TonyFalla

I don't know if it is possible to do what I want to do in the current version of PTE but I have a situation where I have a fairly complex object with several parent / child levels, I have set this up at about 6 different keyframe times. What I would like to do is to copy all the parent / child elements plus all the associated animation parameters from one keyframe time and then paste at a different keyframe time. The only method I can see of doing this is to duplicate slide, but I wondered if there was any other facility I am not aware of. Anybody got any other suggestions? Regards Tony

Hi Eric I have just gone through this same process although my video builder licence had expired 18 months ago. After some research I found out that if you don't renew your video builder licence then while we have 7.0 you are OK your existing licence will work. However when a major update to PTE is made you have to make a decision then. If you upgrade then PTE will still work but none of the features of video builder will work until you renew your licence. If you use the features of video builder and you don't want to renew your licence then you can continue to use 7.0 but of course will not get the new features of the upgrade. Hope this helps Tony Falla

I think part of the confusion is because Igor is an honourable honest business man, a rare commodity these days. A lot of companies would have just said we are stopping PTE and are now bringing out a new product which would just be PTE with bells and whistles, you can upgrade to the new product for a discount price of x but after this you will have to pay for major upgrades. This is in effect what has happened but has become complicated by Igor's commitment to honouring the original free for life licence. Again many thanks for all the helpful info Tony Falla

Thanks for the replies, he of little brain is starting to understand what is going on. From your replies I now understand the situation to be PTE consists of two parts PTE and Video Builder, the licence for PTE for existing customers is for life, the licence for Video Builder has to be renewed every two years. Video Builder is the software associated with the "Create" function and is for everything except a PC Exe or Screen Saver. This is the bit that is still unclear. One person is saying that if your Video Builder licence has expired then you should use the Video Builder from your last version when the licence was valid. How do you do that? Do I have to replace Video Builder for 7.0.1 with that from a valid version or does the software look for it? Another is saying that you can only use the PTE and Video Builder in a specific pair, i.e. Version 7.0.1 Pte will only work with Version 7.0.1 Video Builder which is logical and what I would have expected. He then says that if you use a Deluxe feature with an expired licence then it will still work but in Trial Mode and produce a version with Trial Tags. I took a closer a look at the Mac version I produced yesterday expecting to see a watermark saying "Trial" or it to end after a dozen or so slides but no that didn't happen, it was only when the sequence was half way through I realised what was happening. Only the main slides are shown with a fad in / out, no O&A or other sophistication. So my conclusion is that nobeefstu is right, you can only used matched pairs of PTE and Video Builder and if I want to produce executable Mac sequences I need to upgrade my licence. If you want to retain your Deluxe features without renewing the licence then you must remain with your last valid version of PTE and Video Builder. My final comment is that the way this has been done is very confusing. In my opinion it would be simpler to understand if when you don't have a Deluxe licence either you cannot use the Deluxe features or it says you can produce a trial version which is watermarked or only works for a limited number of slides. The trial I produced yesterday for the Mac doesn't really tell me if my sequence would work on a Mac as I still don't know if the Mac version copes with complicated O&A. Many thanks to all those who replied and helped me to clear my befuddled brain Tony Falla

Hi Lin Thanks for that but the senility must be really bad today as I am still confused. What you seem to be saying to me is that when I load the latest version of PTE there is (possibly) a revised version of Video Builder with it. When I start up PTE and then try to use Video Builder the software says I haven't got a licence for this new version and offers for me to pay for a new version. If I decline this offer then my old version of video builder is used. It is this last bit I can't get my head round where is it getting my old version of Video Builder from? I currently have 3 versions of PTE on my PC 6.5.8, 7.0 and 7.0.1 all of which have been installed since my licence expired, all of which the Video Builders have dates corresponding to when they were released / installed. What I don't get is that unless there is some very clever programming how does the software distinguish between what your licence permits and doesn't permit. If it is using my old version of Video Builder where is it getting it from, as I could have had a problem and cleared my disk and lost my old version of Video Builder. The only way I can see it working is that Video Builder somehow contains all versions and when you come to use it it selects the one corresponding to your licence but this seems very cumbersome. I am not trying to be argumentative I am just trying to understand how it works and wondering what happens if people decide not to pay the licence does there come a point when for some reason their old Video Builder is no longer available for whatever reason? Tony Falla

I am even more confused now. I thought I would try to see if I could create an Exe file for Mac, it came up and said that my licence had expired but I could still use previous version. I had the option of Buy or OK, I clicked OK, expecting it to take me back into PTE. No it then allowed me to create a Mac App which I transferred to my Mac and it played. What is going on? If my licence has expired then it should stop me from doing things not covered not let me carry on regardless. Tony Falla

I have had PTE in various versions since 2004/5, but for personal reasons haven't used it much in the last 12 months, today for the first time I started to use Version 7.0 . Now I know I am going senile but I have been trying to understand the new licence agreement and all I am getting is a headache. Where can I find a list of what is considered standard and what is considered deluxe? I bought a Deluxe Licence a few years ago but this new version tells me it expired about 18 months. My understanding at that time was that the Deluxe version gave you additional output methods such as video, u-tube, iPad, etc none of which I have ever used. Looking at the WNSoft site I get the impression that some of the new features of 7.0 e.g. video clips, are only included in the Deluxe version. Am I correct? At the end of the day I want use PTE to produce a sequence that I will put out as an exe file for a PC or a Mac. Currently I don't see me using video clips but I may want to in the future. Do I need a Deluxe Licence for this? Tony Falla

I'll second that I always thought that the fade at the end gave a nice finish to the sequence and have never really like the abrupt closing we get with the later versions. Tony

Barry Desktop 1920 x 1200 Laptop 1920 x 1080 Tony Falla

Thanks for your honesty Igor at least Mac users now know where they stand and can make their own decisions on how they can produce AV's with or without PTE Tony Falla

I know that when Igor was over in the UK inSeptember last year he stated that the Mac version of PTE was a major undertaking but the last date mentioned for this was in March 2010 when it was stated that it was hoped that beta testing would start before the end of the year. As one of many people I know who are currently changing to Mac's it would be nice to know if there is a timetable for the Mac version. I can then plan how long I keep a Windows PC or plan for installing a windows partition on the Mac. It is not a case of "are we there yet as" suggested on this forum somewhere but looking at what I should or should not be buying in the next year or two Tony Falla

This is a problem that has existed with PTE for a long time which I reported about 18 mths - 2 years ago, I can't say exactly when as it appears as my posting history only contains the last few months. I can't remember the full details but I had the same file names for images in two sub-folders of the folder used to create the template. I only found out about it a year or so later when I tried to restore from the backed up template and lost some of my images. I have come across the problem Jose is reporting since when again I had put my images into sub-folders some of which had the same name, at least this time I found out about it before I backed up my project and was able to correct. I presumed that this had been put in as a safeguard to overcome the problem I had initially reported. As I say I can't remember the exact detail but I believe no problems were experienced when creating a PTE project it was only when I tried to create a template that the problem was reported. I have got over this now by creating all my images into just one folder with no sub-folders. Tony

Hi Nick I bought a replacement PC about 2 months ago with Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit and spent a lot of time in the first few weeks of ownership working on a PTE 6 project. Did not encounter any problems and it works a lot better than the Vista Ultimate 32 bit I have on my other PC. One of the advantages of 64 bit is that it will access more than 4GB of memory but you may find that some of your older software and hardware will not run on 64 bit. There are numerous articles on the subject on the web if you put into a search engine something like "Comparison Windows 7 64 bit 32 bit" Hope this helps Tony

Hi Ed I may have misinterpreted your problem but there is a file naming problem within PTE that has existed for several versions now. I have found that if you replace your original image with another using O&A then the original imnage's file name still appears in the slide list. An example has recently occurred with a sequence I am currently working on. I wanted two black slides to start the sequence so I created an image Black-Slide and used this as my first two slides. On the second of these I used O&A to show the titles of my sequence. I then decided that it would look better if the first two slides had a border so using Photoshop I created Black-Slide-3. In PTE I removed the first slide and then inserted Black-Slide-3. On the second slide I went into O&A inserted the image Black-Slide-3 moved it to the back and deleted the image Black-Slide. Now if I look at my slide list I have 1. Black-Slide-3 2. Black-Slide Although occassionally causing me confusion as I have an image listed which is no longer part of my sequence the sequence works as intended but then I do not very often use large zooms Tony

The circumstances under which you are getting mis-alignment need to be looked at. If it is your background image that is being mis-aligned make sure that you are using exactly the same image in both slides. For example if you want you background image to go from colour to B&W make sure that in you image manipulation software you used a copy of your background colour image to do the B&W conversion. If it is images in the O&A window that you are having problems with then again make sure you are using exactly the same image in both, also check that the Parent - Child relationship is the same in both O&A windows. If the above is true, the easiest way is to look at the Animation tab particularly the Pan, Zoom and Rotate parameters these should all be exactly the same otherwise you will have mis-alignment. Hope this helps Tony