Truelight

I used many of the early versions of PTE, but have not needed the program for a while and have not kept up with the new releases. I have also changed my computer and my e-mail address several times through the years. I again have need for the program, but no longer have a registered copy. I do understand however that my orginal purchases guaranteed "lifetime upgrades." So... can get a key so I can use the new Version 5.6? Please advise... Thanks.

Integrate DVD burning of a show into the product. Having to use a third-party product to do this is bogus. Until you do this, Proshow Gold will remain my product of choice.

>>you can make the same type slideshow with P2E by using the output to AVI feature then using another program such as Ulead DVD Movie Factory to convert and burn the AVI to DVD format.<< True, but... I continue to use PTE on occasion to make .EXE shows that will be run strictly on a PC. But, when it comes to making shows for DVD, that's where PSG shines. I --hate-- it when I have to use multiple programs to execute a task and unfortunately, PTE forces me to do this if what I'm after is a DVD-based show. PSG on the other hand is one-stop-shopping... I create the show there, add an effects I like (the text effects are unmatched), and then can output the show as an .exe, a DVD-show (or both on the same disc), or even such variants as VCD, SVCD, or .SCR screensavers. PTE is still king of .exe creation and the ability to add objects to link to other things is it's greatest strength, but having to buy an additional program like Movie Factory so I can make a DVD?? Nah.... not this kid. Wanna --really--- take PTE to the next level?? Add a burning engine to it and allow the user to take the project from show to disc all from within the program. Until then, I'll use PSG for what it does best and PTE for what it does best, which isn't making DVD-based shows. Wanna see what a pro can do with PSG ?? Check out this show by Mark Ridout -- Rick

PTE has always had the ability to manually advance the slides (via the Navigation Bar) if you're making an .exe show. But now that you can output an .avi file for use in making a disc-based show (VCD, SVCD, or DVD), is there a way of have those kinds of shows have manual control? This is one shortcoming of PSG-created shows. What would be the process for creating a show for display on a TV set (played from a DVD player) and still have manual control of the show?? -- Rick

Or CDextractor CDextractor Truelight (Rick) See my Webpage

Here's wishing the wide-world of PTE users all the best for 2004! Happy New Year from Boise, Idaho USA -- Rick See my website - True Light Words & Pictures

I'm really not a "cat person," but Isabel Cutler's show really did convice me I "Gotta Love Louie." Beautifully photographed with a good music selection, this show is a glimpse into an owners' love for her pet and the "personality" of this beautiful animal. Two-thumbs up Isabel! Nice work!. -- Rick

The new Beta2 version is much improved and works well for me. I'm running Win XP on a P4 with 512MB ram. Perhaps the problem with the previous posters tries is a slower PIII machine running Win 98? Tell Santa you need a new computer.

>>The big disadvantage (apart from the poor quality) is that very few DVD players will play the finished disc - you will need a special player!<< A "special player??" I've been using ProShow Gold to make SVCD shows for months now as a way to distribute "digital proofs" to my photo clients. At home my "special player" is an Apex 1000AD which cost me a "whopping" $40 at Walmart. The machine plays just about any kind of disc I can throw at it. I've had very few customers complain that they can't play the SVCD format. I think you'd be surprised how many players will actually play this format and quality looks pretty good too. Interestingly, it's often the higher-priced Sony's, Panasonics, and "name brand" DVD players that don't play SVCD. But, the same site I mentioned earlier in the thread - DVDhelp.com has a section that will tell you which players will play which formats. Give it a try before you "dis" it.

Once you start making images for display on a TV set, you enter the realm of TV-specific issues. The "Safe Zone" is one of them -- ------------- Safe Zones Early TV picture tubes distorted the image near the edges, so it was decided that the picture would be overscanned with the edge of the picture hidden by a plastic bezel. However, when working with video on a computer you see the whole image, so you must always be aware that the edges of your image will not be visible on a TV. The non-visible portion of the image corresponds roughly to the area inset 5% from each edge (about 36 pixels from each side and 24 pixels from the top and bottom). The area inside is often called the "action-safe zone." Make sure that anything that has to be seen is inside this zone. Additionally, there is another region that is inset 5% from the edges of the action-safe zone known as the "title-safe zone." Older picture tubes still produced some distortion outside this zone, making text harder to read, so titles were always including inside this zone. Most TVs nowadays don't have a problem with text outside of this zone, but it's still common practice to use it. You may want to play it safe, but if it's not possible I wouldn't worry about it, since the likelihood of someone viewing the video on an old TV that has this problem is low. -------------- You also need to be concerned with NTSC-colors, etc. Read up on such things here: Making Titles and Graphics NTSC compliant Just when you thought there was nothing else to learn...

Just for the record, the new beta-2 version creates a --much-- more compatible .AVI file. I was able to successfully convert a PTE-generated .AVI to the .MPG format using this product -- AVI-MPEG Converter Now to find a freeware way to get the .MPG file to an SVCD disc!

Ron writes -- >>>However, there are still many mountains to climb before we can expect the same excellent resolution on the TV screen as what we get from the .exe file on a computer monitor.<< No...No.No... You will NEVER experience the "same excellent resolution" on a TV screen as you do on a computer monitor. The fault is not in the software, it's in the output device itself. Television displays are incapable of achieving the same visual quality as computer monitors due to their technical limitations. (lower resolution, interlaced display, the ancient NTSC/PAL standards, etc. etc.). I keep reading threads from people who think that if we just "tweak" the software, we'll get computer like quality from a TV set. It's not gonna happen. It's like asking for concert-hall sound from a cheap transistor radio.

You're experiencing what TV folks refer to as the "safe zone." Because TV's will crop out some of the picture, what you see on a PC may not be what you see on a TV set when you output your show for viewing on that device. Some programs (Proshow Gold is one), allow you to see what will be inside the "safe zone" and what may be outside of it. Perhaps that might be a feature we should ask for in PTE if folks are going to be using .AVI output for shows -- display of the "Safe Zone" while editing.

You can get all that you ever wanted to know about DVD, VCD, SVCD and related stuff (and probably a whole lot more) here: DVDHelp There is also a complete glossary here: Glossary For example - SVCD -- SVCD stands for 'Super VideoCD'. A SVCD is very similiar to a VCD, it has the capacity to hold about 35-60 minutes on 74/80 min CDs of very good quality full-motion MPEG-2 video along with up to 2 stereo audio tracks and also 4 selectable subtitles. A SVCD can be played on many standalone DVD Players and of course on all computers with a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive with the help of a software based decoder / player. Better read up. If you decide to take advantage of the .AVI output of PTE, you'll need to understand some of this stuff.

I'm pleased to see the new version of PTE has a way to output an .AVI file, but am hoping I might be able to find other ways to generate a disc playable in a DVD player without having to purchase another program - Ulead DVD Movie Factory. Does anyone have any alternate methods? For instance, Nero will create an SVCD disc from an .MPG file, but not an .AVI and the one program I tested for converting .AVI to .MPG didn't like the PTE-generated .AVI What else might be possible? -- Thanks...

Are there any free tools which will accomplish what you're suggesting we use the Ulead product to do? Other alternatives? For instance, Nero will burn an SVCD disc, but not from an .avi file, one must have an .mpg file for this purpose. So, if it were easy to convert the .avi file to .mpg, this might be possible. I tested a demo version of AVI-to-MPG converter AVI-to-MPG Converter and it would not read the .AVI file produced by PTE. (For that matter, when I select Custom, VCD, SVCD, or DVD-Video Disc, they all create an .AVI file... what's the difference between them??). I guess the bottom line is what other alternatives do I have other than Ulead DVD Movie Factory? Are there other ways / tools for getting a PTE-generated .AVI to disc? Thanks...

I wanted an "old-timey" soundtrack for a project I was working on and came across this website -- http://www.honkingduck.com/BAZ/baz_one.php?req=info By going to the song, right-clicking on "Standard", and then "Save Target as", you will be able to download the song in Real Audio (.ram) format. Now, you'll need to get it into something PTE can use, so use this freeware utility -- Realaudio-to-Wav Recorder http://www.rawavrecorder.homestead.com/ Now you will have a .wav file. PTE can use this, but it's pretty big, so convert it to an .mp3 (Audacity, another freeware program that should be in every PTE user's toolkit does a nice job of this). You could also clean up the typical noise from this old recordings with Audacity, but I kinda like that as I feel it retains that "old time sound." http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Of course this procedure will work for any other soundtrack you might find in Real Audio format. I just thought it was cool to hear the stuff from the old 78's playing on my computer. (Those were "records", usually with a single song on them that played at 78 rpm for you 'youngsters' that may have never seen one. Just picture that RCA logo with "Nipper listening to "His Masters Voice" from an old phonograph. http://www.intelab.com/swem/rca_nipper.jpg Who would've thunk we'd be listening now on a computer? Makes you wonder how your grandkids will listen to music! Have fun! -- Rick

There's some nice stuff here and for most purposes, it's all Free!! http://www.freeplaymusic.com/

Want it --really-- simple?? I rarely see the need for images that are larger than 800x600 when making a PTE show. Yes, people use monitors with higher resolution and yes, there are projectors now that go higher than that, but if you use the "windowed" mode of PTE, you can work around the resizing issue. An 800x600 image will print very poorly at anything much above a 4x6" print, but will look OK on the screen. (DPI is meaningless to a screen capture program so 'reducing your images to 72dpi' means nothing here and if someone does want to steal your images, that's how they will do it). Keeping images small also has the benefit of making for leaner .exe files. Now...(and we've all discussed this before)...If you are really concerned about someone stealing your images, there are only two solutions: -1- Deal only with honest people. A determined thief will find a way to steal from you if that is their intent. No protection exists that can't be circumvented. or -2- Show your images, but don't distribute disks with the images or the shows on them. Yes, you can lower image quality, use watermarks, do any number of things, but remember point -1- above. And finally.... If you're losing sleep over someone stealing -YOUR- images, you're 'holding on too tight.' All of us are just 'passing through' this life. Don't be so concerned with what you think you 'own.'

I saw this nice use of PTE on Barry Beckham's website -- Barry Beckham website I had to wonder if he is a PTE regular? If you haven't checked out his website, it's a wealth of Photoshop and other graphics info. -- Rick

I appreciate not only the tutorial, but the techniques used to create it. I think Al should post a "the making of Tutorial 101", a glimpse of how the show was put together. I've e-mailed him personally to ask a few questions and I don't think he'll mind if I post that exchange here as it's very insightful -- -- What was the procedure by which you recorded the narration track? I have quite an elaborate sound setup in my basement "playpen". I have a professional mixer to which I input TV, stereo HI Fi, CD player, two of my pc's, a MIDI sound module, and a microphone. There is also a line from the mixer back into my desktop pc. So, for the narration, I simply turn on the mic input, and the output to the pc, where I use Adobe's "Audition" (formerly "Cool Edit") to pick up the sound and record it in digital ".wav" format. Each sound clip (for each slide) is a separate wave file. In Audition I adjust (normalize) the loudness (amplitude) of each file to 0 db, run the routine to eliminate ambient noise, and then save it as monaural mp3 file (set at a sample rate of 22050 hz and a bit rate of 24 kbps). -- Is this one large track (.mp3? .wav?) to which the slides are synchronized or is it lots of small files, added as sounds to individual slides? No, it is 143 individual mp3 files. I didn't use any synchronization, as I wanted the user to have freedom to move around on an iteractive basis. The narration is added to the appropriate slides using the "Sound" line in the main window, under the slide list. -- The menu is interesting in that it runs as an open to the show, but also is interactive, allowing one to jump ahead to any portion of the show while it is running. How is this achieved? The menu ("directory") is created using "button objects" placed over the slides. They can be programmed to jump to specific slides, go back forward, etc. It is tricky using buttons due to the scaling problem in PTE, so I elected to set it up in "windowed mode" to partially get around this problem. It is still a problem if the tutorial is viewed in screen resolutions less than 800 x 600. The intro uses around 7 or 8 different slides, over which all the "object" control buttons have been copied. Then, I used the "properties" menu for different buttons to change the appearance of the appropriate button for the specific topics being introduced by each slide. Thanks again for your email - glad you liked the show. It helps illustrate the great versatility of PTE for all kinds of different applications. --Al -------------------- Al's show is not only helpful as a tutorial to PTE, it demonstrates the potential of the program for making --narrated-- shows, something I've seen only used rarely so far. The photo slideshows with music are pretty and we've all done them, but sometimes it's time to roll up one's sleeves and make a program that can be used for teaching, training, and demonstration. Al's program shows how that can be done. Kudos again Al for showing the potential of PTE! -- Rick

Methinks you are making this too hard...why use a "mask" to hide, then reveal underlying images?? To use the example the original poster used... 1. Make a "background" slide (it could be another photo, a gradient, a solid fill, whatever you like) 2. Copy this slide multiple times (as many as you need for the photos you will overlay) to your show. 3. Take the images you will overlay (i.e. Mom, Dad, baby) and resize them using something like Irfanview to something smaller than the resolution of your show. (i.e. if your show will be 600x800, make the individual images 240x320). 4. Use the Object Editor and Insert Picture to add the image(s) to your background slides (i.e. Slide 1 is just the background, Slide 2 is the background with the Mom, Slide 3 is the background with the Mom and Dad, Slide 4 is the background with the Mom, Dad, and baby, Slide 5 is just the background) 5. Use a dissolve transition (or a wipe if you prefer) and the individual images will appear to come in in additive fashion. Now... if PTE would allow us to -scale- the objects we bring in via the object editor, the process could be done entirely in PTE!! - Wish list item!!

You could also use the freeware, Irfanview to sort your images by date/time taken and then batch rename them if needed. -- Rick

It's been months since I last visited the PTE forum and it was months before that that we were told there would be new forum categories to better organize messages. (Trying to dig through the heap that is here now for items of interest is very difficult). I understand that upgrades to PTE are a greater priority, but this forum will never be what it might without better organization in my opinion. Igor...? Two simple questions... will we see forum categories, and if so...when?

Do you mean with PTE or with another program? With PTE, no... not easily anyway. With other programs... sure. Write me if you'd like to know about some of my favorites. They do not like us to speak of "Brand X" here.