wideangle

Have a look at the four free programs at www.faststone.org. One is a batch converter, for resizing, cropping etc. but all are extremely useful.

Al, I'm sorry that you seem to have taken some of the comments in this thread a little personally, because I doubt that anyone can deny that you offer as much help and support as anyone, and on a regular basis. In connection with other observations, I still think that it is essential to have a much more detailed Help file within PTE, but there was never any suggestion to aim for the detail of an Adobe file! That would be futile in aiming to help the beginner, and totally unnecessary. No, just an outline of each function is all that is needed. The idea of incorporating links from a Help file to useful sites etc is maybe OK as an extra, but I go back to my previous point - you want help to be at hand when you are actually using PTE, and at that particular time you may not be on-line, and therefore not have access to that kind of help. Also, creating a Help file at this moment in time is also a non-starter - you just don't waste time on it at a beta stage.

This is provoking a lot of discussion, with strong views at both extremes! Those of you who have been around a long time and have seen the program develop and know it like the back of your hand don't want a manual, while newcomers do tend to get started OK, but find the second stage of learning quite slow. For a beginner, what are the effects of the tick boxes Main page, Transparent to selection, Perspective correction for zoom all about? What is the difference between the 3 options in Mode? The idea of trawling through the forum when you are a beginner in the middle of trying to produce a new work of art is not really an option - you want some guidance at your fingertips. I think the answer here is a compromise. The Help option within PTE surely is the best option, although I realise that at the moment there are other priorities for Igor and his colleagues. At the moment it is hardly even a skeleton Help system. It needs a short paragraph summary of each option on each screen display, to explain the basic function, no more - just enough to allow the beginner to pursue it and investigate that option.

I have EXACTLY the same problem as Bruce - a basic show which tested fine on all previous issues of PTE (no pan or zooms involved, just a 12 slide show with fades) but stuck at 99% on the burn using the 'Create DVD Disk' option in beta8, and then totally locked the computer.

Just to add to this - there are 4 superb little freeware programs at www.faststone.org for viewing, processing and handling files. (Put a tick in the advanced options on the photo resizer/batch renamer program). The image viewer is superb when you get used to the hidden menus around the four sides of the screen.

Thanks Ken - that obviously makes sense. And now............an apology. I've just got my new laptop - installed the relevant software (making sure it was the latest version 4, ie 4.48) - and it all works with Ulead!!!!!!!! So sorry for wasting your time. I'm still puzzled as to what the problem is on my desktop - can only think that something has been corrupted at some stage to cause Ulead not to recognise the file.

That's an interesting option Ken. I'll try it when I get a bit more time. I hadn't thought of trying no ticks because that's a bit of an oddity in itself - you would expect PTE to say "Hey, you haven't ticked a box yet, you can't progress any further". indeed, that is exactly what it ought to do, and will be a bug otherwise. If it does let you progress further without ticking boxes, it begs the question as to what settings it is using to create the avi - maybe the ones currently active from the custom avi settings??

Hi. As a newcomer to this area, it is very noticable how much comment is generated on DVD production from PTE when users try to use Ulead software, so I'd like to throw a few points into the melting pot, if I may. Let's leave out the custom avi approach for the time being. PTE offers what appears to be a simple and straightforward way of producing DVDs, by simply ticking checkboxes to use Adobe, Pinnacle or Ulead software, then loading the relevant package and burning the disk, remembering of course NOT to click on the 'Finish' button in PTE until the whole job is finished! It would appear that it generally works fine with Adobe and Pinnacle, but Movie Factory generates quite a few comments. This is what I have found. Observation 1 : When you tick the box for Adobe or Pinnacle, PTE will produce a file with an .avi extension, as you would expect. With Ulead, it creates a .ptev file. Observation 2 : PTE uses Movie Factory version 2. This program has long gone - we are on version 5 now! I have used version 5 for the DVD process and it doesn't recognise the video file produced by PTE. I'm led to believe theat the same is true for version 4 as well. A number of comments in different threads seem to confirm this. So, is it that PTE has not moved on to take account of changes in Movie Factory? Where would you get Movie Factory 2 from now, and why would you want to anyway? yes, I know that every time this issue crops up, people chip in with workarounds using custom avis, but that clouds the issue and is missing the point of why the tickbox approach doesn't seem to work for certain versions of Movie Factory. It would be helpful if Igor could clarify whether the problem is related to which version of Movie Factory is used, and what the situation is likely to be in PTE 5 when that element is implemented. (Is ptev an old codec? I can't seem to find it anywhere now? Thanks.

While I am a staunch supporter of PtoE v4.**, I have to say that this 'beta' release is a bad move, and is a likely to be a bit damaging to the reputation of what is a quality product. It is not developed fully enough yet to warrant being called a beta - alpha testing still has a long way to go. That is verified by the large number of critical comments so far, on what seem to be a wide range of problems. To use descriptions such as unbelievable, amazing, marvellous, or whatever, at this stage is misleading, although, given time, I am sure they will be the case. On a slightly different point, can I refer to the production of DVDs. This again has prompted a lot of discussion over a long period of time. Why is there still the suggestion of using Ulead DVDFactory 2 in the PtoE software- it is up to version 5 now? I bought the Ulead v5 product for use in this way, only to find that PtoE, when set up for Ulead MovieFactory, produces a video file with a ptev extension, which isn't recognised by MovieFactory 5!!! A friend tells me the same is true if you use the previous version of MovieFactory as well. Yes, i know I can play about with custom avis, but that is missing the point.