Peter S

I have produced a show with a menu and three parts. It all works perfectly as a PC production. DVD is a different proposition and I have not been able to figure out a way to get the menu working properly so would appreciate some guidance. It took me two attempts to get the burn to work. The first at 8 times speed on a DVD-R failed, the second at 6 times DVD+R was fine. Played via a Panasonic DVD player that is part of a "Freeview Box" that has a hard drive and DVD recorder/player (for recording TV) the picture quality is fine. It is however very difficult to get the menu working properly. The menu has 4 items on 2 pages. I cannot see any way of flipping between the pages. The only way to get to the second page is by pressing the number buttons for 3 or 4 - not very elegant. The < and > keys do not seem to have any effect. The controller does not have a MENU button and although the show returns to the menu if the STOP button is pressed it will not return to the menu after a section of the show has been completed. There does not seem to be any way to operate the Navigation buttons when viewing the DVD Menu screen. Do I need to programme these in some way? (The ones for the Navigation Bar in the PC version I have programmed and they work perfectly.) Commercial DVDs work perfectly on this machine. I also played the DVD on a cheap stand alone DVD player connected to a different TV. The remote for this DVD player does have a menu button and the DVD returned happily to the menu when this button was pressed. The page function on the menu screen still did not work. As a separate issue I noted that the colour on the second DVD/TV combination was all washed out. I would expect some variation but not as big a difference as this showed. Is a wide variation in colour something that is expected?

Hi Igor, It's great to know that version 5.2 is already under construction. Your new planned feature will delight many users I am sure but .... you can have a rest on Christmas day you know 2007 has been a great year for PTE fans and 2008 promises to be just as good. All best wishes for the festive season and for good health and happiness in 2008. Peter

I can add that I installed 5.1 and scans with Zone Alarm, Xoftspy, Adaware and AVG anti root kit all come up clear. Kind Regards Peter

Hi Peter, Yes I see this but it does not seem logical because if you take the three slides and add up their individual durations shown in O & A you get 33 seconds instead of 30 for the show. The slide duration should surely be the same however you view this information and not change between O & A and other screens? I seem to remember a post where Igor mentioned that he was planning to split fade in and fade out so each could be adjusted for a single slide. This could make the differences in slide duration even more complex. I cannot see any advantage in the current situation but I could simply be missing the point. Kind regards Peter

Igor et al. I am not sure if this is a bug or not but I do find it confusing. This is a very simple example! If I set up a show with 3 slides 10 secs each and no transitions. I get a 30 second show. If I now change all the transitions to 1.5 second fade in/out I still get a 30 second show and this is how it looks on the Timeline ... BUT if I look at the duration for the first two slides in O&A it shows each of these slides has a duration of 11.5 seconds. I only noticed this when I was trying to match a voice over with printed words appearing on screen. Is there any particular reason for this? Kind regards Peter

Hi Dabbler, I would suggest that before you do anything else you go to the Tutorial section of this forum and download the PTE user Guide. On page 47 and onwards you will find all about the Project Options. Page 62 and onward explains about Video Builder and DVD authoring. It is an essential read for all new users and many more experienced ones too. I keep it on my desktop. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7202 Kind regards Peter

Hi Mike, I have a button on my TV remote that allows me to change the aspect ratio of whatever I am viewing. Can't you do this on your TV? Kind regards Peter

Hi Al, I have seen one or two articles that suggest that Adobe Gamma is not a very suitable tool for calibrating LCD monitors. I certainly found it "not very helpful" and now use a Spyder 2 as several other people seem to do. I am not sure if this has any relevance to your issues but I would appreciate any comments that you have on Gamma and LCDs. Kind Regards Peter

Hi MIke, I think this would also allow me to achieve what I wanted to in my post under the new suggestions thread. I was in fact trying to move an object away from a zero original start point. Multiple keypoint movement for single object. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7702 Kind regards Peter

I sometimes find I have spent a long time creating a specific animated movement for a single object that exists on a slide with several other objects that move independently. I then want to change the relationship of the first object to the others. Ideally I would like to select all the key points for this single object and simply shift them along the time line in O&A. I cannot see any way of doing this at present so I have to make some careful notes and then move them individually by exactly equal amounts. I would love to be able to "shift click" all the key points for the object and then just move them en-mass. Sorry if this has been aired before but I could not find any reference relating to single objects - only the moving of multiple objects which as I understand it Igor has said is a major difficulty. Kind regards Peter

Hi Argonaut, If you are going to be doing a lot of this sort of thing it would be worth your while to learn about layer masks in photoshop. They enable you to fine tune your selection by painting with black and/or white brushes. Layer masks are non-destructive and you can go back and edit them on another day. Once you have saved something where you have used the eraser over enthusiastically you might have a problem. If you search for Photoshop Layer Masks you should find a few goo0d tutorials. This link takes you to one that should give you a pretty good idea of what it's all about. Have fun! http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut003_3.htm Kind Regards Peter

Dom, By the PTE site I actually mean this Forum - sorry I was not too clear. I have tried to upload a picture of what I see in my PC to help explain see below. Kind Regards Peter

Hi Dom, I have had a problem downloading your files from the PTE site for some time. I have normally solved this by going to your own site but I would like to know why I have this difficulty. I suspect it might be due to some settings in Zone Alarm but have been unable to isolate the cause. I have tried with Firefox and IE so do not think it is a browser problem. Any suggestions? Please. Kind regards Peter

Peter, Al and Nobeefstu, Many thanks for your suggestions. I will not have access to my PC for a few days but will try these ideas out early next week. Al, I think I will also have to experiment a bit with the music side. Switching out to Photoshop and back to PTE the music seemed to start again in the same place with no problem. I have also used the navigation bar to jump back and forth and that seems to work OK. So I will just have to see how things pan out. I was hoping to have music with the main map but not with the pictures that the buttons open. Though I guess I could attach music separately to the individual pictures if I wanted to. Thanks agin Kind regards Peter

After a bit of a layoff I have been playing with buttons and hyperlinks. I thought I would try opening a picture from a button as I wanted to be able to show a route around a map with buttons that could be clicked on to show a view from the selected point. I suppose I should not have been surprised that my PC promptly opened the picture (a jpg) in my default viewer Photoshop. When I closed Photoshop the slide show continued from where it had left off. What I really wanted though was a full screen picture sitting on the screen until I chose to close it. I did not want to use a copy of the slide that had a very long display time (this seems like a workaround) but it may be the only simple solution. Can anyone suggest any elegant way that this could be achieved? Congratulations to Igor - the buttons look good and the change when hovering works fine. Kind Regards Peter

Hi Barry and Carol, Loved the pictures - so sharp so nicely saturated. It's a shame you may not get another chance to fly higher for longer! The traffic may be bad but I thought you'd given up the to and from work bit Kind Regards Peter

Hi Ron, I have just downloaded from Mediafire without any problems so I suspect the problem is at your end. Could your firewall be blocking the download? Kind Regards Peter

Hi Don, Observer, Have a look at Lin and Jeff's excellent PDF which you will find under the Tutorial section of the forum. It will save you hours. Kind Regards Peter

Hi Mariner, It is generally considered to be better to stick to one format in your slide shows and not to mix portrait and landscape unless you use some form of animation or perhaps a frame to hold one or more portrait images. It is common practice to use your monitor resolution to set your picture size. 1024 x 768 used to be the most popular but 1280 x 1024 is used by many people now. If you asre using widescreen you may want to select a 16:9 ratio. If you want to pan or zoom images you might like to start with larger images to ensure you do not zoom too much and loose quality. I am not familiar with the Nikon software so can't offer any help with that but I think you will find that most of the people on the forum use either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. If you have a crop tool available in your NIkon software you can simply crop your images to your selected resolution and save them as jpgs to use in your slide show. If you haven't done so already have a look at the link Barry posted. It's well worth reading. Kind Regards Peter

I would appreciate it if anyone can give me some advice on the best way to get a good quality panoramic map into one of my shows. I have a digital mapping programme that allows me to show 1:25000 scale maps at various zoom factors on my screen 1290 x 1024. I have tried capturing images using Freestone, saving them as Tiffs, joining the individual captures in Photoshop and saving as JPG. The results are not too bad but are less clear than I would like. My objective is to produce a moving map (following Lin's and Thedom's previous work) and that's why I want a panoramic map built up from these TIFFS. Any suggestions as to how to improve my process and results would be much appreciated Many thanks Peter

Hi Igor, It's great to hear you are back and I hope you enjoyed your holiday. Six years without a break is real dedication but may not be the best thing for your health. We all want you to be around and building PTE for years to come. So please don't work too hard and take a bit more time out in the future. Most, if not all of us, are delighted with the current features in PTE and I certainly believe that nothing is so urgent that you can't take time to have a holiday. Very best wishes Peter

Hi Pauline, I have had several problems with CA Internet Security Suite affecting my slide shows. I also had a problem when Igor sent me my Registration Key. The CA software changed the zip file extension to EFW and it took me some time to find out that this was a CA security measure! Not very helpful. I have changed to using Zone Alarm which looks very similar to CA's product. (I understand that the CA firewall came from Zone Alarm originally.) I have had no problems with Zone Alarm. Kind Regards Peter

Hi Jeff, Many thanks. Still loads of new things to learn and old things to relearn. Can't wait to get it all in one place and I can only admire how much effort you and Lin must have been putting into the User Guide. I have masses of information but I am afraid it is not that well structured and sometimes it takes an age to find some forgotten gem. I am sure many others are waiting as keenly as I am for your publication day. Kind Regards Peter

Hi Al In the main menu bar under View - Advanced Options there is an item "Path and name off sound editor". I thought this may be the answer but I cannot discover what it does if anything. I tried changing it to Adobe Audition but it seems to have reverted to sndrec.32 all by itself. Any ideas? I thought I remembered Igor mentioning an intention to add a facility for sound similar to Ctrl W but cannot find anything by searching the forum. Kind Regards Peter

Beth, It's a bit hard to add to what Lin has already said. The only thing that might not be clear is that (as far as I am aware) you can't have every slide on screen for an infinite time. There must be a transition after some time interval but if you never want the viewer to see it automatically you have to make the time for each slide very long. So set your time interval in Project Options Main tab to several minutes and then allow the viewer to use Pg Up Pg Dwn keys or set up the navigation bar as Lin described. Kind Regards Peter