Ian

I think some people have mis-understood the purpose of the Beta release. This is NOT the finished product - Igor has released this early version so that users can play around with it and identify the problems that need to be fixed. He is asking for our help in bug-hunting at this stage so that they can be ironed out. Ian

Hi Igor The pan and zoom effects are working well. I've tried to amend an existing sequence, and have found fome glitches: 1. My existing transitions were all 'fades', with most having customised times. All these customised ones have changed to 'circle out' transitions. The 'default' ones with unchanged times are still okay. 2. The 'text' and 'action buttons' on the object editor don't work. 3. The checkbox "Show Image" is missing. 4. When using and overlayed 24-bit .png file with transparant background in the Object Editor, the slide background image disappears in the slideshow image strip and only the .png image is visible. 5. Previewing from a set slide starts the image preview from the correct point, but the audio starts from the beginning instead of from the synchronised point. 6. The X and Y axes of the Zoom editor are currently set to forcing the same value. 7. When editing values in the Zoom/Pan/Rotate fields, an error message "Complaner Vectors in Basis" floating point error is generated if the system thinks a zero value is being entered even before the value is fully typed in. I'm sure these are more oversights than real problems, so for a first release its looking good! many thanks Ian

Hi Mike Check with the authors how they added the music. If they used a .wma file, or used Windows Media Player to encode an MP3 file then the problem could be the copyright protection encoded with the file. That would explain why it plays back perfectly on their own system but not on yours. Worth a try anyway! As a rule of thumb its best to steer well clear of Media Player and use a third-party product like Audio Grabber instead. Ian

Thanks to all and sundry for the commiseratory e-mails I've had! I guess its all downhill from here...... Ian

Hi Roger Have you thought of a Shuttle? A few years ago we were deciding on a PC for the club, and settled on a Shuttle because it could be specified to the same level as a high-end tower, but is about the same size as a toaster so very portable. You can see some examples on the Shuttle website Ian

Peter - when I replied the other countries hadn't yet had their competitions. Most results are now on the Gaphe site Ian

These were the percentages entered: Countries number %age Belgium: 5 (5%) Canada: 1 (1%) France 33 (36%) UK 35 (38%) Hungary 2 (2%) Ireland 3 (3%) Italy 1 (1%) NL 1 (1%) Poland 5 (5%) Uruguay 6 (7%) At Aldbourne we had three judges, each awarding up to 5 marks per sequence. We split the event into sessions of 20 sequences to give the judges the chance to compare notes during the day. The overall scores then gave us a good grasp on the potential winners, and the eventual palmares were decided by discussion at the end of the event. I won't give the UK result yet until all 17 venues have reported back to GAPHE! Ian

The UK stage at Aldbourne is now all ready, and will start at 10.00am next Sunday (19th Feb). Please note that this stage is a week ahead of the 'rest of the world' as I'm in Belfast judging the NIPA festival next weekend when the other events take place! Hope to see some of the NI Forum members there! All other 321 events take place on Saturday 25th February. There are 17 events taking place in 13 countries across four continents, so check if there's one near you! Ian

I suspect that this issue is actually becoming more of a problem with the current crop of laptops. I changed my laptop last year to a much higher-spec Toshiba Tecra, with fast Centrino processor, high-end ATI graphics card and plenty of RAM. However, I ran into looping problems with some sequences that had played perfectly on my older "lower-spec" laptop. I later discovered that the disk-access time on my old laptop was faster than on my new machine, and hence the increase in performance was completely off-set by the slower access speed. It only happened on a few sequences and I was able to re-make them quite easily, but if you do change your laptop its worth trying all your old stuff out before doing a show! Ian

... and a very merry Christmas from me as well! this year's card is at: Christmas Card Gallery Ian

well - not so much technology, more 'flashy' in a medallion-man sort of way. See what the BBC have to say! Ian

Hi Ron As Dave says, the easiest solution is to use an actual minidisk player. I had to get one for a project recently as I was supplied an audio file on a minidisk. I found a Sony model on eBay that had a USB interface that also read 1Gb disks for £32. As the technology has been superceded now by MP3 players etc, there are some real bargains on Minidisk player/recorders to be had! Ian

The Royal Photographic Society run an International AV Festival every two years. The 2006 competition will be held in Cirencester in the UK next September. I know its early notice, but the event website has just been launched at www-rps-international-av.co.uk The rules etc are on the website, along with entry fiche and full details of the event. I've attempted to provide translations of key pages into French, Italian and German. These have been done via Google however, so are bound to have errors! If you spot any please let me know via the email link on the relevent page! Ian

I have a widescreen laptop with a 'normal' resolution of 1200x800. My usual configuration in the office is to use this setting on the laptop screen, with a second monitor attached set to 1024x768. When I use it with a projector, I sometimes use this configuration with the projector replacing the monitor at the same 1024x768 resolution. If I'm doing a demo and need the two screens showing the same content, I switch the laptop screen to 1024x768 to match the projector. This results in a 'squashed' image on the laptop but still workable. The projected image isn't affected and displays the correct aspect ratio. Ian

Hi Taza It might be that you're attempting to put links into a synchronised show. Currently the 'objects' will only function in an unsynchronised show, though Igor is working on including this functionality in a future release. Ian

Yes that's right - the avi file that PTE exports is only viable while PTE is still open. You need to convert this temporary file into a stand-alone format first. I think Igor is developing a new method for a future release so that PTE uses its own codec, but for now the only option is to go through this conversion process. There are several threads in the Video forum that pick up on this point and have more detailed info. Ian

Hi Steve I have an Archos 420, and have succesfully converted PTE shows to run on it. There are probably several ways of doing it, but my method is: 1) Export the sequence as a PTE video file 2) Convert this to a VOB file with Ulead Movie Factory 3) Convert the VOB file to a DivX (various methods availabe - do a Google search) The resulting file is an AVI, but highly compressed by the DivX codec. It plays in excellent quality on the Archos and can even be hooked up to a digital projector. If the Flashtrax can handle DivX files this should work, if not you could try converting the original PTE AVI file to Mpeg instead. Ian

There was a similar problem a few years ago when a Norton update mistakenly identified certain PTE exes as viruses. Igor managed to sort it out with Symantec and subsequent definitions updates cured the problem. Maybe its happened again? Which anti-virus program do you use? I've just updated the definitions for my Inoculate program and it hasn't caused any problems. Ian

Losing your thread...... the default seems to be that only "today's" posts are shown on the front screen. If you scroll down there is a dropdown menu for selecting other time periods, but it seems to default back to "today". Ian

Hi Dennis I've included a Powerpoint show inside a PTE show at a tutorial earlier in the year. Its pretty seamless if you have the same background image in the Powerpoint show as in the PTE one. Make your Powerpoint show and save it as a .pps file, and in the Powerpoint options disable the "black screen at end of presentation". This means that when the Powerpoint file quits you'll return to the PTE show without a break. In your PTE show, include an Object that will link to the Powerpoint file (use PTE's Object Editor) Save the PTE exe and .pps file in the same folder. Run the PTE exe, and when you get to the page with the Object, click it to run the Powerpoint file on top of the PTE show. This is a very easy and convenient way of including moving text and graphics in a PTE show. Alternatively if you don't want to click an Object to start the Powerpoint file, you could set it to start when the PTE show quits. Ian

A friend had a similar problem with 'preview'. We tried various potential solutions with no joy. Finally he downloaded new drivers for his graphics card, and instantly the problem disappeared! Might be worth trying the same thing, just in case the problem lies outside of PTE. Ian

Hi Peter Good to see you again on Friday/Saturday! If you just want a pocket device capable of playing back a sequence, think about a Personal Media Player. These will also serve as a data back-up device for your camera. I've written a short review of some of them in AV News - see Media Players These are not PC's, so you have to convert your sequence to a video file first. If you'd have mentioned it at the weekend I could have shown you!! Ian

Someone was asking the other day about adding a 'hit-counter' to a website. I've been using the free service provided by Sitemeter for many years, but today I was pleasantly surprised to see that they have upgraded their service, and can now track visits by location and even display maps of where the user is situated! I've added some demonstration images and links to my camera club site - see WCC Website Stats There are two links to the new features beneath the graphs. Sitemeter is available from www.sitemeter.com and the basic package is completely free. Sometimes there's a bit of a lag in updating the stats, but otherwise its great! Ian

hmmm... it should be there. I have XP Pro SP2 on the machine I'm currently using, and its there. Maybe its not available on XP Home, or if you're not logged in with admin rights. What do you see on the list when you right-click "My Computer"? Ian

The drive might still be okay. Right-click the "My Computer" icon on your desktop and select "Manage". See if it shows up in the external storage list. If so you can assign a new drive letter to it. Ian