Tony Falla

Thanks for the replies, I looked at your link Tom but as I am new to Macs currently I am a bit reluctant to start altering files but it only increases the graphics memory size to a maximum of 256K. Looking at the problem in detail I think it may be just due to the numbers of O&A's I have on some slides, I see that in the main PTE there is a similar discussion going on so I will look at what is being said there. Again thanks for the help Tony

I have recently taken the plunge and am in the process of changing from PC's to Macs. I bought my first about 12 months ago a MacBook Pro and recently an iMac. On both of these I have installed VMWare Fusion and PTE, although use on the MacBook has been very light. I was in the middle of developing a sequence on my PC when my speakers packed in so I transferred it on to the iMac. No problem until I started to run my sequence from the timeline or Preview buttons. The sequence just stuttered along, now I know this sequence is very heavy on O&A but I had no problems with the PC with 12GB, i7 Processor, 1GB graphics card. The iMac has 16GB, i7 processor and 2GB graphics card. I found within Fusion there is Virtual Machine - Settings - Processors & Memory in which I have set Processor to 8 and Memory to 8GB, the maximum it will allow but I still get stuttering in a slightly different way. If I make an alteration to my sequence and then position the arrow in time line and play then it stutters and does this several times until eventually it runs smoothly. Is there anything I am missing that I can do to change this situation Tony Falla

Igor I agree with you that putting in two keys is a pain when setting up a new computer having just gone through the experience. At the moment you have a procedure where if I have lost my key I can contact you. Looking at your website I have to give three pieces of information, the product, my name and either original e-mail address or order id. I presume you have a database that has this information for all your customers. I am not sure what you do at present as I have never used it but could you change this so that customers with two keys, are then given a new universal key. Could you then change the procedure in PTE so when setting up a new computer installation it says two keys are no longer accepted and to fill in the lost key request to get a single universal key. This means that it may take some time before all your customers are converted but it would not produce a surge of requests to yourselves. The main problem I see is that you would have to respond to this very quickly. Tony Falla

Thanks Lin I can now see how you made your distortion example, but I don't think that I can do what I want to do using this. It was worth asking the question as it made me look at one or two tutorials and you always pick up something new when you do that Tony

Hi Lin Thanks for the information, I had already downloaded the Dollar Flipping tutorial and experimented with that. Although it is quite satisfactory for a vertical flip, I find that because there is no distortion when you do the same thing for a horizontal flip it looks unnatural. I can see from your Distortion example that you have managed to achieve the kind of thing I am looking for, but I am in the dark as to how you did it. I would therefore be grateful if you could point me to any tutorials which would help. Tony

I have seen in Vista Screen Saver, using photographs, an effect where images are flipped by rotating backwards into the screen and wondered is it possible to create this effect using Objects & Animation. It would mean that to get the effect the image would have to be distorted as it flips, ie the top would decrease in size and the bottom increase in size, and I cannot see a way of doing that or am I missing something.

Sorry for numerous messages having problems wherby getting a page not available message when posting. Didn't realise they were getting through

I have recently downloaded this version and tried experimenting with importing points from another project but nothing seems to happen so I presume that I am doing something wrong. I set up a small project with 8 images, a piece of music about 11 mins long in case music length caused a problem. I placed the blue arrow after the last of the 8 images and and selected import from another project. When I selected a project the line under the waveform flashed on and off but nothing happened. I also tried with no slides and when I did that I got the message "Access Violation at address 0054D4D4 in module apr.exe. Read of Address 0000000C.

Thanks will look at that

Hi Al I'm afraid I have given up on Pinnacle, when I purchased the PC, mid-year, it came with a version of Pinnacle. I am not sure exactly what as it has lots of features but not all work and the product seems very unstable. Personnally I found that the program was forever falling over and hanging the PC so in addition to requirements for PTE I have been looking for software that would give me reliable burning of data to CD / DVD.

I eventually managed to create a DVD using Nero 6 as you say it took a long time (1 1/2 hours) but worked exactly the same as the EXE version. I still find it off putting that the preview is jerky and the music does not synchronise properly

Took your advice and tried to burn a DVD to see what the results were but unfortunately that failed with an error caused by an excessive number of VOBUs, whatever they are. Investigating but it looks as though Movie Factory is the better product in my mind

I presume that this question has been asked before but having looked through the forum I can not see it being discussed. I am curious as to why when creating video files for burning to DVD or CD, PTE only creates temporary files. Is there some legal / technical reason why this is done? It is just that it seems to me, in my naivety, to be a clumsy way of doing it having to open multi copies of PTE. I have just created a DVD with 5 PTE which has only used just over 1GB on a DVD. I realise that it depends on individual projects but this could mean over 20 PTE projects open to create a DVD which must start to have an impact on the rest of the PC.

Hi Den Thanks for the information do you also experience lose of synchronisation in the preview?

Hi Kurt Thanks for the information on sound cards, unfortunately I live in the UK and Turtle Beach is not available here, a pity as their prices seem quite reasonable. I will look and see what there is on the UK market but suspect that currently I will leave well alone as I suspect changing sound card will not be an easy matter.

I never created a DVD as I didn't want to waste one when the preview was not giving me what I expected

Hi Kurt Thanks for the offer I must admit that until I got interested in PTE I had never given sound on the PC a thought all I had ever done was put a CD in and sound came out of the speakers ergo it was working. Now you have asked me to find out what my sound card is I think I may have part of the problem I don’t know if this makes sense but I don’t appear to have one. I have downloaded Everest as you suggested and when I start looking for a sound card there does appear to be one. Looking at the specification of the PC it states that it has Onboard 5.1 Surround Sound 6 Channel Audio. In Everest it says that the mother board is an Asus P4R800-VM (3 PCI, 1 AGP, 4 DDR DIMM, Audio, Video, LAN), does this mean that the sound card is in effect part of the motherboard? The Mother board chipset is ATI Radeon 9100 IGP and the Audio Adapter is an ATI SB200 - AC'97 Audio Controller. Does this make any sense?

I am currently investigating which software to use for creating DVD's of my PTE Projects. I already have Pinnacle Studio and Nero 6, and a trial copy of Ulead Movie Factory. Recently I have been trying out Nero 6 and have hit a problem with synchronisation. I have loaded a few PTE projects and created a menu but when I get to the preview screen and play a project I hit problems:- 1. The pictures appear as static pictures one appearing about every 5 / 6 seconds, the pictures do not fade into one another at all. It appears as though it just displays what is currently at that position as sometimes I get a half faded picture of 2 slides. 2. The music and pictures have lost synchronisation, the music finishing about 60 - 70 % of the way through the slides. I most likely have missed something but cannot find anything that I can do to correct this. Has anybody else hit this problem and if so how did they solve it?

Am I correct as interpreting all of this as the most likely reason I am not getting surround sound from my PTE projects is that my sound card does not support Dolby Pro Logic. Therefore if I want an emulated surround sound I would have to install a sound card that does support Dolby pro logic. Thanks for all the help I think I now know how to proceed

Sorry Guys but I am confused, not (as you may have gathered) that it takes much to get me confused, but this subject seems to have gone a full circle. It started off with the fact that my PTE projects were only producing sound from 2 speakers, not the 5 of the surround system. A couple of people said that their PTE projects produced surround sound and the effect was marvellous. I am now being told that if I use wave or mp3 files in my projects I will only get stereo sound (i.e. 2 speakers) unless I use a new form of mp3 files which cater for surround sound. Are the people who said that their PTE did produce surround sound using these new mp3 files?

I have just noticed in PTE there is a facility to change the path and name of the sound editor, under View –Advanced Options. I cannot see how this can be used other than typing in another sound editor, e.g. Windows Media Player. I have tried that and it doesn’t appear to make any difference. Is this an area I should be exploring further or should I just leave it alone and accept I am only going to get Stereo sound from PTE

I have recently downloaded the trial version of Ulead Movie Factory and found it worked very well in creating a DVD. The only problem I have is with the Movie Factory Menu I created AVI files for 5 PTE slideshows and loaded them into Movie Factory. In Movie Factory I created a Menu with a seperate Menu Item for each of my slideshows and then burnt the DVD. This all worked fine. I then took the DVD and put it into DVD player attached to the TV that worked, the menu was displayed, I selected one of the slideshows and that worked exactly as I expected it to. The problem occurred when the slide show had finished. I was expecting to return to the Menu but instead the next slideshow started up. I was able to get back to the menu by pressing the Menu button on my DVD remote and could then choose any of the slideshows and start again. At first I thought it was my fault as the exe version of the slideshows goes to a menu slideshow and I hadn't turned that off in PTE. However I made the Project option in PTE to stop when slideshow had finished, in all 5 slideshows, and burnt another DVD but got exactly the same result. Does anybody know if it is possible to return to the menu when a slideshow is finished, and if so what have I to set up to achieve this

Thanks for the information that an MP3 file will be a stereo file and therefore only appears through the front 2 speakers. I presume that this Dolby Pro Logic circuitry must be used in Windows Media Player as if I play an MP3 track in that I get surround track. I have also proved that it is something in my set up as I downloaded one of Al Robinson’s AV’s (Desert Canyons) and when I play that the sound only comes out the 2 front speakers, although Al in his reply a few days ago said he had surround sound. I have just discovered two additional features in my SoundMAX software called Virtual Theater and Virtual Ear with a tie up to a web site called Sensaura. I need to do some more exploring to see if I can emulate surround sound using these facilities.

Thanks for the help I am starting to get somewhere with this problem. I discovered this morning on the PC a piece of software called SoundMAX which appears to control sound to speaker output. On this I discovered that there was a facility for saying what your speaker set up was. Mine was set to Quadraphonic, so I reset to 5:1 Surround Sound. It also had a facility for testing that sounds were coming out of the right speaker. This proved, I think some people already suspected this, that my wiring was incorrect. So I now have my speakers wired correctly and set up to 5:1 Surround Sound. In Audacity I found that within file – preferences there is a facility to set up the playback / recording device, also in sndrec32.exe within PTE there is the same facility via edit – audio properties. So in both of these I set the output / input devices to SoundMAX Digital Audio thinking this would solve my problems but it didn’t. I am half way there the sound in Audacity / PTE now comes out of the front speakers but I now get nothing from the rear two speakers. I will keep investigating.

I am missing something here, I am new to sound files and the PC with surround sound is new. There is a lack of understanding on my part, so I have decided to investigate further. I may be new to sound files but I have been using computers for nearly 40 years. I have found that if I take an MP3 sound file and player it on Windows Media Player, then all 5 speakers are used. If how ever I put that MP3 sound file into either Audacity or PTE when I play the sound file in those two pieces of software, only two speakers are working, in my case the back two. I presume that part of Windows Media Player in simplistic terms takes the MP3 sound file and in effect directs it to the speakers so the sound is produced. In the same way Audacity and PTE must have a similar piece of software to Windows Media Player in it or link in to some other sound player software, again to produce the sound. This suggests to me several possibilities 1. There is something needs to be set up in the Windows Sound software to allow other programs to use the surround sound facility. If there is I haven’t as yet found it. 2. The software in Audacity / PTE needs to be set up to play surround sound. 3. The sound player software in Audacity / PTE is not as sophisticated as Windows Media and only directs sound to 2 speakers as though it was a stereo track. 4. I need to link Windows Media Player to Audacity / PTE to get surround sound Can I ask some further questions? 1. Are people using surround sound with PTE without problem, i.e. is it only me who is experiencing this problem? 2. If other people have experienced the problem how did they solve it?