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I agree with Al this would be a great improvement for PTE and make PTE more intuitive (easier to use!) This whole transition point thing is really causing quite a stir but it is so important to get it right as it is a fundamental feature of PTE. I admire Igor's patience with us as we continue to want more and more I think what ever is changed it needs to be simple and needs to follow a natural flow that makes sense to even a new user. At the moment its not really clear looking at the interface as to what does what

Igor Thanks for the new Beta Great to see deleting transition points doesn't now delete the slide BUT If you delete a slide the transition point is still deleted and all transition points move down the time line 1 slide. If you add a transition point amongst existing points PTE just shifts the following transition point to where you want to input the new point. These two things make it very difficult to edit a show where you have already laid down transition points. In my opinion deletion or addition of transition points should have NO effect on existing transition points. The Gordian Knot continues!

I have used Thumbs Plus for years and find it very intuitive and reliable and it can handle very BIG libraries.

Hilquite I had this problem too and tried absolutely everything I could think of. All other programs on my PC were running fine, I took the drastic step of reformatting my hard drive and loading everything up again. All is good now and my PC is really humming along nicely but it took me over a week to reload everything. I now have a very good uninstaller ASHAMPOO which tracks all my installations of all softwares and allows you COMPLETELY remove any software you add to your PC. You might want to try doing a "Repair" Reinstall of Windows XP but make sure all your data and internet settings, favourites etc are backed up. I think this is the third time this problem has been raised now so either it means PTE has a bug or PTE by its design is showing up some deficiency in the current integrity of your system. Maybe Igor needs to look into this a little further as your problem sounds exactly the same as what I had. Good luck and I sincerely hope you don't have to go down the REFORMAT or REPAIR REINSTALL path.

I have spent a lot of time today thinking how I would best go about constructing a PTE presentation if I could have all the enhancements I wanted. My method would be something like this:- (text in bold are things we can't currently do in PTE) 1. Decide/prepare/compose my sound track 2. Import my soundtrack into PTE via the Background Music Tab 3. In the timeline view I play my sound track and add my transition points. This gives me a good first go at laying out transition points according to the soundtrack. I may never change these points or I could change them a lot or a little depending on how I fine tune my presentation. 4. Then I load in my slides to the slide list and switch to the slide table view. 5. Now while keeping the slide table view open I bring up the timeline and play the soundtrack. As I play the soundtrack and watch for the transition points I move slides around on the slide table to suit. 6. Once I have roughly arranged the slides in the slide table I focus back on the Timeline and play the show from the beginning looking at the small preview 7. CHANGING IMAGES ASSIGNED TO PARTICULAR TRANSITION POINTS- When I get to a transition point that I don't like the attached slide for, I right click on the transition in the timeline window and select "Replace Slide" PTE takes you to the Slide Table/Slide List and you are prompted to select the new slide. When you select the new slide PTE will check if that slide currently has an assigned transition point:- If it doesn't have an assigned transition point it will replace the slide and send the replaced original slide to the back of the slide table/slide list. If PTE detects that the replacement slide already has an assigned transition point it will show a Dialogue Box "Transition Point already exists for this slide Do you want to:- Copy Slide - This leaves the "replacing" slide where it is but creates a copy and replaces the "original" slide. The "original" slide is sent to the back of the slide table/slide list Substitute Slide - This does a simple swap between the two. Replace with blank slide - This replaces the "replacing" slide with a blank slide, replaces the "original" slide with the "replacing" slide, and sends the "original" slide to the back of the slide list. By leaving a blank slide it shows you instantly where you now have a "gap" in your slide list. Replace and move forward - This replaces the "original" slide with the "replacing" slide, sends the "original" slide to the back of the slide list and then moves all the slides behind the "replacing" slide forward one slide to fill the gap. 8. DELETE TRANSITION POINT - If I want to delete a transition point I right click on the transition point and select either DELETE TRANSITION POINT or DELETE TRANSITION POINT AND SLIDE. Both of these options preserve the positions of other transition points but if only the transition point is deleted then for example the 6th slide would now play at what used to be the 7th transition point. This is how classic PTE works. 9. ADD NEW PRESERVING TRANSITION POINT - When I want to add a completely new transition AND slide I click on this button. This will preserve all existing transition points and their corresponding slides but will be a two fold button that will behave as follows:- First - Click the button and a transition point is added then... Second - PTE takes you to the Slide Table/Slide List and you are prompted to select the new slide.When you select the new slide PTE will check if that slide currently has an assigned transition point:- If it doesn't have an assigned transition point it will move the slide to the new position. If PTE detects that the replacement slide already has an assigned transition point it will show a Dialogue Box "Transition Point already exists for this slide Do you want to:- Copy Slide - This leaves the slide where it is but creates a copy and inserts the copy at the new transition point. Replace with blank slide - This replaces the slide with a blank slide, and inserts the slide. By leaving a blank slide it shows you instantly where you now have a "gap" in your slide list. Insert and move forward - This moves the slide from its current position and then moves all the slides behind the "inserting" slide forward one slide to fill the gap. This may read as fairly complex but if you think about it it is very intuitive, it also uses the classic pre beta functionality except for:- - Deleting Transition Points - Adding Preserving Transition points - Replacing slides assigned to transition points - Allowing Slide table and timeline to be viewed at same time What do you think???

Igor sounds like we are getting there! Just one question, when we go to insert a new transition point amongst other already existing transition points will PTE change the other transition points (like it does in current beta)? I think its important that it DOESN"T change the other transition points. One other option may be useful. In the slide list or timeline can we have a "Replace slide option" accessed by right clicking slide and selecting from a file browser type box? Also Personally I don't think 2)b is necessary from my perspective Thanks for all your efforts on this Igor and your will to get it right

Rainer I think one of the really good things about PTE is that you can lay your slides out in the order you want them to play in the "slide table" view and manually change them around to suit the order you want them to appear. The images then naturally line up with your transition points in your time line. I like what you are suggesting but in being able to make such a link to an image PTE would also have to make the corresponding changes in the slide table. I think the slide table should also be able to have more slides than there are transition points so you can have slides "off to the side" which you can add or take away if needed.

Igor I just looked up the "Gordian Knot" on the internet Solve this puzzle with PTE and it will make you "Igor the Great" !! :-)

Thanks Igor, I was getting a little worried but am very pleased to see that you treating this with an open mind :-) Its this open mind that has made PTE such a great peice of software.

IGOR PLEASE READ VERY IMPORTANT SLIDES AREN'T AS IMPORTANT AS TRANSITION POINTS It seems to me that generally from start to finish in a project once you are happy with your transition points they won't change but the particular images occuring at each transition point could change many times until you achieve the right feel of your presentation. In short transition points should be "sacred" and the hardest thing to remove, images should be able to be chopped and changed easily. Right now if I go and remove half the images from my slide list I also remove half my transition points!! This could be devastating if I didn't know before hand. When you are programming transition points in the Timeline you go to great efforts to place your transition points at very precise changes in the music, you can spend a lot of time doing this, it seems wrong to loose these transitions when you delete a slide because its not the right slide for that transition point. The slide can easily be changed but the transition point will require more work. Pictures to exe will be fundamentally flawed if you allow transition points to be deleted when you delete a slide. Think of it this way. I spend 3 hours getting all my transition points ready for a 10 min show, perfectly synched to the soundtrack however I now realise that there are about 15 slides throughout my presentation that I could replace with better slides, under the current beta it will mean virtually reprogramming the whole show as opposed to simply making 15 quick changes in the slide list.

Igor just a few things about the latest beta 4.40#3 -IMPORT POINTS FROM ANOTHER PROJECT option. Has this function been introduced because with the latest Betas Transition points are now locked into slides present and when you delete a transition point you delete the slide and vice versa? This means the only way to change all of your images and keep the transition points the same is to start a new project load up your new images then import transition points from your first project? - I think how the timeline used to work is more logical. It seems to me that generally from start to finish in a project once you are happy with your transition points they won't change but the particular images occuring at each transition point could change many times until you achieve the right feel of your presentation. In short transition points should be "sacred" and the hardest thing to remove, images should be able to be chopped and changed easily. Right now if I go and remove half the images from my slide list I also remove half my transition points!! This could be devastating if I didn't know before hand. - When using the CTRL and the UP and DOWN keys in the timeline shouldn't the cursor move to the right when you press the UP key and to the left when you press the DOWN key? Currently its doing the reverse. +The ALT plus mouse function is great!!

Great work Guido we are all very lucky to have you as part of the PTE family!!

Big thanks to Ken Cox as I have now recovered all the photos and web pages for the PTE Forum members photos, you can view here:- http://www.imagescapes.co.nz/forum/forum.htm if you are not in the "Rogues Gallery" and want to be please email me your Photo at:- pteforum@imagescapes.co.nz

AL Sounds good

CCMANZ Just tried your idea on inserting a new slide, worked perfectly! - Thankyou :-) However I still feel a new user will not find this method very intuitive, I don't think it should be too hard for Igor to add the following functionality:- 1.Right click timeline 2.Select INSERT NEW SLIDE AT THIS POINT 3.You are taken to a file list, probably the main file list you have open in your main PTE window at the time 4.Select the slide 5.Done

Igor The timeline is working fine accept for one thing in my opinion. Say you program a show with all your customized syncd transitions and you decided that the show is fine accept for the start of show where you want to now have two slides where previously you had one long slide. If you go and add a new transition point all that seems to happen is that the next transition point shifts from where it currently is to where you are inserting the new slide, you then have to go through the whole show and adjust all the transition points. You need to be able to insert a brand new transition point that doesn't effect the other transitions you would also have to add a slide into the slide list where you want the new slide to go. What would be ideal is if you could go to the timeline, right click and select INSERT NEW SLIDE this would then add a transition point leaving everything else as it was but it would also propmt you to select the new slide from a file window, once select it would place the slide in the right place in the slide list. This would be a very intuitive way of adding additional slides to an almost complete show.

Thanks Ken, got them this afternoon, will try and resurrect the forum rougues gallery (this time making sure I include it in my back up routine!!) Cheers

In the past week I have done two things which I might usually do once or twice say every two to three years, the two things were:- 1. Completely format my hardrive 2. Change my web host provider for my web site Now here is the disaster part. As I have always keeped a copy of the Forum members photos on my hardrive and a copy on the website I didn't include the Forum data in my regular backups, so it was with some panic last night that I realised that I had just deleted both sources of the Forum Members Photos and web pages!!! So here is my plea for help. Has anybody happened to have downloaded the forum members website data to their hardrive? and if they have could they possibly email me the data, shouldn't be too big, probbaly not even a megabyte. Any help greatly appreciated Thanks in advance (fingers crossed)

Igor, Glenys and everybody else. Please don't get me wrong PTE didn't make me reformat my hard drive I just felt my system had become "clogged" with many programs installed and removed over the past two years, I just thought it was time for a clean out and it worked. I'm thinking of it more along the lines of PTE found a problem which I may not have possibly found any other way. I am not saying everybody should reformat if they incounter this problem but maybe as a last resort. Cheers

SUCCESS!! I have now managed to get the Beta to run perfectly. How did I do it? I reformatted my hardrive and reloaded everything and now PTE runs perfectly. I still don't know why it seemed PTE was the ONLY program affected but at least it gave me a good reason to have a clean out! Windows XP certainly makes it easy to to do a complete Hardrive reformat. So Igor and the team please accept my apologies for any "Wild Goose Chases" I may have sent you on. The one thing this highlights for me is that these computers are complex beasties and the more programs you instal and uninstall the more chances there are of something going wrong. Thanks for everyones help in trying to repeat the fault on your systems.

Not sure what to do now, I loaded an earlier version of PTE and its doing the same thing with the PREVIEW i.e. won't show a preview. I have recently upgraded my Memory from 500Mb to 1 Gig and thought that might be the culprit, but I took out the extra and no change :-( I did notice that normally when you do a preview the Progress Bar counts from 0-100% then shows the preview in this case it just sits on 0% and only shows the first image with no music. So it would seem as it happens that the problem probably lies on my machine as opposed to the new Beta since previous versions of PTE have the same problem on my machine. Any suggestions anyone? - short of reinstalling everything!

Igor Rechecked the Cancel function this morning, now it seems to work!! Rechecked the Preview function but still not working, very strange as if I create the show it plays perfectly. I was just wondering if anybody with 1 Gig of memory is having thsi problem as I know some programs can have problems with this much memory? WAVEFORM Do you mean that if you have a background sountrack and a sound assigned to a slide that both waveforms will show? I'll test this tonight.

P.S. To above post Igor Also the cancel command still doesn't restore any changes i.e if you delete a slide then hit cancel the slide is still deleted.

PROBLEM WITH PREVIEW Igor I have retested the preview function and can give you more precise information. Firstly I completely uninstalled PTE and cleaned out all the files in the Pictures to exe directory (except for the "key" file) then reinstalled the new Beta 4.40 #1 1. If I do a Customizable Synchronisation and attempt a preview from within the synchronisation window (from the FIRST image) all I see is the first image which stays on screen and nothing else happens, no music is heard 2. If I do the above from any slide other than the first slide then the remain slides show in rapid succession still with no music. 3. When in the Customizable Sync window the play button plays the show correctly in the small preview window. 4. Back at the main window 1 & 2 happen when I use the preview button 5. If I create and run the show, the show appears fine. I am running Windows XP Service Pack 2, 1 Gig of Ram, 2.4 GigHz Processor and about 20 Gigs free Harddrive. Any body else having this problem?

I have had a chance to play with the new Beta and here are some observations:- *NEW CURL TRANSITION - Appears to work fine (very professional and very smooth *CUSTOM SYNCHRONISATION WINDOW DELETION OF TRANSITION POINT DELETES SLIDE - Works but I think it needs to be enhanced. Maybe you should have the option to either:- (a) delete the slide from ONLY the timeline (so it remains in the slide list maybe going to the back of the slide list) ( delete the slide from BOTH the timeline and the slide list at the same time SHIFT SLIDES FUNCTION - Great! Very Useful SHIFT ALL SLIDES TO RIGHT FUNCTION - I'm not sure what use this function is? CANCEL BUTTON - Didn't seem to reverse and changes I made PREVIEW FROM WITHIN TIMELINE WINDOW AND MAIN PTE PAGE - Preview doesn't work properly. Works OK in the small PREVIEW window on the timeline and in a completed show but doesn't work on full screen preview. Shows the first image but the next image is always black? PAGE UP DOWN KEYS FOR ACCURATE CURSOR MOVEMENT - Couldn't seem to get this to work FINALLY - I couldn't move the first slide which appears on the timeline by dragging, is the first slide not supposed to be able to move and always locked to the start of the timeline? I understand not all of the enhancements may not have been enabled but those are my findings so far. Love the Timeline button on the Main PTE page and being able to change properties for slides from the customisable synchronisation window (both individually and in selections), a great time saver.