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Granot, I find that when I add a file to a folder in Windows, it first appears at the bottom of the list in Explorer. However, when I close Explorer, or move to another folder, and then re-open the folder containing the new files, they show up in the correct alphabetical order, the way you would want them to do. Am I missing something?

Guido, Don't forget the "gif's" - even if they are transparent! Or, are you including "gif" in with "BMP" ?

Hi, Oleg, Thanks for the short tutorial on sound processing. I used these methods very extensively in my own tutorial. It's amazing how you can clean up a piece of music! I am using Adjustor right now to clean up some old taped choir music - it's one thing to equalize an instrumental piece and quite a different matter to deal with babies crying and people coughing in the background!! However, it's amazing what you can do even with this kind of background noise. One thing I was wondering about - what is the purpose of the compression after the frequency equalization? And then the need to equalize again? In Audition, one extra step I always take is to run the music/narration through "noise elimination" filters. I found that you have to be careful with this step as, particularly with voice, it tends to make it sound like it is coming out of the end of a hollow pipe. I also played the sound clips you included on your web site. The differences are subtle, but the clips are definitely different. I find modification of "tone" a very personal thing. I usually tone down the higher frequencies and boost the bass (guess that's why I don't sing tenor! ). In my tutorial I found I had to reduce the higher frequencies to get rid of some scratchy quality in my voice, and also reduce the bass as my voice was already low enough. As you say in your tutorial, you have to experiment! Thanks again for sharing your methodology. Edit: Two other questions - what was the source of your sound sample (CD, tape, live, etc.) and how was it imported into the pc (ripped directly from CD, input from hi-fi unit through sound card, etc.)?

Walt, This LINK will take you right to the upload page. It will help, too, if you already have a 120 x 80 pixel (horizontal) thumbnail image ready to upload for showing the presentation on Beechbrook.

Thank-you all (Michel, Bob, and Oleg and others on the "other side of the mountain") ! Coming from AV'ers the likes of you, these are compliments, indeed! Oleg, you can see I used some of your ideas in this show!

Thanks, guys, you're making me blush! I'm glad you find it useful, and I hope that newcomers to PTE will be able to learn from it and that it will help them shorten the "learning-curve". It will be a bonus if it works as a sort of reference for others, including myself, to brush up on different features. Bob: re the organization, I wasn't so organized while I was getting started in the project, but I sure am now! It has been a real learning experience for me, too. Thank you all for your kind remarks!

Just for the record, I have uploaded a basic PTE tutorial, "PTE 101" to the Cottage. It is available on my web site, but there is a link to it on Beechbrook. I hope a few of you, particularly those new to PTE, will find it useful, once you get used to my scratchy voice! It is a little long (around 13 Mb), but I couldn't reduce the size without seriously affecting image quality. Please let me know if you find any serious glitches, and I will update it. I would also like to know if you find it useful. Thanks to Igor for looking it over first, and making some valuable suggestions.

Claire, A "utility" is a little program which is designed to carry out certain functions like saving a file, opening a program, changing an image, etc. Granot's website is full of them, and he comes out with one ever other day (must have a utililitizer in his basement! The file, "All_Exe.exe", is one of them. You have to download it first, (#126), and then include it on the CD.

Granot, Sure wish I could get so many projects finished like this by sitting on them!!!

Thanks, Jim. You're a good salesman! The beauty of it all is, I enjoyed every minute of it! Nice to have hobbies like this, when retired, to make the days go by so happily! Anyway, I am happy to help out any way I can to make this great program, PTE, even more successful, as in the end I will be the beneficiary, along with everyone else. One drawback in adding to the success of PTE, though - the more features Igor adds to it, the more I will have to go back in and modify the tutorial.

Hi, ocgraphics, and welcome to the Forum! You must first have some music added in Project Options / Music. Then click on Project Options, check "Synchronize slideshow ....." under the "Main" tab, and click on "Custom Synchronization". I see your initial post is repeated. Might be a good idea to go into it and edit or delete it so we can keep track of all the replies in the order in which they occur. Good luck with PTE!

Stu, I think that may have been my problem - I was trying to set it up as a shortcut to the URL on my desktop.

Jim, I can think of a few ways to solve the "boring" part. I would just like to be able to avoid the slush season in between fall and winter, and winter and spring. I usually hibernate into my basement playpen during those in-between seasons.

I knew between the two of you the solution would be provided! Stu, I tried something similar to what you recommended, but for it didn't work from "run application after last slide". Hence my initial reply. Boxig's suggestion should solve this. I didn't try the customize routine you suggested as I usually run synched shows. Lazlo, thanks for the question - through it and the replies I learned something new which may prove useful to me some day!

Bob, See my reply in the new topic on the other side of the mountain!

Bob, thanks for the compliment (even if I don't know the difference between Colorado and Utah!! ) And I bet you know more about Canada than you let on. However, there's only one good way to correct that! I wouldn't advise a visit after the end of the month, though, until next Apr or May, as things get a bit messy up here. Unless you are an avid skier or dog musher, that is. (I'll probably get some hate mail now from fellow Canadians Some however would agree - especially the ones who go south for the winter) . You are so right about the benefits of PTE and the Forum and Beechbrook - before PTE I would never have believed that I would soon be able to watch such a diversity of slide shows, literally from all over the world, from the comforts of my easy-chair. The opportunities for creativity with this fabulous program are limitless! Yes, PTE has been a great source of enjoyment for me, too. And the people one meets on this forum are also great! Some day we'll have to have a convention and get to meet everybody in person. The trouble is, we wouldn't be able to decide where to hold it!

Hi, Lazlo, Welcome to the Forum! There isn't a capability "per se", but I am sure either boxig or nobeefstu could easily design a utility in MMB which would open at the end of a show and automatically start up a web URL.

Sorry, Bob! I can't see that far from here!

Bob, You are right - I gave credit to the wrong person. My apologies to you too, Andrew. To me, Colorado is south so I was thinking of your Sunset Peak show, Bob. However, you gave a good answer, as I knew you would.

Just make sure you don't grovel!!

Ken, this was Cindy's post from another thread. She is starting a new one, as the subject is different from that of the original thread: Okay, it's zipped and on my site. I discovered I wasn't "optimizing" images properly, so I pulled up the never before used Image Ready and dug out the manual and actually used it. I hope I haven't optimized the pictures TOO much. They're about 40-70 kb each! I also re-did the rest of the images on my site and now the pages load twice as fast. The file size is now 3.7 MB. As far as the full screen mode, I tried the windowed mode and don't care for that look. The desktop is distracting. The "fit to screen" button is un-checked, I thought that was supposed to make a difference. I have downloaded other slide shows and they weren't in the "windowed" mode, so I don't know what I should do. I know the fading is REAL hard on slower systems. I haven't upgraded from the 4.01 yet. Would the latest update make a difference in the smoothness of fading transitions? You can find it HERE Cindy, Bob (LumenLux) would be able to answer this better (especially questions about his show), but I can point you in the right direction. It sounds like your images are fairly small, especially so since they are only 800 x 600. So, if your monitor screen is larger than 800 x 600, make sure they look smaller than the full-size screen. If this is not the case, they they are still being "fit to screen". You can either disable "fit to screen" or reduce your monitor resolution to 800 x 600. Next make sure you don't have any other programs running in the background, and hogging your pc's resources. You can check the system monitor (available with Win Me, and XP, and possibly others) to see how much available processing time and RAM are being used. The next consideration is that of transition speed. The best way to get a smooth transition is to use either a "quick" transition (or "cut"), or else a fairly long one (try some different times to see which ones work best). And make sure there is approx 1/2 to 1 sec of time at the end of one transition before starting another one. (in non-sync mode you won't have to worry unless you have made the slide duration (delay) times too short). The last consideration is that of contrast. Images of similar lightness or darkness dissolve more smoothly into each other. V. 4.14 might even make image transition look worse (if Igor has "borrowed" some resources for fixing the problems in the new sound player), so updating to it won't help in this case, except make the music playback sound better. As far as clarity of pictures, these are a function of how sharp they were originally, how well they have been "sharpened" in the image editor before importing into PTE, how well-exposed they were, and also their size in pixels. Hope this helps!

Claire, "You have to learn to walk before you can run!" Keep experimenting - that is the best way to learn how to use a new software! At least in the beginning.

Dana, I don't think you do. Part of what Oleg said is as follows (this translation by "Socrat"): (........) My english too (.........), so wake good, translate please. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Igor, I (duma) that possibility of use AVI format in (.........) must be without fall, more so that this unessential will enlarge a size of program. Requests to use a possibility of creation DVD (....) seem unjustified, as far as exists an ensemble of programs, converting AVI in DVD. As to possibility of control in the view mode of timed presentations, persist on that that this sole right of author to presentations- to allow or forbid a possibility of similar control. Matter of fact that some presentations are built as an united integer, where all elements: expressing, their sequence, effects, rate of changing a personnel (frames), music work together and any attempt to break this sequence will bring about destroying an author's idea or author's vision to presentations as a ready product. I beautifully understand that (..............) personnel (frames) from presentations by possible ensemble of methods and unbeknown author, but this already at all other question... And not to Igor. Sorry, Oleg, I can't bring it any closer than this. Maybe someone else will be able to translate more correctly.

Guido, I appreciate what you are saying, but I'm not sure I agree with you. People are asking for video capabilities, and zoom in and out, and panning, etc., all of which are very processor-intensive, and not really in the realm of slide-projection. Without a multi-projector simulation, our shows will continue to be somewhat "stilted", as is the case when we have to leave half a second before starting a new transition. Multi-projector capability would smooth out these transitions so that they would blend in more pleasingly with each other. For instance, I tried to set up a transition to an intermediate image in order to smooth out the dissolve from the first to the third slide, but I had to give it up as the dissolve between only two slides was smoother and more natural due to having to have a slight pause after each transition. This capability would also lead to some interesting effects due to the combining of two or more transitions (e.g. a vertical wipe combined with a horizontal one, and involving 3 or 4 images, or a dissolve half-way to a second image, and then back to the first one, or cycling through several images instead of having to do this linearly.) All of the processing for this wouldn't have to be done "on the fly" but could be set up in the "create" process, like a sort of "rendering". I find it strange to believe that it is possible to control up to 4 projectors by cycling quickly through each one in turn, and calculating and controlling the phase of the power to each such that each one cuts off at exactly the right time, according to how intense its lamp is supposed to be at the time, in only 4Kb of RAM, but it is not possible to simulate this digitally with at least 32,000 times the amount of RAM, and a processor at least 10,000 times as powerful. I do agree with you that the ideal solution to this problem, as well as to the provision of many of the new features we are asking of Igor, lies in the use of some other specially-adapted custom OS other than Windows, but maybe there is a happy medium through clever adaptation of the Windows OS, too. Igor has provided us with the best-looking dissolve on the market, so I'm sure he and others could come up with some clever algorithms to handle these more sophisiticated effects just as ingeniously if they applied themselves to it. Maybe all this is just wishful thinking, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to wish and dream a little, too.

Hi, Cindy, Looks like you have figured it all out - good on you! You have some interesting and clever juxtapositions in your show. Well done! By the way, as you have found out, you don't absolutely have to have your show in "zip" format - only for uploading to Beechbrook. You won't save much space zipping a PTE executable file. However, some people have trouble downloading .exe files and getting them past their corporate firewalls (some companies are paranoid about executable files finding their way through their internet connections, and rightly so). So, it is wise to zip the file - some people change the suffix from .exe to .p2e, instead, which the viewer then changes back to .exe before watching the show. Here is the address for Beechbrook: Beechbrook Upload site . Just follow the directions. You will need a thumbnail photo of your show (120 x 80 pixels) so that an image representing the show can be posted. Since the space is limited there, you might consider sending Bill ("cottage" on the forum) an email asking him to post just the link to your own site, and people can then download through Beechbrook off of your own web site.