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I must say that I am very impressed that anyone would take on this challenge so soon after I posted it and I am equally impressed with what has been achieved so far! This week I will see what I can come up with and if it's worth posting I will post it.

I'm sure most members know what the Rubik's cube is. I think it would be a great demo for PTE to be able to have the PTE version of it! Can it be done? That's the challenge!

Me too!

Barry, I've been using Windows XP x64 Professional for about 2.5 years. Never had a problem with any of the PTE versions that have been released over that time. If you can point me to the exact slideshow that is giving this person problems I can run it here and get back to you. <begin shameless plug> When will we see a 64-bit version of PTE? <end shameless plug>

And in the past many have asked questions about autoplay CDs and DVDs... yesterday's software at this site was Autoplay Menu Designer... too late now to get it from http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/ but, for future reference, they often repeat the same software just a few days or a few weeks later. (Disclaimer - I have nothing to do with www.giveawayoftheday.com!)

Some members maybe interested in today's free (for non-commercial use) software at http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/.

Excellent! Here's a challenge... to anyone. If you ever saw the movie "Contact" (with Jodie Foster and based on Carl Sagan's novel), there's the opening scene that took them months to make that zooms out - like this demo does - but it zooms out to the end of the Universe then fades back to the child's eye at the end. Now to see something like that done in PTE would be very impressive. (Of course, I'd do it myself but I just don't have the time :-))

Lin, Jeff, If you do decide to update or re-work the unofficial guide, please let me know (you still have my e-mail address, yes?). The HD video section (appendix) is also old and I would be willing to update/re-work it at the same time. Ray

Isabel, What do you want the aspect ratio of your output to be? 16:9 also?

Some may not have the same experience in which case they should Google (and use) "DVD Region Killer."

I want to e-mail the Mac output to a friend to try on his Mac. Do I also pack the whole folder into a ZIP archive and send him the .zip file? Can I use WinZip to produce the .zip file?

I tried to use 5.7 beta 3 to make a Mac slideshow to test but it said I must be a licensed user of PTE Deluxe (I'm not a licensed user of PTE Deluxe). So does that mean I can't beta test the new Mac slideshow output?

I'll add my congratulations and best wishes for the future. PTE has helped me bring a lot of pleasure to people over the years. Ray

I strongly second this - I actually suggested it also a long time ago. To see a picture go out of focus (or come into focus) as a transition would be wonderful!

This kind of comparison will depend on a lot of factors. As an (unrealistic) example if I have one image which is 1920x1080 in my show, the .exe file will be around 2MB typically whether the show lasts 1 second or 2 hours. But the .mp4 file will be much much larger if I show that image for 2 hours versus 1 second. If I want to zoom that image and not lose quality it will be a larger pixel size so the .exe file will be correspondingly larger but it would have no impact on the .mp4 file size. In my experience of realistic HD slideshows (15 minutes, 100 slides, maybe 15% of these have no zooming) the .mp4 file at 1920x1080x 15Mbps is much smaller than the equivalent .exe file.

There are some interesting comments on the thread that Mike linked to: "it is a bit unfair to ask Igor to have to build in a complex colour profile conversion engine to work in realtime and at high res & refresh rates." I don't think anyone in this thread is asking for PTE to convert images to any color profile - sRGB or any other. "colour conversions need to undergo at least two transformations - from the original to an "neutral" intermediate, and then from the intermediate to the target colour space." Again, nobody seems (to me) to be asking for any color profile conversion within PTE. Maybe I've missed the point of what everyone else is saying on this thread (always possible :-)), but don't we all want PTE to simply preserve the original color profile of our images? If my (or your) image is sRGB because I created it that way don't we want PTE to leave the color space alone just as much as we do if my (or your) image has some other embedded color profile?

Igor, (and everyone else), I don't understand what you are saying. How does this apply to video output? If I burn a DVD the DVD player doesn't load images in the way a .exe does, so why would it take double the time to play a video file? If you mean that it would take double the time to render that file that is not an issue (for me at least). Are you saying that, if my images have an embedded color profile of PAL/SECAM (or NTSC), and I use PTE to create video, the color profile of the created frames in the video output file will get converted to sRGB by PTE? If the answer is: "yes, but only if you use the PTE codec or VideoBuilder" I can live with that. If the answer is: "yes using any codec" this means PTE is a very bad product for video output. Can you please let us know how PTE manages color for video output? Thanks, Ray

Mike, Do you intend for your post to be applicable only to .exe output or are you saying this is all also true of video output - where there would be, for example, an MPEG2 file (.vob) burned to a standard DVD and played back on a set-top DVD player connected to a TV (analog or digital) - no PC or computer monitor anywhere to be found?

Doug, Create a zip file of your project and upload it to a file sharing web site. Then we can look at it and see what the problem is.

This can be true if you don't know what you're doing and/or if you print on low-cost paper using a low-cost workflow. It sounds like this company does all the above. When I print I want the printed version to be as close as possible to the original photo. Since my printer is an Epson (Stylus Photo R1800), it came with color profiles for various Epson papers. So if I'm printing to, say, Epson Premium Glossy Photo Paper I will assign the image in Photoshop (as well as set my monitor) to that color profile (and not sRGB) so I can see what the printed version will actually look like. If it's too dark I will increase the brighness in Photoshop. For this company to make a flat statement that "AdobeRGB & ProRGB will give dark, flat results" as though that's somehow inevitable shows they either don't understand color management or just can't be bothered to take the steps necessary to get the customer's print looking good/right. As for "Images need to be sRGB for PTE" I'd like to know what that's based on. Unless I plan to produce a .exe file none of my images are sRBG and PTE works fine for me. If you're producing video output it makes no sense to use sRGB as your color space. You'd want to use NTSC, HDTV or PAL/SECAM. I hope Igor can/will confirm that, for video output, PTE preserves the input color space of the original images. If it doesn't that's a very serious design flaw.

Bob, When you produce the DVD make sure you select 29.97 frames per second (the NTSC standard used in Canada) instead of 25 frames per second (the PAL standard used in Europe). Otherwise your friend in Canada will not be able to view the DVD on a set-top player connected to a TV.

I like it!

Jeff, You would create a zip backup from within PTE itself. That would give us all the files we need.

Jeff, Why not upload your zipped project files so that someone can take a look and advise you? Ray

Henri, I agree with you. This was just an example to get people started if they want to do a route using masks. Ray