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KGHalbe, Please check to ensure you have DirectX version 9c installed. Also, check to see how much video RAM you are using with your video card. And, while you are at it, please let us know what version of operating system you are using. Are you able to run any of the "exe" files developed in v.5 (particularly the demos provided by WnSoft when the first beta of v.5 was released)? I suspect the main reason for not being able to run any beta of v.5 is that your system has insufficient resources.

It works fine for me in v.5.

Very professional-looking, Hans! I'm looking forward to being able to download the full 5 hours someday!

Igor, This fixed the problem - thank-you again for your usual patience and attention to our special needs! The wide-screen show runs perfectly from my dvd player now, both on the TV (where it is properly letter-boxed), and through the 15:9 projector, where it is presented full-screen, perfectly synched and all (see photos below). Playing through dvd software on the pc monitor, the show is slightly letter-boxed on all sides, but I suspect this is because it is designed for and expecting a 16:9 aspect ratio, but the show is only 15:9. No problem at all. Thanks again - and thanks to Sergei, too, and the rest of the team! Have a Happy New Year - I know I will!

Alan, Good to have you back! That is a great AV sequence - I especially like the idea of mixing in crowd scenes and photos of individuals - it reinforces the idea of a "show", instead of just showing the planes flying by. Good photography, and great presentation, overall!

Lin, I don't notice any glitch in the music on my system. However, I noticed one little picky thing - outside the second window, the snow stops falling before the scene completely disappears. Makes for less shoveling, I guess! Nice snow effect, overall, though!

PTE "Video Builder", Pinnacle "Studio 8+", Adobe "Premiere Elements", and other video programs will all let you customize a menu that will let you select one of a number of shows to run, but you have to render your pte project files to video format. Although I have never tried it, apparently you can also customize your own menus in Adobe "Photoshop Elements", and to some extent in "Photoshop" itself. Please explain what you mean by "menus that are used to transcode the pte slideshow executable files ". In PTE v 4.48 you can also create an "Intro" show with buttons to select any one of many other shows and put them all on a DVD for running in a pc. There are many examples of this and instructions for doing so referenced on the Forum and also available on Beechbrook.

Thanks so much, Igor! (for a while I thought it must be something I was doing wrong, especially since it looked OK on my pc monitor). Will look forward to the fix in the next beta.

Sergei, Thanks - that would be great! Glad to help in any way I can.

Yoshi, Welcome to the Forum! Yes, this is possible - In the O/A menu, click on an object in the object list, then right-click on it and select "Order". There you can "Bring to front", "Send to back", "Forward one", and "Back one" to change the order of the objects.

Thanks, Igor. Another step forward! The animated preview from a designated scene is now working fine. However, my wide-screen show still does not appear in letterbox format on a 4:3 tv set. I tried creating a show both with my pc and laptop, and obtained the same cropped results.

Wow, Lin - that looks like the Christmasses we used to get! This year it's green grass, with people out on the golf course still. Personally, I'd rather have the snow this time of the year! Guess I'll have to use your method and make some with PTE, instead. Have a great Christmas!

Hey, another Canuck! I knew there must be a few more of us Canadians lurking in the shadows - welcome! Maybe we'll be able to have a "reunion" someday of PTE'ers in the area (from Sarnia to Quebec City, including northern USA, too). We have enough material for a 2 or 3-day conference sometime! Merry Christmas!

Igor, Best of luck, and if we can be of any assistance with testing, don't hesitate to ask. Thank-you for all the improvements you and your team have made so far, and I hope you and Sergei and Pavel and everyone else in your group have a very good Christmas, and a happy and profitable New Year!

Thanks, JP - that was beautiful, and it was good of you to share it with us. Merry Christmas and all the best to you too!

Here is how a commercial widescreen movie looks on my 4:3 TV set (see attached photos). As you can see, the dvd player compensates for the limitation of the 4:3 screen and shows it in letterbox mode as it should and as Pavel has described. However, PTE shows do not behave this way as I reported previously. Igor, I sent you an email about this problem on 12 December, but maybe you did not receive it. My previous tests were for mixed-aspect-ratio dvd's (3 shows on one dvd), but this recent test is for a single wide-screen video.

Pavel, Thanks for such an organized, clear description of what we should look for in our dvd's under different parameters of creation and playback. However, I am not experiencing the same results with my system. I have created a show using images 15:9 (1280x768), and set the aspect ratio in PTE at 15:9 also. In Video Builder, I set the aspect ratio at 16:9. When I play back this show on my widescreen pc monitor (also 15:9), I see bars top and bottom for the menu, and on all sides for the video itself (see attached screenshots). However, when I play this video from a dvd player on my 4:3 TV set, the images are cropped severely on the sides, with no black bars. (see also attached images). Sorry for the poor quality of the screenshots - I over-corrected the brightness so as to be able to see the edges of the monitor and TV set. In the previous testing I did for Sergey, I used the pc and laptop only, so these results did not show up. Our biggest problem here is the number of variables and possible scenarios under which shows can be created and then played back on various pc's and various players. I will test this show on my daughter's wide-screen tv set on the weekend and report back. Ralph ("Hawk") is experiencing similar results with his tests on 4:3 tv playback using images at 16:9. Thank-you for your continuing patience and assistance in sorting all this out.

Isabel, I use Premiere Elements very successfully to burn PTE shows to dvd. When you first request PTE "Video" to create your "AVI" file, make a note of where the temporary "AVI" file will be, and also what it will be called. Then, after you open Elements, when you are looking for the AVI file to import, go to that same folder, and select the file by the same name you made a note of in the previous paragraph.

I didn't know you were in Montreal! Hey, we're almost neighbours! We'll have to get together for a beer sometime! I know what you mean by the "green Christmas"!! Guess we'll just have to settle back and enjoy our egg-nog!!

Maureen, I'll settle for the LOL! You help to keep the Forum full of cheer and good will!! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to both you and Robert!!

This is because in v.4 the duration time is separate from the transition time, whereas in v.5, the duration time includes the transition time.

Isabel, Glad to see you are still with us! You can also highlight one of the transitions on the timeline, press "Preview", and the program will preview from that point in full-screen mode. Try "left-clicking" on the timeline instead of "right-clicking". When I "right-click", the moving triangle moves to the point of the cursor OK, but I also get a menu window. Try moving the last transition to the end of the music, then, while it is still highlighted, "shift-click" on the first slide and then select "Timed points / arrange selected points". The slides will now be spread evenly over the entire length of the music.

This is quite simple. Place an object (the figure you want to remain upright) on the Main Image (i.e. as a "child" or "sub-object" of the main image. Then move it to where you want it to appear in relation to the Main Image, away from the centre-point of that image. Create a second key-point for each of the Main Image and the child object - place these new keypoints where you want them to appear on the O/A timeline. Finally, set the rotation of the main image in one direction (e.g. give the end-keypoint a + value, say 360 degrees), and the rotation of the child object as the same amount but with the opposite sign (e.g. -360 degrees).

Joseph, Hans will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what he was recommending is that you check to see that you do have all of the images and image objects available, for images #127 on, in the folders where PTE is expecting to find them. Sometimes these images get deleted or moved or renamed once a show has been created, so that they are no longer available for use by the PTE project. Another thing you might check is the music. Try running the show after the music has been deleted, or if synched to music, try replacing the music with another selection, or selections, of the same total length.

Stéphane, This is another very dramatic use of special effects to present a message in a humourous, but effective manner. You are a master at this! I see you found your way around the current "sync" limitations. By the way, if you select "Close show after last slide" in Project Options, the music will not start up again and repeat at the end of the show. Hope to see lots more of your productions!