alrobin

No, they don't even list a Canadian office any more, so I wouldn't call them a Canadian Company, although these days, most companies of this type are "global", anyway. I see, too, that their lowest-priced package is still more expensive than Brinkster's. ($7.95 vs. $4.95). I have the "Pro" package, at $7.95/mo. (used to be $9.95). This gives me 3 Gb of space - much more than I will ever use, and 75 Gb/mo worth of downloading (again more than I need). But other things are important, too, such as the items you mentioned. I know Brinkster offer PHP, SSL, CGI, and I suspect MySQL, as well, since that seems to be the way MS are going these days. But, just like buying a car, it's usually the add-ons that make the difference. But in the end it really boils down to what you really need and what you are going to use the website for.

Dom, Great "movie" introduction - once again it shows the versatility of v.5 (and your wonderful creativity! ) Complete with subliminal messages - I was wondering why I had the sudden urge for a Coke! I would like to add my appreciation to that expressed by Robert (Lumenlux) for all your lively contributions to the Forum. Keep up the good work! Yes, Ron, you will probably lose the ability to run PTE. However, I'm curious as to why you tried to delete "apr.exe". The downloaded file comes in as "countdown.exe" on my system. Check your windows explorer to see if you have this file in the folder to which you downloaded Dom's show.

I found that the providers here in Canada are typically much more expensive than in the US. The charges for Brinkster, the US provider that I use, are even lower than the price you quoted. I have found them very reliable and responsive, and they even provide a real-time chat service for when I need assistance. No more waiting until the tech returned to work on Monday. Probably more important than price is the level of service and also the throughput and disk space provided. Just for comparison, my previous local provider was charging me $300 CDN per year for only 50 Mb of storage space, and 5 email addresses, but fairly unlimited throughput. I could add another 25 Mb of space for another $10 per year. Service was OK, but limited, compared to what the current provider offers. These prices were fairly representative of others in the area. You can check out Brinkster's charges on the website above, but suffice it to say that their basic service is only $4.95 US per month, for 1,500 Mb of storage space, 35 Gb throughput, and 50 email (proxy) accounts. They also provide basic web setup facilities.

Hi, Mighty, It is usually only possible to view PTE shows on the #1 display of a dual-mode setup unless the shows are in "windowed mode", in which case it is a simple matter to move them over to the second display. However, if you make the projector the primary display, or if your video card allows you to display both at once, it is possible to view them on a projector. Check to see what your possibilities by right-clicking on the desktop, and choose "Properties / Settings / Advanced / Displays".

They look great! And they illustrate yet another movement to enhance the effect - a slight rotation. Now if we can get Igor to include animated GIF's we'll be all set!

Andreas, I enjoyed your slideshow very much! At first I thought I would be disappointed in seeing only B&W images, but your show demonstrates that Rome is a city that lends itself very well to B&W treatment. And, you certainly captured the mood and beauty of the city - especially with your night shots. I spent 6 or 7 weeks in Rome a few years back, and this show brought back many fond memories. Thanks so much for sharing it with us!

Igor, I think I've found one - at least it's an unexpected result (see screen-capture below). It occurs when an object is compressed horizontally, only, by applying zoom while holding down the "shift" key, or by entering a small horizontal value in the "animation" table. For medium compression amounts, everything appears normal (second example in the screen-capture). However, if the object is compressed until the image is very thin, the outline and its "hot-points" (used for clicking and applying PZR effects) become distorted vertically (see third example in the screen-capture). However, the "vertical" zoom dimensions in the "animation" table at the right remain constant throughout. The same effect is not encountered when zooming in the vertical direction only. This showed up when I was playing with Lin's theatre curtains, and compressing them to simulate an "open" condition.

Lin, You're right, it does make for a neat effect. One little thing that I noticed in your example, and also in the one that I first tried, is that the curtains seem to rise at the end of their travel, leaving a space between curtains and stage. I found that I had to expand the curtains in the vertical direction slightly to compensate for this. Just a small picky thing, and don't know if it is a flaw in the horizontal "stretch" and "compress" action, or just due to the initial setup positioning of the curtains.

Deanna, Do you have a broadband connection? However, even with that, uploading usually takes much longer than downloading, due to the asymmetric nature of broadband. However, I have no trouble uploading or downloading large files, so it must be due either to too low a bandwidth on your ISP connection, or a very busy server.

Ron, You can also change your default settings in the Control Panel under "Regional and Language Options".

But Ken is American, is he not?

A very pleasing show, with great photography, and exceptional doll-house. Almost looks life-size! I have found that, depending on the effect I am trying to use in O/A, and the size of my images, I sometimes notice jerkiness if I start the O/A (PZR) effects before the end of the transitions to the slides, or if they continue on into the transition to the next slide. By playing around with the timing, these uneven effects can be minimized. They are also not as bad using just ordinary dissolves, and simple pans or zooms. I suspect that certain transitions (once Igor adds them to v.5), will interfere more with the smooth performance of PZR effects.

Jean, You must have inadvertently moved the project file to a different folder. Do you have all the images, music, and project file in the same folder, with no sub-folders? If not, try this and see if the project file will recognize the images.

Hi, Deanna, Welcome to the Forum! As Gilio says, it's not very large for a 7-minute show. Most shows are multi-Mb in size. You can get an idea of how large your show will be by adding up all the image and music file sizes, as PTE does not compress things and adds an additional Mb or two with its built-in player. (If you use an image twice, don't add another amount for its file size, as once an image is used already, it does not require additional space to use it again.) You can reduce the size of a show by lowering the jpeg quality of the images, or the mp3 quality of the music. And, you can reduce the size further by using smaller images. Also, "MIDI" music requires much less file space than mp3, but may not meet your needs for the show. "Wave" format for music is usually much too large, so most producers use mp3.

I played around with it a bit, and found that if I compress the curtains horizontally at the same time that I move them a bit, the result is even more realistic.

Lin, A very interesting and effective way of opening a show - I've seen something similar with competing programs, and now we can do this with PTE, too! Thanks for sharing it!

Those examples of special effects are amazing - very well done! Dom, you have an incredibly fertile imagination! (wonder how Alta Vista translates that!! ) Seriously, though, I enjoyed your examples very much - especially the thunder and lightning scene - very effective! Well done!

Lin, Very beautiful show - now that's what I call "landscape photography"! No problem loading, by the way. I liked the transitions and also the choice of music. Very interesting to watch, especially for us astronomy buffs. The use of the star "sparkle" effect added some spice to the show, too, although most of the images were fantastic enough on their own. It's amazing what's out there! And what we can see, even from space, is only such an infinitesimally small portion of it all that we can only wonder in awe at what else is waiting for us.

Lin, I'm inclined to agree with you. Not an urgent feature, but one of those "nice to haves".

Maybe the addition of "object" and "transparency" capability to the exisiting "background" feature in PTE would provide this convenience, without elaborate modifications to the timeline structure. ??

Yes, even though they are "child" objects of the "main" object, they can still each be assigned an additional speed of panning, zooming, or rotation, independent of each other. Also, in a future beta, Igor has promised to provide for accelerated or decelerated PZR effects. As far as the separate tracks are concerned, maybe in other programs that is the way they work, but as Robert and Lin have said, PTE works differently and doesn't need to have separate tracks all displayed at once (this would clutter up an already busy user interface). Imagine trying to fit all the layers of "Flash" into the PTE window! One area in which I would agree that PTE may be deficient is that the sound track cannot be heard or its waveform seen in the O/A editing playback. However, hopefully, in a future beta, Igor will be able to rectify this. PTE's present philosophy is to not provide for sound or image editing, and instead have show producers use one of the several excellent sound and image editors already available. PTE is not intended to be a super-duper, do-all program. If it did, then we would have to pay the same as for other programs such as Cubase, Premiere or Photoshop, and this would be duplication, as we would still need these other expensive programs for all of the extra fine features which they provide, and PTE would never ever be able to duplicate. Instead, PTE is a super-duper slide-show program, second to none, especially for ease of operation and quality of slide-show features. We don't ask Photoshop to do sound editing, and we don't ask Cubase to do image editing or slide-show production. But we can use these programs to produce some pretty fantastic images and sound-tracks which can then be used in PTE for a pretty fantastic slide-show! In my opinion, anyway!

Marian, It's probably one of the several features not yet activated in v.5.

Igor, Thank-you. That will be much appreciated!

Nettleton, I covered this briefly in my "PTE 101" tutorial, available on Beechbrook. One other thing to consider when using the "sound" line on the main window for adding narration, don't forget to check "Don't interrupt sound comment when new slide appears" under the "Music" tab in "Project options" if you want some narration to span more than one slide. Otherwise, the next slide will cut it off. By the way, I used this "sound" line in my tutorial and it worked just fine. However, there is one other thing to consider and that is sound volume. After a while my background music becomes a little monotonous, and over-powers the narration in places, so if you want really sophisticated background sound / narration, it is best to blend it all together in a sound editor. This allows you to tone down the music when the narration is on, and turn it back up in the spaces in between. In other words, you have more control over the two "tracks".

Igor seems to be a little reluctant to add keyboard functions, especially if they are used for something else somewhere else in the program, so I suspect that may be why he included the arrow buttons. For example, we requested some time ago that the space bar be used for pausing and restarting the preview along the timeline, and there was some reason why he couldn't do that, even though once you have clicked on "play", the next time you hit the spacebar it will "pause" the preview, and toggle it on and off after that.