slide show, I just want hit Pause and use the Next Slide icon. It tends to go to the previous slide instead. Gary

Greetings, I just finished creating a show using 6.5.2. I included the Nav bar, as I usually do. During this process, I noticed that when I click on the Next Slide icon, it actually does a Previous Slide. It sends me back one slide. I was about to upload my final show to Beechbrook but I noticed it again in the final run-through. Can anyone duplicate this problem? Gary PS Sometimes it works correctly, but mostly it seems to do the Previous Slide.