ADB

Stevie - Thanks Stevie, Queenstown for your Honeymoon? You should have popped in and said Hi, you'll find me at the National Bank :-) Peter - Glad you liked the show. Only time I used O&A was for the Titles. I love long fades and especially those moments when you think your looking at one thing but it turns out to be another. Definitely not my longest show but I'm tending to reduce the length these days mainly as peoples attention can start to wander after about 10 mins or so. Keeping it short also lets you concentrate the imagery without repeating images or at least showing very similiar images ( a flaw of some shows I have seen). Next show hopefully will be about the Earnslaw (a steamboat that operates on the Lake) Cheers Andrew

Interesting thread developing here and I think it highlights one important thing about PTE and that is that it is an excellent EXE producer. There are more advanced softwares out there as discussed with multiple soundtracks and video tracks and everything else BUT they are producing VIDEO. I feel WNSOFT may have pushed EXE presentations almost to the limits that current mainstream hardware can manage, is it actually physically possible to have multiple full function soundtracks and play back full screen, high resolution images complete with animations and effects all in Smooth Real Time? If the answer to that question at this point in time is NO maybe we need to live with producing the audio track in other softwares and importing into PTE. Regards Andrew

Hi Brian The only reason I can think why the timeline won't play is when you haven't loaded a music file in the "Project Options / Music" Tab? Cheers Andrew

I've found that overly large files can also cause you problems so resize your images to the maximum screen resolution you think your show will be viewed under. I'm current using a default screen size of 1280 x 1024 so my images (except Panos) are no wider than 1280 or higher than 853 pixels (I crop my screen to fit traditional 35mm frame format 15:10 Ratio this leaves black bars at the top and bottom of the screen) Also keeping all this in mind if you are planning to start a slide zoomed in and then zoom out you are going to need higher resolution for optimal qaulity. I can't confirm this but if you have multiple sound files as your background music don't start any complex animations or transitions close to the change in the music, I did notice a increased smoothness when I did this but it may have been coincidental. All that aside I reiterate Lins comments, this latest beta is capable of very smooth Pans and Zooms unequalled in the EXE Presentation market. Cheers Andrew

Thankyou all for your comments, it has been a show that I have been wanting to do for a long time and the new animation features in PTE now lets me achieve the effects I'm after. David - Ah ha so you did see Frodo! Truth is he was actually not too far away from that mountain range in Lord Of The Rings infact I am pretty sure the Remarkables actually feature in a couple of background shots. Ron - Glad you liked the show and you never know you might just bump into Nicky in the next few weeks as she is heading back to your neighbourhood to catch up with family for a couple of weeks. Judy - The Remarkables do have that affect on people I have spent hours watching them from our old house and making this show was a little sad as we just don't have that view anymore. Thanks for the heads up on Beechbrook, I checked and you were right so I have emailed Bill and hopefully he can correct the link. Regards all Andrew

Cheers Ken Good to know! Yes I could put a different spin on that winery sequence now with the latest Beta, trouble they needed it 6 months ago :-) Still got the case of wine though ;-) Andrew

Hi Alain For me, sometimes I like the relative Keypoint Value and other times I don't, to me the best solution would be to have the choice via a clickable button for either relative or absolute. For those that aren't sure what that means:- "absolute" = the Keypoint Time from the start of the show to the current Keypoint "relative" = the Keypoint Time from the start of the current slide to the current keypoint. Both are useful depending on what you are trying to achieve but currently values are only shown in "relative" format. Andrew

Hi All I have finally completed my first Beta5.0 (11a) full show. Has been quite a while since my last show and animation certainly makes for the whole process to be a lot more involved than it used to be :-) This show runs smooth on my PC and I would be interested to know how others find it on their machines, in particular the opening Animation Title Sequence which caused me some initial smoothness problems. Show is the first part of 5 planned sequences covering my work over the last 20 years. This sequence is themed on the Remarkable Mountain Range near Queenstown, New Zealand. Can be downloaded via mediafire at the following link:- http://www.mediafire.com/?egedlqjnjzu Cheers Andrew

Geoff Ahh..... I searched for ages to try and find your original post and started to think I dreamt it! :-) I can certainly imagine on a show with 1500 slides it would be invaluable, fingers crossed Igor can implement in future versions. Cheers Andrew

Dom Thanks again, this one is a real shame as you can spend a lot of time "jiggling" animations around in the O&A window. We will just have to keep our fingers crossed that the amazing Wnsoft Team will find a way one day :-) Andrew

Dominique Thanks for finding this, that would be useful to do it that way as well, but to also do it with the mouse visually would be great for "tweaking". Cheers Andrew

It would be very handy to be able to select multiple keypoints in the O&A window (like you can now with the Timeline window using CTRL or SHIFT + Click) As it stands now if you make an animation but want to insert something or move the animation back or forward in time its a very time consuming process. Andrew

Hi Neighbour! Yep...already using that system but feeling lazy having to scroll to the end of the show every time to do the "shift-click" thing to select all the slides. Just thought it would be a nice short cut to right click and bingo! Cheers Andrew

I totally agree Lin, almost did the same myself tonight! It seems the latest betas are so enticing you can spend hours working away on a project without ever thinking to save your work, "autsave" would be VERY welcome. Cheers Andrew

Hi Ron and others I think the way the forum is now set up its ok to make comments about "Suggested improvements" as long as they remain within the same topic. There will be times when someone makes a suggestion for an improvement that already exists and the forum can point this out fairly readily to the poster, also some suggestions warrant a bit of discussion possibly to tweak the suggestion with many minds sometimes being better than one. I think as long as Igor updates the posts with their status (on the second title line) it should work really well. Cheers Andrew

Another poster has posted this somewhere else in the forum's but I can't find it just now so thought I would make it a seperate heading in "suggestions". I have spent some time programming shows of late and am finding after I synchronise some transitions to a soundtrack I might want to insert some silence or a title sequence and I need to shift the current slide plus all slides to the right backwards or forwards along the timeline. Would be very useful in the timeline window to be able to right click a transition point and choose the option "Select current slide and all slides to right..." this would make it easy to shift all the affected points to resync with your soundtrack and tweak as necessary. Andrew

Would it be possible to access the O&A window for any slide by right clicking on the transition point in the timeline and selecting a menu option? This would save having to back out of the Timeline Window everytime you wanted to make small adjustments. Andrew

Currently ONLY in the timeline can you use the option to "Replace the main image.." by right clicking on the transistion point and selecting the option. This allows you to keep timings, effects, objects and animation of the slide but change the image. Can this option also be included in the main Slide List View i.e without having to go into the Timeline.

Great tutorial Lin, very easy to follow, Thank you! Regards Andrew

There has been some talk on the forum recently of keeping a separate thread for future suggested enhancements, I have an idea:- In the pinned section there are three pinned topics each contains a bullet pointed list that is only updated by the moderators. The three pinned topics would be:- 1. Suggested improvements - any suggestion that hasn't already been suggested gets added a list. 2. Accepted improvements - all suggestions that have been accepted by Wnsoft are taken off the Suggested improvements list and added to this list, maybe even with a future implementation date added (if possible). 3. Declined improvements - all suggestions not accepted by Wnosft are taken off the Suggested improvements list and added to this list. It would mean some work on the part of the moderators but it would provide a very quick and easy reference as to what is or isn't planned for PTE. Of course as enhancements are put in place they would be removed from the Accepted Improvements list. If the moderators miss a suggestion then I'm sure the contributor can "bump" their suggestion to the top of the normal thread list until it is noticed by a moderator. Just a thought and maybe a way of making things clearer for everybody and avoid any repetition. P.S. You could have a similiar pinned list for known bugs P.S.S As you have probably worked out I love lists! hopefully this hasn't revealled anything too disturbing about my character :-) Cheers Andrew

I have three future suggestions:- WHEN PREVIEWING IN THE TIMELINE THE PREVIEW (SMALL DISPLAY BOX) ALSO SHOWS ANIMATION EFFECTS OBJECTS AND ANIMATION WINDOW TO OPERATE IN A SIMILIAR WAY TO TIMELINE WINDOW IN AS MUCH AS YOU HAVE THE SOUNDTRACK WAVEFORM AT THE BOTTOM AND WHEN YOU PLAY THE ANIMATION SYNCHRONISED SOUND IS ALSO PLAYED WHEN PROGRAMMING SHOWS YOU ARE ABLE TO MUTE SOUND, THIS LETS YOU AUDITION MUSIC IN SAY FOR EXAMPLE WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER, IN OTHER WORDS YOU CAN PLAY YOUR SHOW WITHOUT THE LOADED SOUNDTRACK PLAYING BUT LISTEN TO A RANGE OF OTHER MUSIC UNTIL YOU FIND A TRACK THAT "FITS" Andrew

John I agree, when you disable "Permit control of show with keyboard or mouse" the pause button shouldn't work, but it currently does I think this will turn out to be a bug or isn't implemented yet. Regards to disabling "Permit control of show with keyboard or mouse" by default I'm not sure. Something I have seen on this forum in recent times is the increasing number of people using PTE as a "Powerpoint" type substitute it could be that a good proportion of users use the keybord/mouse feature, nevertheless its a simple step to set that as a default setting in PTE for your own use by clicking "Set Defaults" in the option screen. The F1 key issue also seems to be a bug, I can also confirm that its currently working opposite to its stated role. Cheers Andrew

Hi John (here's my response to your eraly post which I think you might have missed?) I don't think you are the problem in this case and this is probably a bug, I think the zoom window should only say "custom" if you manually alter the zoom pattern outside the 4 options (smooth, accelerate etc). However until that bug (if it is considered a bug) is fixed, if you want to know what zoom pattern you selected, you can click on the "setting up" option within the zoom options box and you should be able to recognise the graph for your originally chosen zoom pattern. There are 4 standard patterns and you can of course go in and make your own if you wish to precisely make the effect you are after. Regards Andrew

Hi Dick If you are only using fade transitions and no animations then your video card should be fine (I would have thought). Does running the same show in Beta 9a result in similiar problems? Beta 9a seemed fairly stable to me and it would be interesting to know. If its a video card problem then you should have the same issues using beta 9a and 10. Also if it is just a video card problem you should be able to burn the show in beta 10 and have it run perfectly when played back on DVD have you tried this? Chances are that won't work either given the latest Beta 10 problems. Finally how big are your images? If they are straight of the camera or scanner without any resizing they could well be too big for your video card. I have a fairly high spec system and even that will falter if I try and load a REALLY big image e.g 200 Megs! Regards Andrew

Hi John I don't think you are the problem in this case and this is probably a bug, I think the zoom window should only say "custom" if you manually alter the zoom pattern outside the 4 options (smooth, accelerate etc). However until that bug (if it is considered a bug) is fixed, if you want to know what zoom pattern you selected, you can click on the "setting up" option within the zoom options box and you should be able to recognise the graph for your originally chosen zoom pattern. There are 4 standard patterns and you can of course go in and make your own if you wish to precisely make the effect you are after. Regards Andrew