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Hi Cor I played your show again and would say its really the style of the titles and their flashing which don't "fit" well with the rest of the show. I think your idea re more integration with the sphere and a metalic type text would be good. I did like what you did with flashing lights in the rest of the show though. On a second viewing my wife agreed with me too so now you really have to be worried! Great show! Andrew

Cor Thank you very much for posting the show, I watched the show with my biggest critic alongside, my wife! My heart sank when I heard the words "This is the best slide show I have ever seen...it even tops yours honey!" So a big congratulations. To me this show is really about the skilful and adept way in which the slide changes have been choreographed to the music, it would be fair to say one of the best I have seen. You have really "felt" the music and integrated it with the visuals to get a 1+1=3 result. Notwithstanding the above I also felt the images were technically and creatively superb. If I was your only viewer and you were tailoring your show to my 100% satisfaction the only comments I would make is that I felt your show exuded "class" yet a couple of the effects took away from that "classy" effect, namely the opening titles heralding the 50 years and some of the "Cokiness" type filter effects, I personally have never been huge on them but its pretty hard to argue they don't support the whole "atomic" theme. My final comment is just a tiny observation that a couple of the slide changes had little difference in the subject matter which gave a slight feeling of repetitiveness, now I appreciate that on a structure like this you are going to naturally get repetition but the variation of angles, lenses, time of day and lighting used has given great variety - its just there are a couple of shots seemingly taken from similar angles, with similar lenses, at a similar time of day -these could have been mixed up a little. So there is the view from a "hardened" slide show enthusiast however please don't forget that my wife thought it was "perfect!" Thanks again for reposting Cor. Cheers Andrew

Hi Morturn Thanks for looking at the show and posting your comments. Yes some of the images are not sharp and I'm hoping you are referring to the shots taken in the car on slow shutter speeds - was hoping to portray a feeling of motion. As the dirty sensor hope it was something on the windscreen as the photos are pretty much taken on only two of my cameras and I'm not currently aware that the sensor needs a clean (a task I carry out with some intrepidation! :-) I never originally thought about having a menu for this show because it's original purpose was to be shown at a Photography Conference where a menu would have been of no use. However I agree for purposes of desktop viewing it would be helpful. The track list is as follows a straight cut and paste from the credits in PTE:- first PRIVATE TASTE lotus FAITHLESS inside MOBY 4th of July ED SHEARMUR love my way WILLIAM ORBIT don't wake me up ARGONAUTS dawn VANGELIS no such thing as monsters MARK ISHAM halycon & on & on ORBITAL Do come over and have a look and if ever in Queenstown look me up at the National Bank Cheers Andrew

Michel Sorry to have missed your show, let me know if you are posting again as would love to see it ! Cheers Andrew

Cor Hello! It sounds like you have made a fine slideshow but sadly I been occupied of late and have missed the chance to download and view. Is there any chance of posting again or does someone else have a copy they could post? Would really like to see it! Kind regards Andrew

Thank you all for your comments, I'm very pleased that you all enjoyed the show, its nice to have your show "out there" being viewed rather than locked away in the depths of the hardrive! LUMENLUX I'm using PTGUI to stitch PANOS. I really believe its the best out there regardless of price. With regards to zoom range I just seem to zoom in to what fits but I never resize images that I have to zoom as you need all the resolution you can get! Give me a couple of years for my 2 under two children to grow up a little and I might just take you up on your exchange offer, its definitely a part of the world I plan to visit! DAVE Regarding the introductory slide for day 2 and 3 being the same, if you look closely they are not. We stayed in the same place for two days and did the same route each day but on the second day did it in reverse! This proved to be a fascinating experience as we got to see the same scenery in both afternoon and morning lights and I think the photos show the effect of each is quite different. We agreed that in future we would definitely use this technique again on different trips. For the first three nights we stayed in a vacant holiday home on the shores of Lake Clearwater (you can download a Google Earth Link here:- Clearwater Accomodation ) For the second three night we moved on to a lodge on a High Country Farm over about 120 km's away which also doubles as shearers quarters during the shearing season (you can download a google earth link here:- Glenthorne Accomodation) JFA I think you are right, the option to have a menu would be nice and is a great idea. With regards to sound i.e voice over and atmospheric sounds I'm really just guilty of being lazy and not taking the time to record these (sometimes feels like you have more than enough to do without having to record sounds as well on the trip!!) I have seen some of your shows with ambient sounds and I always say to myself "I must do that in my next show..." but I never get round to it. Maybe a challenge for my next show(s). It does really add a whole new dimension to the show. Cheers all Andrew

Thanks for all your suggestions and encouragement! I have had a play round with the JPEG compression size and chopped it down to a Quality of 70 and reduced the Bitrate of the soundtrack and have managed to get this baby down to just over 100 megs! I was quite surpised as the screen quality appears to have held up nicely. I'm going to take up Bill on his offer and load up to Beechbrook for 30 days - Thankyou Bill. And the show... well its quite a different project for me, and if I'm honest is inspired by the shows we see from Lumenlux and Jeff Lunt (Wild Dog). Shows that tell a story of a particular journey or experience. This particular experience is a 7 day road trip last May of what we call in New Zealand the South Island High Country. Its way different for me as its the first show I have made where I haven't been able to choose the very best images taken over a long period of time I just had to rely on what I had over the 7 days. We had a poet on the trip so there's some of his verse included in the show. 30 mins might sound like a long time but the show is broken up into the seven days each with its own underlying theme in a way so it hopefully doesn't drag. I played it at a Photography conference back in October I can't be certain but I don't think anybody fell asleep! So all things going well should be up on Beechbrook within the next day. Thanks all Andrew

Hello all I have a big PTE presentation I'm wanting to post, its about 500Meg as it is (has lots of Big Pans and zooms etc that need the full resolution of the image file and is almost 30mins long). I could reduce the quality of the JPEGS and maybe cut it back to under 300Meg. Most upload sites are limited to 100 Meg uploads Does anybody have any suggestions? Cheers Andrew

Tom & Hawk (Ralph) thanks for your posts the following will provide some more information about my setup: *I'm shooting Mini-DV tape on a Panasonic Video Camera *I'm capturing this video into Sony Vegas *I'm then rendering out sequences using the Sony DV-AVI Codec WINDOWS FOR VIDEO (AVI) - PAL DV-WIDESCREEN TEMPLATE Audio: 48,000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, PCM Uncompressed. Video: 25 fps, 720x576, Lower field first. Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.457. OpenDML compatible. Widescreen PAL DV video files compatible with Sony Video Capture. I imagine this a fairly mainstream codec. I have ran a few tests now and I can confirm the following:- * Using the above work stream any AVI file I produce which is less than around 4 Gigs in size will load into Video Builder Fine * Using the above work stream any AVI file I produce which is more than around 4 Gigs in size will not load into Video Builder but instead will only show a grey box. I completely took the original video out of the equation and ran a test with a single jpeg image. I imported the image into Sony Vegas and rendered it into a static video clip (using the above codec) of the following durations:- 15sec, 15min, 22min The sizes of the clips were 58megs, 3.4Gigs and 4.8Gigs respectively I replicated the same results as with the original video footage, the 58meg and 3.4Gig AVI files imported perfectly but the 4.8Gig file only showed the grey box. From these tests I can safely say Videobuilder happily recognizes the Video Format but struggles with AVI video size larger than 4 Gigs Approx from this particular codec.

Hi Ken Yes I can drag all 11 to the bottom. Using the same AVI files I have successfully burnt a DVD using ULEAD DVD MOVIEFACTORY. One thing I have noticed is that these are the two biggest AVI files out of the 11 with both of them being over 4 GB in AVI format. Perhaps there is a bug in Video Builder with the loading of AVI files greater than 4 GB in size?

I have been trying to create a DVD consisting of 11 separate AVI files all rendered from the same video editing package within minutes of each other. All AVI files play fine on anything I can find to play them in however when I load them up into Video Builder just two of the AVI's don't display. On the Menu Building page (see attached) or on any other Video Builder Screen It seems like this is a bug. When I try to select a frame to show on the thumbnail of the two affected files I get nothing but the blank grey image you can see in the attached image. It just seems weird that it happens on only two of the AVI's yet these AVI's play fine on anything other than Video Builder? Anybody experienced this?

The inclusion of MPEG files is fantastic! I send DVD's to my family and friends and incorporate PTE Mpeg files and Camcorder Mpeg rendered files via an elaborate DVD Authoring program which is way to complex for my needs. It sounds like PTE VideoBuilder will be able to also be used as a very stable, simple to use, high quality DVD authoring program able to offer menu selection to both PTE and externally produced Mpeg files - great!

Igor these are great enhancements that will certainly make compiling shows easier. Over the last month I have spent almost every night programming up a "powerpoint" style show in PTE which also incorporating the launching of 4 other standalone PTE shows for a photography conference presentation in the weekend. The presentation went flawlessly and everybody was impressed at the versatility of PTE and the quality of the transitions and P/Z/R effects. It was quite fortunate that there was also a couple of presentations made by Proshow Gold and they both showed obvious signs of jerkiness in Pans and Zooms so I think you may have a few converts over to PTE! One other thing that I found a little frustrating in making the show was becuase I had a lot of slides that only had text on them (in a powerpoint style) it became quite difficult to quickly locate the slide in the Main Window of PTE as all those slides just showed as a blank black slide. Is it possible in the main window view to simply make all objects 100% opacity in any slide that has any objects added for the purposes of seeing what is actually on the slide? The only other way to quickly find this out is to go into the O&E window and flick through the slides using the previous/next arrows - but this can take a long time!

Lin Its shows like yours that hopefully help the rest of us realize the horror, terror and waste of war and in doing so maybe make it just that little bit harder to start the next one. Regards Andrew

Cheers Lin and thanks for the link - I even learnt a few things about "Earnie" I didn't know before!

Hi Ray Unless I am getting you wrong can you not just select the next slide you need to shift (in the timeline mode) then hit SHIFT-END (This selects all slides to the right of your selected slide as well) then just drag however far left or right along the timeline as you need to go, all transition points will be bumped along the same amount. You can even (after you have selected the transitions) hit the Timed Points button in the Timeline window and precisely enter a value to move the slides left or right. If that is your problem hope it helps. Cheers Andrew

Did someone say PTE wasn't for making movies? Seems a shame! WOW!!!!

Thanks for your post, of course you can change your mind on this show (if my wife can so can you!) I think what you have said lines up with why I instantly liked the original show, because I had gotten used to the photography and wanted a more non-literal interpretation of the subject matter. Maybe its like when you see a movie for the second time and enjoy it even more than the first. I understand what you mean about the scenery, I live with it every day so do take it for granted a bit. That opening scene is a real pain for me as the time of that pan is locked into the soundtrack which I think fits the image perfectly and the length of the panorama which I can't shorten as you can't have an opening panorama of the Earnslaw without including the famous Remarkables at the start of the panorama. I may be able loop my soundtrack secretly within itself but its such a crisp peice of music I possibly won't get away with it. I used to judge photos at my camera club and would have them for a whole week, I usually found if I hung them around the walls all week, the image I preferred at the start of the week wasn't the one I liked at the end of the week. Thanks again for your comments. Cheers Andrew

Hello Mathais and welcome to the forum. I think your main problem is that your text is moving too fast and you seem to have a transition occuring at the same time. You might want to go to the customize slide option box and in Effects select "Quick (no transition effect)" it would be esaier if you post your actual project file so we could have a look, not the .exe file but your .pte file. Good luck! Cheers Andrew

Al, I have tried your test above and agree the show does in fact come to the original position in the originating show but in my tests it seems depending on how long you display your launching slide (the slide that starts the "other" PTE show) you may or may not see following slides before your "other" show starts. For example if my launching slide is only say 1 sec duration and I have three following slides each of say 1 second then when I run the show I get to the launching slide, I then see the next three slides THEN the "other" show starts. Now if I make my launching slide 10 sec duration, when I play the show and come to the launching slide, it stays on screen for 10 secs then the "other" show starts without any following slides playing until the "other" show finishes. Clearly some tweaking is needed to PTE by Igor. As a work around though I think it may be best to disable the "pause when window ....." option and manually control the show with the Stop after slide command as you are not going to know how long necessarily to make your launching slide to prevent following slides to display before your show starts, also you do have to wait less time for the show to start using this method. Regards Andrew

Thanks DOM

Very "outside the box" thinking - Brillant!!!

Hi Al Yes I don't want to have to press any PTE "Buttons" on the "announcing" slide as I will be walking around a conference room with a Logitech 2.4 GHz Wireless Presenter (amazing peice of kit by the way) and will be 50 feet or so away from my Laptop hence the need to run from the slide options and not a PTE button. Great the flashing thing worked - only problem is if you distribute your show - others probably won't know to adjust their Taskbar settings. I think with all the work arounds involved this is actually a bug and maybe Igor can fix in future versions. Just another side comment, PTE as a Powerpoint type presentation software is fantastic! Cheers ANdrew

Thankyou gentlemen for your feedback. I think I may end up making a hybrid of the two shows for my final, some of those long dissolves in the second show I think look better than the first so I may incorporate them but at the same time feel there are some very strong zooms that just need to stay Dave you have got me thinking, I know just the thing to fill in that long pan at the start, and that's a superimposed introduction of text as you suggested (thank you!) though I know Patrick's going to say "Now I can't even see the landscape!" :-) Thanks again all has been a very interesting exercise for me and I think part of success of this forum is that sometimes we manage to agree to disagree and of course wherever "art" is involved its probably a good way to be! Cheers Andrew

I'm trying to make a manual Powerpoint type presentation but at three or four points through the presentation I want to be able to launch a separate fully automated PTE show then come back to my manual presentation. The only way I have discovered how to do this seemlessly is as follows:- 1. Make sure Hardware Acceleration is turned off in the "Screen" page of the Project Options menu 2. Create a blank slide solely for the purpose of launching my "other" PTE show, make sure this is set to 1 sec duration no effects and in the customize slide option "Main" select "Stop at the end of this slide" 3. The slide before my "launching slide" announces that the show is next, this slide is also set to "Stop at end of this slide" 4. Go to my XP Bottom Task Bar, right click and unselect Properties/"Keep Task Bar on top of all windows" option. This prevents your desktop flashing briefly at the end of your "other" show. So when running my manual presentation I come to my "announcing slide" hit the mouse, it goes immediately to my blank "launching slide" my "other" PTE presentation is run then because I selected "Stop at end of this slide" returns to a blank screen in my manual show awaiting my next mouse key to continue. NOW What I don't get is that there is an option in the Projects/Main called "Pause when window of slide show becomes inactive", I would have thought if I had have selected this all I would need to do is, on my launching slide change the "Stop at end of this slide" option to "No actions after this slide". This would then mean that my "other" show would run its course then once finished PTE would automatically carry on to the next slide. This isn't happening, what does happen is that I go straight to the next slide after the launching slide plays and it displays that slide for a few seconds then my "other" show starts up and when its finished I am returned back to the slide after the launching slide. Infact the "Pause when window of slide show becomes inactive" seems to have little effect at all. Am I missing something here? I have seen other posts with similiar problems but these appear to relate more to object menus or linking menus. Any thoughts greatfully received. Cheers Andrew