Ian

Well done Jacek and Urszula! The sequence was very well received as you can see and came across very well on our large screen. We had top-of-the-range audio equipment as well, so the soundtrack was crystal clear. You should receive the awards in the post shortly. Regards Ian (Chairman of Festival)

Hi Xaver I just saw Robert's comment and can confirm that the RPS International AV Festival is happy to accept any format so long as we can make it play back on our system. We get entries from all over the world, and try to be as inclusive as possible. If the Festival is over-subscribed we will pre-select the entries that will be shown at the festival, but this is done on quality grounds and not on the format of the entry. Even with some 'exe' files (notably those from Wings Platinum) it is often a requirement that a new Direct X version is downloaded, so not all 'exes' play straight away. Igor - Many years ago I used to use a French programme called GlobFX Composer (now defunct), but even back then it gave the option of creating either an 'exe' file or a 'show' file that came bundled with its own bespoke player. This format could also be streamed from a website by using an on-line version of the player. GlobFX was way ahead of its time, but the company moved into Flash presentations and Composer was abandoned about ten years ago. Ian

This was actually on the development list. When Igor gave his talk at Cirencester in September 2010 he demonstrated an image blur effect that was on the 'to do' list for a future version. I guess its taken a bit longer to develop than was thought! Ian

Hi Andy Long time no see! I just clicked on your "PTE Members Gallery" link and happily it still works. Nice to see the old faces from the early pioneering days in the first Forum! Its got 2007 as the last update, but I guess most of these pictures will be from a lot earlier than that, and a couple sadly are no longer with us. Even Igor looks a lot younger11 Ian

hmm..... doesn't seem to allow me to attach the zipfile. Hopefully the suggestion will help anyway!

Hi Brian The easiest solution is to use a black-only mask as Peter suggests, but then also add as a new layer the coloured png file on top. The mask will produce the desired effect of giving you a transparent windscreen and the additional layer will give you the colour. See attached zipfile. I've only made a rough black-only mask so its a bit jagged around the edges but you'll get the idea.

Igor - the original unedited .mov file is too big to send. I'll record another short one and send that instead. Ian

Hi Igor Yes, I used the new converter in PTE. I will send you the original .mov file. Ian

I'm getting strange results using the PTE Video Converter on the .mov files generated by my Canon 60D. I've tried converting a simple video (30 seconds long) at various quality settings and have found: 1) The audio is out-of-sync by about 0.5 seconds whatever quality setting I choose. 2) If I use a high quality setting (eg 60 or above), the resulting file freezes at some point when played back within PTE. Changing the quality setting changes where it freezes 3) Using a low quality (eg 30 or below) results in a file that plays all the way through. I don't think its a resource issue as I have a 64bit machine with 8Gb RAM and a hex-core processor. However, if I use the free Prism Video Converter and export as an .avi file, it gives a perfect result (and much smaller file size). Anyone else had this issue? Ian

I have the same result as Xavier - a video file re-encoded with the PTE codec from VideoPad saves the file, but only the audio component plays back.

Yes - its in the list of encoder options, and will probably be in the options of everyone who has PTE installed. The thing to do would be to install VideoPad on a computer that has never had PTE on it and check if the option appears then.

Robert - its probably simply using the various codecs that you already have installed on your system.

I've no idea what this one was all about! Can you explain Peter?

Photographs from the event are now on the Festival Website Ian

The results of the Festival are now on the Festival Website. Pictures taken at the event will be posted some time later this week when I've collected enough! There is also a "Feedback" button should anyone who entered or attended wish to send in any suggestions or comments for the organising committee to take on board. Igor wasn't comfortable with the idea of his lecture being recorded, so we of course complied with his wishes. He was quite happy for the content of his lecture to be reported though, so thanks to Peter Appleton for doing this and providing a summary (see above post). Igor visited the Lake District prior to the Festival, and is now continuing his holiday in North Wales, where I trust the weather is being kind! Ian

Its part of the Day 1 programme, so the lecture is included with the ticket for Session 1 of the Festival rather than it being a seperate item. Ian

The RPS International AV Festival takes place every two years, and this year the 19th Festival will take place from 17th to 19th September in Cirencester in the UK. Seventy four sequences will be shown over the three days, and the International Jury for the event are Eddie Spence (UK) Chairman of the Jury, Marion Waine (UK), Eric Kellens (Belgium) and Igor Kokarev (Russia). Igor has kindly agreed to give a talk about future developments of PTE on the evening of Friday 17th, to which all ticket holders for Session 1 are invited to attend. Full details can be found on the website RPS International AV Festival Ian

The UK results of the 321 Competition are now available on UK 321 website The scores by each individual country and overall winning entries can also be seen. Ian

Count me in!

To re-iterate some of the points from above, I frequently make use of menus for club/federation/festival events, and ALWAYS turn off hardware acceleration to prevent system resource issues. The menus are used to launch a variety of shows from different people, made with a variety of software and different versions of PTE. I acknowledge that it would be possible to use v4 to make the menu instead, but then you are stuck with the old grey buttons rather than the current designs. I also use a a short animated sequence as an intro show, culminating with a page of buttons to launch the sequences. Because of the need to disable the hardware acceleration, I make the animated show with the acceleration turned on, which then quits to reveal an identical 'last page' with just the buttons, made with acceleration turned off. I accept that the majority of users are only catering for their own shows and are therefore in complete control, but for the few who use PTE to run festival events removing the on/off option would be a retrograde step. Ian

Hi Jonathan If you only bought the standard version you can still make a DVD, but you have to use another program alongside PTE. After you've transported the PTE project in a zipfile (as per instructions in the other post) to your computer with the DVD burner, do this: 1. From the Create menu, choose 'create AVI file. 2. An options box will pop up - click "DVD-Video Disk" then "create AVI". 3. Save the AVI file to your desktop or specific folder. This is a temporary file that will automatically be deleted at the end of the process. 4. An info box will pop up after the file has been saved instructing you to use another program to create the DVD. 5. Don't close PTE - leave it running, and browse your programs for Windows Movie Maker (a freebie from Microsoft) 6. Open this, then drag the AVI file on to the storyboard at the bottom of the screen. 7. Click the Publish to DVD option. A message will appear saying that the program will close and hand a saved project file to Windows DVD Maker. 8. This will then open and let you save the video to a DVD. After its finished burning, you can close all the programs. Hope this helps, and have a great day! Ian

Happy Birthday to PTE! I bet you didn't know what a global phenomenon it would become when you started out!!! I wonder how many of the first users are still Forum members today? Ian

Hello all Ken suggested I chip in. We (ie Wantage Camera Club) replaced our projector some time last year. The big decision was whether to go for a Canon model that projeted at 1400x1050, or to opt for the HD widescreen format 1920x1080. We went for the 1920x1080 option , and bought an Optoma HD800X - see http://www.optoma.co.uk/uploads/brochures/...XLV-B-en-gb.pdf This is connected by either a DVI lead to our aging Shuttle, or by an hdmi lead to my Alienware laptop. The image quality is stunning, to the extend that in our main clubroom we have painted the wall with projection-quality paint so that we can obtain a 12 foot image. I also use the projector when doing shows and AV Days, and have used it succesfully everywhere from Lampeter in west Wales to Clacton on the East Coast. Its larger than the usual projectors, but still entirely portable. The projector is used with a variety of computers, and the hdmi connection is noticeably better than other leads, and doesn't seem to suffer any loss of quality even when a long lead is used - eg 10 metres. We use a ColorMunki to profile the various computers that get attached to it, with varying degrees of success. The profile it gave our Shuttle was very good and that combination gives a very accurate colour balance. Doing the same thing on my laptop however has so far resulted in an over-contrasty image with over-saturated colours. This laptop is the one we have to use to run AV shows though, as the Shuttle struggles with 1920x1080 dissolves. I'm going to have another go with the ColorMunki tomorrow and see what it comes up with this time. Ian

Hi Peter PNG files will be re-scaled in exactly the same manner as jpgs, so from this point of view there will be no problem. The potential issue is if the png files have smaller pixel dimensions than your background jpgs, then there is a chance that the relative positions of the pngs will shift on screen. Sometimes this might not be noticeable, but if you have some that need to be precisely aligned it would be best to save the png image on exactly the same canvas size as the background. This might entail having a large area of transparancy, but will preserve the relative positions exactly as the scaling will be applied to images of the same dimensions. Ian

Hi Peter Using a 4.4 menu should give no problems with launching any sequence no matter what version it was created in. I suspect for the Geoffrey Round you will have a whole variety of exes including ProShow, mObjects and Wings Platinum to run, so there would be no advantage in using a 5.6 menu. It sounds more likely that the filename you have used for the problem sequence has a reserved character in it. Make sure that there is not a backslash included in the file name, or you haven't used a filename that is the same as a Windows OS filename. Ian