ksf

Hi Ron, I agree with some of your points that we need to be careful about the use (or misuse) of animation. Do you remember when Cokin filters were all the rage. Everyone went overboard with them (we saw tobacco skies, speed, and multiple image fiters and so on). After the novelty wore off things settled down and people returned to concentrating on taking good images rather than dressing them up with special effects. I think we are seeing the same thing happen with v5. People are experimenting. They are keen to learn the new features, to learn their limitations, what will or won't work well in a sequence, and so on. I think (hope) things will settle down once people have got it out of their system. We should use just the occasional piece of animation effects (panning & zooming will probably be the most common) for impact - so you are quite right if we overdo it the sequence will lose impact and appear gimmicky. One feature of v5 that I think will be used more is the ability to have transparent (png) images on different layers and to alter the opacity of them independantly. Exciting times lie ahead and I look forward to seeing some interesting creations (and trying to fathom out how they have been made).

Audio Visual in my dictionary states "involving and directed at both sight and hearing". So, if someone wanted to they could incorporate video into a sequence. Why not? I'm not saying it would be any good, or particularly easy to watch, but it is possible and given the right subject matter could be very effective. To some extent you (Barry and Ron) are missing the point about wanting to make water move. I don't even particularly want to myself, but these sorts of challenges are an ideal way to exercise the old grey matter and think about how to achieve something then go and do it. Surely it is far better to learn techniques and products this way rather than rely on others to produce templates then have them amend them for your purposes? In other threads recently there has been several occasions when people (The Dom, JPD, ...) have issued templates. These have been excellent and I hope they continue to show what can be achieved with PTE. However, rather than people studying them, analysing them, and experimenting for themselves they have continually asked for changes to the templates so they can just substitute their photographs - which to me is basically like having someone else make their sequence for them. In another thread I asked if effects could be imported from ProShow (Ron's comment was "too many effects spoil a sequence"). Having had some success in international competition I think I understand what makes a good sequence, but I would still like to know if it could be done. Some would even say that the panning and zooming are not required but we have already seen some superb examples of how they can be used. We all have to move with the times, otherwise why would we have ever progressed from the magic lantern?

Hi Fred, Yes, sorry my comment was a bit misleading. I'll try to explain it a bit better: I have seen some fade effects used in ProShow that I have sometimes thought I'd like to use in PTE. For example, what I can best describe as a "windmill sail" or "cheesecake" type of rotating fade. Others being the different variations on the mosaic style of fades. My question is that as we can cut and paste slide effects from one PTE show to another I wondered if it is possible to copy a fade effect from ProShow and incorporate it into a PTE show? Or is the only way to try and recreate the effect manually within PTE using animated object layers and PNG cutouts etc?

I have seen many examples of slideshows produced in PTE and ProShow and I agree with Mike that the quality of PTE stands out far and above ProShow (Gold or Producer). I can't explain why this should be the case but I wonder if PS applies some form of image compression when it saves a show? Perhaps other more learned members of the forum could shed light on this. One other thing I would like to know is can you import an effect from PS and use it in PTE?

I would be interested in giving it a go - it sounds like an interesting challenge. If you would like to send some images I will see what I can do with them though I can't promise you a completion date as it may take me a day or two to come up with something (bit like waiting for 5.9...)

Hi Lin, Some beautiful artwork and some beautiful photgraphs. You have captured superb detail in the close-up shots and made effective use of the panning and zooming abilities of v5. Personally though, I would have preferred it without the snow-globe effects which felt out of place.

Hi Bert, There are certain features in version 5 that are not yet activated - unfortunatley the ability to "Run application after last slide" is one of them. It should be enabled in the next beta release which we are led to believe is due out soon... and which we are all eagerly awaiting....

Hi Pat, When I first started testing with v5 I had a similar problem whereby at the end of the sequence the first couple of seconds of the music would start again after the last image had been shown, before the show would close and return to the desktop. Here's what I found: In v5 if you look at your last slide in the Timeline view you will see that it is followed by a thin green line with the comment "End of Last Slide" next to it. This green line needs to be adjusted so that it is positioned at the end of your music. If the green line is not visible (i.e too far to the right after the end of your music duration then the music will begin to repeat itself. The green line is part of the last image so to adjust it you can either: - drag your last image along the timeline so that the green line meets the end of your music; or. - double click on the last image and go to the Main properties tab where you will find a box marked "Display slide for". Enter a value in the box to effectively extend the green line so it meets the end of your soundtrack (do not over extend it so that it exceeds the duration of the music or you will make it repeat). I apologise if this explanation seems confusing but if you look at the Timeline view and experiment with the timings then hopefully it will make sense. Adding a few seconds silence to the end does work but only because it effectively puts the green line back within the music duration. What it also does is give you/the projectionist time to hit the escape key to end the show and return to the desktop. It seems also to be avoiding the problem rather than trying to prevent it happening in first place but I think it may all be resolved when we get 5.9 and full music synchronisation back.

Hi Bob - Welcome to the forum. Yes, your captions will be ok as you have made them part of the image itself. I make all my titles and captions this way and have never actually felt the need to use the caption facility within PTE.

What a fantastic forum this is. The wealth of knowledge out there is great. I've just used the slice tool for the first time (though it took me a while to find it) and already I can see possibilities for using it. So a big thankyou to Sylvia for asking the question, and to Ray for passing on his notes.

Hi Geoff, If I had any criticism it would be that I don't think you have enough separation between the volume of your voiceover and the background music as I struggled to pick up some of the words. The gaps between the sentences also felt a little long in places. Overall, I found it a very pleasing, relaxing, sequence to watch though I would have liked to see more of the close-up flower shots interspersed throughout the sequence rather than just shown at the end.

Hello Mike, YouSendIt.com is a website that allows you to send large files to other people over the internet. It works very well and it is simple to set up an account for yourself. When you send a file you receive an email to confirm that the site has uploaded the file correctly and the recipient also receives an email with a reference link to your file for downloading. Best of all it's free!

Hi Ron, Yes, you are right - the .exe is not included and you have to copy this into the folder manually. What the template does save, however, is all the components necessary to recreate the .exe should the need arise.

Hi Ron, I've seen this message too and the answer is as easy as opening your 4.48 pte file using v5 then saving it as a new pte file. For example, if the original show was called "holiday", I would open it and resave it as holiday-v5" then you have both versions available to use. The only thing to be wary of is if your v4.48 show uses features that are not yet activated in the beta 5. So far I have not encountered any problems with any of my shows but I do always run them as v5 versions first to make sure they still run okay after conversion. Once resaved in this way then the v5 version is the one you can burn to dvd.

Hi Dave, No flames (I promise)...it's a good question as people possibly don't use them enough. Templates are extremely useful for a number of reasons. - Have you ever worked on more than one computer or made a joint production with anyone else and had trouble moving images etc between PC's? - Have you ever wanted to create a backup of your sequence or move it to another file directory? - Has your computer ever crashed and corrupted any of your disks with your sequences on and then you can't recreate a sequence becuase you've lost the information? All of these scenarios can be catered for if you use templates. They store all the information and files used in your sequence. That includes the PTE file, the .exe, jpegs, and sound files - the whole lot. You create one by using "File\Create Template from this show". It creates a folder with a .pt extension. This can then be copied to cd or to another machine or to another file directory. You can then open it up in the new location and access the files from within PTE. I make templates of all my shows and off load them to cd for backup purposes. In v5 there is also a new feature "Create backup in zip" this essentially does the same thing as the templates so you will soon have a choice of which method to use. Hope this helps,

John, As Al has pointed out the features you want to use are not currently activated in the Beta 5 release. I take your point that perhaps these features should have remained available but I rather suspect that these 'basic' functions as you refer to them will no longer be 'basic'within the new version. We must remember that Igor and his team have more or less rewritten the whole program to give us the brilliant and promising features already seen in v5. I suspect that it is no longer simply a matter of switching from one image to the next at the press of a mouse button especially as each image could now have objects and animation applied to them. The process of switching between these images would be more complex to achieve - hence we will all have to wait for them to be reinstated once Igor is happy with them. With regards to your comment about wanting to zoom as well then this would open up a whole new bag of worms to sort out if you wanted to also have this under manual control. How would it be controlled?, what pace of zoom?, which area of the image to zoom? etc etc. You could try making use of the push effect that Al has mentioned to provide your panning effects (it works quite well if the panoramas are correctly aligned) then follow certain key images with an enlarged (ie zoomed) version of the image which you could fade in/out using the currently available v4 functions. It may not be as ideal as you would like but nothing should be "too much effort" when preparing a presentation.

Hi Al, You are quite correct - see "General Note" below. Bert, if you are using v4.48 then you can achieve the same result by creating a template as per Brian's reply above. "General Note"- What this has highlighted (and has happened before) is that unless people start their queries by telling us what version they are using then it can be confusing - perhaps we should try to encourage some sort of standard approach to raising questions. Eg to start by stating "I'm using PTEv5.'n', Audition v'n', Photoshop v'n', ... etc" then ask the question. Should this appear as a separate guideline somewhere on the forum, I don't know if such a place exisits for tips on how best to use the forum...

Hi Bert, To answer your other question "Is there a way to save or copy all the pictures that are in the slide list, in a separate folder on my computer?" Yes there is - if you use File...Create Backup in Zip...this will create a backup zip file of your sequence. You can then copy this to another folder and unzip it. When it has been unzipped the new folder will contain your PTE project files, sound files, and all the images used in your show - all in one handy folder.

Hi Gary, I think you've answered your own question ("I don't know why it was fixed"). If you have such large jpeg images spaced close together as you had in your 1 minute show then you are asking an awful lot from your graphics and internal memory drivers to load each image fast enough to complete the fade before loading the next image. That is why, as you have so rightly pointed out, the final images required in your sequence need to be optimised. If your show had been 10 minutes long with 26 large images then you may have got away with it. Still I'm glad you have resolved the issue.

Maybe its a problem with Vista? After all, in the claimed 50,000,000 lines of code there are bound to be some bugs lurking in there...

Hi Al, I agree with you and I think this was a favourite amongst most, if not all, of the audience at Cirencester - it certainly had the biggest Wow factor - maybe back then it was just a bit ahead of its time? A deserving winner.

Hi everyone, I have created a show that has a camera shutter sound effect firing 12 seconds into the start. This coincides with a camera shutter effect "flashing" on the screen (technique borrowed from one of The Doms demos). The timing works perfectly when played in preview mode. The problem I have is that when I double-click on the .exe file, the "flash" image effect appears .25 of a second after the sound effect. However, if I escape from the sequence and double click the .exe again , the second and all subsequent times after that it runs perfectly in synch until I start the pc again and the problem recurs. It's got me confused as I can't fathom why it appears out of synch on the first run but perfectly in synch on subsequent runs. The other problem is that if I want to send this show to someone else or enter it into a festival than I can't be certain that it will run correctly when played for the first time. Has anyone else noticed this with any of their shows or can anyone explain why it is happening. I have not noticed this problem with any of my other shows (I created this one in 5.8u).

Hi Dom, I have produced several shows which are run from menus and sent them to other people on CD as you want to. I create a specific folder directly on my C: drive then place all the pte exe files within that folder. When I create the menu.exe all the button objects point to that folder to find the appropriate show to run. I then copy the entire folder to the CD. From experience I have found it works best if the other person copies the contents of the CD directly onto their C: drive, so replicating the file structure of my original. I provide instructions on the cd label for the person to create a desktop shortcut to the menu.exe screen and they can then run the shows at will. I do this because I have known instances of where shows have not run smoothly straight from the cd. I think it may be a result of different computer speeds, cd drive speeds, and read-ahead buffers, that sometimes causes a show to jerk if run from the cd, so I always recommend copying and running from the hard drive. Hope this helps.

Hi Dom, The extended version is superb, I particularly like the way the background image changes as the pages turn and the rotation movement is so smooooth. Well Done!

Hello Lin, Jean-Pierre, and everyone else who has given feedback on this topic. I find myself torn between agreeing with Lin (and others) for requesting additional options to refine certain effects and simply wanting to get my hands on the next release. I do not want to stop people making suggestions, far from it especially as we will all benefit from them, but I don't want Igor to feel that he has to build these sorts of enhancements in just yet - guess I'm just being too keen to try the next version!