JEB

Hi, You may notice I have made a related post under the "Styles" part of the Forum. I think the issue perhaps is my desire to make DVD's for distribution to a number of people. Apart from the fact that on a personal note I don't have a TV with a USB port. I've promised myself that I will upgrade once the valves go!! (As a Yorkshireman Peter you should understand my position). John

Dave, Yes, I do mean DVD. However, I'm not certain I understand what you mean by "MP4 Video played via USB". Do you mean creating an MP4 version and putting it on a stick and plugging that into a TV? My TV's not up to that! Equally it sounds an expensive way of distribution. I increasingly have a need to distribute sequences to a number of people so DVD appears to be the most satisfactory method. Cheers John

Hi, Is there any way that a style could be created to achieve the following. It might be best to state what my main objective is. I am looking for a simple method to convert a sequence made for display on a computer monitor/projector to TV without loosing any part of the image. I know there are various work arounds but I wondered if “styles” might not be a possible way forward. I’m not comfortable with this aspect of PTE. I have been experimenting using the supplied Styles, specifically Border/Simple and getting encouraging results. I have accepted that it is inevitable that there will be black vertical edges (preferable to clipping top and bottom) in my opinion. I am setting the size to 82% (to fit with TV safe zone) and the background to Zero and getting satisfactory results for simple slides that only contain one object. What I would like would be for children of that object to be included in the style. Could this be done? Regards John

Hi, A facility for the conversion from full screen (projection) to TV friendly version of PTE sequences. I have absolutely no idea, nor am I particularly interested, in how this can be achieved but I do believe that it would be desirable if not essential that it is achieved. I know there are work-arounds (BUT THAT IS ALL THEY ARE). I acknowledge that certain variables such as TV screen sizes will always exist and will need to be accepted. More than likely workflow will need to change. With the increased use of TV as a method of showing our work, more of us I suspect, have this in mind from the outset and perhaps build our shows accordingly. There will however, at least for the foreseeable future, often be a need for both versions. I would suggest that if PTE is going to survive it must address issues such as this. John

Igor, I have sent you a further update as a PM. John

HI Dave, Sorry if by unintentionally misquoting you I have caused offence. As you may have guessed from my last post there have been developments which I have passed direct to Igor. Cheers John

Igor, I have sent you a PM on this. Regards John

Igor et al, Being a Scot I thought I should conduct a few experiments before going out and spending a fortune on DVDs when I have 50 or so still to use. I burned a 6 image DVD (Maxell) on my PC Laptop which I use for presentations with the PTE version that was installed (8.0.6) and it worked on my TV/DVD player. I then thought I would upgrade PTE on this machine to 8.0.10 which was on my iMac (Parallels) and which was giving me the problem I initially reported. The idea being to see if it would create the same problem with that. However 8.0.10 was replaced with 8.0.11 two days ago (12/1/15). I downloaded this (11) to the PC and it worked. I then downloaded (11) to the iMac and EURECA! Somebody mentioned a couple of days ago that there had been a suspect update recently but at that time I had just installed 10 so assumed I did not have the “suspect” version. Hope this helps Igor. Thank you all for your assistance John PS I will burn my big show later tonight or tomorrow and confirm the result.

Igor, Thank you, I will get hold of one or both of those makes tomorrow and give them a try. John PS. I have been using Maxell on this occasion, though I think they have worked for me before.

Hi Dave, Yes latest version, downloaded 2 days ago. John

Hi, I am sure I have asked this question, or one like it, before but where can I find a definitive guide to burning a DVD for showing on TV? This is a side of PTE that fills me with dread every time I am forced to get involved. I have been putting off for months in providing DVD versions of some of my sequences for friends. I do NOT want to use anything other than the PTE Video Builder software, primarily because I am sure it should be able to do all I want. I have successfully done this in the past. I have recently reinstalled PTE so may not now have the correct settings, though I have changed nothing from those that were set when it was installed. I think PAL is correct for UK? I have left the following unchecked- Create PEG2 Create DVD folders Create ISO image and selected Burn DVD I know that my DVD player is OK - it runs previously produced DVD’s but it won't load this one! I have been reading the help information but this only explains what the various buttons are. I thought that I had seen a more detailed “How To” document at some stage but can't find it. Cheers John

Me too !!!!! Please

Sometimes (6 or so times a year) if I have to. But I hate the whole process for some reason! Just me I'm sure. I don't find it very intuitive I'm afraid. Too many techie options that need basic explanation in my opinion. John

Hi, I understand that initially my colleague unzipped the file with the unzipper which is built into Windows 7 professional. When that failed he decided to try something else and used one of the free programmes called 7zip, which worked perfectly. The size of the zipped file is 181 MB. John

Thanks Dave, It has never been an issue in the past for me. I have been using this for years, I just thought it strange given the fact that it has not happened before. I'll have a look again at TEMPLATE. It's been a long time since I used it. Cheers John

Does anybody have any explanation for following? Some months ago I made a seuence (1) with a relatively complex title slide involving the movement of text objects. It worked so successfully I reused the title slide in a later sequence (2). I used the standard copy proceedure and it works very well, in an identical fashion to the first. As is my habit I made a backup to zip copy of sequence 2 at the end, as a record. I had occasion to provide a copy of that zip file to a collaborator who found that on opening and unzipping in the prescribed way he received an error message indicating that ONE of the text objects (copied from the 1st sequence) was missing. On further investigation we found that in fact the object was there but that it still had a reference to its original location as part of sequence 1. We were able to re connect the object, though it had lost its keypoints and they had to be rebuilt. There is a further twist to this. If I open and unzip the zip file on my computer there is no problem, presumably because PTE can still access the original location on my drive. I made several zipped copies for my collegue and all behaved identically (only ONE object (the same one) out of several, ALL coming from the same location) retained its original location identity. Any thoughts? John

Hi Eric, Sorry, my fault. I thought it would be obvious that I was referring to the two you posted above. I just clicked on them and let them run in my browser. There is quite a difference between them. John

Hi Yachtsman1, I am always interested in any discussion on audio as I find I spend a considerable amount of time trying to get this correct in my sequences. Selecting the music and writing the script are two time consuming aspects but that is not the reason for my post. I also use Audacity and in particular the techniques that both you and Peter have so well explained, to get the balance between different music sources. Please don't be offended but I found your voice over in the first of your videos to have a few irritating echoes (e.g. about 1:10, 1:27, 1:40) that weren't in the second video. The second video was much quieter. Could it be that the first was in fact almost clipping? I would be interested in your comments. Regards John

Hi, As you know PTE tells you which files are in conflict with each other and where they are on your computer BUT NOT where they are in your sequence. That is my issue. I regularly work with sequences that have 200 + slides many with multiple files. Frequently these files are coming to me over a period of time from several different individuals. All files are located in different folders on my hard drive. If PTE could tell me that the issues are in slide 29 and slide 129 this would in most cases assist greatly in resolving the issue. I quite agree one conflict at a time is acceptable, though more at a time could be helpful in tracing the source I believe. It just seems to me that when PTE provides so much detail regarding the original location of the file on the hard drive why not the location in the sequence. I'm using 8.0.6. Regards and still hopefully. John

Igor, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, can we have an improvement to the information provided in the “Information” box when two or more files with the same name are detected when performing a back up to zip? I am aware that there are a number of “clever cloggs” within our community who are so well organised that they never make such stupid, careless errors but I don't think I am the only normal human being within the community! (Tongue in cheek joke). If the program can detect the filed locations of such files surely it must know in which positions they are and can give us that information. Forgive me if I am being naive but this must surely be a simple task. Regards John

Would it be possible to have a warning appear when removing a slide from a sequence when there is an audio clip linked to that slide?

Hi, When editing an envelope in Timeline View using the mouse to drag a marker right or left would it be possible to incorporate the ability to lock the %'age volume of the marker with say the use of an additional key such as the “Ctrl Key”? I don't think this is at present possible, but I have been wrong before! John

Hi Dave, It must be different on one of these old fashioned PC things! On a Mac, running Parallels, Control and Mouse Wheel zooms the window. Cheers John

Hi, I have only come across this discussion since raising the same issue yesterday elsewhere. I have been using PTE for many years now and NEVER experienced this issue till yesterday. I have always relied quite heavily on the bold font for identifying unused images in my working folders. Yesterday, quite out of the blue, practically every image lost its bold type face. I did wonder if I had done something while trying to work out how to contract the time line view using a combination of guess work with function keys. Given that both Dave and Peter have no solution It would appear that there is an issue requiring input from "he who knows all things PTE". I'm surprised that this facility appears not to be used more than this topic suggests. I would also like to see the Non Main Image being identified in some way. Thanks in advance Igor (if you are listening!) John

Hi, I hope this isn't another false alarm. In the past hour I have noticed that in a project I am working on the bold type of the file names of my used images within the “selected directory window” has changed to standard in almost every case. A few file names are still in bold and if I add a new image it appears in bold. Any ideas? Cheers John