Peter S

So the answer John's question: "Presumably if we wish to ensure that the correct font is displayed on any PC other than the one that created the show we will have to revert back to Photoshop. " is YES - unless you only use commonly available fonts such as Arial, Times Roman etc. We cannot expect PTE to offer the vast array of options and effects available in Photoshop for manipulating text so this is just a case of "horses fort courses". If you want fancy fonts and fancy effects you make them in Photoshop or Xara 3D etc. If you are content with "common" fonts and somewhat limited effects that are very easy to apply use what's available in PTE. I noticed that fonts that I assume are identified as "Open type" by an O in Photoshop also have a different symbol in PTE (looks like a monitor) but I am not sure of its significance. Peter

That's terrific news Igor. You and the team must be putting in a lot of hours! You are making the changes faster than I can get used to the new functionality. Congratulations on your terrific progress. Does a release candidate mean some limited additional testing before a general release announcement? Peter

I am working on a project that will probably have 20 to 30 sections varying from 5 to 10 minutes each in length. I would like to give viewers options to choose which section to watch, to exit at any point and return to the start of the section or to start a new section. I would like to make the output available as either a CD or a DVD at the users option. For the CD version: I have read previous threads explaining the creation of a menu based on a "one slide menu exe" linking to other exe files, but never tried this myself in 4.48. I understand that this will be possible in the final version of 5 but is not yet available. Can anyone please confirm this? For individual slides the current buttons in O & A only seem to provide information about a slide but nothing more. Is it going to be possible to use them to "go to" other places such as other slides or other files? Or can they be used in other ways to help menu creation? For the DVD version: This would seem to be easier as I can just use the video builder pages to create a structure for the DVD and let the viewer use the remote to stop/start/return to menu. BUt ... is there a catch? I would like to ensure that I do not spend too much time producing separate sections for the CD version that I later wish I had bundled together and would really appreciate any advice or comments that anyone can offer. I have already seen that I could have saved some time if I had waited for the new text options but then I do like some of the more complex Photoshop text effects!! Peter

Granot, Audition is an Adobe product (it is quite expensive) and it can record sound from a variety of sources. If you bring up windows volume control and look under properties/recording you will see some options that enable you to set a recording source. I have recorded radio programs this way with no mic connected using Audition. This may work with your other recorder. Peter

Brian, I think it might be wise to delete that file!!! I had not come across the concept of a file that acts like a "sleeper" in a spy film - very nasty. Thanks for a timely warning. Peter

Brian, Thanks for your reply and your patience with those of us not "in the know". I am still not entirely clear but an example would I think get me home. I have copyright free material purchased from Medwyn Goodall. His conditions permit me to use this and distribute it in whole or part (with some restrictions that do not affect me) for commercial ventures. I bring his music into Adobe Audition and build it as backgound music into my own narration. When I have finished all my editing I use "Save As" in Audition. I choose MP3 and Audition tells me "This is standard MP£ encoding. For higher quality at lower bit rates, try mp3PRO. There is other info in Audition's help files that also lead me to use mp3PRO so that has been my choice for all my recent compressed audio files. There is a licensing comment in the encoder options box that says " mp3PRO audio coding technology is licensed from Coding Technologies, Fraunhofer IIS and Thomson multimedia. I had therefore assumed that I do not need to pay for any other licenses if I decided to sell some of my productions and only had a very small revenue. I am not doing any of this to make money and any sales I did make would only be to recover some of my costs. Thanks again for sharing your expertise. Thanks also for your suggestions re structuring a slide identification scheme - very neat. I am still hoping Igor might come up with a "dual I/D system" but it may be asking a bit much. Peter

Igor, I am not sure if my problem is unique or if others would appreciate an improved facility for identifying variations on slides that are frequently repeated. I am using one jpg image as a background for numerous slides that all have different text and moving objects. I thought that using one image would save file size. I am however finding it difficult to keep track of which slide contains which animation in the "Slide List" which I prefer to view as thumbnails. I can change the name on the Common tab in O & A but this name does not appear on the Slide List. It would help me greatly if it appeared underneath the original file name below the thumbnail. Although it is not quite the same as the request under the "Indication of animation on slides" it would in effect answer that question as well. Peter

Hartmut, Thanks for your reply. The name in O & A is some help but is only a partial answer. What would be really helpful is if the neme in the O & A could appear below the title of the original main image thumbnail in the slide list. I think I need to put this to Igor. Peter

There is a second statement about mp3 and mp3 pro distribution on the web site that Al originally pointed us to. It is here: http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/emd.html It is titled electronic music distribution and is under the Music Services tab. It seems to spell things out clearly on one page. Peter

Brian et al, I downloaded a trial version of XoftSpy by Paretologic.Com and ran a scan. It reported Dollarrevenue as being a Severe threat associated with a file ~DF305B.tmp. To remove the file I would have had to pay $36 for the full program. I was a little surprised as I use Computer Associates PestPatrol, in active mode, and update it daily. Being cautious I sent the file to CA and their analysis showed that the file was in fact clean. I also scanned the folder containing the tmp file with Spybot and Adaware neither of these reported the file as suspicious. I am not sure what to conclude from this but having purchased on internet security suite from CA I did not want to pay XoftSpy to enable me to remove a harmless file! This whole security issue is a bit of a nightmare. I have found the following site very useful and informative: http://spywarewarrior.com/ There is a fantastic amount of information about security issues on this site and some interesting anformation about rogue products. There is a note on this page about XoftSpy http://www.spywarewarrior.com/rogue_anti-s...re.htm#xos_note Peter

Al, I don't think I am taking it out of context but my interpretation may be incorrect! The whole FAQ says: 5) Do I need a license to distribute mp3, mp3PRO or mp3surround encoded content? Yes. A license is needed for commercial (i.e., revenue-generating) use of mp3/mp3PRO in broadcast systems (terrestrial, satellite, cable and/or other distribution channels), streaming applications (via Internet, intranets and/or other networks), other content distribution systems (pay-audio or audio-on-demand applications and the like) or for use of mp3/mp3PRO on physical media (compact discs, digital versatile discs, semiconductor chips, hard drives, memory cards and the like). However, no license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with associated annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00. So I conclude I do NOT need any license for the distribution of mp3 coded content if my revenue is less than $100,000. If I wanted to distribute music copied from a normal purchased CD I would need to pay royalties to the Copyright holder of the original works as Brian stated. If I use COPYRIGHT FREE music I do NOT need to pay the Copyright holder because he has given me permission to use his material that I have already purchased from him. I agree there are TWO separate issues here but if the statement in the FAQ from Thomson is correct and applies in Europe my conclusion is that I can distribute any COPYRIGHT FREE music in mp3 format as part of a slide show (but not other commercially available music) without any other license. Peter

I would appreciate some advice on an associated problem that I have. I am using a particular image numerous times in the same presentation. Each time I use it it has completely different animations but it has exactly the same name in the film strip. Can anyone please suggest a way in which I can keep track of which slide in the sequence has which animation associated with it. My only solution so far is to keep an old fashioned hand written list of the slides! Peter

Brian, I do not understand what role Thomson play in this discussion but Al provided this link to their site: http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/index.html They state "However, no license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with associated annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00." The underlining is mine. Are you saying that this advice does not apply in Europe and is only relevant to the US? I have a selection of MedwynGoodall's copyright free CDs which specifically give the buyer permission to use the music to form soundtracks for CD, DVD, slide shows...... in the public and private domain. So it is only the mp3 issue that would cause ma any concern. Peter

Hi Igor, It's great to have our hands on Beta 9. I have been checking out the text facility and think it has great time saving potential. I used to make lots of png text files in Photoshop and it seems I can now get the same results simply using PTE. I love the facility of being able to adjust attributes such as line spacing and text size while viewing the live slide view. But .... Why is there a Rasterize text to png image facility if the PTE text is already transparent? Are there system consequences of using the PTE text facility v png files? The blur function does not seem to have any effect is this implemented? Peter

Al, Boxig The full text from the link says: "5) Do I need a license to distribute mp3, mp3PRO or mp3surround encoded content? Yes. A license is needed for commercial (i.e., revenue-generating) use of mp3/mp3PRO in broadcast systems (terrestrial, satellite, cable and/or other distribution channels), streaming applications (via Internet, intranets and/or other networks), other content distribution systems (pay-audio or audio-on-demand applications and the like) or for use of mp3/mp3PRO on physical media (compact discs, digital versatile discs, semiconductor chips, hard drives, memory cards and the like). However, no license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with associated annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00. Surely this makes it clear that for anyone with a revenue less than $100,000 no license is required as far as the mp3 encoding is concerned? So if you use royalty free music you do not need any license from either party. If you sell something using music that is not royalty free you will have to pay the royalty to the "owner" regardless of the format that you use in your product. However if your gross revenue is lower than $100,000 you will still not need to pay any fee for the encoding. Peter

Igor, This is excellent news. The only downside is that I know I will spend too many hours playing with all the new features! Has any more work been done on the DVD burning facility? I have not run any more tests recently but am working on a project that I would really like to be able to make available to people without PCs in due course. Thanks again to you and all your team for sticking to your quality objectives. Peter

Hi Brian, You should be able to get a full screen preview with the Beta version in exactly the same way as the original version. It should work from the main screen or from the objects and animation screen by simply clicking on the preview button. If you click on the "flying brick" immediately to the right of the preview button you should get a full screen preview from the image that is live in the strip view/main window. Peter

Jean-Pierre, I am so sorry to hear of your misfortune. I wish you well and hope that you make a speedy recovery. If you respond to your treatment as quickly as you do to requests for help on the forum you will soon be fit again. Best wishes Peter

Hi Stephane, I'm very pleased to see your excellent work on the PTE forum. Congratulations for your result with Eugène le gène on 1/2/3. Are you going to post a link to that here as well? It would be good to see it again. Peter

Hi Fred, Thanks for the reply. I had searched the forum and was unable to find anything on this topic. I am not sure why the "Original size" mode is still there if Igor thinks it is "a bad mode". Perhaps he is planning to turn it into a "good mode" one day. Peter

I have been experimenting with "Original mode" and "Fit to screen mode" and have found something I find a bit strange. I would love to know if anyone can explain why this happens. Here is my experiment: Place 2 objects on a background in Photoshop and draw an arrow to fit exactly between them. Save the objects and background as a jpeg. Crop the arrow against a transparent background and save it as a PNG. Use the objects and background as a slide and then add the arrow in Objects and Animation, sizeing the arrow to fit exactly between the objects as in the original Photoshop picture. You can do this regardless of whether you make the arrow a child of the original slide or an independent object. You can also do it regardless of whether the Mode for the arrow is "Original" or "Fit to slide". Here's the catch - If you now burn a DVD the version with Mode "Original" gives an arrow that does not fill the gap between the objects. The version with Mode "Fit to slide" is OK. I only found this after puzzling for ages as to why my diagrams did not come out on the DVD as they look in the preview. Sorry I cannot demonstrate this with a posted file but it is only apparent when you produce the DVD and watch it on a TV screen. Peter

Hi Keith, Go to http://www.mediacollege.com/downloads/soun...ects/equipment/ This is a useful site for a selection of sound effects and other information. From the site go to Downloads - Audio - Sound effects - Equipment and you will find three camera sounds to choose from. Peter

Igor has recently told me that trying to erase DVD +RW can damage the media. I looked on Wikipedia and found some information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD%2BRW This points out the difference between +RWs that can be treated as a removable hard drive that is randomly written to and -RW that needs to be erased before re-use. Talk about learn something every day! I have since tried simply re-using DVD +RWs and it has worked fine. Peter

Hi Lumenlux, I have been doing quite a bit of testing with burning DVDs and have had some email exchanges with Igor. Here is an extract from the last message I sent. As you can see I suspect there is a problem with erasing/re-burning although the problem seems worse with +RW. This may however be a function of my particular set up. I had some problems burning different formats and Igor provideed a burning utility that I tested. There are some earlier posts under "How to Create Video" "More DVD woes". With the latest beta 8z I ran some more tests but had problems with previously used Philips +RW discs. I bought some new Verbatim +RW discs and my first test burn was perfect. I thought the problem must be with the erasing of the +RW disc produced by Philips as I had previously burned new discs successfully. To check this I erased and tried to reburn the Verbatim +RW and it did not work. The first try it gave an error message and the second try it hung the PC completely. So I have been able to reburn erased DVD -RW but NOT +RW. New discs I can burn either version. I erased (using Nero) and reburned a -RW disc and although this failed at the first try it succeeded when I tried a second time. These have worked OK before as well. I have now succeeded in burning every type of disc +R, +RW, -R, -RW. The only small problem is the erased and reburned +RW. I did not want to throw away the RW discs that would not burn a second time so I erased them and tried to use them to act as back ups for my images stored on my hard drive. I was surprised to find they worked perfectly for this purpose. So these DVDs will not burn video using either Video Builder or Nero but they work as DVD data discs with over 3GB data. I don't know if this helps but at least you know you are not the only one experiencing this (and so do I!). I have successfuly burned vob files using Nero Vision 4 which comes packaged with the full version of Nero. Peter

Hi Jean, You need to click Create rather than Video to make the exe file Peter