goddi

bjc... Very nice. I like the results. I'd like to see a template .pte to see how you did it. Good work. Thanks... Gary =======================

Thedom, I have been playing with your template. I was going a bit nutty with your first template because a few of the images were coming out backwards. I was about to ask about it when I see you created a second template. It is working much better and has corrected the backward images. But I have another problem that I can not seem to fix. I want to edit your 'text' and move it down to a corner of each image. However, when I try to move the the text block, I can not drag it to a new location. The text block handles disappear. Is there a way to grab the text block and move it??? Also, I don't have any idea how you made this template. It is driving me crazy trying to understand it!!! But, thankfully, you can do it. My wife saw me updating your template with our own images and she was impressed and asked if she could have it has a screen saver. Of course I said 'NO, it was just an exe file'. But then I remembered that PTE has the screensaver function that I have never used before. I tried it and your 3D Cube makes a GREAT screensaver file. Thanks much. Gary =========================

Greetings, Though it might have been implied, I don't think it was expressly stated. I want to make sure of one more point. When you are talking about the need to being able to turn off the 3DHA feature when you use a Menu.pte to run other PTE shows, all you are talking about is being able to turn off the 3DHA in the Menu file only, not the exe's that the Menu will run. Correct? Thanks...Gary ===========================

Peter, Ok...another clarification needed. You say, "If you want animation on the Menu and in the driven sequences...". When you refer to 'animation,' do you mean that the Menu has components that are activated by items you have set using the Animation Tab? I can see that a Menu can be created using only the Property Tab and the Common Tab, without getting into the Animation Tab. If this is true, then we don't have to worry about using the same PTE version in the creation of the Menu and its driven shows if we don't use the Animation Tab in the Menu? I understand that when you adjust the size and location of an object (without actually getting into the Animation Tab), the Pan, Zoom and Rotate settings will change in the Animation Tab. But I don't consider this as 'Animation'. When you talk about 'Animation', I am thinking you only mean using Keyframes?? So I think the question is, what do you mean my 'animation' that would use the 3D Hardware Accelerator feature, in relation to this Menu problem.?? And, if the Menu has more than one driven show in its screen, you can only use the 'Run Slideshow with Return' option (in the Common Tab/Action on Mouse Click) to be able to return to the Menu to make another selection from its menu? Is there any other way? Thanks...Gary ==============================

Ed... Just so I understand this problem correctly, when a PTE show is made that uses a Menu.pte to run other PTE shows, the Menu.pte must be created with the 3D Hardware Acceleration OFF. But...it is OK if the slideshows that the Menu.pte runs are created with 3D Hardware Acceleration ON. Do I have this right? Thanks...Gary =========================

Ed, I agree completely. I made a similar comment in another posting about duplicating a text object in consecutive slides. I like to insert title text objects in several consecutive slides. If you copy a text object from slide#1 to slide#2, the pasted text in slide#2 automatically becomes a "child" of the image in slide#2. This duplicated text object in slide#2 does not line up with the text object in slide#1, unless you "unlight" the frame, before you paste the text object, to make it a "parent" text object so it lines up with the text object in slide#1. Gary

Lin and Igor, I think I have resolved how to get the image pieces lined up using the Pan's x and y values. It is clear to me now. Thanks to Lin's suggestion. However, I am now confuses about your suggestions to use (not use) the "edge antialiasing" and the "low quality of resizing" features to line up of image pieces in a slide. In my problem, I did not have artifacts in high resolution images and I did not have white lines showing up in the slide. Can I now discount these 2 suggestions as I don't see that they relate to the problem I was having? Or am I still missing something? The tutorial states: The Edge antialiasing should be normally turned on. It is used to minimize the distortion of some artifacts of high resolution images, when they are shown at low resolution. Low quality of resizing is the feature, which shouldn‘t be always used. It‘s helpful only when the quality of the image is not very good and you have white lines in your image. Thanks... Gary =================================

Greetings Morasoft, Thanks for taking a look at the PTE show. I took a look at your Pan setting for Slide#2. You may have changed some of the keyframe's values. However, it looks like you did it by "eye". It looks OK but the only way to really get the 1-9 images lined up, is to adjust their positions using the Pan x and y values. Through Lin's suggestion, I now understand that the Pan x and y values can be copied over to their related images so that they line up exactly. It takes some time but it works. Thanks... Gary ===================================

Lin... I never messed with "Low Quality of Resizing" because I never want anything to be "Low Quality..." on purpose. So I don't understand what this function does. I tried it and I don't see anything happening. I searched the Forum but found nothing. Can you please give me an explanation as to what this does and when to use it? The reason I don't use 'children' is that I usually want to just copy text objects from one slide to another, and be placed in the exact same location. If I inserted the first text object as a 'child', the pasting of it in the second slide would not be in the exact same place. So I have been conditioned to not put text, or anything, as a 'child'. I don't do fancy multiple image animations as you explained. But thanks for the explanation. Maybe I'll try doing some in the future. Thanks... Gary PS Yes, Snap to Grid was what I was thinking. Any such thing as "snap to image"? Is this even possible? Seems it would be useful. =============================

Malcolm, I used Photoscape (not Photoshop) to do the splitting. There is no choice to do anything other than 100%. It is a very neat program to use if you are doing any splitting of images. Gary =========================

Davegee... Since I solved the problem, this info might not mean much now. But, the original image was 3872x2592. When Photoscape split it into 9 images, the results were: Images 1,4 and 7 (the first vertical column) = each image was 1290x864. Images 2,5,8 (second vertical column) and image 3,6 and 9 (the third vertical column) = each image was 1291x864. It all added up correctly. Gary ===============================

Ronnie... Yes, I was trying this to 'hid' the problem. But as you can see in my reply to Lin, his suggestion got me to figure out what I was doing wrong. Photoscape works really well for the splitting of images. Thanks...Gary =================

Lin and others, see response below in Bold... =============

Lin, I had it up to 500% and, in O&A, I did not see the thin black lines. That is what bugs me. You think you have them lined up in Q&A, but when Previewed, the lines show up. Makes it very difficult to get it cleared up. You would think it would be apparent in Q&A under a large scale. Gary ============================

Greetings, I was trying to get a little creative in PTE (V6-20) and I used Photoscape to split an image into 9 equal pieces. In PTE, I have slide#1 as the entire whole image; then, slide#2 contains the same image split into 9 pieces. I have these 9 pieces in slide#2 rotate and come back together to show the image as a complete whole image. The problem I am running into is that when I Play slide#2 in O&A, and they rotate and come back together, it shows that it completes perfectly. However, when I do a Preview, a vertical thin black line shows up between pieces #4 & #5 and between pieces #8 & #9 in the completed image (pieces are numbered in the attachment). I have tried everything I can think of to eliminate these lines but I have not been able to. I have even tried to overlap the images in various ways but no luck. Can anyone explain why it looks good in O&A but not in Preview? Thanks... Gary Added later: I finally was able to get rid of the lines by more fiddling around with the images--sliding them one click to the left (before it did not seem to work). But I am still wondering why it looked good in O&A but not in the final Preview. Added later: And, even though now I don't see any thin vertical lines in O&A or in Preview for slide#2, I do see them when I look at slide#2 in the Miniviewer... SheepdogSplit_Oct11-2009_17-04-48.zip

Greetings, We spent the day at 'The Fall Fiber Festival and Montpelier Sheepdog Trials' in Orange County, VA. It's about a 2 hour drive from our home. This show's Screen setting is 4:3 at 96%, while the images were resized down to 1613x1080. I am not sure why I resized to 1613x1080 except I just wanted to see what the difference would be. It made the exe about 50% larger. Since I don't have a 'large' screen to play it on, I am not sure what it would look like. Maybe no difference from my usual 1000x669 resized images? Gary http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/

Lin... You know I looked and looked and didn't see the forest for the trees. Thanks for pointing it out. I'll give it a try. I asked Peter but let me ask you also: When you resize for PTE, do you leave the DPI at 300 or change it to 72? Thanks... Gary ========================

Peter... Ok, good. I am on the same page as you. Keep file "small enough but as large as necessary." My previous method was not really 'broke' but I can see it is not keeping up with the times where we might need them for larger screens. I tried another program and it also would not resize any larger than 1200x803. I'll let you know if you find anything with NX Trial. Gary Added later: Should we leave the DPI at 300 or reduce it to 72 when resizing for PTE? ==============================

Peter, Yes, I have looked into IrfanView. It has the ability to batch Rename and Conversion of format. But when it comes to resizing, which works nicely, does not seem to have a batch feature. You have to do it one by one. I am looking into NX trial now to see what it has. Gary ========================

Peter, Thanks for the info. However, you have opened a can of worms for me. But it is a good thing. After reading your reply, I started to look more closely at my workflow for getting images into PTE. Now I see I have not been paying close attention. I am still pretty much lost on what exactly to do but I now see I have been negligent in my workflow. Normally, I would shoot JPGs, instead of RAW. I'd run them through Photoshop and usually adjust only Levels and USM. Then, to get them down to manageable size for PTE, I'd run then through a batch resizing (using NetGraphics Optimizer, not available anymore). NetGraphics is a great little program; but after your posting, I see that I should be resizing my D80 images down from 3872x2592 to 1613x1080 (3:2) aspect ratio (I don't want to crop my images). I now see that even though my NetGraphics program lets me "use image's original size", the max resize using their batch process is 1200x803. And I see other programs I have will also not an image be resized larger than this. So I was not able to ever get the 1613x1080 resized images. Using Photoshop, I'd have to make an Action, but I have not been able to make one that works as it should. Anyway, the bottom line is I have to rethink my workflow. I have not responded sooner because I have been trying to find a better approach. I have not succeeded yet, but I see I need to. I have thoughts of now shooting only RAW and using Nikon NX2 to do the batch conversion to JPG and resizing. But I have not tried it yet. I now feel like a lost lamb in the woods. Too many things to think of trying to get the correct workflow and make my images higher quality. And this is all before I get to understand some of the settings in PTE, which still are not clear. I still have may questions, but one question at this point: when you say 'resize', what is your process to do this? Do you do this one image at a time, or do you have a batch process to do this? Which program? And, do you 'resize' only to get the final PTE exe file to be more manageable or for other purposes? Thanks... Gary =================================

Greetings, I have been following the recent discussion (Shows Created in PTE/The New Zealand Landscapes) about image size. Ok…I confess I am a bit confused. Since my PC is a 17” monitor and I don’t have one of those big screen TVs (yet), I have not had to be worried much about the images' display size. However, I am trying to understand the proper procedure to create a PTE show that will play the HD Video (mp4) or DVD-Video Disk for televisions on the ‘big screens.’ Normally, I would reduce my Nikon D80 images (3872 x 2592) down to about 1024 x 768 and reduce the images’ resolution (keeping them at 10.42” x 6.97”) so the show’s exe size would be more manageable. According to what I have been reading in the Forum, the way to go for presentation on large screens is to Create the show in HD Video 1920 x 1080 with an aspect ratio of 16:9. I can see where to set the setting in the Create menu for HD Video. However, what I am confused about is what needs to be set in the Project Options/Screen menu if you are going to Create the (1) HD (1920x1080) file (do you always choose ‘High Quality’?) and the (2) DVD-Video Disk for television: -Is it necessary to set the Aspect Ratio to 16:9 here, or does it matter? -Is it necessary to set the Virtual Size of Slide here to 1920 x 1080, or does it matter? -What do you do with ‘Virtual size of slide’? If you start out with the original image size of 3872 x 2592, can you (should you) keep the original size (10.42” x 6.97”) and reduce the resolution (file’s size in Kb) to keep the exe file smaller and not lose quality? I hope I am not mixing apples and oranges here. It is just not clear to me when to set certain settings. I’d appreciate any clarifications. Thanks… Gary

Peter, Sorry to disappoint! I'll try to come up with some more taxing questions soon. But, I don't think I explained my question too clearly. Your solution was good for changing a few images. But I did learn something I had not tired before...using 'Main Image'/'Change Image File'. Thanks for that. However, I want to change ALL of the images in a show that were all low-res with the original hi-res images. And I wanted to keep the low-res files and its associated pte and exe files. I figured a way to do this. I created a 'Backup In Zip' of the low-res folder and put it into a new folder. I unzipped it and then just copied over the low-res images with the hi-res images and it worked just fine. I will now start working on a more obscure question to keep you guys on your toes. Thedom... I looked at the tutorial you mentioned. However, the file is made to play on a larger screen so it made it very difficult to follow what was going on. I could not get it to play full screen on my monitor. But I solved my problem. Thanks. Gary ==========================

[edited later...changed 'animations' to 'custom transitions'] Greetings, I checked the Forum but I could not find the answer to my question. I made a slideshow with low-resolutions images. Many images have custom transitions. I now want to replace the low-res images with their original higher resolutions images. When I do this, I can't seem to just replace the images and keep the custom transitions I already have for the low-res images. Is there a way to just replace the images that have animation without having to re-do the custom transitons associated with each slide? Thanks... Gary

Thanks, Cor. I see now it means the "software mode" of the particular PC that the PTE is playing on (as opposed to the PTE software). I appreciate the info. Gary ===================

Yes... I apparently missed both page 2 and page 3... Still getting used to the new layout of the Forum. No complaints, just missed it. But I still needed an explanation of what "software mode" meant. But Cor answered the question. Thanks...Gary =============================