alrobin

Ryt, There are several ways to do this. First click on the "Video" button at the bottom of the screen, and select "DVD-Video disc". Try checking "For Ulead DVD MovieFactory" first. Press "Create AVI", and make a note of where the resulting AVI file will be created. Note that with this option, only a temporary AVI file is created, so you have to leave the Video menu of PTE open while importing into the Ulead program. In Ulead, search for the AVI file where PTE indicated it would be created. It should still be there if you have not closed the PTE video menu. If the rendering does not produce a suitable video file, then try un-checking "For Ulead DVD MovieFactory", as this may only apply to older versions of the Ulead program. Lastly, if this doesn't work, create a "Custom AVI video file" (the top choice on the PTE AVI video file menu). This will create a permanent AVI file which you can import into Ulead. Hope this helps. Good luck!

Welcome to the forum! No, PTE only runs on the primary monitor in a dual-monitor setup. However, you can move it over to the secondary monitor if you run it in "windowed" mode. (see Project Options / Screen / Screen options if you are using version 5.x). Also, if you are projecting the image, PTE will run on the second display (i.e. the projector, in this case).

Alan, Personally, this is the way I believe the program should work as it makes recycling back to some previous slide much faster. After all, the transitions are designed to work from slide a to slide b, so a transition from b to a would not necessarily have the same effect (e.g in the case of a "cut", where slide b is designed to "startle" the audience, and a cut is used for effect. A "cut" in the reverse direction would not have the same effect. If you want to see the effect of the transition, go back 2 slides and let the program run from there. Just a personal view on this - other people may use the previous slide action for other purposes than I do.

Lin, So sorry to hear about your crash-landing. Hope you can recover all your valuable original art-images, as well as the originals for all your work on PTE templates, demos, tutorials, etc. I don't envy you all the hassle involved in the recovery process. Best of luck!

Peter, Right you are! This would obviate the mouse control for forwarding to the next landscape image. Unless he were to set up forward control on the right mouse button, and rely solely on the reverse arrow on the keyboard for going back. But this would be different from his stated desire to have the mouse buttons for forward and reverse. One way this would still work, however, is if there is a border or black area around the image he could click there for forward operation and click directly on the image for returning to the menu. Lots of possibilities. Igor, perhaps it's time for an option to assign a control to the mouse wheel. This would assist considerably in my own presentations where I like to be away from the keyboard, and use a "bluetooth" mouse for controlling the show.

Glenn, Welcome to the Forum! You might want to check out this recent thread if you haven't done so already: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7845 It covers the ground on this subject quite thoroughly.

Alan, I have used MIDI on a few occasions (when I needed copyright-free background music, or special effects not available from other sound files), and this is the method I use as well. It gives one control over the playback on other pc's which is not available with MIDI on its own. Mark is right, though, in that there is no substitute for the sound of professional music mp3's if such are available.

Tom, Just one small addition to what Peter and Lin have described. Instead of adding a transparent object to each landscape slide, if you are using PTE version 5, you can program the entire image to return to the menu when you click on it. Open "O&A / Common" for each landscape slide, click on the slide name in the object list, and then select option "Go to slide number ...", or "Go to first slide" (if your menu is the first slide), under "Action on mouse click".

Ray, I agree - the "autospread" feature is not a viable option for me, either. IMHO, it isn't a "workaround" in Gary's example, but rather the cause of the problem. It just so happens that if I disable it and then re-enable it in his example, the AVI problem disappears.

Gary, I agree with you. (I think we've been over this ground at least once before.) I rarely use the "Autospread" feature, myself, preferring to sync each transition to the music separately, and manually. When setting up an AV I first delete all transitions, and then add them back on the timeline by using the "New transition" button. Then I make adjustments to the end of the show so that the music will not cut off prematurely. If one still wishes to autospread the slides, there is already a means for doing this on the timeline under "Timed Points". A while ago I asked Igor to give us an option whereby we could choose to manually spread the slides and not experience the music truncating before the end of the slides, but I guess he has more important things on his plate. Best of luck!

Alan, Welcome to the Forum! Thanks for showing us around Salzberg! The only city I've been to in Austria is Vienna, and then only for 3 days. It's a beautiful part of the world. I enjoyed the presentation - however I agree with most of the comments about panning and zooming. I thought the pan/zoom through the cannon opening was clever, and added some interest. One problem with extensive zooms is that they start with a photo nice and sharp, and then deteriorate if you overdo it. Might be better to take two photos, zoom very slightly on the first one, and then dissolve into a sharp slightly-zooming close-up. I thought the music was OK, particularly for MIDI. Nice and light and fitting for the festive time of the year. Thanks very much for sharing this with us - hope to see more of your work soon!

Mark, Welcome to the Forum! I enjoyed the presentation of your Norway adventure, and particularly liked the way the music accentuated the mood around the appearance of daylight and the sunrise behind the mountains. You were very fortunate to capture the Northern Lights, too, especially from the deck of a moving ship! Will look forward to more of your productions. Re the laptop, I run a program called "EndItAll" to clear out all the processes running in the background (typically this amounts to 25 or 30 non-essential programs!). I find if I close all of these that the transitions in slideshows from version 5 are much smoother. One source for "EndItAll 2" is http://www.docsdownloads.com/Tier1/enditall.htm .

Gary, Sorry I haven't had time to contribute to the testing of your AVI example before this, but I confirmed your results with another twist - my avi version jumps from 9 to 13, to 17, and then to halfway between the transition from 21 to 22. Next it displays halfway between the transition from 25 to 26, and finally between 29 and 30. Seems to be some sort of a timing conflict, dependent on the particular configuration and speed of one's pc setup?? On further testing, I can confirm that Lin is closest to the reason for the problem. Gary, when I open the timeline on my system, I notice that "Autospread" is selected, as you indicated, but for some reason the music itself shows as ending half-way through the slideshow. The red "end-of-music" line appears at 1-min, 17-seconds, and the slides appear to be approx. 10 seconds apart. However, if you uncheck "Autospread", and then check it again, instead of being 10 seconds apart, the slides appear to be spread properly, and are only 2.5 seconds apart. After this change, PTE also produces a correct AVI.

Mary is correct according to my understanding of the process, too. I jumped in here just to add to what Mary has said and mention that the process of creating a custom AVI has been streamlined in version 5 such that at the completion of the rendering process there is an option for previewing the completed file. If this option is selected, the AVI pops up in the default video player (WMP, in my case). Everything works so much more smoothly than in the good old version 4.x days!

Tom, That's correct. You first add the slides to the slide list in the normal way, and then delete the transitions from the timeline. This can be done in one operation by opening the timeline, selecting the first slide, and pressing "shift-end" to select the remaining slides. Then simply delete them and add them one by one in the usual manner with "new transition" while listening to the music.

Lin, In Canada "Smarties" is the name for our equivalent of "M&M's". So from now on, PTE users will also be sweeter than normal!

tbimle, Welcome to the Forum. I just replied to your PM.

What are your show parameters? Is it synched to music? Does the music, if any, play OK? I haven't had any problem with the new version myself.

Geoff, I have a Mitsubishi DLP model - I chose it because DLP projectors have traditionally had better contrast ratios than LCD models. However, I believe that both technologies, as well as the LCOS models, have recently improved to the point that there are excellent projectors among all of the three types. For me, contrast ratio was one of the most important features, after suitable resolution, aspect ratio, etc. "Optoma" is another of the more popular as well as affordable makes favoured by photographers.

Try this test: Click on the photo in the file list. Record the path spec at the bottom of the window (see diagram below). Then click on the same photo in the slide list - record its path spec. If they are different, then you have changed something on your hard drive or whatever was the original source of the photos.

Henri, There shouldn't be any problem - it's mainly a function of the video card. In my case the native resolution of my beamer is 1280x768, and I normally use 1680x1050 for my monitor. My slideshows are usually 1280x768 (the same as my beamer) but I also create shows 1024x768 for camera club or competition purposes without any compatibility problems. If I have the monitor set at a higher resolution, the projector automatically resizes it when I connect the two together. You will probably find with the greater resolution of your projector that you will soon be creating larger-resolution slideshows to take advantage of the image improvement. But there shouldn't be any compatibility problems with other sizes.

Joe, Welcome to the Forum! Completed shows (in ".exe" form") are usually quite large (up to 100 Mb in some cases). The music alone typically contributes 5 to 10 Mb to the file size. The email system is not designed to handle large files, so one has to resort to other means for sending them to friends and family. There are several websites which help you send large files, and others which allow you to upload your files and make them available to others. One of the most efficient of these is "MediaFire" (in fact I'm downloading a 53 Mb file right now while writing this). It's web address is http://www.mediafire.com and it allows you to upload a file and then send the address at which it is located to one or a number of other people for downloadin. Another is "Dropload" which allows you to send a large file to a specific friend or relative.

Millan, Welcome to the Forum! To insert a coloured blank slide in PTE, add any slide to the slide list, open O&A, delete the main slide, and select the "rectangle" object at the top left of the screen. Then give it the desired colour by opening Properties / Fill Mode and selecting "solid".

Thanks so much, Igor - Seasons' Greetings to you, too, and to all the WnSoft staff! You have set us up for a wonderful new year of AV production with PTE 5, and for this we are very grateful. And best wishes to all the Forum Members, too - especially those who provide us with tutorials, demos, and, best of all, examples of their work. These, too, are very much appreciated. They say that music is an international language - understood and appreciated by all. Well, then, Audio-Visual (music combined with photography) must be the ultimate international language. Let's hope that in 2008 our productions, all combined, help even in just one small way to further the cause of world peace and understanding of each other. HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone!

You can do this now. Just send the end user the PTE project file, with instructions on how to rename his or her own images, and instructions on how to purchase PTE. This would not only open up other uses for PTE, but increase the benefits to WnSoft as well.