alrobin

That's the way I do it too most of the time - I don't think the voiceover function on the "Sound" line in PTE is activated yet in v.5.

Hi, Jeanette! Welcome to the Forum. There is an easy answer to this, but it is buried in the depths of all the menus and requires a roadmap to find it. Click on "Project Options" and the "Effects" tab. On the top right-hand side you will find two small icons side-by-side. The right-hand one will uncheck all of the effects. Then simply check on "Fade in/out", and that is the only one which will play in your show, unless you want to customize a particular slide by clicking on "Customize slide / Effects", where you are still free to choose any particular effect you want for that slide.

You may have a point, but I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt - it could be a young person with an interest in making AV's, although you would think he/she would be more interested in learning about the program than how to contact people. If this person is a hacker, he or she will already know how IM and PM works. However, it's true there is a resemblance between the nickname of this person and the author of the next post, (which has already been removed), which is obviously spam.

Fred, Well said! I, too, agree wholeheartedly with your comments, and would like to encourage everyone to be patient - as Fred says, we have an excellent program already, and v.5 b.8 is on the verge of being posted, with several improvements which will allow us to actually make professonal-looking animated AV sequences and render and burn them to dvd's, probably in time for Christmas. All within PTE Deluxe! Igor and Sergey and the rest of the team have already made a lot of progress in this project and only they know the best way to proceed. Life is good!

Welcome to the Forum, MeLindaLee! Don't hesitate to ask about anything in PTE that isn't clear to you, as there are dozens of people here just waiting to answer your queries! To PM someone, just click on "PM" at the bottom of one of their posts, or click on "Members" at the top of this page, search for the member's nickname, and then PM from there. A few members also have "IM", but there will be something under their posting or on their profile to indicate that. Hope this helps!

Scott, You can also remove the music file, then add it back in under the same name, and the new waveform should appear.

Igor - it's nice to "see the light at the end of the tunnel". I have an appreciation for how difficult some of these changes must be - solving some very tricky timing and logic problems, getting everything to work harmoniously together, and making everything compatible with each of many different combinations of hardware and software out there, and still keep an eye on future developments within Microsoft. Thank-you so much for all the hard, conscientious work by you and every member of your team on our behalf! I hope everything comes together smoothly from now on, and I am confident that you will produce, in the end, a product which will be the envy of everybody else in this business.

Hans, Welcome back! I too had wondered where you were. I have always enjoyed your great images from the North. Do you and Ina still travel to the Yukon? The new site is marvelous! I have to do something similar with my own one of these days. Looking forward to seeing some more shows! There are still 3 or 4 of your old tutorials on Beechbrook. I think you'll have great fun with V.5

"AVShow Menu Tutorial" (on the page I linked to on my last post). It's very detailed.

Tiago, I was under the impression, perhaps falsely, that you wanted to open PTE through a command line instruction from another program. However, you last note seems to indicate a need for a command line capability within PTE, in order to open flash, etc. There is already a capability to open other programs like avi's, flash, notepad, MS Word, html, etc., automatically from PTE whenever a certain slide comes up, but not the capability to give that instruction a further "command-line" parameter. Also, one of the problems now in having "avi's" open from within PTE, for example, is that there is no way to close them after they have finished their task. I agree that in some instances this capability would be useful. However, not all of these programs will accept a command line instruction in their initialization, either.

Hi, Maureen, Thanks for the tip! I wouldn't have thought of using that selective stretching technique myself - very clever way to fit an image to the monitor! Unfortunately, I am working mostly in a 15:9 aspect ratio these days (closer to 3:2 than 4:3 is, but I still have to crop a bit off the top and bottom). Stretching horizontally is probably out of the question in most instances. But, by using your technique, I could probably selectively compress the sky or foreground a bit instead of just lopping it all off.

Tiago, Your idea is great, and would be very useful. The main problem right now is that, although PTE can be "run" from a website, it must fully downloaded onto the viewer's pc before it starts to run, which means that the viewer now has a copy of it on his or her pc, and can then do whatever he or she wants, including use a password to watch the show. The best way to set it up on a website might be to render it to video format and create an "avi" or "flash" version, which could then be "streamed" from the web server along with password control the way you describe it.

This is a very useful way to organize a large AV sequence, one which I, too, use all the time. There are a couple of examples of this on Beechbrook. One is a tutorial on how to implement it.

Yes, Ron is correct - it can be either the same drive or a different one - but preferrably a folder just "below" the present one so you know where to find it, or even a sub-folder of the present one. Doesn't matter - PTE is very flexible.

Stevie, One way is to simply copy all the files and subfolders in the current PTE directory over to a new one, and then download the new version into that directory, unzip it, and save the new files over the ones existing. Then click "setup" to install it, with or without the usual icons, etc. Then you can easily select which version you want to use.

Hi, Tiago, Welcome to PTE. Right now the only "command-line" instruction you can send to PTE is the starting slide number. The password protection in PTE is available once the program starts. So, if you used your script to start PTE, I see no reason why you could not then enter a password once the program started, the same way as anyone else would when running the program "normally". You would have to try it though, to find out for sure.

Steve, Welcome to the Forum! In general, you should resize your images to 1024x768, or whatever the native resolution of your display medium is. If your production is going to be distributed, then 1024x768 is a good compromise as it will probably match the majority of viewers' monitors. For PZR effects, it is advisable to use an image sufficiently large to cover the total area traversed in the effect. If you find the show becoming "jumpy", then cut back on the size, and don't pan or zoom as much. You can think of it this way: your pc has a limited capacity, and every object or transition you add to the show is a burden on this capacity. So, if the images are changing at a rapid pace, or if you many different objects all moving at the same time, then you might have to back off and compromise a bit (fewer objects, smaller images, smaller objects, lower transition rate, smaller music files, etc., etc.) If you have the "horsepower" in you pc, you should be able to accommodate quite large images in your PZR actions; however, the actions themselves might have to be very slow, without many other effects happening at the same time.

One thing I learned from my mountain-climbing days is that there's always another mountain! Anyway, John, welcome to the forum! We'll all help you where we can. But I would suggest saving working with DVD's on V.5 until after Igor gets all the bugs out of the system.

John, Anyone can order PTE through the postal service. Follow the links in the PTE "Help" menu / Registration. "Alternatively, you can also use the Bank/Wire Transfer, or Check/Money Order. And Fax orders are accepted as well. " A company called "RegNow" looks after registration of PTE. The following page on their site gives all the ordering info: "Contact" . The snail-mail address is: RegNow/Digital River 9625 West 76th Street Eden Prairie, MN 55344 United States of America Since your friend does not have an internet connection, he would have to give them your address (or someone elses) as an address to send the "key" to. Alternatively, you could download the program for your friend, pay by Paypal or credit card, receive the "key" file by email, and put everything on a memory stick or CD for your friend, who would then offload everything onto his PC, activate the "Setup", and double-click on the "key" file to imprint the necessary information into his pc's register. Don't forget to collect the $24 US from your friend!

Igor, You're welcome! Did you understand the message at the end?

Nice effects, Dom - I'm sure Igor will enjoy it. Reminiscent of Ian's "Chariots of Fire" introduction. Very smooth now with v.5.

Or, if it is an un-synched show, try making a synched show. The only ones I have ever converted to AVI's have been synched. You might normally see a slight difference in the AVI time, but not as much as you are experiencing. Also, do you have very short times between some of the transitions? Try a short "normal" show as a test (several seconds between slides, and default times for transitions). If it is a synched show, you might also check the timeline for any transitions which overlap with the next slide. As an alternative, try creating an AVI from PTE using another program such as Nero "Vision Express" or Adobe "Premiere"Elements" to see if there is any difference in the result. What type of music are you using? "mp3's" work best for me. Also, try a different piece of music, to see if that makes a difference.

Igor, I would like to add my voice to that of the rest of your many admirers throughout the universe! I hope that you had a wonderful birthday today (tomorrow your time). Here's a little something I put together in your honour.

Robert, Welcome to the Forum. Yes, you can save as an AVI - there are options on the "video" menu to let you do this. Try different codecs, as some work better than others. Re the distortion, are you using v.5, beta 7? There are still some problems with the video sizing and/or aspect ratios with this beta, particularly for wide-screen productions. (see the various posts on the forum).

No problem, Guido. It just shows that 2 heads are better than 1. Your reply referred to a 1-px black used as a background image, and mine referred to such an image used as an introductory black slide. I was relieved to see we both agree on the blue jpeg!