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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 =============================

Greetings, I would like to understand better what the mouseover states about Hardware Acceleration when it says "In case of old video card, slide show will use software mode automatically." What does "software mode" mean? Does the "software mode" vary from PC to PC? Thanks... Gary =====================

John, Thanks for your comments. I tweeked the slideshow so many times trying to make it as viewable as I could. After I figured out at the last minute how to make the car travel around the map's route, I didn't want to push my luck so I just quit playing with it. I just did not think of your "intermission" idea. Sometimes you just don't see the forest for the trees! But I am glad you enjoyed it. Gary ===============================

Greetings, I finally finished putting our driving trip through Austria together. I had to break it up into 2 parts. In these shows, I added a few new animation tricks I just learned. I have a little car traveling along a route on a map. The shows are a bit on the 'quick' side, but I put in the navigation bar to make it easier to pause. I didn't want to drag it out too slowly. More like a 'home movie', but I hope you enjoy the trip and it gives you some idea what Austria is like if you haven't been there yet. Critiques welcomed. Gary http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/

Yachtman1... Which tab has the 'default font' in it??? I have looked until my eyes are sore. Gary ========================

It would be useful if we could set a default font, along with bold, shading, color, etc. This would allow us to change our mind and choose a different global font without resorting to editing the .pte file. In addition, for those fonts you don't want to be affected by a global change, it would be helpful to have the ability to set a custom font for individual slides, etc. that would not be affected by changes in the default settings. Thanks...Gary

Thanks...will do. Gary ==========================

TheDom... Very cool! I'll give that a try. Is there any reason that this can't be programmed into PTE to make it a selectable choice in 'Project Options'? Thanks... Gary =======================

Greetings, I have been putting lots of text throughout a slideshow. I want to change the font I used to a different font. I'd like to do this globally if possible (like changing the default font). Is there any way to do this? I have searched the Forum but I can not find any discussion about this. I'd hate to have to do this slide by slide. Is this the only way? It looks like it can be done for Comments, but not for text in the body of the images.(?) Thanks... Gary

Greetings, Budapest was our last stop on our 1,500 mile driving trip through the Czech Republic and Austria. The Navigation Bar is active if the pace is too fast. Image quality is not so good because I had to reduce the file size twice to get it below 50Mbs. But I hope you enjoy the trip. The show is on Beechbrook: http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/ Gary

Thanks for the clarification... Gary =======================