davegee

Here’s the TEXT only version of the Photography Monthly Review of Slide Show to DVD Software. This month’s issue also has some other excellent articles, reviews, etc. Please excuse any OCR errors – I did not have time to check them. I have not included the MAC Software BOINX FotoMagico 2.0.1 Pro for Mac which received a very good report. Of the reviews below PTE was judged to be the “winner”. Magix Photos on CD & DVD 6 deluxe Price: £40 Contact: www.magix.net Compatibility: Windows 2000/XP/ Vista, Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon 700MHz or higher, 256MB RAM, 500MB or higher hard disk memory Launching the program presents you with an interface with a large screen for viewing photos and a small thumbnail video section at the bottom where you can drag pictures and select which ones you want to play on your final DVD. You’re also asked if you want to watch in 16:9 widescreen format, which can be disabled. Handling found the program easy to use, but the array of effects and style is slightly overwhelming if you’re after a quick route to making a DVD. It is possible to precisely alter the effects applied though, which is great if you want a professional show with complete control, You can control camera movements, make professional 3D animations, and use the Magix Story Maker to make individual arrangements with a variety of transitions and weird and wacky effects. VERDICT Photos on CD & DVD is a top slide-show maker, once you’ve spent some time with it. It was a bit slow on PM’S test PC, so you need a fast processor. This is definitely worth considering if you’re wanting lots of control. The Classic version costs just £20, but lacks both the ability to create high-resolution HD-DVDs, and the in-built photo and audio editors. PROS Good interface, capable of quick and complex editing CONS: Price, too much choice on offer for some ULead DVD MovieFactory 6 PLus Price: £50 Contact:www.ulead.com Compatibility: Windows XP/Vista, Intel Pentium 4 1.8MHz, AMD Athlon XP 1800+, 512MB RAM (though 1GB RAM or above recommended), 900MB hard drive space The latest version we look at adds support for Windows Vista, Blu-ray and HD DVD. It also includes InterVideo WinDVD 8 Silver for DVD playback and lnterVideo DVDC0py 5 for recording non-encrypted discs and converting them to DivX. Handling You can apply intro and end sequences with themes such as Wedding, but they’re rather kitsch. You can also create collages. There’s import options for DV, HDV and AVCHD (a new high-definition MPEG4-based format) cameras, digital TV tuners and analogue video-capture devices, which is far more than the remit of this test allows for. The interface is very well designed and very simple to use. It doesn’t have much in the way of advanced features though, but if you’re after a simple program, this is for you. VERDICT For all the video options on offer, there’s not much left over for slide shows. The pan and zoom function doesn’t even preview your picture, and applies the same setting to all the photos. The program also lacks image- editing and web tools. PROS: Great-looking interface, impressive import and export options for video users, attractive DVD menus CONS: Transition times not precisely controllable, pan and zoom function is awkward to use, more for video users, so slide show is basic PicturesToExe Deluxe v5.OO Price: £30 Contact:www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/productcart /pc/viewCat.asp Compatibility: Windows 2000/XP/ Vista. For slide shows with Pan/Zoom effects: 1.4GHz CPU, 256MB RAM, NVIDIA/ATI video card with 128MB of video memory. For slide shows created with simple effects: 500MHz, 64MB RAM and any video card PicturesToExe will produce a single EXE file, which contains all images inside, to play on your PC. No additional programs (including PicturesToExe itself) are needed to run the resulting EXE file. If your demands are a bit higher, PicturesToExe will make you a DVD. In both cases, you can customise each slide, add different transition effects and background music, which can be synchronized precisely to music by using the waveform display. Handling Pan/Zoom effects play without jerks/hesitations even with high activity of other programs which work in the background. It is a powerful editor in that you can set Pan/Zoom/Rotate effects for several objects simultaneously. The interface is simple, so don’t expect glitzy design. Then again, for this price, who’s complaining? VERDICT PicturesToExe is a great, quick way of producing a good- looking slide show. It lacks some of the finer points of ProShow, such as precisely co-ordinating transition times, but considering the price, it’s a fantastic way to get started. PROS: Capable of quick, user-friendly editing. The price CONS: Transition times not precisely controllable Photodex ProShow Producer 3.0 Price: £250 Contact: www.photodex.com Compatibility: Windows 2000/XP, 500MHz or higher processor, 256MB RAM, 70MB or higher hard drive memory This software presents itself as the first program of its kind for professional photographers. It features all the usual slide- show options to manipulate and add photos, video clips and music. It also offers Raw file support, precise custom timing for each slide and a transparency feature to overlay masks and borders. You can output to a website, as a Flash video, and you can also create an auto-play CD for PCs. Handling ProShow allows you to edit images in an external editing program like Photoshop or Elements, which is usefuL The software on the whole was easy to use, but despite its high spec profile, it was difficult to work out how to rotate images. Rather than a simple right-click, it was necessary to open the image editor for each one. I suppose it is possible to rotate them before importing into the program, but I’d have liked to have seen an easier way to do this. It’s also possible to synchronize your show exactly to the music you load into the Soundtrack bar. You’ll have to do this while you listen though, as there’s no waveform display to guide you, which is a shame. The interface is rather complicated to use and I found I had to refer to the manual repeatedly. Once you know what you’re doing though, the sky’s the limit. There really is nothing this program can’t do in the way of slide shows. VERDICT ProShow Producer 3.0 is a very powerful slide-show maker, and like the Magix software, is really worth considering if you want to do a lot of editing, web shows and the like. It’s not a quick, easy way of creating a DVD though and unless you spend a lot of time with it, it can be confusing. If you want the ultimate in slide-show creation and are prepared to fork out for it, this is for you. PROS: Complex editing, links with external image editors, web capability CONS: Confusing interface and no waveform display on the soundtrack. Pricey, hence only three stars DaveG

Back to the original thread - I believe that any monitor performs at its best at the native (max) resolution. My 19" IIYAMA is set to 1280x1024. I use windows mode to ensure that anyone with a larger res does not view at the wrong res. Am I correct in thinking that a 1280x1024 show will fit to screen on a PC with a lower res monitor? OKAY! To answer my own question - no it does not. I find that creating a 960x768 of the same 1280x1024 works to a degree, but the Taskbar shows at the bottom. Dave G

Hi Igor, Would it be possible in a future version to be able to "distort" images? At present we can alter height and/or width. How about narrowing the top of an image while making the bottom of the image wider? What I would like to be able to do is create the shapes necessary to do do "Star Wars" type intros within PTE and not have to do it in PS etc. That's just one example. I have mentioned this before - is it still impossible? DaveG

When purchasing VideoBuilder keys be aware that you have to choose what you are buying. At present the default is PTE so if you do not change that to Deluxe Upgrade you will not get the correct key. See other threads. DaveG

Hi Guys, I had a similar problem but it turned out to be MY MISTAKE!! When I clicked on the link to connect to the site which handles the payments I did not realise that it is the same site for payments for PTE etc as well as VideoBuilder and a choice has to be made – what to pay for. Igor says: “Probably it is our mistake also. We'll improve this moment - and will set Upgrade to Deluxe by default when you click on this URL”. Hence, I mistakenly paid for and received the key for PTE. Igor promptly corrected my mistake and sent the correct key “VideoBuilder_regkey” which when opened in notepad reads: [HKEY_current……./VideoBuilder] (Open notepad etc first – double clicking on the file won’t do it). Hope that this helps – the documentation received with the key advises you to contact support@wnsoft but Igor is now away until Wednesday. DaveG

Hi Igor, Many thanks for the wonderful service (and also the wonderful PTE product). The zipped VideoBuilder_regkey worked first time!! I am now able to test Video Builder. I think that the problem was that the original KEY sent as a result of my payment was a normal PTE key and NOT the VideoBuilder key. I have compared the first key sent with my original PTE Reg.txt and it is (almost) identical. You might want to check why that happened? Thanks again and best wishes, DaveG.

Hi Igor, E-mail sent to Support:wnsoft regarding "Invalid or damaged key" when UPGARADING to Deluxe edition. Davegee

Christmas, it seems, will be a little early this year!!!!! DaveG

Have you tried look for help in the TUTORIAL section at the top. It SHOULD be there but the way it is laid out............. DaveG

There's one called "Camera" - part of Powerpoint. You'll find it in Program files.

Hi all, At the risk of repeating myself (not for the first time).... Why can't the excellent links provided by Maureen above be PINNED to the top of this forum so that they are available to all newcomers ALL of the time? Additional updated tutorials can be added as and when available. That is the way things are done at other forums and it works really well. I have suggested this a number of times but never got an answer (to the best of my knowledge). Could I make a direct request to the moderator here to answer this question and perhaps clear it up once and for all. "Is there any reason why the links such as those provided by Maureen cannot be PINNED to the top of this forum for all to have access at all times?" If you need examples of this sort of practice I will gladly provide them. Best wishes to all, including Leonard, DaveG.

You need to use MP3 files - certain audio files are not supported. I think that probably wma is one of the unsupported ones. You should also think about updating to the latest version - 4.48 - it is a free update. DaveG

I would like to add my best wishes for a speedy recovery, DaveG

Depending on the dimensions of your images you could also try "Actual Pixels" in Project options/Screen. If your images are all the same height as your monitor pixel height it will do what you want. If your images are all different heights - forget it. DaveGee

Thanks Lin, That’s well hidden – it’s a long time since I have been down there and had forgotten all about that. I do remember thinking that if Igor did not recommend it then there must be a good reason and I should avoid it until I have found out why he does not recommend it. I will play around with it and give it some thought. It still does not address my other “requirement”. If I add a 2048 high image to my 5:4 project (with disable scaling ticked) on my 1280x1024 monitor I want the Zoom Percentage to read 200% straight away and not the 100% it gives right now. It should be possible to do this by comparing the monitor resolution with the size of the image within the software. One way around it would be to click on the “cover screen” option (the percentage stays at 100%) and then enter the 200% figure to zoom back into the image. This is exactly the same as what I have to do now, without the “disable scaling” enabled. So at first sight it is not the answer. Do you ever get back over here to your roots? DaveGee.

Hi Al, Terminological differences can sometimes get in the way of a discussion, especially in a forum like this one. So I have tried to put my thoughts into a logical explanation of the way I think about PTE. Let’s start at the very beginning……. PTE is clever enough to know what my monitor aspect ratio is (it tells me in Project Options that my display is 5:4) so presumably it is also capable of knowing what resolution I have set. In my case that is the maximum resolution of the monitor – 1280x1024. The following assumes a project aspect ratio of 5:4 and monitor resolution of 1280x1024. I like to fill the screen with my images in PTE and have no intention of getting a wide screen monitor at this time. However, since my camera produces 3:2 images this means that I have to make some choices. I usually get around this by panning any images which cannot be cropped to 5:4 without losing valuable information. If we forget about zooming for a moment (it introduces some further problems) it makes sense to make all of my images 1024 high in Photoshop before creating the JPEGs for use in PTE whether they be 5:4 or 3:2 so my definition of “100%” is when my 1024 high image fills the HEIGHT of the screen. What happens when I add these images to a project in PTE? If they are 5:4 images at 1024 high then they FILL the height of the screen. If they are 3:2 images then they default to filling the WIDTH of the screen (black lines top and bottom) and the ZOOM percentage is shown as 100%. Now I am used to thinking of 100% being the same as ACTUAL PIXELS in Photoshop so here we have a conflict. Some basic mathematics tells me that when the 3:2 image which is 1024 pixels high is fitted to the width of a 1280x1024 screen the zoom percentage figure should read something like 83% because the 1024 height of the image is only filling around 83% of the height of my monitor. Anyway, by right clicking on the image and choosing COVER SCREEN my 3:2 image 1024 pixels high now fills the screen with some overlap on either side, but here’s the strange thing, the zoom percentage STILL reads 100%. I consider that the COVER SCREEN option is the correct option for the parameters I have given i.e. 1024 pixels high filling the HEIGHT of the screen. This ties up with my thinking about ACTUAL PIXELS. So, if we had a choice of making COVER SCREEN the default I would be a happy man. One other problem with all this is that if the 3:2 image that I add to the project is 2048 pixels high instead of 1024 (in other words 200% of my monitor resolution) it still shows 100% zoom percentage. I want the zoom percentage to refer to the pixel size of my image compared to the screen resolution of my monitor, which is exactly what happens when I add the 1024 pixels image to my 5:4 project on my 1024 high monitor (cover screen mode). This is the reason I asked Igor a while back if we could have three options: 1. Fit to screen 2. Cover screen 3. Actual pixels Unfortunately Igor did not reply. I can only imagine that either he did not see my request, did not understand my request or chose to ignore it. I would like to think that he did not see it. In order to keep PTE running at maximum efficiency and not subject it to the needless calculations involved in interpolating images I like to keep my images no larger than they need be. To perform simple pans they only need to be 1024 pixels high. However, when zooming, images need to be correspondingly bigger. To zoom into an image at 200% my start image needs to be 2048 pixels high. That’s an easy example. I sometimes use a 1024 pixel high image to determine the amount of zoom I am going to apply to the image and then go back to Photoshop and recreate the jpeg image at the correct zoom percentage so that PTE only has to cope with the zoom I ask for and not have to cope with the extra work of interpolating an oversized/undersized image to fit the screen at the requested zoom percentage. (I hope that makes sense?). Anyway, that’s the way I think. Wearing my PTE Beta tester’s hat I have to ask: 1. Would PTE be a better product if we had the choice of either Fit to Screen or Cover screen? I think that it would. 2. Would PTE be a better product if we also had a third choice – ACTUAL PIXELS. I think that it would. DaveGee

Al, Your example show black lines top and bottom which is what I do NOT want. If the slide you put in was 1024 high in a 5:4 format show on a 1280x1024 then the percentage shown is WRONG - it should be around 83%. I agree with Lumenlux re: CHOICE. DaveG

There is sense in what you say Al, but you must admit that it makes no sense that the Zoom Percentage shown in the O&A dialogue is clearly wrong when using the fit to screen option (Fit to width when importing a 3:2 image into a 5:4 show). Dave G

I would like to second Lumenlux’s proposal regarding the choice of defaulting to “Cover Screen”. Excellent idea!! By the way is there an explanation as to why, when Cover Screen is chosen, the Zoom percentage stays the same? When I put an image which is 1024 pixels high into a 5:4 show using my 1280x1024 monitor and using Cover Screen that is the way it SHOULD be (100%). I believe that the other option (which is, in effect, “fit to width”) is wrong. Having used Cover Screen I find that I have to zoom to around 83% to get my 3:2 image to fit to width again. If I accept the “Fit To Width” default then I have to zoom to 120% to achieve “Fit To Height” which is clearly wrong because my image is 1024 and filling 100% of the height of the screen. Perhaps all of this confusion will be cleared up in the final Beta but at the moment it is clearly wrong. The Windowed Mode of Version 4.48 copes with this problem because, having told PTE that my window should be 1280x1024, any image that I use is automatically sized accordingly. Bring back Windowed Mode!! (Only kidding - I know it's on the way - I hope!) DaveG

......from Wales to Igor & Team and all PTE users everywhere. DaveG

Simply install from the APR.EXE file again (you can use the Ver 4.8 or 5.8) and place the REG.TXT (which you recieved from WNSOFT in an e-mail) in the PTE folder on your new computer. If you cannot find the e-mail you can transfer the REG.TXT from your old computer to the new one. DaveG

Hi Isabel, Click on PLAY and then click on the timeline wherever you want it to run from. That works for me. DaveG

Hello Patrick, I am sorry that the show does not run well on your PC. Obviously I would not post a show which did not run less than perfectly on my own PC (and also the PCs of some friends). Bill looked at the show before posting and did not make any comments about stuttering etc so I assume it was OK on his computer and no one else has reported a problem Could it just be that your PC is struggling with it? DaveG

Moderators cope quite well over at the NIKONIANS site - if something is in the wrong place they just move it to the right place and put a notice up to that effect. They are also quite good at PINNING tutorials etc to the tops of forums so that people don't have to go searching for info - it is right there where it should be for all to see. DaveG

Bill has kindly posted a show of mine. Enjoy, DaveG