Jill

Hi Lin, Sorry to hear of your eye problems, but have no fear your sight will return. I had the same problem of a PVD about 18 months ago. Although it wasn't as bad as yours sounds. It occured after banging my head on a cupboard door. I had dark flashes & then saw grey misty circles in front of my eye. It is very disconcerting when it first happens. But after a few weeks became less noticable & after a couple of months I was no longer aware of the problem. Hope you will soon be back at the forum with your words of wisdom. With all best wishes Jill North Wales

I also would like to add my thanks and best wishes to everyone. You certainly deserve a break Igor and team. Happy Christmas to all those I know personally and also all those I feel I know through the forum, although have never met. Jill North Wales

The only time I have used this option is when I have a menu screen that allows the viewer to select from several shows. Each show then starts with 'show first transition from desktop' & also have 'show last transition to desktop' so that they fade in & out from the menu screen rather than just jumping to a black screen. If I can achieve this in another way then please let me know & by all means remove the option. Jill

I have noticed that the size of the Exe file given at the bottom of the main window is now incorrect. It appears NOT to include any of the Objects. Eg main window says Exe file is 36mb but when I create the Exe it is actually 44mb. Also when I rename a slide it is not being carried to the O/A window. If I rename the slide in the Slide List then the new name is shown in the O/A window. But if I rename the slide in the File List, which I have to do for Objects, then the new name is not shown in the O/A window & an error message shows saying it cannot find the slide. I don't know if anyone else has asked this, but will it be possible to Highlight slides in the File List that are only used as Objects. When I have a lot of slides it is difficult to easily see which I have used as Objects. Also is it possible to widen the name box in the O/A window. It currently does not scroll as far as the file Extension. So I cannot tell if the Object is a .jpg or .png as I cannot see the last part. Thanks Jill North Wales

I have discovered a possible error in the creation of Backup Zip files. The date stamp is 1 hour behind for all the files. Original file 01/09/2006 14:26 File in Zip folder is 01/09/2006 13:26 Original file 02/09/2006 00:45 File in Zip folder is 01/09/2006 23:45 The time for the Zip folder itself is correct I created a zip folder under XP and the time stamps were all unchanged so it appears to be PTE that has changed the times. Jill North Wales

Hi Igor I am learning just how wonderful V5 is & it is amazing what can be achieved with a bit of imagination. But I have some additional requests. I don't know if these functions will be available in the final version but if not could you consider them for future releases. 1. It would be really great if it were possible to see both the Timeline/Waveform & the Object window. I find I am constantly switching between the 2 to work out the positions for key points. Even if I could only 'see' the waveform & not hear it it would help. 2. Is it possible to select a group of key points. Like in the Timeline window I can click on the first point then shift click on the last point & all are selected. I sometimes find that I need to move a group of key points for an object but keep their relative positions. 3. Would it be possible to see a 'timeline' for each of the objects on a slide. I find when adding another object I have to keep clicking on previous objects to get the positions right. If I could see all the key points for each existing object it would make things a lot easier to get the timing for the new object. 4. Would it be possible to be able to zoom the timeline on the object as in the Timeline/Waveform. Using Ctrl + F11/F12. I sometimes find it difficult to see keypoints that are close together when a slide has a long screen time. The current window is the same length however long the slide time is. I know these are a BIG ASK & may not be possible, but would be great to have & would make it easier to use the O/A functions. Thanks Jill North Wales

Hi Igor First let me say a BIG Thank You for V5 it really is something special. I am now finding all the great things I can do with it. Well Done. However I have noticed that the Mosaic effect is no longer smooth in V5. I have it set to 500 x 500 & Display of 100. This gives a very smooth effect in V4.48 but is very jerky in V5 b5. Other effects I have tried seem to be ok but not tested them all yet. Is this something you can fix in the next beta. I am currentlly working on a show & really need this effect to work smoothly. Jill North Wales

Hi theDom Thanks I have just downloaded the grids. Tried to make one myself in photoshop, but not very succesful, will give these a try. Jill

Hi Igor I have finally bought a new PC with an Nvidia Geforce 7300 GS PCI Ex video card with up to 512 mb memory. The processor is AMD Sempron 3000+ with 1GB RAM & Win XP. Screen resolution is 1024 x 768. So I can now run Version 5. Seems to be very smooth on the tests I have done so far. Very easy to use once I got my head round it (& Win XP). Don't know if these have already been mentioned but a couple of points that would be nice to have are:- 1. Allow an option of short file names in the Properties & main (show image) windows instead of the full path. I have found that with Win XP 'My Documents' that the actual path name is VERY LONG. Wasn't a problem on my old Win 98 PC as I had a second drive for data. 2. Include a Grid screen on the Properties window, similar to Photoshop, to help align objects when zoom & pan. Jill (North Wales)

Hi Igor My findings so far with version 5 beta 2 My PC is PIII 450mhz with 128mb ram running Win 98 SE. Video card is 3dfx Voodoo3 with 16mb video memory Hardware Acceleration - Full GFX clock speed 166 Mhz Direct X version 6.1a Screen Resolution 800 x 600 True colour 32 bit Don't know if these problems are related to my old video card, but cannot get the following to work. Using your Flower seq demo, which you say should work on any video card. Slides are 1024 x 768 have also tried with smaller 262 x 175 pictures but still get same problems. 1. Flowers Sequence FLOWERS.EXE will NOT RUN - Error message 'This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down' 'Flowers caused an invalid page fault in module <unknown> at 0000:00000000' Press OK then get 'Exception EAccessViolation in module FLOWERS.EXE at 00000000' 2. When I try to open FLOWERS.PTE I get error message 'Project Files created with PTE V1.00 - V1.60 are not supported now' Also get same message if I try 'File / Open' in V4.48 BUT if I do 'File / Open' in V5 then the PTE Project opens & I can see the pictures 3. If I try to Preview a slide - from within the show - by clicking on the image in top right of main window I get error 'Access violation at address 00000000. Read of address FFFFFFFF' Press OK then get 'Access violation at address 0050DBD0 in module APR.EXE. Read of address FFFFFFFF' Press OK and then mouse cursor dissappears. Reappears when left click mouse. BUT if I click on an image from the File Panel window, the image appears in the top right window, BUT the 'slice of bread' is missing, then when I click in top right window the image is previewed full screen. 4. If I try to Preview show by clicking Preview button or 'slice of bread' then I get 'This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down' 'Flowers caused an invalid page fault in module <unknown> at 0000:00000000' Press OK then get 'Exception EAccessViolation in module PREVIEW.EXE at 00000000' Is the 'slice of bread' button between the Preview and Project Option buttons another way to Preview?? HOWEVER when I go to the Timeline window & press play then it plays ok in the small preview window. 5. When I go to the Objects/Animation window I get the same error message 'Access violation at address 00000000. Read of address FFFFFFFF' The screen then displays but there is no picture Also I cannot get out of the screen. The Close X button (top right) does nothing Minimise and Resize buttons do work. I have to do 'CTRL+ALT+DEL' & then 'END TASK' to get out of the window OTHER OBSERVATIONS 6. In the File Panel, the 'UP' folder image the one with the big arrow does not work. But the small icon above the file panel does. 7. Navigation bar You have 'Auto hide nav bar after so many secs' Would it be possible to also have 'Show nav bar after so many secs' The reason for this is when I want the nav bar to show after a short intro & the next slide has a long fade time I do not want the nav bar to show until the slide has fully appeared. 8. What is the 'Hold Time Points' check box for at the bottom of the main window. Is this something to do with a feature I asked for before V4.?? IE. Would it be possible to 'lock' selected slides to points on the timeline but allow others to be altered. e.g. Lock slide 5 at 0:34, slide 8 at 1:10, slide 15 at 1:56 but allow remaining slides to be arranged, dragged, shifted, added or deleted? 9. TIMELINE Window Would it be possible to add a SAVE Button to the Timeline to save the Project. It can be a problem having to go back to the main window everytime to save the project. Especially if I have done a lot of changes & the PC crashes, I have then lost all my work. Or better still allow the Timeline to be viewed with the main window. Another 'Nice to have' Feature would be to be able to play the music and to be able to add marker points onto the wave form. When a wave form has both speech and music it is often difficult to see where the key points are. I know this is not a fully working version but will the errors I am experiencing be fixed with the full version. Or, do I need to go out & buy a new PC with a newer video card. I know mine is old & slow, but V4.48 works great. Thanks to you & your team for all your hard work creating V5 even though I can't run it, yet!! Jill (North Wales)

Hi Igor, I have found a small problem with Template creation. It does not recognise duplicate file names. I have 2 versions of a Pte show, one is a copy of the 35mm slide version & the other is a digital version. As some of the images are common to both I have two folders Pte-Slide & Pte-Digi. However some of the images have the same name, but the image is different. EG I have a slide called Fire from PTe-Slide & a different image called Fire from Pte-Digi. When opening the Pte project this is not a problem as it knows to look in the different folders. However when I create Templates, so I could take the files to a friends PC for creation of a DVD. The second slide called Fire overwrote the first, so that I had the same image for both slides. It did not recognise that they were from separate folders. I know it is my fault for having 2 images with the same name, but I thought Pte would flag this when creating the Template. Maybe it is something you could fix in Version 5. Thanks Jill North Wales

OK Also added it to there. Still finding my way round this forum, so the topic may be on twice Jill.

Hi All, I need help on how to create a PTE show onto a VCD. I have an old PC PIII 450 with a CD Burner and Nero Express Version 5.5.10.53. Nero says it can create a VCD and will automatically convert the AVi file, but to create a SVCD it says the file needs to be in MPEG-2 format. Will PTE do this for me?? I need to create several CDS and looking at the Forum on 'HOW TO CREATE VIDEO' it seems that this will take a very long time. Is there any way to speed things up. I also need to create at least one to be sent to America, I assume in NTSC format. The show I am making is to run from a menu screen where the viewer can then select which PTE show to run, does this still work on the video?? or do I just put each show on seperately?? As I do not have a DVD player, I will have to go to someone else's house to check if it works. Can I use CD-RW to test things out ( I suspect I will need several attempts to get it right) or does it have to be on a CD-R I have never created video before so please excuse me if the questions are basic. Thanks for any help you can give me. Jill (North Wales)

Hi All, I need help on how to create a PTE show onto a VCD. I have an old PC PIII 450 with a CD Burner and Nero Express Version 5.5.10.53. Nero says it can create a VCD and will automatically convert the AVi file, but to create a SVCD it says the file needs to be in MPEG-2 format. Will PTE do this for me?? I need to create several CDS and looking at the Forum on 'HOW TO CREATE VIDEO' it seems that this will take a very long time. Is there any way to speed things up. I also need to create at least one to be sent to America, I assume in NTSC format. The show I am making is to run from a menu screen where the viewer can then select which PTE show to run, does this still work on the video?? or do I just put each show on seperately?? As I do not have a DVD player, I will have to go to someone else's house to check if it works. Can I use CD-RW to test things out ( I suspect I will need several attempts to get it right) or does it have to be on a CD-R I have never created video before so please excuse me if the questions are basic. Thanks for any help you can give me. Jill (North Wales)

Igor, I run on a Pentium III 450 with VooDoo 3000 video card, so PLEASE keep PTE running for that set up. The current version works fine as long as I leave at least 500ms between slides. Can't wait for new version!!

I have only just found beta #4 so no time to test yet, but after reading other peoples comments my suggestions for the Timeline are as follows. I usually work by selecting images and building up effect times first, as it is the EFFECT BETWEEN TWO IMAGES that is most important to me. I usually set all screen times to a default of say 500ms. I then build up my music to match the slides. I will then go into the Timeline and adjust the transition points and screen times of the slides so that they fit the music. There will be several slides that I will want to fit exactly to points in the music, others will then need to be spaced evenly in between. So I would like to be able to :- 1. Lock only certain slides say by RIGHT CLICK on the transition point and select LOCK. These transition points would change colour, say to RED. The transition point, slide, effect & screen time will then NOT ALTER unless you RIGHT CLICK and select UNLOCK. 2. All UNLOCKED slides could be changed. Either individually or as a group in between the LOCKED slides. Also all UNLOCKED slides could be SHIFTED RIGHT to the end of the music and either DRAGGED back to where I need them, or inserted automatically by using NEW TRANSITION. Say if slide 5 was LOCKED, then slides 1-4 would be inserted before and then slide 6 etc would be inserted after the LOCKED slide. It would be nice if I could select all the slides in between LOCKED slides and ADJUST so that they were spaced evenly, ie for PTE to alter the screen times, but, MOST IMPORTANT - keep the original effect time. 3. Be able to REPLACE an image with a different one. But keep the position, effect, screen time etc EXACTLY as for the image being replaced. NOTE it is just the image that is being replaced, the attributes relate to the slide number, NOT the slide name. 4. Be able to add in new slides, in between existing ones. If I insert a new slide with effect time of 5sec, say in between, #3 currently at 1min with effect time of 10sec & #4 currently at 1:20min with an effect time of 5 sec. Then the new slide would be inserted at 1:11min, assuming that the default screen time is set to1sec in Project options. It is the default screen time that determines where to place new slides in between existing ones, rather than placing them in the middle. In this example the effect time & screen time of the new slide will fit between slide #3 & #4. If the new slide has an effect time of 10sec then it will not fit so a WARNING should be displayed and the transition point HIGHLIGHTED. 5. I would love to be able to drag & drop slides from the slide list onto the timeline. This would be much easier to work with than having to keep going back to the main window. If this cannot be done until a later version then will it be possible to SAVE the project from the Timeline window. Currently I have to keep going back to the main window to save and create. Thank you Igor, for listening to our suggestions and trying to cater for all needs. It is much appreiciated. I will try to check out beta #4 and report back, hopefully before you create the next version. I have a hard time keeping up with you. Jill (North Wales)

Hi Igor My findings so far with version 4.40 beta 2 My spec is PIII 450mhz with 128mb ram running Win 98 SE. 1. Diagonal curl works great, even on this VERY SLOW PC. 2. Customize Sync. Love the changes you have made. - Customize Slide button not available when waveform is shown. - Update button no longer seems to do anything - Cancel button did not work at all when I first tried it , but now seems to ! - Not sure what 'arrange points' is supposed to do Would it be possible to 'lock' selected slides to points on the timeline but allow others to be altered. e.g. Lock slide 5 at 0:34, slide 8 at 1:10, slide 15 at 1:56 but allow remaining slides to be arranged, dragged, shifted, added or deleted? 3. Object Buttons - 'Run application and exit' seems to exit first then run the application! I have a sequence with 'when show ends keep last slide on screen'. This last slide has a series of buttons that allow the viewer to select which sequence to run and then close the show when they choose. When the 'close' button is pressed I then want to run a final sequence which has credits etc. and close the show. I have set the properties of the 'close' button to be 'run application and exit'. However it seems to exit first then run the application. So that the show displays the desktop then runs the final credits, thus breaking the flow of the whole show. Am I doing something wrong or is it meant to work that way. The end sequence is set to 'show first transition form desktop' but I have also tried without this set and it doesn't seem to make any difference. Thanks for all your hard work on making PTE such a great program. Jill (North Wales)

Hi everyone This is my first post to the Forum so I hope it works. I have been playing around with the 10 slide version of PTE for a while now, but have only just got round to getting the full registered version. Should have got it sooner it is a fantastic program, many thanks to Igor for all his hard work. I am having the same problem as LumenLux with slides not playing in sync on my PC. 'Play' works perfectly but 'Preview' and 'Exe' does not. I have created my first proper sequence and it will not play correctly, it always misses out the same slide near the middle of the sequence. The previous slide fades in, then jerks & fades in again, then it misses 1 or 2 slides, then the next slide is in sync with the music. My spec is PIII 450mhz with 128mb ram. I create the jpegs 1024 x 768 by 'save for web' and compress to 50%, Image sizes range from 57k to max of 196k, most are 100k to 120k. The jerking/missing images occur a couple of slides after the long! (7.5 & 8 sec) dissolves, most other dissolves are 3 - 4 secs. Most screen times are 500ms, to try & keep the slides moving, although I did have 1 & 1.5 sec around the problem areas. Maybe I need to leave longer gaps after the long dissolves? to allow the system to catch up, but I thought this would cause the sequence to stand still too long on a faster machine. Do long dissolves take more processing power than short ones? I also have another problem with runing the show. I have an intro sequence which is created to 'close show after last slide' and 'run application after last slide'. This second sequence is one slide with a series of buttons that allow the viewer to select which sequence to run and then close the show when they choose. It is created with 'when show ends keep last slide on screen' . When the 'close' button is pressed I then want to run a final sequence which has credits etc. and close the show. I have set the properties of the 'close' button to be 'run application and exit'. However it seems to exit first then run the application. So that the show displays the desktop then runs the final credits, thus breaking the flow of the whole show. Am I doing something wrong or is it meant to work that way. The end sequence is set to 'show first transition form desktop' but I have also tried without this set and it doesn't seem to make any difference. Thanks in advance for any help you can give. Jill (North Wales) PS I may not get to read any replies until next weekend, I am on a VERY SLOW dial up service and it takes forever to page through the Forum. So I tend to only check it at weekends.