Kurt S

Hi Al thanks for replying. I have tried that and it doesn't seem like PTE will resolve UNC paths on it own.

I am having a problem with the the path of a program. In object editor I choose to make a hyperlink. Then under Actions I choose to Run application or open file. Here's where the problem arises. I want to put this file on the CD but it creates a direct path to the file along with the drive letter of the drive it's on. Obviously this won't work as the drive letter of the CD drive can change from system to system. Is there any way to create a universal path so drive letter mapping doesn't matter?

Ok, thanks for looking into this. Seems like this issue should be addressed. I used a competing product to create the screensaver and it didn't have this issue. PS. Your English is fine.

I'm having a difficult time with the screensaver hanging. I have three pictures I want to make into a screensaver. The picture sizes are 1024x768 and the file size of each is approx 150k. I want it to have a very long fade transition length (1 or 2 minutes). The problem I having is the screensaver won't shut off. I have to do a CTRL+ALT+Del to end it. Even if I set the transition length down to 5 seconds it still takes several seconds for the screensaver to end. I've tested this on 2 different computers, both have 512megs of RAM. 1 machine is running at 2.8mhz and the other is running at 1.7mhz so it's not due to a lack of power. I'm using PTE version 4.44

Killing the keyboard still won't stop screen copying. There are screen capture programs you can set to do timed screen captures at specific time intervals. Irfanview will do this so all you would have to do is start timed screen capture in Irfanview and run the slideshow.

That's a bit like asking how much gas will it take to drive across the USA. There are too many variables involved to answer. What resolution are your viewing at, What is the size of the jpegs, how much are they compressed, how good is the quality of your projector? Your best bet would be to experiment yourself and see how much compression you can use before the viewing become unsatisfactory.

Conflow, my intent was never to start an argument but to possibly inform Marianne of the possiblility that the info you provided was not going to help since it was incorrect. I even tried to compliment you at the end of my post. I will however say one last comment to you Conflow. You are highly un-informed about audio and CD standards. Your mis-information was serving no purpose other then to confuse Marianne even more. I was try to offer a good reason, not made up speculation such as what you have posted. Keeping it simple is always the best (KISS) but simplicity does not involve mis-information. A wise man will learn from others. A fool will continue to believe what he wants and ignore facts. Anyway, I harbor no ill will and I hope you don't either. If I have offended you, I appologize. Debates can be good, you can learn many things.

You are not keeping it simple, you are totaly wrong on your information. "and while you are at it please indicate where the File header is and why there is a 2sec Intertrack Gap in virtually all Commercial CD-Recordings." The file header information is stored in the file but it is not part of the audio stream. The two second gap is built into the CD TOC (table of contents) not the actual file .This is why once you rip the song from the CD there is no 2 seconds of blank audio in the track. "And please,please let the readers know all about the degradation of Mp3's when they are over-edited and over 'Saved As'" Yes, on an MP3, WMA, Ogg Vorbis (lossy format compression) it will degrade every time it is resvaed, buth thats not what you were saying. You also indicated waves were this way as well. "and most important what happens to the 'Musical pitch' in these circumstances". I already stated why that is probably happening in a previous post. It has nothing to do with editing the first two seconds of auio. Ther eis no file information stored in the audio stream. You can edit it to your heart's content and it won't change the pitch or lower the bitrate. The bitrate info, stero/mono/ bit depth is all stored in the "non-editable" header. A completely separate part of the audio file. The reason she is experiencing change in pitch is that she is working with audio file that have a different bitrate or bit depth. You have to convert them all to the same rate before you can paste them together. "Furthermore with Wav Recordings (pure audio) ~althought they are not digitally encoded, but usually Digitally Recorded in the Studio, and for the most part they are certainly 'highly compressed' usually for the purposes of fitting more Tracks on the CD" "On other matters... The 'Redbrook CD Format' to which you refer is a comparitive newcomer to CD-Music Technology - it has nothing to do with the way the WAV is made" First off, CD's don't use wave files. They use raw PCM data. Raw PCM data does not have a header with info about the file the way a wave file does. This is why the redbook standard was invented. The player does not need to know what the bitdepth, sample rate, or number of channels because the CD follows the standard and the player uses this standard to play the CD. "The 'Redbrook CD Format' to which you refer is a comparitive newcomer to CD-Music Technology " I can't beleive what your saying, where are you getting this info. The redbook format is not new, it was developed in 1982 and is the standard that Sony/Phillips used for CD audio. It describes the specifications of the CD, the data rate, the storage size, etc of an audio disc. It was invented before the audio CD, not a newcomer. "it's simply a 'User' information stream about the Artist, Song Title etc,etc. AND MOST OF ALL it's geared towards Copyright and ways of preventing people from copying a CD which they have paid for." Not true. It isn't just user information, it's specifications on how the CD works. Copywrite? No, there is no copywrite specifications wriiten in the redbook standard. The redbook standard never had copy protection in mind. All the copywrite scemes that have been writen for audio CD are non-redbook compliant. This is why many players are having problems with copywritten discs. They don't conform to standards. "and for the most part they are certainly 'highly compressed' usually for the purposes of fitting more Tracks on the CD" They certainly are not compressed. Show me one article that says they are. The only way you get more info on an audio CD is to break the redbook standard of 650 megs and make the disc 700+ megs. There is no compression written into the redbook standard. "If you didn't do that and allowed the full 60db dynamic range you would probably end up with 5 or 6 Tracks on the CD." 60db? A good quality cassette deck will give you 60db, CD's are up around 105. Besides, you are talking about two different types of compression. Compression/limiting the dynamic range has nothing to do with compressing the file to reduce the size. Two totally different subjects and one has nothing to do with the other. Nor does limiting the dynamic range reduce file size. "But yet you maintain that WAV CD's are pure Audio Streams....If memory serves me correctly that went out with 8, 16, 32 Track Studio Tape Recorders such as Studer, Ampex EMI etc. I know because I was in the Studio Business in those days when we had pure Audio" I'm not quite sure how to answer this one. Show me where I said they were pure audio streams. Yes I was also around in those days. That was called "analog recording". This statement is completely irrelevent to our conversation so I'll move on. "So instead of taking my simplified Post (selectively quoted by you) out of context, pehaps you would like to offer an explaination to Marianne for the...'apparent change in pitch'...of her edited Mp3 Files ?...I gave her an explaination, whats your's ?" Well, I already explaind it in the third post of this topic. She is trying to mix together audio file with different sample rate or bit depth files.

"Whether it's Wav or MP3 there is a mandatory 2 secs of 'Lead-In' in each Audio Track." No, there is a Redbook CD audio format that needs to have a 2 second gap on the first track only. It has nothing to do with wave or mp3 files. To the Listener this 'Lead-In' sounds to be a 'silence period' where in fact it contains sub-liminal 128bit Data Signals which are arranged as 'Tags' which imparts to your PC or Player vital information about 'Bit-Rate', Subjective Loudness, Compression Range, Format, Artist Name, Song Title, Cddb Library data, Copyright and so on and so on" Nope. There is no file data in the lead in, hell there is no lead in. The data that the file requires to be played properly is stored in the file header, not in the audio stream. "You must understand that Wav and Mp3's are designed to "Fool" the Human Ear into hearing things that are simply not within the Music any more ~ It's complex" Again, wrong. Wave format is an uncompressed format that does not use "psycoacoustics" like MP3's to fool the listener. "Editing or Cropping out that 'Lead-In' makes Audacity default down to the lowest 'Bit Rate' it had encountered unless you instructed Audacity to save the finished Edited File as XXX Bit Rate in Stereo or Mono. Consequentlly of course the final Edit will usually be shorter in 'Time-Span' that the time span of all tracks in series." Editing a wave file does not edit the header information or lower the file to it's lowest bitrate, nor do you see a two second gap in the editor that containds the header info. "After 'Multiple Edits' and 'Save As' all digitally Compressed Files loose their 'Hi-Frequencies' and super-compress the 'Lowest Frequencies' and flatten out the dyanamic range of the Music but leave the 'Peaks' intact." Nope, Non- lossy WMA, Flac and Monkey's Audio file are all non-lossy compressed and they ca be editied as many times as you like without degredation in quality. "When Audio Editing always use 'Save' and only use 'Save As' for the final compilation ~ Much like a JPeg ~ this will greatly reduce the 'phantom effect' you hear" Only true if you are working with lossy formats like MP3. If you are editing wave files, you can do a save and not suffer loss. I don't like to argue with other forum members, especially members like Conflow who have offered a lot of valuable information in the past but I have to call you on this one. Where on earth did you get this information. Nothing you have stated here is correct.

You were on the right track by converting them to waves first but you need to look at the specs of the audio. What is probably happening is that the MP3's were created from waves that varied in bitrate or sampling rate. Decode the MP3's to wave and look at the specs. The standard should be 44.1khz, 16 bit, stereo. If the wave file indicates anything different, use the wave editor to change it.

Hi Mysty. If the slideshow works, then I doubt it's the slideshow giving you problems with zipping it. I would suspect it's the zipping program itself causing problems.

Using Windows Explorer, locate the file and right click on the file and choose Rename. Hightlight the extention and give it a new name such as .zip, .abc, or .txt. Then just e-mail the file and make sure to let the recipient know they need to rename it back to a .exe extention.

There is no real need to zip the file. Many e-mail programs and exchange servers will block exe files but they are not smart enough to know what the file type actually is. In other words, you could simply rename your presentation with a .zip or even a .txt extention and it will go through just fine. Then the recipient will rename the extention back to .exe and it will work.

Why not just use an MP3?

Quite true. I don't normally use theses formats except when I'm archiving audio to hard drive or CD for backup. But I thought it would be good to give the original poster other options as well.

There are also non-destructive compression formats such as Flac and Monkeys Audio files. These will not compress the file size as well as an mp3 or wma will but you will not lose any quality either. If sound quality is important to you but you need to reduce the file size, have a look at these. Flac - http://flac.sourceforge.net/ Monkeys Audio - http://www.monkeysaudio.com/

I hate to sound rude, but it sounds like your tutor is a narrow minded little fool. Flash is a good medium but it certainly isn't the only way to go. With flash ,you have to install a player, with a PTE show, you don't. PTE only costs $29, Macromedia Flash/Shockwave and all the add-ons can run well over $800 dollars. Tell him you will go with Flash if he buys the software for you. Honestly, there are many media formats out there and none is better then the othre. It just depends what you want to do and what your budget permits.

I just downloaded it and tried to run it but it gives me the following error. Eception EListError in module Diana.exe at 00073A1C. List index out of bounds (0)

I absolutly agree and try to avoid them like the plague but unfortunatly that isn't always an option.

1. I think we are both saying the same thing in a different way. Convertors usually convert from a lossy format into a pcm (non-lossy) then convert into the other lossy format. IE. MP3 to pcm to WMA. The transferance from mp3 to wave is ok as the sound quality won't (or shouldn't) degrade at this stage but then going to the other lossy format does degrade the sound further. This isn't usually considered recording. Recording is a term usually used in the analog sence like what Truebyte does. So anyway, we are essentially on the same page . And Tunebyte is missleading. They say on their page " Q: Will the quality of the piece of music be lost? A: The audible quality of the piece of music will not be lost." This is very missleading. Granted it won't be lost but it will be degraded. As we both know going from D/A then A/D and going through analog preamps is going to add noise. So back to my original question, Does anyone know of a WMA convertor that does not convert by doing an analog recording but does work with protected files? DbPoweramp will convert WMA's as long as they aren't protected.

Not true. Most will convert to a raw pcm format then convert to the new format. This is not recording. And I do understand that converting from one format to another is going to cause further loss in fidelity due to compression artifacts. However, Truebyte does use the soundcard (it even says so on their site that you need a full duplex soundcard and It re-records analogue audio signals) and this is going to add more distortion. Even the best pro soundcards are not 100 percent distortion free.

Does anyone know of a converter from wma to mp3,wave, etc that doesn't use the re-record method like Tunbyte does. it would be nice to keep the audio as clean as possible without having to run it through the soundcard.

Did you protect the wma file? Just for giggles, try encoding the file as an mp3 instead and put that in your slideshow.

What type of audio did you use, MP3, wave or WMA?

Yup, your soundcard is built right on the motherboard. It is an AC'97. It looks like you got the Sound Max software with that. The instructions are rather vague but it does look like it provides some sort of surround emulation with the MultiDrive™ 5.1 feature. I can't say I'm real impressed with this soundcard though. it mentions nothing of being able to decode Dolby Digital or DTS or anything about a real 5.1 surround setup. It looks like it is mostly for emulating surround for games. If your interested in getting a better card, have a look here - http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/soundcards/ All these cards can emulate a surround sound from a 2 channel source. And all will decode Dolby Digital and DTS surround formats as well as DVD multichannel audio.