Tony Falla

Thanks for that Bill, Idid reply when you first answer but suspect I forgot to press the Post button. Have now downloaded 7.5 and am trying to get my head round the changes that have been made. Suspect I will be asking a few questions in the next few days Tony Falla

I have been inactive for well over a year now due to a couple of family bereavements and am just starting to get back into my photography. I see the latest version is 7.5.8 whereas I am still on 7.0.3, is it OK for me just to download this and update or have I missed something in the time I have been away. For example do I need to do have updated to some other version before I can go to 7.5 or is there any extra payment involved? It will be a new leaning curve as I expect PTE has advanced significantly since I last used it Tony Falla

Igor No problem downloading PTE in IE9 running under Fusion 4 on an iMac. I did have the same message a few weeks back when I bought a new piece of HDR software, I can't remember how but I somehow said OK download and it did download fine. Tony Falla

DG I only read your posting as factual information, which again should be borne in mind when creating sequences. Apologies if you thought I was directing my comments at you. Tony Falla

Prehaps I am just getting to be an old Fuddy Duddy but I get quite annoyed at people telling me what ratio I should or should not be creating my sequences. As I have been trying to say, the equipment is only a consideration, I tend to use 4:3 as that is the projector I use. I do however feel that we are too hung up on it must be 16:9 because modern equipment is produced at this size. As I said most cameras produce a 3:2 so why not make a sequence in this size? I have created sequences that are 4:3, 16:9 and 1:1, it is not the equipment that determines these sizes, but what I want to achieve with my AV and the content that determines the ratio I use. I prefer to let my own creativity determine what ratio I use rather than the equipment, that is what I was originally trying to say but obviously failed miserably Tony Falla

BEB The whole point of my comment is that you should consider where you are going to output your AV sequences and that has an influence on the ratio of your show. If you are going to show your sequences on TV's, computer monitors then I agree you should aim for 16:9. If however, as I do, the majority of your shows will be shown on a 4:3 projector then make them this way. I do not see the point of making 16:9 sequences if you are mainly going to show them at 4:3 and vice versa. I know as pointed out in my second paragraph that it doesn't matter what ratio you use your sequence will still be displayed. Funnily enough the PC I use for creating my sequences has a 16:10 ratio and if I use my iMac to create a sequence then that has a 16:9 ratio so I do have experience of running sequences of different ratios. I would also add that I personally do not particularly like 16:9 ratio, I find that the images I have taken in my 3:2 ratio camera do not crop very well to 16:9 they crop much better to 4:3 but as I say that is a personal thing. It does not mean that I haven't used 16:9, I have as well as other ratios. The main point of my comments to Kim was not to get hung up on ratios, consider where you are going to output your sequence, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter what ratio you use it will still play no matter which piece of equipment it is shown on. Tony Falla

Hi Kim One of the problems that has always existed in photography even before digital AV, is that the ratio of the camera image was usually different from the ratio of the output. Although the 3:2 ratio of the camera image is now almost a universal norm, cameras do exist with 4:3, 1:1 and various other ratios. Even in the days when your only option was to print your images, you had to decide whether you were going to crop your image or print with uneven borders as a most papers were a 5:4 ratio. As has already been said there are currently two popular ratios for outputting AV's 16:9 and 4:3. What you have to do is decide where you are usually going to show your AV's. If you are intending to use a 4:3 projector then obviously this is the size to go for, if however you will normally be showing on a TV, computer monitor or 16:9 projector then obviously that is the size to go for. However don't get too hung up on all these ratios and the equipment you are using. Look at the images you want to include in your sequence and decide from them what size will best suit the sequence you want to create. If it means that the ratio being chosen is different to the equipment, in my opinion, that doesn't matter, the sequence you are creating is the main consideration. Although there will be a black border it isn't noticeable when the sequence is being played. This gives you plenty of scope to express yourself so even if you use a ratio that isn't 4:3 or 16:9 as long as that ratio fits the sequence it will still play no matter what equipment you use for showing. Tony Falla

Thanks for replies, DG's answer does exactly what I wanted. Eric the people who will be using this it will be difficult enough to get them to use a forward and backward arrows that are part off the presentation without having to find things on their own keyboards. Ken turning the speakers off will not make any difference as I don't intend to have any sound on this presentation. Many thanks again for the replies Tony Falla

Thanks for that, silly me read that as if you wanted keyboard control of the show, didn't think that it could also apply to the mouse. I knew there had to be an easier way. Tony Falla

I want to produce a slide show where somebody viewing the show has complete control over when to go on to the next slide or go back to the previous slide. I have managed to do this by using the Navigation Bar but the only way I have been able to stop automatic transition to the next slide is by setting a slide duration time of 10 minutes. Is this the way to do this or am I missing something? Tony Falla

Hi Ronnie Sorry not on Skype but will send you a PM. Tony Falla

Hi Ronnie I run VMWare Fusion on both an iMac and a MacBook Pro, in both cases I bought Windows 7 Home Premium to run with it. I run PTE on both machines but it depends on how complicated or otherwise your PTE sequences are as to how successful this is. Simple sequences I have no problems with but a large complicated project which I recently finished did cause me some problems. When running Fusion the amount of memory, number of processors and graphics card memory is limited, the default settings are 1GB memory, 1 processor, 128K graphic card memory. You can change these to half the memory of the host machine, half the number of processors of the host machine and 256K graphic card memory if you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7. Changing my settings I did manage to complete my project on the iMac (for more details see Configuring VMWare Fusion 26 Jan 2012), but due to the size and complexity of the sequence it would not play on my MacBook Pro which has only 4GB of memory (i.e. 2GB for Windows). If you want more details please feel free to contact me. Currently I still have a PC which I normally use for developing PTE projects, I am hoping that before this comes up for replacement there may be a PTE for Mac available but my impression is that is not likely to happen. Tony Falla

Thanks for that information Bill, it is nice to know that there is a a piece of AV Software for the Mac that can be recommended. I will explore further as I see that the Home version can be bought fairly cheaply from the App Store. Obviously having sent a few years learning PTE it would be better if a Mac version of that was to appear before I give up PC's entirely. Tony Falla

This is a fantastic manual, I only have a limited knowledge of French but I am sure with this manual and my trusted Larousse dictionary I will be able to get a better understanding of some of the areas that I haven't tackled yet. Tony Falla

Barry I am sorry Barry but I take exception to your remarks, I did not give any reason for transferring to Mac's all I was doing was was enquiring about the progress or otherwise of the Mac version of PTE. I am not aware that I suggested a Mac is better than a PC or otherwise. Over the last 12 months I have been transferring to Macs and gradually running down my PC's and as and when buying replacement software. Where available I prefer to buy the Mac version of the PC software as it is easier than having to learn new software. I have, in some instances, had to buy an equivalent software but was aware of this when I started to convert. I am not whining as I am aware that there is limited availability of AV software for a Mac I am therefore trying to establish when or if a Mac version of PTE will be available. Originally the Forum was told that a Mac version would be available late 2010, this never materialised, we then had the statement from Igor that appears at the start of this post. I realise and respect that Igor and his team at WNSoft have to make commercial decisions as to their priorities for development of PTE, but it would be helpful if I had an update on the availability or otherwise of PTE to Macs. Please respect my decision to convert to Macs without making snide remarks Tony Falla

My concern is that I am aware we were told a year ago that the best estimate was one to two years, but since then we have not heard what progress has been made and if the estimate can be refined to this year, next year, the year after, five years time or possibly never. I know that they are working on refining the Windows version of PTE and as I have said I have kept a PC purely to do PTE. In addition I have Windows installed on my Mac under Fusion and although there are limitations it does not stop me from developing PTE projects. I would however like to get rid of my PC's altogether but would like to know the possible timescale of this. If it is going to be in the next year or two then I can live with that, but if it is going to be a lot longer then as Ken says perhaps I should be looking at alternative AV software. Tony Falla

I am rather disappointed that having asked a week ago what the latest position is with regard to PTE on a Mac there has been no response. One conclusion that I could draw is that it is because this work has been abandoned, I hope not but if it has I would like to know . Tony Falla

I have only recently converted to Macs but keep a PC specifically for PTE, recently however the sound packed up on the PC and as I was half way through a project I had to do a quick transfer to the Mac. My work flow on both machines is to develop images in Photoshop (CS3 on PC, CS5 on the Mac) running under Adobe RGB, I then use Save for Web & Devices to create the images for PTE. On the Mac I run PTE under VMWare Fusion 4 and there created both an exe and an app. The exe has been run on my PC (without sound), on a club laptop PC and under Fusion on both my Mac and my MacBook, the app has been run on both my Mac and my Macbook under Lion. I did not notice any significant colour change in any of these viewings. Tony Falla

On the first anniversary of Igor starting this topic I wondered if he is in a position to give us an update on the progress of the Mac version of PTE. Over the last 12 - 15 months I have been gradually converting from PC's to Macs, the only piece of software that I haven't found a Mac version for or a Mac equivalent is PTE. I currently still have a desktop PC which I kept for PTE. I also run PTE on my Macs using VMWare Fusion but as I found recently when my PC lost all of its sound there are limits on memory usage both processor and graphics with this solution. I know it is a bit "Are we there yet?" but it is better to have a rough idea of when it will be available. Tony Falla

Hi Lin Thanks for that I am glad I haven't been missing something, it would be nice if when cloning there was an option to keep parameters. Tony

It may be a silly question but is there anyway I can clone a keyframe and keep its parameters. I have had the situation lately where I have a fairly large object with a number of adult/child relationships, I already had two or more keyframes for this adult master and wanted to do an insertion between two of them. If I cloned the first keyframe a further keyframe is created .5 sec after that but all the children of this master will have made .5 sec progress to reflect the parameters in the second existing keyframe. I wanted to keep the new keyframe parameters the same as the existing one i.e. I wanted a pause. The only way I can find to do it is to go through all the new keyframe children and reset the appropriate parameters. Am I missing something? Tony Falla

I have to say that personally I disagree with Barry, I find that I use the manual, the FAQ and the forum to find out how to do something that I haven't done before. Yes you can get the situation where something described in the manual / FAQ's no longer works in exactly the same way, but the manual is a pointer to how it was done and I find I can usually fathom out what I should do. If not then a simple question on the forum usually supplies the correct method. As to people giving several ways in which a particular aim can be achieved I personally find that very helpful. None of us do everything in exactly the same way and if you are presented with several alternatives you try them and then decide which suits your particular style of working. I'm sorry Ken but I cannot see the point of sticking with an older version of PTE because you don't use the more up to date features. Currently I am using the latest version even though I have no plans in the immediate future to use video in my sequences. If I were to stick to an older version then sometime in the future when I may decide I want to use video, not only do I have to learn how to do that but I will also have to update myself on the features I do use that have changed since I last updated. Tony Falla

Peter Thanks for that it is always nice to understand how things work Tony

Sorry Tom forgot to say I am using Fusion 4, currently I am trying using only 4 processors and 8GB of memory and I think that is the same if not slightly better than using 8 processors Tony

I have been having a similar problem to Arthur but thought it was something to do with transferring the development to an iMac running PTE under WMWare Fusion. As with Arthur I have a large number of O&A's on most slides mainly using some fairly large PNG files, this was being developed fine on my PC with 12GB memory, i7 processor and 1GB graphics card. My iMac has 16GB memory, i7 processor and 2GB graphics card, but when developing I have problems playing the sequence using the timeline, I place the blue arrow at the position I want to test the sequence and press play, the audio plays fine but the sequence stutters along. By experiment I have found that if I keep stopping and restarting the sequence will eventually play without stuttering. I have discovered that Fusion only allows me to use part of the iMac's capacity, 8GB of memory and 256K of graphic card memory so I am actually using less than on the PC. The thing that I have noticed is that I do not get this problem if I use either of the Preview buttons. I think I can understand this as my logic says this is because Preview, I presume, creates a temporary exe file which is then run, whereas under timeline it must do some kind of build up as it runs along and because it has so much work to do that is what causes the stutter. Is this logic correct? Although I don't understand why it should eventually run without stuttering, I think that it is something to do with loading changes I have made. I have noticed, and this applied on the PC, it takes quite a time when first opening up for all slides to be loaded. This sequence is an experiment and through this discussion I have learnt a lot but as it is nearly finished I will not attempt any major changes at the moment Tony