potwnc

As Alan said, the best/easiest way to do this is to edit everything into 1 sound file. When you say you "want it to last for about 1 minute" does that mean that it _does_ last for about 1 minute? If not you'll have to either edit it down to the length you want it, or "pad" it with silence to last longer. There is currently no way to insert silence in a show - the silence must be in the soundtrack (or you must use files that contain only silence if using multiple sound files). I always finalize my soundtrack before beginning the synchronization by adding transitions to the timeline. I've found it is a real pain to go back later and re-synchronize everything after even the smallest change to the soundtrack. Ray

Peter, I get a 404 error at this url http://www.maureenalbright.com/pages/fiche-gr2004.htm. Do you know of another link? Ray

We are a non-profit, educational organization. I contacted WnSoft with the same question before I bought it and was told we had to buy a business license. Don't take this as official WnSoft comment on your situation - I don't represent WnSoft. But I suspect the same would apply to you. Ray

I use 800x600 for screen/lcd projector shows. All my shows mix portrait and landscape and I find the following to look OK when I go between the 2: E.g., 800x600 landscape -> 450x600 portrait. Make a second copy of the 800x600 image and "mask" it on each side so that it is the same image but with the center 450x600 pixels showing. This second image is still 800x600 pixels, but the viewable part of the image that shows is now 450x600 pixels portrait. Do a fast (no effect) transition to this second slide and show it for a small (e.g., 200 msec) amount of time before transitioning to the third, 450x600 portrait image. I've found that if you don't do too many of these in a show it works quite well. Ray

When you say image size I assume you mean image dimension? 720x576 pixels is the optimum if you are targetting 16:9 output (e.g., the newer digital TVs). The resolution (dpi) makes no difference. The compression does make a difference. I'd recommend scanning at as high a bit/channel as your scanner can handle. I scan at 16 bits/channel. Then save out to JPEG format (which will be a maximum of 8 bits/channel) with as high a compression quality as you can. Depending on how powerful your computer is, it may be slow to render avis for long shows using very large JPEG files. If you are targetting 4:3 output (e.g., traditional TVS) I have found that the same 800x600 resolution I use for .exe shows works fine also for TVs. Ray

Mark, We are a non-profit organization. Our main use of PTE is documentary slideshows of indigenous peoples. I'm not sure what kind of music would be suited to that - something simple and tranquil I guess. We are not currently in a position to pay for music, as we're still really in the start-up phase. So my question is, would you be interested in licensing (non-exclusively, of course) some of your music in return for the "advertising" you would get from being acknowledged in the credits? If so, please respond with an e-mail address so we can discuss outside this forum. Ray

I meant going AVI -> TMPGenc -> Roxio

Stephen, I have not done exactly the test you are asking for, but I did post some time back asking about file sizes and I'm still wondering the same thing! In my experience I use the same format of JPEGs for both .exe and .avi -> DVD output - 800x600, the dpi makes no difference. For .exe I compress to about 200KB/file, but for DVD I don't compress and so the same files are around 800KB typically. I keep the 4:3 ratio simply because most TVs are still 4:3. If someone wanted 16:9 I would re-scan all the slides! Setting the AVI option to 90% of the screen and putting the AVI through Roxio Easy CD/DVD creator, I get excellent results (most of the time - I have experienced some weird frame flicker, which nobody else seems to have experienced and to which Igor has not responded). I have also had excellent results going SVI -> TMPGenc -? Roxio. Even though I use 800x600, the actual video frames are 720x480 (NTSC). My (and most) DVD players are able to realize that the actual video is 4:3 and reproduce that faithfully on 4:3 TVs. I don't see any reason why larger sizes - e.g., 1024x768 would result in better DVD quality. I guess using TIFF files instead of JPEGs would, but it would likely only be noticeable on the higher quality digital and plasma TVs. Ray

Isabel, A product by Roxio, called Toast with Jam does similar things I believe. Ray

When I produce an exe, I generally reduce my JPEG files to around 200KB as some of my clients will have older computers that don't have the CPU power to handle larger files. But when it comes to video output should the JPEG file size matter? I work with different files for video output as I want the best quality possible in the final video. So these JPEGs range from 500 to 800 KB. I just finished a show of about 14 minutes, with about 250 transitions (all fades, 0.5 - 2.0 seconds). When I watch the DVD on my player/TV I see occasional flickering to other slides that shouldn't be there. For example, when slide #159 appears, there are about 7 or 8 frames showing slide #1. The same project produces an exe that plays perfectly on my PC (Pentium 4, 3.0 GHz, 1GB RAM). Is this a bug? Or should we be using smaller files for video output also? To Igor: If it's a bug, I'd suggest there might be some video frame caching that is not being dumped/overwritten properly. Has anyone else experienced this? (I'm using beta #5.) Ray

Well I'm originally from the Uk (Yorkshire), but I moved to Canada and then to Charlotte, North Carolina, which is where I live now (when I'm not off somewhere taking photos - I'm planning a long trip to Brazil next year!). Christmas doesn't mean anything to me and I'll be working on a slideshow that's almost complete. But Happy Christmas + New Year to those of you it does mean something to! Ray

Thanks for the link. I'm still using win 2000 so bad luck for me :-) Ray

bfreas, Where can we download this? Ray

You can check for compatibility here: http://www.dvdrhelp.com/dvdwriters. Ray

LumenLux, I may need your help... when I try to re-encode PTE's AVI using Studio 8 (trial) I just get an error message saying the AVI wasn't compressed with DV Video Encoder. But when I create the AVI file using PTE there is no such codec to use! How did you manage to get this to work? When I click Help in Studio nothing happens!!! I guess the trial version doesn't include any help? Ray

Ok I'll give Studio 8 a try. I don't think Windows Movie Maker would help because WMV is only viewable on Windows, right? Ray

Oops... should have read all the posts first... you were asking a different Ray and not me! Ah well, I'd still be willing to give Studio 8 a try! Ray (#2)

Dana, I read this before but just noticed the direct question to me. I haven't tried Studio 8. If someone could post a link to the trial download I'll give it a try and report back. Ray

Yes, these numbers are much closer to what I would expect! I imagine you used Pinnacle Studio 8 to do this? Unfortunately I don't have that software so I can't do a comparison test on my own show - unless there's a trial version for download? Out of interest, which codec were you using? Ray

I think the output AVI only needs PTE to be running on the same computer if the PTE codec is used - I can use a different codec, copy the AVI file to a different directory, exit PTE and play the copied AVI just fine. I tried a different experiment - I actually resized my jpg images to 200x150 pixels. This also has no effect on the output AVI file size - it is the same as it was with 800x600 jpgs. It is even bigger using the DIVX codec, which, as everyone knows, is supposed to produce very small AVI files! The .exe produced from the project is around 1MB, but the AVI is 7.5MB - and this is a really simple show with 4 images (each about 40KB) and a short (43 seconds) mp3 that takes up 700KB. I've tried putting the AVI through TMPGenc. As you probably know, TMPGenc allows only VCD, SVCD and DVD frame sizes, so the rendered mpg file has a minimum 352x240 frame size. I can live with that frame size, but the resulting mpg file is still around 7.5MB (it's actually a little smaller than the original AVI file!!!). I have seen good-quality MPG and AVI files on the Web that last around 43 seconds that are less than 1MB! I realize that this new version of PTE is really supposed to be for burning to VCD, SVCD and DVD format - and I'm very happy with the results when I do that. I just wish Igor would come along and clarify this so I can stop wasting everyone's time, including my own! If this version of PTE is not going to allow me to produce reasonably small, stand-alone video files that I can put on my web site then OK, I'll just have to live with that, but at least I can save a lot of time trying to do the impossible. But at the same time, I believe it would be an oversight and a mistake not to include it - or at least announce plans to include it in the next version. I for one would (reluctantly) switch to something like Proshow Gold to get this capability which, based on the trial version, Proshow Gold does extremely well already. Ray

Ok I'll try one more (5th!) time since we seem to have a definitive place to post these topics now. I want to put small AVI files on my web site as demos so that non-Windows users can see them. This has nothing to do with burning them to DVD or to CD. The issue: when I select custom AVI for output, the resulting AVI file is always the same (huge) size - it doesn't matter what frame size I select. Generally speaking, video files (AVI, MPG, WMV, MOV etc.) are supposed to be smaller when a smaller frame size is used (just like a smaller JPG will produce a smaller file than a larger JPG). It appears PTE is not taking the frame size into account. So I end up with an AVI of about 40 seconds requiring a 7.5 Megabyte file! I've tried this with all 4 betas and get the same result. Any help on how to get this file size down is greatly appreciated! Ray

Beta #4 also doesn't solve the size problem - all AVI files are the same size (in MB) and it doesn't matter what you set the frame size to in the custom AVI option. Igor, can you say if you intend to look at this (I've posted this feedback 4 times now!), so that I can stop wasting everyone's time? Maybe it's not important to others, but I'd like to post AVIs to my web site so that non-Windows users can see my slideshows, but with the huge file sizes produced, I can't afford to pay for the bandwidth I would suffer from the downloads. Alternatively, does anyone know of any software that would reduce the AVI file size by actually taking the frame size into account? Thanks, Ray

Igor, See above - I (actually Andreas) fixed the border problem. My big issue now is that all AVI files are the same size independent of the frame size I set in custom AVI option. Is this something you can/will fix? Ray

Thanks Andreas, This does solve the problem and I'm sure it will be useful for others to know. My original pte file used full screen mode, and I never would have thought that that's all I needed to do!! Now my #2 issue... when I specify a custom avi with output size 200x150, that's what I get in the AVI file, but the size of that file (in Megabytes) is still the same as with my 800x600 AVI file. I'd like (and expect) it to be much smaller - mathematically I'd expect a file of about 1/16th the size. Is this a bug? Or do I have to individually resize all my original images to 200x150? Ray

My #1 issue is not resolved by this new beta - a thick, black border appears when I use my 800x600 images. This border is there in the AVI file for custom, VCD, SVCD and DVD output. Igor, are you reading this beta testing feedback? Is this the correct place to post feedback? I'd really like to know if you can/intend to address this because as it stands I will be unable to use the new AVI feature. Ray