jfa

Judy, have a look at my post today: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index....st=0#entry49776 It's not as expensive as you think when you consider the money we all spend on our photography equipment, not to mention the PC cost. Good prices can be found on the NET and the end result is very satisfying.

An update to this thread. In mid December I took the plunge and purchased a Zoom H2 Personal Recorder, (US$175), and have been testing and using it extensively over the last month. I am extremely happy with the quality of the results and the functions that the H2 offers for making recordings to be used in AV shows. The quality of the sound this little unit produces continues to amaze me. I have used it to record steam trains working, street sounds in a busy city, aircraft at an air show along with crowd noise, a blues band in a noisey pub, bird song and sounds around the farm. All with stunning results. Having the tracks on a SD card in WAV format makes it very easy to download to my PC and work on the file in a sound editor. Checkout the Zoom H2 here: http://www.samsontech.com/products/product...6&brandID=4 For making an AV with a mix of background music and sounds I arrange the images with the backing track in PTE, then I preview the show while watching the screen from an adjacent room where I record the commentary on the H2, thus eliminating all PC noise. This voice track is then downloaded and mixed with the background track in my sound editor, checked, and final timing adjustments made and sound effects added. Some back and forth between PTE and my sound editor is needed to get timing perfect, but this should be eliminated soon when we get the basic sound editing functions in the upcoming version of PTE. To anyone wondering if they should use one of these, or similar, recorders I would wholeheartedly recommend it. It may not be very cheap but it is true value for money.

Hi Mike, if my memory severs me correctly, (and at my age that is not always the case), I have seen this function in PTE as a template that can be downloaded from the DOMs site. Have a look there:- http://www.thedom.fr/share/portal.php Also one of the best advantages PTE has is this forum and the people here. The level of friendly help here is unsurpassed anywhere else. My "optimal combination of tools" for creating AVs is Photoshop CS3 (and bridge), CoolEdit (now Adobe Audition) and PTE. I make executable PC/Digital Projector shows and the occasionally TV DVD. Many others have been tried but I decided on the above for the quality of the end product, flexibility and a simple work-flow, (the less applications involved for this the better).

I enjoyed your show very much Mark, thank for posting. A part of the planet I have never seen. Good images and your skill with the low-light photography is excellent. The audio was also a good choice matching the images well. The high ISO used in some shots did produce some noticable noise in the images but this was minor and didn't detract from the show. Thanks again, and welcome to the forum, more AVs to come in the future I hope.

Number 2 was even better, thanks.

Welcome to the forum Alan and congratulations on your first show. There were some nice images of an interesting city and you demonstrated your creativity in the way you showed some of them. Your choice of music was good and the Mozart link appreciated. The comments made earlier about the pan and zoom use I would agree with, as a general rule for any effect subtlety is the key word, where a little will have much more impact than a lot. The one area I would like you to think about is the mix of image formats. This is one of my pet subjects, maybe it stems from my days of multi-projector slide shows, but I believe that the format of the AV should be established with the first image and then maintained for the show. This is often a trap for people starting in AVs, switching back and forth from landscape to portrait format, going from full scree to wide screen, (black area above and below the image), and narrow to wide screen. This can be distracting and prevents the viewer from being immersed in the show. There are many techniques that can be used to allow the change from one image format to another without changing the overall format of the show, picture in picture, frames, backgrounds, etc. Many of these can be seen in shows posted here on the forum. You have talent as a photographer and you showed the ability to use the creative functions in PTE well. I'm looking forward to seeing more of your work in the future, thanks very much for sharing this with us.

Ron your question couldn't have been more timely. I had my hands, literately, on the keys to uninstall NAV from my PC at the time. I was aware of most of the pitfalls this involves but it was great to see the process layout so well presented by Brian, (thanks heaps Brian), to help us through this minefield. The decision to remove and replace NAV was prompted by the time and resources that NAV uses at startup and due to a general slowing of performance on my PC which I traced to NAV. Also a recent test conducted by a local PC magazine, (PC Authority Oct'07 edition), on Anti-virus software. They rated Norton AV 2007 at a low 68% effective. AVG came in at 83%, ZoneAlarm at 81%. The best was Kaspersky AV7 at 98% and the best free one was Avira AV Personal Edition at 92%. This magazine has a very good reputation for the depth, quality and independence of the testing they do so I decided to take the plunge. Thanks again everyone, this is just another example of how great this forum is.

Enjoyed your show Dave, nice images, thanks.

Gilio, I think your remake is an improvement. The new music is much more appropriate for winter scenes and I'm not sure if you rearranged/replaced any images but they look better to me. It may be that with the better music/subject match the impression of the images is also raised. Well done and thanks. I did still have text running off the screen. (see attached screen shot).

Welcome to the world of PTE A-Vs and the user forum Jen Jones, you will find lots of friendly help and advice here. You can get Audacity from here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ I would also suggest you download Lin and Jeff's excellent "PTE USER GUIDE" PDF document, which you will find under the Tutorial section of the forum. It will answer all/most of your questions and save you hours. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7202

I had problems with the download from MORTURN site too, however mediafire worked fine, thanks Ken. Now to watch the show.

I agree with Colin. PS Happy New Year to all on this forum.

I would like to second Xahu34 and Henri. This function is one I have been patiently waiting for to be added to PTE as it was promised some time ago, (along with basic sound editing functionally - fade in/out, cropping, volume adjustments, etc).

Al, the rotating one dollar coin was fine as was the scrolling text at the end on my 1280x960 screen which showed the overlapping text in Gilios show.

I too had the problem with text overlapping and running off the screen. My screen setting is 1280x960. Apart from that the show was fine. A very different December to what we experience down here, thanks for cooling us down a little.

Thank-you for posting your show, very, very enjoyable. I have watched it several times and find your photography stunning and the way you used the functionality in PTE creative and informative, I particularly liked the map. The location is wonderful and it is such a disappointment to me that Xmas has just passed as I could have put my order in with Santa for a airline ticket to get there and do some photography!! Regarding the soundtrack, yes a little subdued background music carefully placed would help, your voice is pleasant to listen to and the timing was well suited to the images. Pan & Zoom stutter was only slightly noticeable and didn't detract from the show in my opinion, the framing on the images, (mentioned earlier by Dom), was a little more disturbing. The computer background was evident also but you have explained the reason for that and yes I would love to see a "final production" of your show if you do make one, (I'm keeping my fingers crossed that you do). Thanks again bjc for this glimpse of a lovely part of the world.

Very nice, thanks for the gift in advance and a very merry and safe Xmas to you Dom.

+1.

Welcome to the world of PTE A-Vs and the user forum Vera, you will find lots of friendly help and advice here. Regarding your comment about asking stupid questions, see the quote below with my signature. All the luck in the world with getting your head around your camera instruction manual, Photoshop and PicturesToExe, just ask and I'm sure someone here will answer.

Yep. I got on with no problems.

Thanks for posting the info Peter. I've had a look at the H4, very impressive. The H2 would appear to have similar features for recording sound for use in AVs and is much cheaper. Is there any reason you went for the H4 over the H2? Any problems with the H2 you are aware off? Kipper, both the H2 and H4 appear to be fully Mac compatible according to the Zoom site.

I too am interested in recording, "in the field," sounds for use in AVs. Something light and portable that allows easy uploading of the files to my PC. What equipment do others use for this and what are the results like?

Like this one Judy it's got my vote, good lateral thinking.

A tantalising glimpse of your coming show Jeff. I will eagerly await the completed work. You matched the wonderful images to the music very well, I may have missed it in your earlier post but what/where is the location? I loved the shot of the empty chair, just waiting for me to sit down and take-in the view. Thanks.

Enjoyed it a lot Bill, thanks.