fromatoz

Are you looking for something like this? Klipsch Altec Lansing Google for reviews. Both systems available at amazon.com

If you need a really really really good sound card for your laptop, you might consider this one: Indigo - Echo Digital Audio It sounds marvelous (just for my ears) and has a decent built in head amp as well. A little bit expensive though.

Or try AntiVir. It's always among the best. http://www.free-av.com (There is also a free version.)

Comment view I mentioned it about two years ago: It would be great to have a “Comment view“. In the meanwhile many nice features have been added, but editing comments is still quite a hassle. Of course there might be a utility out there, but I would prefer to have something like a “Comment view” included in PTE. Why I am asking for this: I use PTE mainly for educational purpose, so I need to set up slideshows fast. Usually it should take no longer than 1 or max 2 hours. I put a bunch of pics in a folder, add comments, and that’s it. I use it as a replacement for PowerPoint, because the shows can be done much faster this way. But often I need to change and move text around, which cannot be done easily in PTE. I mean, it is easy, but not convenient. The “Comment view” would allow to see in a row all pics (thumbs) and comments, divided from the pic / comment before and after only by grid lines, allowing to move the cursor up and down in order to write or edit the comments. It would also be cool to have the possibility to load a text file, all the comments only seperated by a special character or whatever. Thanks for considering.

Today, I thought Oh my God ... twice: The first time when I read about Ratzinger being the new pope. The second time while reading Conflow.

Tripstrilles and Den - Thanks for your replies. Breeze Browser is my choice :-)

With PTE one can create superb exe and video shows, which is great, but are there any plans to add the feature of a simple, but highly customizeable web gallery (web based slideshow)? I tried out Proshow Gold, which I did not like, and Ulead PhotoImpact, which is not bad, but the customization is somehow restricted. I do not know about Adobe Photoshop Album, because in the starter version the web gallery feature seems not to be included. Do you have any suggestions?

Sounds great. Thank you.

I like "show first transition effect from desktop" very much. How about the other way round? Is there a way to fade out last slide to desktop? Thanks.

And also greetings from Japan - though we have no Christmas here. We are working! From my window I can see Mount Fuji, powdered with snow ... Tom

... And I fully share your opinion, Marco. Excellent arguments. Tom

LumenLux - Thank you. Ron - No, I am using PTE mainly as a teaching tool for my university seminars on German literature, culture and language. Ever thougt of an interactive quiz made with PTE, using photos, video clips, sound and text? That's why I am asking for those special object editor features as well as for a text editing view. If the object editor was more powerful and flexible, PTE would be the perfect tool for my purpose. Or has anybody a better idea?

Ok, letfs come back to the main point. I made a few suggestions regarding additional features in the object editor (object rotation, allow flash, avi and pte-show objects as parts of a slide, and you guys turn these ideas down with a chorus of praise for Igor (what he deserves without doubt) and concerns such as: fit on a floppy, PC requirement, ethos, factors which make a good slideshow (gsimplicityh, guse of simple rulesh), long time experience and so on. - None of them I find convincing. Fit on a floppy: Why does PTE have to fit on a single floppy? Donft you all have your CD burners? And if not, you can still split PTE and copy it to 2 or 3 floppys. PC requirement: Even if PTE became a middle sized 5 MB application, it should run without any problems on Win95. And many of you probably have photo editing software installed which is bigger in size than PTE anyway. Please keep in mind that there are many ways of using a slideshow app like PTE, and they might be fairly different from what is usually published to beechbrook. I came up with some ideas regarding the object editor, which, I think, are not so bad, but many of you obviously do no like it. No problem. You guys can do your shows the way you always did. PTE has still a huge potential without having to compete with PowerPoint or similar large scale presentation apps. But if most of this forumfs core members and, of course, the PTE programmer himself prefer to stick to the very traditional kind of slideshow creation, PTE will unlikely going to unfold its potential. Too bad for PTE.

Probably I am on the wrong train here I agree with Jim and nobeefstu, PTE is a nice slideshow tool, but it could be much more. I fully understand people who want PTE to be "light", but for my purpose I would prefere it much more flexible (the object editor as the key tool), more open towards something I called "photocinema" in another thread. PTE is surely one of the best slideshow apps. But as far as I can see, there exists no single application which is basically a slideshow app, but with advanced abilities like accepting movie clips, flash-files (I have absolutely no problems having a flash player installed as part of PTE) and doing things like originally being discussed in this thread. This brings me, as Mike suggests, to another Idea (for Igor): Why not develop two versions of PTE? "PTE light" for those who want the basics, and "PTE full" for those who want more. To Mike: I think we should not discuss about what is a good slideshow or not. It makes no sense at all because people have different ideas of aestetics. Are you joking? Losing it's "original ethos"? If this is the way you prefer to argue, then I definitely got on the wrong train.

Hi Jim, thank you for your reply! I might be wrong but it seems that in your shows one has to manually click on "Icons" or whatever to start a different show. But I am thinking of the following. It's like watching four movies at the same time: one in the upper left, the 2nd in the upper right, the 3rd in the lower left, the 4th in the lower right corner. So, if I start the main show, the four embedded sub shows are launched automatically and are all visible, as described above, until they are finished. I hope it's more clear now. Would be nice to have such a feature in the object editor. Tom PS: Thanks, Boxig. Just saw your posting while writing mine. I will check out the FlashMe utility.

Igor wrote: I forgot to ask in my earlier posting: Why should that be a problem? I do not understand at all. And another question: Is it possible to have one or several pte-shows running in a pte-show? For example, I'd like to set up a "main-show" with only 1 slide, while several "sub-shows" are running simultaneously as parts / objects of the "main-show". I think, the object editor is a magic tool with a huge potential for creativity ...

Hi Igor, Thanks for the reply! Thumbs / light table view and text editing view: I am looking forward to it. Cool. - I thougt it would be pretty nice to have the possibility to throw any kind of picture files, SWF animation and short video scenes (captured from a DV video cam) together, for example to have a few slides first, then a video clip, then some slides again or a video clip or SWF animation as part of a slide and so on ... - And if it was possible to enhance the object editor so that one can rotate picture and text objects (or all objects) ... In my opinion and for my needs that would be the ultimate thing! Thank you.

Hi Igor: Please push PTE one big step further and add the following features to make PTE a more easy-to-use all-in-one-software: - Thumbnail view (dark-table, which allows to visually change the slide order) - Batch rename feature - Text edit view (which allows to edit text easily, as I pointed out in another thread - with no feedback; very useful for people who work with pics AND text!) - Import of avi- and swf-Files (in Japan this sort of slideshow, mixed with moving parts, is called "photocinema") - Proper display of special characters on ALL Win-Systems (East Asian ones included) - Because such improvements means a lot of work: why not double the price of PTE or ask for a fee when releasing bigger upgrades Thanks to some very active members of this forum, there are lots of utilitys and add-ons around, but some of them are rather difficult to use (sorry to say that). I think the "magic" of a software lies not only in the richness of functions (like the AVI export, which is really great) but also in the most SIMPLE & ELEGANT handling of basic functions. Thanks for listening. Tom

Al - thank you for checking. Maybe, in my case, PTE does not work properly because of an incompatibility with the system of double-byte fonts Chinese / Japanese characters make use of? Sometimes computers seem to suffer the same kind of cross cultural communication problems as human beings...

Thank you, cc. A lot of additional work, but at least a way to get around the problem. I would be interested in knowing from other PTE users with English Win OS installed, whether special characters (for example from the French alphabet) appear correctly during runtime mode. Thanks for your feedback. Tom

While the PTE forum is mainly concerned with AVI stuff (the DVDs I made work fine - great feature!), I am still struggling with basic things. I use Japanese WinXP, and my problem is that in PTE I cannot get text with German special characters (Umlaute like ä, ö, ü). Though these characters appear correctly in the comment-line, they come up as a, o, u in runtime mode. When I choose “Arial” or “Arial Unicode” or any other common font, then language / region “Central Europe”, then click ok, then preview the slide, then check language / region again, for some unknown reason “Central Europe” has turned back to “Europe”. I wonder why. Of course, the problem is the same with Japanese characters. Has anyone a suggestion how to fix this? Thanks.

Beside the hide-slide-feature another feature that I would appreciate very much: A gtext editing modeh, in which one could see all the pics (thumbs) and the related comments / text objects as a simple list. This would allow: 1. to see all the comments / text objects at once, and 2. to edit the comments / text objects easily just by scrolling up and down the list. What do you think?

To put it the other way: PTE's behavior not to move directly from checked slide to checked slide even in not-synchronized mode looks rather unusual, or unlogical to me. I am sure you must agree with me Of course, the option to keep the (custom) settings of the unchecked slides active is ok, but it is surely not what I am thinking first of when unchecking the "show image" box.

nobeefstu - To make it clear: I AM talking of that feature during build mode. I am NOT talking of the possibility to change the slides during runtime, though a position progress bar could be useful in some situations. The possibility to skip slides fast and easily in build mode is a very, very basic feature, I think. In fact I do not really understand the meaning of the "show image" feature as it exists know. Why are the unchecked slide's (custom) settings still working, if, by unchecking "show image", you want to get rid of the slide temporarily? In many or even most cases one might uncheck a slide in order to skip it completely - or is this really so unusual?

Dear PTE-Pro's I appreciate your different suggestions very much - thanks a lot. All your hints are technically no problem , but: It seems that there is no really SIMPLE and FAST way to unmark some slides so they will not appear during the show. I would be happy if it only were possible to uncheck "show image" with an additional option to skip the slide with no customized settings working in the background. A very simple task. It might be an unusual way to program a show like this for the most of you, but in some cases, instead of setting up different shows with some changes, I prefer to have only one show which I can modify (skip certain slides) in no time before I actually run it. Nobeefstu's idea of a "dragable slide position progress bar" sounds also nice to me. It would certainly add some more flexibility. Thank you again for your kind help. Tom