Lin Evans

Hi Eric, The Navigation Bar only appears when you "preview" in either version and from the main screen or from the O&A screen. It's the same in 7.x and 7.5, but, you can press the "Pause" button, then drag the navigation cursor to the point in your video where you want the still slide to appear. Note the "time" displayed and then set the opacity fade in to that time. Best regards, Lin

Eric, Enable the video (default) Navigation Bar then simply drag the cursor to that point in the video as displayed on your screen and fine tune the appearance via the opacity of your still frame accordingly. Best regards, Lin

Some time ago, one of our forum members asked about a "similar" phenomenon when he saw a slideshow on YouTube done with PTE by a person from China. It seems one of our French PTE users, Marcel, had discussed a technique for doing something like this (not really a logarithmic path, but a similar effect to what you describe) with this person and had explained how to do it with PTE. Some discussion ensued and several of us played around with this idea. I made this silly little YouTube show as a joke for a friend, but it demonstrates something like I "think" you are discussing. You can see it here: (turn your sound down low - it's obnoxious) If this is something you would like to experiment with - here's a link to my tutorials - the one for this is # 36 Tutorials Link Click on "Tutorials" then scroll down past the red descriptives to the actual llnks below. Best regards. Lin

Hi Scott, You can use the "File" "Create Backup in Zip" feature to quickly and automatically assemble all files necessary for proper PTE function. Then just extract the files from the zipped archive anywhere you wish and everything will then work perfectly from the new location. Best regards, Lin

Hi Colin, Wonderful imagery and a heartfelt tribute to those who served in the great wars! Thanks for the chance to see this again - I haven't been to Perth for a decade... Best regards, Lin

Hi Scott, The animation features of PTE are extremely sophisticated - it's indeed possible to create amazing animations with PTE. There are myriad examples of this around - I have a few which you might enjoy seeing and there are some mind-blowing ones created by several of our French users of PTE such as Jean Cyprien and the late Jean-Pierre Dollangere (JPD). Here are links to a couple you might enjoy. These were done entirely with PTE. http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/exceptional/jpd.zip http://www.learntomakeslideshows.net/exceptional/jcyprien2.zip Best regards, Lin

Hi Scott, There is no way to do this.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Scott, There is no easy way to do such a thing. It's "possible" but requires using two or more PTE executable files. For example, you have the option of running an "external" application at the end of a slide. That "application" could be another PTE executable show which simply begins at the slide where you wish to "jump." Then, if you wanted to get really tricky, you "could" place a "run external application" call in that second PTE executable show to go to yet another pte executable which would do likewise in a "chain" type of sequence. The real "power" of PTE is that by using the mouse click, you can assign multiple commands to do things like "jump" to another slide, run a slideshow and return, etc., and assign that mouse click to not only a "button" but to an invisible area on your screen - a sort of "hot spot" done by placing a "frame" object (invisible rectangle) anywhere and of any size you deem proper. Then when the mouse cursor is moved to that relative position and clicked, the action will happen. I use this feature, for example, to pop up the names of people in group photos when someone clicks on their faces. There is no present way to actuate other than the "run external application" without the mouse click. Best regards, Lin

Hi Scott, It's actually the level of jpg compression which has the most effect on executable output size. Images or videos which are repeated in the executable Windows or MacIntosh output do not add to the exe file size. That is if you use the same slide five times or one time, the "hit" on size does not really change. So in answer to your question, yes, the file size rather than pixel dimensions is most important in determining output exe file size. Slightly compressed jpgs or bmp files will cause the exe size to increase proportionally. Highly compressed jpgs will result in smaller executable file sizes. A PhotoShop jpg compression level of around six to eight will result in smaller exe sizes without undue compromise in image quality. As for audio, the best compromise would depend a bit on whether you are doing voice-overs or presenting music backgrounds. For voice quality, there is usually no real need for stereo output and lower kHz can generally be used without undue compromise in tonal quality. For stereo music with its generally much wider frequency range than the spoken voice, an MP3 with 44,100 should provide a very satisfactory result. Best regards, Lin

As Girard says, you can make the increments on the scale closer together or further apart with Ctrl F11 and Ctrl F12, but you can't actually change the "scale" or zoom the appearance of the slide thumbnails. Best regards, Lin Correction - my error: If I keep pressing or use the Mouse Thumbwheel as Gary suggests - the scale does actually get finer. A little different than with Audacity or other audio editor, but definitely it does scale the increments. It's nice to learn this...

If you mean perform a "zoom" on the slides so that they appear larger or smaller in the timeline display the answer is no. There is no way to scale the timeline slider or make the individual slides view larger or smaller. To perform a "zoom" on a slide itself requires the Objects and Animations screen and use of Keyframes. Zooms either happen over time via the first and subsequent keyframes or happen at the start of the slide via the bounding rectangle or "zoom" value from the "Animations" tab. Best regards, Lin

The absolutely "easiest" way is to use the "Customize Slide" feature to add your audio rather than adding through Project Options. This way each audio clip is assigned to its individual slide. Then after observing the time for the audio clip, click on the "Main" tab and match the time of the slide to the time of the audio. Use seconds if the slide runs for over one minute. That is 1:04 in the audio would equal 64 seconds in the Main Tab for slide display time. Then if you move the slides in their positions, the audio will accompany each slide and not be separated. You "may" have to slightly modify the display times for each slide to account for the transition times, but this is a minor task. Note: Doing it this way, the audio will not appear on the timeline, but this is inconsequential because it is "locked" to its individual slide. The "next easiest" way to approach this is to write down the actual time for each audio clip so that you have a log of the audio timings in the proper sequence. Next determine the amount of transition time you want between slides. Then simply set the time for each individual slide via the "Customize Slide" feature to correspond to the time of the audio for that slide plus the transition time. This should get you "very" close. The other way would be to go to the "timeline" view and visually "drag" each audio clip so that it "fits" within the visual display time for the particular associated slide. The "problem" with these last two methods is that the slide and the audio are not locked together.so that if you position a slide in a different place, you will need to move the audio. Best regards, Lin

Hi John, To add to David's explanation. It's a little unclear what you actually want to accomplish. If you could give a bit more detail it might help. If you simply want to change the size of the image on the screen, that is done in the objects and animations screen. Just click on the slide to highlight it from the opening PTE screen, then click on the Objects and Animations tab and look up at the top of your screen to the left of the "close" button. Click on the little blue box and from the drop down menu change the size of the display so you can see the bounding rectangle. 50% might be a good place to begin. Then you can size the image and position it on the screen from the default as desired. If you do not understand keyframing, I would suggest you go here for some tutorials: Keyframing can be used to zoom, size, position, etc., at any time during the display of a slide. Link to Tutorials Section of Forum Best regards, Lin

Hi Eric, No one can see your video because it's "Private." If you want people to be able to see it from your link but not make it "Public," then change it to "Unlisted." Lin

Hi Kess, Welcome back to the forum - I enjoyed your Audiobook very much. It has been many years since I heard the story of Little Red Riding Hood! Thank you!! Best regards, Lin

Hi Ralph, Welcome to the corps! Best regards, Lin

Hi Joanne, I think David's suggestion would be the way I would proceed. Create a mask in PTE or a PNG mask in Photoshop with a "feathered" top and/or bottom and the text will softly "appear" and disappear at the point of the feather. If you want to do it quickly, just put your text in a mask in PTE. Make the mask with a decent edge radius and drag the right and left side slightly beyond your image borders by holding down the shift key while dragging each side. This will give you a very soft entry and exit of the text and prevent disturbing the frame around your images and by dragging the sides beyond the periphery of the image the softening will not affect the text on the right or left should it be wide enough to be close to the edges of the images.. Best regards, Lin

Hi Joanne, There are more than two ways to do this. I'll cover two of them. One is easy and the other more difficult. Because PTE is a "slide" show program, actions are keyed to a single slide. So "text" can't really be shared among numerous slides in the slide list. In order to do this the first way, you must put the slides which you wish to appear behind the text in separate layers as "objects" and keyframe them in using opacity. The way you would proceed is to set the opacity for all except the first slide to zero then your "second" keyframe would "hold" the 100% opacity of the first slide until you wanted it to fade out. The third keyframe would set opacity on the main slide to zero and the next slide in the objects list's "second" keyframe (remember the first is set to zero) would hold the zero opacity while the third keyframe would determine the timing for fade in of the second slide. This sequencing would continue for as many slides as necessary to complete the scrolling of the text. The "slide" time would have to be sufficient for the fade-in, fade-out, fade-in, fade-out sequence of all slides. As you might assume, this is a bit complex. It's not "difficult," just will take some time to do. Now let's look at the "easy" way to accomplish the first goal. First determine how long you need for the text to scroll. Then determine how many slides you want to display and divide the time equally among them. For the time being, forget the text. Next create a simple show with the number of slides you want sequencing and the transitions you want to use between slides and create an HD "video" with PTE and export this brief "sllideshow" as an MP4 h.264 video. Next insert the video as the "slide" in your slideshow (let PTE convert it and insert the converted video). Next scroll the text while the video plays. This is the easiest and most efficient way to do what you have described. Best regards, Lin

Hi Tom, Two masks for the dream bubbles - just pasted the "solid" dream bubbles to a transparency, selected them with color select in Photoshop and painted them white then cropped individually for the two masks which perfectly fit the bubbles with transparency around. Saved as PNG's. The fire in the fireplace was also created inside another mask and the rest of the image including the fireplace was a photo. So for the exe, there are three videos and one still. Just a fun little project for the girl who owns the two kitty cats - LOL Best regards, Lin

Lin

Hi Bert, If I understand you correctly, you will initially show 50 thumbnail sized images and after some time, one of these will appear full size on screen or did you want the full sized image to "enlarge" from the thumbnail. Then that image will fade away and another will enlarge and so on until all 50 have been displayed? I assume you want to return to the 50 image grid between each full sized slide? Did you want this to be an auto-running show, or did you want the images to pop up when selected (mouse click) by the observer? The "random" part is not something which can be programmed "if" you want the thumbnail to enlarge to the full sized image. PTE has a "random" slide display, but there is no way to "link" this back to a "grid" of 50 images. If you could detail exactly what you want to happen, maybe some of us can help you with suggestions.... Best regards, Lin

Hi Jim, Superb collection and outstanding photography! Best regards, Lin

Hi Brian, Unless someone just happens to also have this template, there is little we can do to help. The only suggestion I would have is that "probably" Dom has an "ending" slide or two which completes the set and finishes off the animation. My suggestion would be to put at least one slide you want at the beginning and one at the end then just routinely add additional slides to get the animation to work, leave the last one or two then delete those you don't want. Generally, these type animations are done on a slide-by-slide basis so that there is no real "penalty" for having fewer or more slides. The only caveat would be that at the end and the beginning of the total animation sequence things are generally slightly different. So removing slides from the middle of the animation will probably have no effect. Best regards, Lin

Hi Jim, It's been a while since I looked at a 6.0 show, but the way it works now is that you simply go to Objects and Animations and remove the "Text Object" object from the slides you don't want the file name to appear on. I assume it probably worked the same way in 6.0. Best regards, Lin

Thanks!! Great information! Best regards, Lin