wideangle

Barry That's a good observation and worth changing. In my case the converter doesn't even show up behind the PTE screen - it's actually minimised to the taskbar. Although it's busy doing the conversion, I have to click on its taskbar icon to bring it up to fullscreen to see what's happening. Regards wideangle

I do the same as davegee, and create an iso image with Videobuilder. I recently bought a 1TB portable USB drive, (these seem to have dropped quite a lot in price recently), and I burn all my isos to this now. The advantage of this approach is that I have a fairly permanent backup, in case the DVD ever gets damaged, and also, I can come back anytime to burn more copies, rather than having to burn them all in one session. There are a couple of good free disc burning packages which I use, which also have a host of other features. These are Imgbrn and CDBurner. Regards Wide angle

I think a Quick Start guide is a useful suggestion as secondary support, but newcomers to the program, and current users for that matter, really want direct, immediate solutions onscreen within the program. It's been raised a few times as to why the 'Preview from current position' is not displayed by default, since it is certainly a well-used tool. I would like to add my support for this as well. However my main suggestion for onscreen help within the program would be to add pop-up tips to tools, which appear when you hover the mouse over a tool. The extra benefit of this would be that space is not needed for labels like 'Preview' etc. Regards Wideangle

Mary I think that your #7 comment hits the nail on the head and is precisely why your suggestion is such a good idea, especially for newcomers. Ken Your comment 'Mary, I offered to pin your request -- no reply, so I guess you really did not want help. ken' is unhelpful. Clearly there was an intention of some kind, otherwise the suggestion would not have been made in the first place. As a suggestion to maybe help beginners get to grips with things, it is particularly worthwhile, and even in the few comments posted, there is already sufficient evidence to support it. Regards wideangle

Hi yachtsman1 I think that it's got to be accepted these days that manufacturers will use the tactic of not updating drivers for older models, in order to get you to buy a new model! I've had Epsons for years, and have had an all-in-one (Stylus Photo 730) for some time now which does all I want (print, scan, photocopier, double sided printing, CD printing, wifi, touchpanel, memory card reader, and more). I think that their current 'Expression' range offers similar features. I also have an A3 Stylus Photo 1400 with a continuous inkflow system which I bought on Ebay for a knockdown price and have never had an issue with that either. Some people like Epsons and some hate them - same for Canons and so on. I think it's often down to previous experiences with a particular make, such as jets blocking, paper misfeeds etc etc. My philosophy is that if something works for you, stick with it! It's worth saying that although there seems to be many comments about use of compatible ink cartridges, I've never had problems. I find a supplier whose product works and stick with it, saving a significant amount of money. Regards, wideangle

Is it more than a PTE problem? Is it the same situation in Windows file renaming? Regards Wideangle

For anyone interested there is currently a super deal on offer for Photoshop Elements 12 from PCWorld and others for £34!!! Sounds like a bargain. Regards wideangle

I appreciate that my input is not going to help with solving any current problems, but it will certainly avoid them happening in future. Make it a golden rule to use "Create Backup in Zip" which is under the "File" option, whenever you produce a new project. This will collect together a copy of all the files which have been used, together with the project file, and save them in the zip folder. Hence you have an instant backup for security, but also, you can unzip the file to any location and run it from there. Regards wideangle

The issue of video builder freezing has been the subject of several discussions in the past, and the problem which you have encountered of video builder freezing may not be directly related to what else you are doing in PTE. I have experienced the same problem on various occasions with different versions of PTE. It always happens at the "burning started" message, followed by a lockup, after which the only way out seems to be to physically switch off the computer. I have looked at various options such as changing the burn speed, changing the brand of disk etc etc with no success. It sometimes happens when video is included in the show and sometimes not, so it seems to be quite random and there isn't a common theme. I can produce a number of different DVDs successfully then one day this will happen again. I've given up trying to track down the problem now, but knowing that it has been reported in the past, keep hoping that it will be resolved soon. I have quite a high spec machine and know that that side of things is not the cause. Regards wideangle

Shall we call that Jill's rule from now on?! wideangle

With the method Jill suggests, you can also use the mousewheel to change the value in the box. I think I've just discovered a bug with the method of typing into the box. Try changing the values for a few slides several times. After a couple of changes PTE refuses to apply the changes any more (apart from on the last slide you changed?) Regards wideangle

Just had a look at this and what I've tried is: Open a folder containing some pics. Set a sort order (eg By name or by date or by size etc etc) Select a few files randomly, for dragging into PTE. Now, to do the drag and drop you need to point onto any one of the Highlighted files, then hold the mouse button down to do the drag and drop. It seems that whichever file you point to in order to carry out the drag and drop, becomes the first one in the PTE list and the rest follow according to your chosen sort order. Regards wideangle

Hi DaveGee Just tried the link above to Dropbox. It goes there but then says that the file could not be found. Regards wideangle

Got it! Thanks for that,Dave. Regards, wideangle

Can someone help me out here? When I download and unzip any of these PTE zipped files, they show up with a PTEF filetype (whatever that is) and PTE doesn't recognise them. Shouldn't the filetype be pte? I get the same result if I use the built-in Windows7 unzipper and if I use 7-zip. Regards, wideangle.

Let me be the first to say that I also have been very impressed with TheDom's templates - I have bought quite a few of them myself. I keep looking at his website for new templates or extensions to old ones for PTE, but nothing seems to have been updated or requests from customers answered since about May 2012, so not sure what is happening there. Perhaps TheDom can update us as to what he may have in the pipeline about future templates and when we might see some. Would love to buy some more! Regards, wideangle

Hi everybody, I posted a comment on Oct 29th about a similar problem regarding the behaviour of the exe progress bar but no-one replied! This is what I'd said: "I produced a couple of shows recently with beta 13 which ran OK on my PC, and which produced DVDs correctly, but had the same problem as each other when I tried to produce exe files for PC. In both cases the progress bar for the exe production popped up and the percentage figure was displayed as you would expect. The odd thing was that the percentage figure was shown as a negative number and in one case went to about -800% before the progress box just disappeared. (That show was about 25 mins and was a mixture of stills and video, and all the videos had been optimised for use by PTE). The exe file not surprisingly did not play. I didn't keep those shows at the time and have not been able to reproduce the situation as yet. Also I wasn't able to check whether the same behaviour occurred with previous versions of PTE. Has anyone else experienced this?" I can add more to that now. All the videos were 1920 by 1080. I rebuilt the project after converting the videos to 1280 by 720 and the production of the exe worked fine. So I'm really supporting Mary's observation about the progress bar. Regards, wideangle

Hi Dom Pleased that your website is up and running again, but it didn't seem to have been updated for some months - have you stopped producing those excellent templates of yours? Also, this forum shows you as having joined only on 9 August 2012 - surely a forum malfunction? Regards, wideangle

It could be a whole new ballgame in two years time with technology, but I have to say that at the moment I produce DVDs for friends on a very regular basis. Regards, wideangle

Hi TCG I suspect that the problem you have is that when you run a PTE project from drive G you are getting the blue screens saying 'File not found'. Right? The suggestions from yachtsman and conflow refer to straight mass file copying which doesn't solve that problem, as you already seem to have discovered. Depending on how many PTE projects you have, the best way is to use the suggesion above of opening each one then doing a File -> Backup in zip. You can then copy the zipped file to whichever drive you like and it will always run when you unzip it at that new location. I've said in the past that a good routine to get into is to do a backup in zip each time you work on a project. You'll never have another problem of missing files. Famous last words!! Regards wideangle

Aside : Yes Barry, that was Chester. I sat just behind you and thoroughly enjoyed the day (and also a couple of The Maltings presentations in Ely)!! Thanks, wideangle

Hi yachtsman1 Obviously I wouldn't buy Photoshop CS6 just for its video editing! Given enough pennies in the pocket I would buy it for all sorts of other reasons. I think Premiere is a different ball game altogether. No, I was just wondering what the video editing features were like, and the direct compatibility with PTE, by getting the thoughts of people who have already used them. I keep seeing these comments about loading videos into PTE then finding they do not work as expected, so someone else suggests using various video converters to solve the problem. Seems a bit messy to me. Regards, wideangle

At some point, as and when I can afford it, I will consider moving up to Photoshop CS6, having read lots of favourable comments about it. One area which has caught my eye is the ability to handle video editing with the traditional timeline and transitions, and also to be able to apply the Photoshop tools of levels, curves, adjustment layers and smart objects etc etc. I suppose I'm really just asking for comments and thoughts from anyone who uses these features, and whether resulting videos are directly compatible with and exportable to PTE. Regards, wideangle

Thank you, Dom and Lin, for the quick response. Yes, that's the one I was thinking of - I could watch it time and time again - very mesmerising! (Welcome back, Dom - your absence has been missed, I'm certain) Regards, wideangle

I've just been reading a post by Lin Evans where he referred to the amazing work of Jean-Pierre Dollangere in connection with PTE. I fully endorse Lin's praises of JPD, and might add that Lin doesn't do a bad job either, in his support of PTE!! Sadly JPD is no longer with us, but it jogged my memory about something I'd seen on the forum some time ago which I feel sure was by him. I can't quite locate it, or remember the detail about it, but I do remember that it was an amazing effect. What I do remember was that it simulated the wire frame pencil drawing of a building as you watched the slideshow. I have two questions. Can anyone else recall what I am referring to? Was there any explanation of the method involved, because I think JPD had said that he would make it available? Regards, wideangle