alrobin

John, Thanks for your kind words! However, I doubt that in this case Adjustor would be useful, escept maybe to show the PTE project script, which Mike is already able to do with Notepad. (Or you can also load the PTE file directly into MS Excel, too, and perform find/replace operations). Maybe someday I'll get around to including a few more "object" functions in Adjustor - but I think it would still require a fair amount of manual effort to change the references to 2600 slides.

Mike, If you customize the first slide with "stop at the end of this slide", then it will hold until you click on the nav bar or activate the next slide with a mouse button (provided you have set the show up that way).

Igor, That's amazing! I viewed your show on my monitor at 1680x1050 pixels, and the images still showed up very well. It looks like the colours over there are very similar to those in the forests around here right now. My wife and I were camping earlier in the week in a popular wilderness Provincial Park near here (called "Algonquin Park"), and the colours there were more advanced than here, and also much more spectacular. In fact, people travel there from all over the world this time of the year by tour bus and rented motor home, just to enjoy the beautiful scenery. It's a wonderful time of the year! Thanks for sharing these images with us.

Skibum, Welcome to the Forum! In version 5 of PTE, you can elect to set your "Main Images" to one of three modes in "O&A / Common", thus dictating how they will be treated upon running the show: 1. Fit to slide (the preferred and "default" mode): the optimum amount of monitor area will be used to display the slides. If the aspect ratios are not compatible, black bars will be shown at the edges of the images. 2. Original: the original resolution of the images will be maintained, even if the viewer's display is "larger" than the images. 3. Cover slide: the images will be cropped until the viewer's monitor is completely covered. For obvious reasons, there is no option to distort the image so that the monitor is completely covered without cropping the slide. Note that in order to set all slides to option 2 or 3, you have to set each one separately in O&A (or use my "Adjustor" model, described elsewhere in another thread, and available on my website, to effect a global change). Hope this helps!

Stu, Are there any utilities that monitor the usage and performance of the video card and controller, alone? With version 5, on my pc, with 128 Mb video RAM, I find that stuttering occurs when I run a v.5 sequence with the monitor res set higher than required (i.e. higher than that of the images used in the sequence). Yet the main cpu usage seems to behave the same for different monitor resolution settings. This is consistent with what Igor has told us about version 5, with hardware acceleration - i.e. that performance depends mainly on the video card and its memory.

Bart, I encounter the same problem at times on my dual-monitor desktop system. It appears to be intermittent, and clears up when I re-boot. I haven't been able to pinpoint the reason for it, and it only occurs once in a while. I find that when it does occur, if I close PTE and open the task manager, PTE shows up in the list as still open. But even if I close PTE in the task manager, and try to run it again, it hangs up again at the opening slide. Even if I use "EndItAll" to close all other non-essential processes, it still occurs until after I re-boot. This also occurs sometimes when I open a PTE "exe" file to run someone else's show. So far I have assumed that there is some minor glitch in the way my system is set up, as recently it is not happening as often as before.

Bohemia, It is - once you know how! Try "Create screensaver ..." or "Create slideshow as", (for .exe files), instead of "Save as".

Gilbert, Since you plan to use the images in an AV production, in PS you can also reduce the size in pixels from the maximum in your RAW images to the same resolution (and size in pixels) as that of the monitor or projector you will use to view them.

Hi, Manfred, I still don't understand what your problem might be - you could send me your pte project file if you like and I'll give it a try (alrobin @ alrobinson.com - remove the spaces). Where in Canada will you be travelling? If you are going to be in Ottawa, we could arrange to meet and discuss your show in more detail. Hope you have a great trip - you will be here during the best time of the year, with fall colours just starting to appear. Very hot in the east right now, but it can't last much longer (we hope)!

Just as a feature-rich presentation software, able to display top-quality images, with stunning graphics, and the ability to control these as would be required in a professional business presentation.

Andrew, I agree that this is a bug - using "stop at the end", the action proceeds as intended, but it is very jerky at the point of cutting away to the next show, and it cuts away before the slide comes to an end, leaving the title semi-opaque until the second show finishes and the action returns to this slide. Re the pc controller, I found a Logitech "bluetooth" mouse that works up to 30 ft, and I now use this to control my presentations. I agree with you regarding PTE for "powerpoint" type shows. I have been using it this way for years. ps, On further testing, I find that "Pause when window ... becomes inactive" does work - it holds the position on the originating show until focus is returned to it, even though I have selected "No actions after this slide" in "customize slide". But the transition to the new show is very jerky, with the last slide in show 1 remaining partially visible for a split-second. One way to solve this might be to put in a dark slide, and set up the transfer to the new show from it.

Andrew, Are you trying to have the show cut away without having to press any buttons on the "announcing" slide? I haven't been able to get this method to work seamlessly, as you mention, nor have I found a use for "Pause when window of show becomes inactive" either. I have successfully used buttons to cut away, though, and for this I usually set "Stop at the end of this slide" on the control slide. I get a flash to the desktop, so will try your method of unselecting the taskbar option. ps, Yes, that solves the flash to desktop beautifully. Thanks for the tip!

Stu, I think he mean't to say "... it had no quirks". Jongru, Try closing a few background programs such as your antivirus, email, browser, screensaver, etc., before creating the DVD, and see if that helps.

Hi, Luc, Welcome to the Forum! Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this. However, you could copy the objects from one slide to all 300 in about 5 minutes by opening the source slide in O&A, selecting the objects to be copied, clicking on "Ctrl-C", and then successively clicking on the right-arrow button at the top right of the O&A screen and clicking "Ctrl-V" each time. This will add the objects each time to the next slide. You should to be able to do one per second with a little practice, so 300 slides would only take about 5 minutes.

John, That sounds like a good solution - different tracks for the objects instead of all on all one sound track. Another way to add a keypoint at the same position as for another object is to click on the keypoint for the first object, thus moving the cursor over to that position. Then select the second object without moving the cursor, and click on "+", which will add a new keypoint at exactly the same time as for the first object. I envy you going to the "Gorges" - I was there a few years ago (with a camera) and found it very spectacular. Best of luck with the weather.

Hilary, Welcome to the Forum! You need to add the music in Project Options, and also select the "Synchronize music and slides" option.

John, I agree - this would be a handy feature if Igor can find a way to implement it without cluttering up the screen in the case of many objects and many timepoints. In the meantime, if you are wanting to set the keypoints of one object to be the same as another, click on the keypoint for the one, make a note of it's "keypoint time" on the "Animation Tab", copy this value, and then enter the same value in "keypoint time" for the second object's keypoint. This will bring both keypoints into lock-step.

Dave, The smoothing line just adjusts the dividing edge in moving-type of transitions such as "hourhand", "page" and "gate" effects. You can experiment by setting a higher number and viewing the resulting feathered edge. It has no effect in the "fade" or "quick (cut)" effects.

John, "Xara 3D" creates good-looking 3-D type from any of the standard fonts, that you can orient in any direction or attitude, and apply lighting, shadows, etc. Then in Photoshop you can apply additional perspective control if you wish.

"The problem is that after the slide track has finished playing the background track does not continue to play. I am sure like Ray C comments that I have been able to this in the past. " A couple of us have already complained to Igor about this cutoff of the background music, and he has promised to provide a fix in the next issue of PTE.

Sam, 1. You have to first ensure that your Windows operating system selects that particular image editor as the default. In other words, whenever you double click on a jpeg file, it opens up in that editing program. 2. I'm not sure what you mean by this. Try selecting an image the same aspect ratio as that of the monitor, and in "Project Options / Screen" select "Fullscreen", and set the "Aspect ratio" to that of the image and see if that changes anything. You may also have to open the O&A "Common" menu and ensure that the mode selected is "Fit to Slide". Version 5 works differently from version 4, depending on the particular mode you have selected. Hope this helps you and your friend in experimenting with the various v.5 settings.

Dave, I find that if I reduce the monitor resolution, the image becomes centrally cropped (and enlarged), as one would expect with windowed mode. It is clearly larger than the current monitor resolution. It more than fills the screen, and is not distorted. The image I am using is 1680x1050. In "windowed mode" it makes no difference whether I use "original" mode or "fit to screen".

You're very welcome, Dave - glad to have been of any help. Your AV sequence is beautiful - sharp images, well-exposed, appropriate music, and PZR effects done very tastefully and effectively - great show! You are obviously a pro! You will have noticed, no doubt, that very sharp images tend to produce some shimmer when PZR effects are applied to them - it can't be avoided, except by dulling down the images, and one hesitates to do that to great images. So, the answer is really to avoid these effects for those images which are particularly crisp, and which one wants to show to the greatest advantage. However, where one does need some motion, dulling the images is actually not all that bad, as, when in motion, these images appear to lose some of their sharpness, anyway. I'm touching on the edges of psychology here, on which I'm no expert, so had better not say too much more. The pros and cons of this could be debated for weeks! Oh, by the way, another tip: when posting future shows, it's best to do so in the "Presentations" sub-forum, so that the people who may not be following this technical stuff can benefit from them. Am looking forward to seeing more of your shows!

Here is the reference to Igor's answer to the problem of the flashing desktop: In v5.1 or v5.2 we plan to make possible compilation of several individual projects to one EXE file and you will able to make menu and slide show with any necessary behaviour in one EXE file. The quote is taken from this thread (post #8): http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....;hl=compilation

Dave, There will always be someone with a pc which does not perform to the standards being set. If your productions are for general consumption, then the answer is to keep everything really simple. If you need to use PZR effects - keep them slow and simple, and don't start them until the end of each transition. And use the smallest image file sizes that still look good on a 1024x768 monitor. DVD's may be a solution, but the image quality is not as sharp as with the original screen-size images on a pc.