wideangle

Now that P2E is moving to include the Mac platform, which will need more man hours for development, is it reasonable to assume that the development under Windows will slow down in order to accommodate this? Regards, wideangle

Sorry Dom I forgot to mention that I was using XP. Regards, wideangle

Hi and Help! Does this work with PTE v5.6? I just tried it (ie customise slide -> run external application etc, having set up a 'Movies' folder and renamed the files 1,2.... ). Must be doing something wrong because PTE ignores all that and just runs the normal slideshow. Regards, wideangle

Yes, that looks much more natural this time. Well done!! Regards, wideangle

I tend to agree with Peter's comment. It is a very busy presentation, with lots going on, which detracts from the main image. Having said that, the quality of the photography is once again of a very high standard with crystal-clear detail. Regards, wideangle

Hi TheDom, As always, the quality of the photography and the level of detail are both excellent. The idea of the curling page stack is good, but for me, the curling doesn't work. I feel that the way that the page curls doesn't look natural or normal. Maybe it's just me...........

Eric Go to www.faststone.org, and have a look at their two freeware offerings for picture manipulation, and also resizing - both very good. Regards, wideangle

Hello Shito. I guess you have two copies of PTE open at the same time and you are trying to copy one or more slides from one project, then paste into the other project. This does not work. You need to carry out the process from within just one opened copy of PTE. As Ralph says : Open your first project and select the slides you wish to copy. USE FILE -> OPEN to open your second project. The PASTE option should not be greyed out if you do it this way. Regards, wideangle.

Here's my simple technique for handling my PTE shows. 1. I save every show I create in zipped format by going to File ->Create Backup in zip. By doing that, all the slides I have used for the show are automatically copied together in that one folder. I don't have to worry about which folders the originals are in. 2. Whenever I want to run a show I simply unzip it to wherever I like. It will always run, with no path errors. 3. If I feel the need to, I sometimes also add other project related files to that zip folder, for completeness. Regards, wideangle

As an extra comment to supplement Lin's last paragraph, I have a collection of 'silence' files of 1,2 5 secs duration which I created with Audacity. I can use different combinations of those inserted into PTE before I insert the 'real' music. 1,2, 5 replicates coinage and various combinations give you any total. I suppose you could work in units of 0.1, 0.2, 0.5 etc or whatever, if you wished. Regards, wideangle.

Hi Gayland VB doesn't use the exe files - it uses the pte project files. Start PTE Click on the 'Create' button then choose DVD Video Disk Use the Explorer pane to navigate to one of your PTE project files (eg proj.pte) Drag the file down to the area at the bottom of the screen, to start building your DVD sequence Continue with as many more as you wish, in exactly the same way Move on to the next stage of designing your menu screen. Hope this helps, Regards, wideangle

Just go ahead and install beta20 following its instructions. It will install separately from beta4. You can then use 'Add Remove Programs' in Control Panel to uninstall the bet4 version if you wish. Any projects created with beta4 will still run OK with beta20. Regards, wideangle.

Seems to be a very sensible way forward to me. Regards, wideangle

Fred, It's because of the impressive speed that Igor works at! He's now ahead of himself!! Many thanks yet again, Igor. Regards, wideangle

Hi jongru, I just meant that I clicked on 'Create' then chose the 'DVD Video Disk' option. When Video Builder starts up, just use the File Explorer panel on the left to find your PTE projects (NOT exe files) and drag each one onto the bottom area of the screen, where you build up your DVD sequence. You don't have to stop at 8 shows by the way. The next stage lets you design your DVD menu layouts. As for my problem, I rebuilt the DVD sequence, and successfully burned the DVD, so I've no idea what or where the fault was. Regards, wideangle.

I install and use each beta as it appears and have had no real problems in burning DVDs before. I am currently using beta 13 and have just found a problem. Randomly I chose beta 7 and the same problem occurred. Here's the scenario. I have 8 separate PTE shows which I want to burn to a DVD with a front-end menu. Those 8 shows play perfectly by themselves and have no problems. The shows are quite basic, with no pan or zoom effects. I choose a menu template and choose a 4x2 option so that I get all my thumbnails on one screen. The DVD creation process starts, with the converting of the files to MPEG2. That works OK. The menu converts to MPEG2. That's OK also. During the VOB files multiplexing the program terminates with the error 'Author.exe Abnormal Program Termination' I have tried to isolate the problem with no success. PTE Videobuilder tells me that the DVD would be 3.21 GB and play for 1hr 03 min if it worked. If I stick with a 4x2 layout but only use a max of 4 shows, it works OK. If I use a 2x2 layout with more than 4 shows so that it uses 2 pages for the menu, I get the error. If I use a 3x2 layout with a max of 6 shows, it works. I'm lost for ideas at the moment - what am I missing here?? Regards, wideangle

What happens if you go up to 'View' on the top menu bar and try switching between Classic View, Horizontal View, Timeline View etc. Does this bring into view anything you are missing?? Regards, wideangle.

Thanks John and Brian for those helpful comments. If I do go ahead with a purchase at this stage, I had already picked out an advertised system. It's just that they were giving me the choice between Vista Home Premium 32 bit or Vista Home Premium 64 bit for the same price. I'm not too clear about which offers the best option for me in relation to the area of interest I mentioned. I was told that while more powerful, the 64 bit option has more incompatibility problems, but not sure how true the last point is. (Brian - it is a Quad core system, and does have an Nvidia graphics card.) Regards, wideangle

I'm looking to replace my computer, and I'm pondering between Vista 32 bit and Vista 64 bit in a new system. My hobby and main use for a computer is photo and video editing, and I'm a long-time keen supporter of PTE. I'm assuming that PTE is OK with either system? I think the main point of my mail is to ask opinions of people who use a computer in the same way as me, and who have moved over from the 32 bit environment to Vista 64 bit. Have you been satisfied/disappointed? Any recommendations? Many thanks, Regards, wideangle.

Zipping up to a memory stick of a suitable capacity is a quick, cheap and easy way of moving between machines as well. Regards, wideangle

Hi Colin. I looked on the page that you gave the link to, tried to download the trial version of the product from there, but it gave 'Address not found'. I thought I would do a search to get it from elsewhere, but discovered that there seems to be quite a bit of adverse criticism around for that particular product in terms of spyware. In any case, the 2909 error problem went away after I rebuilt the PTE file. Regards, wideangle

Colin, It can't just be Vista. I'm using XP - see earlier post. Regards, wideangle.

Some of you will no doubt be well aware of this, but I wasn't! I've just stumbled on this accidentally while trying to add a text object through the Objects and Animation option, and trying to decide which font to use for a title. First add some text. If you then double click inside the drop-down box showing the font name it becomes highlighted. Make sure that your mouse pointer stays over the font name. You can then use your mouse wheel to run through your fonts and see the effect immediately, making it easy to find a suitable font. (The up and down arrow keys also work here). (I know that similar approaches work in other packages but hadn't got it to work here until I realised that the mouse pointer must stay over the font name!) Hope this helps a few people. Regards, wideangle

Hi TheDom, You have got some very interesting friends there!! Regards

Nobeefstu Thanks for that. I had a look at it but all that I could glean from it was that it told me that error 2909 occurred after the Vob generation, which I knew anyway! After that I threw the towel in and decided to regenerate the suspect slideshow. The dvd with the full collection of slideshows burned OK after that, so I was able to move on. I'm still no wiser what error 2909 was, but am still curious to know.......... Many thanks, wideangle.