Peter S

Hi Barry, Very interesting and right on the mark. I have been trying to get good pictures of bluebells in a beech wood and there are always gaps in the trees with varying amounts of light peeping through. A perfect exposure in one shot? Not any of my shots that's for sure. Interestingly the Mac version plays very well but now with a slightly distorted sound. It has slowed the sound down a little and thereby reduced your pitch by around a semi-tone. I played the two versions together on a Mac and PC side by side and it is quite noticeable. More work obviously needed by Igor and the team to get this just right. Kind regards Peter

Barry, I previously had a problem with a voice over details in http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11750 Igor said that there was a problem in the way that the Mac converter processed mono to stereo. Making my sound file stereo as suggested by Brian solved the problem. I find a similar problem with your Mac version of this show. The sound plays "Pinky and Perky" style. Is this a mono voice over? If it is I will send a message to Igor so he knows this is still a potential problem. Kind regards Peter

For anyone doing any new recordings I have found the easiest solution to the Mono/Stereo issue. If you go into Audacity/Preferences you will see a screen such as the attached. You can set this so that all your recordings using a mono mic are automatically presented with a duplicate track and recorded as if they were stereo. Similar screen for PC under Edit/Preferences For old mono recordings Brian's solution is a gem. I have found that the sound recorded with a mic on my iMac is far cleaner than anything I can produce on my PC. I have just done some testing using exactly the same mic and set up and the iMac is way better. I suppose it has a lot fewer whiry electric bits and pieces. I am using quite a decent mic and an input amp from Howard Gregory that is extremely low noise. Still I am very pleased, and a bit surprised, with the result. Kind regards Peter

I have always assumed (a dangerous thing ) that most of the participants in the forum were interested in Photography in its broadest sense and not just AV. I think Barry you have a point. AVs must have good quality images, assembled in an "artistic" way and shown with a suitable piece of music or other sound track. Getting this right is fundamental. I do however think that it is important not to just ignore other aspects. If you do not want to get into the technicalities of colour management that is fine. As I said in my post I have seen many excellent AVs and printed images where I know people have worked in sRGB throughout but..... If one takes a RAW image ( I believe you advocate shooting in RAW.) and converts it using Adobe RAW, Lightroom, Aperture and CaptureOne one can actually see differences in the way that the converters manage colour. Does it matter? Probably not to the majority. If RAW images are opened in Adobe RGB or sRGB some colour information is discarded. ProPhoto retains much more information. The more colour editing that is done the greater the benefit in a larger colour space. As Andre says conver after the manipulation. Images from Lightroom are also 16 bit. Does it matter? Probably not to the majority. People who are interested in making large colour prints with very smooth colour gradations will benefit from taking care with colour management issues, and Andre's work flow would be a sensible one to adopt. Perhaps this PTE forum is not the right one for discussing this type of technical issue. Anyone who wants to really get into the subject should have a look at: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/ This is a great site for many things photographic and it has lots of information on RAW processing and Colour Management. WARNING!! The latter is not for the feint hearted, it sometimes gets very technical and I only understand a few words. I am, by the way, sometimes eternally grateful for the technical experts who participate in this forum. How else would my sound problem have been solved? I am however also grateful to those who help me improve my skills in an artistic direction - they need help too. Each unto his own as they say. Kind regards Peter

Igor, I think the thanks are due to you and Brian. Brian for spotting the mono problem and you for your quick action in correcting the bug for 6.5. It is always pleasing when problems are identified and solved so quickly through the forum. There are not many other pieces of software where this would have been the case. Brian, Thanks for the additional information. I knew from your previous guidance in sorting out my PC that you where a whizz in that area are you also a Mac magician? Kind regards Peter

Brian, You are a star! Using Audacity I duplicated my mono recording. Clicked on the little down facing arrow in the left hand box. Clicked "Make Stereo Track". Used this version in my show and made another Mac Executable and it worked. You said: "That essentially is the kernel of the problem ~that short piece of Music~ which no doubt was a Stereo-extract. Mixing Mono and Stereo together (irrespective of the sampling rate) will not work properly unless you fill the empty Track (left or Right) with some data which can be tracked by the system, even a 'silence-track' will do." This is not quite the case. I did say "There was no music although I did add a very short separate piece of music at the end in the Project" but I also said "The result is, though, the same with or without this addition." So it appears that the converter simply does not like mono tracks. I am, as ever, most grateful for your excellent advice. I will write to Igor to let him know as he asked me to send a copy of my sound file to him. It would be worthwhile putting a warning on this site telling people about the problem with mono recordings. Perhaps one of the moderators will pick this up. Kind regards Peter

Hi Peter, The file was actually only a voice over. There was no music although I did add a very short separate piece of music at the end in the Project Options. The result is, though, the same with or without this addition. It was 44100 32-bit float saved at 128 bps. The sound, on its own, plays perfectly on the Mac and on the PC. One other thing I tried was making an HD video. That plays perfectly on my iMac in Quicktime. I am pretty convinced that something untoward is happening to the sound file in the creation of the Mac Executable. I have been in touch with Igor and have sent him a copy of the sound file. It remind me a bit of some of the problems that cropped up in the early days trying to get various different formats of DVD to record and play properly but this experimenting does not produce lots of "coasters"! Kind regards Peter

I wonder if I am the only person who has this problem? I have just posted the following on the Audacity forum following Ken's suggestion from am earlier post on this subject. I have made a commentary for an Audio Visual show using 1.3.11 Beta and Lame 3.98.2 when saving as an MP3. The recording was on an iMac using an AKG C1000S mic and a "noise free" input amp. The sound quality is fine for my purposes and plays perfectly in iTunes. Mono 44100 Hz 32-bit float exported at 128 kbps Constant bit rate mode. My current AV software (PicturesToExe) only allows me to produce AVs on a PC but can produce "Mac executables". I have several AVs with music that work OK on the Mac. My commentary plays perfectly on the PC - as well as it does in iTunes on the MAc. But and it is a big BUT when I add the music to the AV, create the executable I run into problems. While it runs perfectly on the PC the sound on the Mac version is terrible. It is just like a seriously slowed down version. Out of desperation I exported an OGG file. OK again on the PCbut the opposite of the MP3 - it sounded like Pinky and Perky - really fast. Can anyone please suggest what is going on here? Better still has anyone got a solution PLEASE. I cannot get my head around the fact that the sound plays perfectly on the Mac and on the PC it is only when it is used in the Mac executable PTE file that there is any problem. This must surely mean that PTE is having some unwanted effect on the sound file. I also tried saving my commentary as a WAV but the result was no different. This is quite a frustrating and potentially serious problem. It will be interesting to see if 6.5 has any impact. Kind regards Peter

Well Peter, I never knew that! I had imagined that the larger file size would mean more work for the computer to render the images. I guess storage space is pretty cheap these days so it's no big issue but every little helps. Kind regards Peter

Ron, This is getting into deep territory. As I understand it in simple terms the sRGB colour space "sees and records" a smaller range of colours than your eye. The Adobe colour space sees more than sRGB and Pro Photo sees even more. Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW work in ProPhoto 16 bit. If you are shooting in RAW the colour space profile only gets applied after you save the file as a PSD or TIFF etc. So the camera setting of sRGB or Adobe RGB has no effect on RAW images. If you want to get the best tonal transitions in your images it pays to work in the largest colour space you can when you are doing any editing involving tonal changes. When it comes to presenting your images on screen they need to be in sRGB so they need converting. I once inadvertently loaded a ProPhoto image onto a web site it was awful! Martin Evening actually says in his Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers that sRGB is an ideal color space for web design but is unsuitable for photography or serious print work! I know that many people will totally reject this and I have seen some great prints made by people who only ever use sRGB all through their processing. Could they have had smoother tonal transitions? Who knows? The theory says they could! Kind regards Peter

In Photoshop under the File Menu there is an option Save for Web ... Elements, b]Save for Web and Devices CS4. This allows you to use the same settings that Barry recommends and to see side by side comparisons at different quality settings. This should convince you that 6 is OK. If you are working in a colour space other than sRGB you can (and should) make the conversion here as well. As Barry says it's best to make your selective crop first although you can resize in the Save for Web panel. The panel is rather better in CS4 than it is in Elements but they effectively do the same thing. See the Help button in the panel for more information. If you use this approach you will get smaller files because all the extraneous file information is stripped out to make the file as small as possible which suits our slide shows nicely. I would be interested to know why this method is not more widely recommended. A quick trial should convince anyone that it does give smaller file sizes. Kind Regards Peter

Mick, It doesn't work with Maureens show but in some shows you can halt the show by hitting the space bar. This can only be done if the author ticks the box in project options to allow the show to be controlled by the keyboard. I always tick this box as I think it is nice to be able to pause a show when you want to but others may have good reasons for not doing so. Kind regards Peter

Maureen, Many thanks for the link. I had not seen your 'Lakeland in Winter' before and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Excellent imagers and they fit in well with Enya's music. It bought back some memories of a few of the places I have visited but I've never been there in the snow! If you would like to have a Mac version of Autumn Days I would be happy to convert it if you posted a zip version using backup to zip. Kind regards Peter

Maureen, Did you manage to produce a Mac version? If you did have you posted it anywhere? I would really like to have a look as I think the Lakes provide such wonderful scenery. Kind regards Peter

Anthony, Have you looked at the posts above and on the "Mac Audi Problem does exist" thread? There seems to be a problem with some sound files. If they are not MP3 the show will probably not work. Try removing the sound, resaving and retesting. Kind regards Peter

Gary, This does seem to be sound related. I took the WAV files off and it ran upto the slide where the first WAV had been added but then it stopped. I removed all the music and sound and it stopped at the same place which seems most odd. I will see if I can find an answer but it might be a struggle. I think it is important that you only use MP3 sound and music files if you want the shows to be Mac compatible. The sound issue seems critical. As you can see from my earlier posts even the MP3 settings seem to be sensitive. I think Dmitry and/or Igor need to look into this. Kind regards Peter

Gary, The only thing I can suggest is you go to File/create backup in zip, and do that. It will create a zip with all the resources for your show. If you the upload that to mediafire I could download it to my PC and see if I can create a mac executabel. I could also try removing the music to see if it made any difference. I am a bit baffled! Kind regards Peter

Gary, You seem to have a missing folder. Here are 2 screen shots one showing a show I did when doing some aspect ratio tests (hence its odd name) and yours. I have a resources folder at the end which is missing in your list. I don't know if this is the problem but it might be. The other thing I notice is that when I look at the File Info for all the other shows on my iMac they show the Version as 0.1. Yours shows the Version as PTE 6.03. Perhaps Tom could see if he finds the same anomalies. All my own shows I view on my Mac have been created using the Creat for Mac and I have zipped them for convenience. I hav e also downloaded several of Barry Beckhams shows and have no problem with any of them. They are not MP4 files either. Peter

Sorry - I just felt grumpy. Glad it might be of some use. Peter

So why the questions in the first place? If I had known you did not want to know the answer I wouldn't have bothered to waste my time trying to provide answers. Peter

I don't know how big your show is but if it is a reasonable length you could post it here and I will download it and see if I can play it. You could post a very short show see if that works and if not post the pte file so some Mac users could have a look at that and test whether or not they can get the Mac executable to run. I would have a go for you if it would help. Kind regards Peter

Hi Garry, It is really simple. You need PTE 6 De Luxe. "WnSoft has announced the release of PicturesToExe Deluxe 6.0, the photo slideshow software for PC providing a smart solution to combine photos and music into an admirable movie. Version 6.0 of the Deluxe edition brings new enhancements to the program, including 3D effects and the capability to create executables for Mac." At the left bottom of the main screen is the "Create Button". Click on this and you get several options one of which is to create an executable file for a Mac (aka Apple) computer. When the dialogue box opens choose to save the file as a ZIP. Send the zip to your friend (or take it to your local store if you like on a memory stick). Do NOT worry about the zip contents. When your friend receives the ZIP if he double clicks on it it will provide him with a single icon which will run the slideshow. He must have a Mac, as has already been pointed out, that uses Intel chips. In other words in needs to be a newish machine. I'm really not sure of the date but anything after 2006 should be OK I think. Kind regards Peter

Jean-Pierre once sent me a wonderful explanation of how some of the internal files in PTE worked. It was typical of his generosity that he spent time helping anyone and everyone who asked for assistance on this forum and he made all his work available to others freely. He will be sadly missed. My condolences to all his friends and family. Peter

Peter, I have just recorded the exact same piece of music I had the problem with using Audacity and recording direct from the web site. It now runs perfectly on the Mac. All you have to do is set recording to stereo mix. I used Audacity 1.3.11-beta (Unicode) which is the latest download from Source Forge. There is no Float command in the view menu as you can drag the relevant toolbar by grabbing its left hand edge. Look at View/Toolbars/Mixer Toolbar to check you have the correct one. I don't think you need to drag it anywhere actually, just make sure to select Stereo Mix in the right hand drop down. I would suggest you just start recording and then run the music from the web site you want to record you can always delete the first part. You should also be able to record radio programmes using this technique. The left hand output slider adjusts what I would have thought was the input Hope you have success. If not I'll try to post some screen shots. Tom, I think you must be right. I will see if I can determine any differences in the settings. The Mac must be more sensitive to whichever settings are causing this strange behaviour I guess. I am happy for now that I have at least found a workable method. Audacity will not do the same job on a Mac and something like Audio Hijack has to be used I believe but I have not tried any of the mac specific software for this purpose yet. As it would have to be moved to the PC to include the music in a PTE file it seems a bit pointless for now. Kind regards Peter

This is getting very puzzling the more I work on it. I downloaded Audacity onto my PC. Streamed a small sample of some audio from the same site as my previous recording was made from. I followed the short tutorial from the link I posted above. Used it in place of my original music. Created a Mac executable and IT WORKED. I will try a bit later to record a longer piece using Audacity and see if it still works. Odd if a free programme works when a quite expensive one does not! My audacity does not have a "What you hear" button! Kind regards Peter