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I have had to preapare a PTE 5.0 slideshow for a vineyard here in Queenstown. I think I have successfully syncd to soundtrack by:- 1) Shifting all transition points forward by 2 secs after having perfectly aligned them in the timeline. 2) I made sure that the duration of the last slide ended 2 seconds before the music stopped for example if you have a soundtrack 100 secs long and the last slide is placed at 90 seconds, give it a duration of 8 secs. This will let your show show cycle without getting further out of synch. NOTE: The above is only neccessary with this Beta and its limitations. Before I release the final version to the vineyard I would be grateful if a few of you could download this presentation:- http://www.imagescapes.co.nz/private/test%20sync.exe and just make sure that on your system the slide changes appear to match with changes in the music. About three quarters of the way through there are about 4 slide changes that are supposed to sync to 4 very obvious quick changes in the music and this will be the acid test. It is so nice to be able to produce pan & zoom show with synchronisation :-) Thanks for your help in advance.

PROBLEM SOLVED I do remember Igor saying somewhere about a 2 sec delay in music or start of show, so if you just move all your transition points forward 2 secs it works perfectly! Note: You can do this by selecting all the transitions on the timeline and clicking on "timed points" then selecting "shift points" seems to work fine, but obviously will be corrected in future.

Hi Ian Can you try something for me... 1. Start a new test show 2. Choose Synchronize to music in the project options and leave "auto" unchecked. 3. Load up about 5 images making the first a long panorama 4. Animate the first image to be a long pan, say 30-60 secs or more 5. For the remaining slides can you set their transitions to fade and a really quick say 200ms transition time 6. Shortly after the first long pan finishes can you add transition points for the remaining 4 images but synchronise them to beats or changes in the music and resaonably close together but not so close that transition times extend past image duration times. 7. Play the presentation and see if the last four slides synch to their designated point on the soundtrack. I'm finding that they don't. Infact they are way out of sync. It plays fine on the timeline with perfect precision but not as a preview or exe. I'm a bit confused about when you say "The one thing you have to watch out for is that you give slides with overlaid animations sufficient time to run before bringing in the next image. Its important to cater for the full duration including the transition times." This as I understand is as it always was in pre version 5.0 PTE for example you can't have a 10 secs dissolve to the next image when the next image has a duration of only say 2 secs. But you can have a 2 sec dissolve to an image that has a duration of 10 secs. In the sequences I'm testing its only a 200ms dissolve with an image duration of say 2 or 3 seconds With regards to the animation length, it appears to be limited to when the next image transition occurs so the animation itself can't extend past that point anyway (apart from transition duration)? Would be greatful if you could try out above and let me know your results. Thanks in advance Andrew

Hi Igor I'm hoping I know the answer to this question already but thought I would just ask it anyway. To me one of the fundamentally great things about PTE is its ability to perfectly synchronize transition points to specific changes or peaks in the sound track and maintain synchronization throughout the entire presentation. (I understand synchronization is not yet implemented in PTE 5.0) With the added ability to animate images in PTE 5.0 are you still going to be able to provide exact synchronization as in the past version? The only reason I ask is that I imagine it could be difficult given that you are now also waiting for each image to potentially finish its animation & transition before you move to the next transition point and this may potentially cause lag? My gut feeling says that you have this covered but just curious as to your comments.

Hello "thedom" Had to pull it from the site as I needed the space but now have freed some room so am reloading. Should be back up in about 15 mins. Is a very simple sequence but that is one of the special things about PTE 5.0 you can make a very atmospheric presentation with just a few images and some ambient music and sounds. I really can't wait for the audio synchronization feature to be re-implemented and then I will have my winter nights full as I have at least a dozen shows I want to put together but have been holding off for over a year with the anticpation of this release of PTE. PTE and the shows it can now produce provide a hugely different experience from the old PTE and I imagine we can all look forward to seeing some stunning presentations on Beechbrook now that we can incorporate smooth motion into our shows. I now see PTE 5.0 as providing a real "cinematic" experience something which no other software (that I have seen) can do in an .exe format. Exciting stuff!

Igor On my old nvidia geforce 440 mx - slightly jerky On my new nvidia geforce 6600 gt tdh - perfect :-)

Ian Very classy and love your sense of humour :-) I am being constantly surprised at how you can incorporate Pan & Zoom to give a seemingly endless range of effects. I remember GlobFX well and also recall its problems in terms of image quality and playability to the wider masses, I also remember hoping that one day PTE could do many of the tricks that GlobFX could do and it looks like that day has finally come. And by the way was a bit jerky on my current nvidea 440 MX but that will be changing in a few days when my upgraded video card arrives.

Thanks Eric I have finally decided on a Leadtek nvidea Geforce 6600GT http://www.leadtek.com/3d_graphic/winfast_a6600_gttdh_1.html http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/dis...0gt-agp_22.html Should be more than fast enough for PTE 5.0 and appears to be good value too.

That's one big rat, beaver, prairie dog? I half expected it to reach out and take a swipe at one of those planes - as in King Kong :-) Even more things this new Beta can do! Thanks for giving us even more ideas to play with:-)

Hi Igor Card is an Nvidea Geforce MX 440 I do recall seeing somewhere that you said this level of card probably wouldn't cope with the new Beta. I'm looking at getting a nvidea Geforce 6800 or 6600 series card with 256mb memory should this be sufficient?? Regards Andrew Thanks Ron, Tom is joy to have around and keeping us both fascinated and tired at the same time :-) Glad you liked the sequence. I'm thinking though those rooftops in the right light (storm lighting maybe) would make for some interesting pans and zooms :-)

Hi Lin, thanks for that, we are moving about 10 km's away to almost a country location, still surrounded by mountains but no view of the lake. We currently live on a very steep section (hence the view!) but just having had our first baby we are looking for a flatter warmer location, but we will definitely miss the view. The place we are moving to is very pretty though, surounded by lots of Larches and other autumn trees so this time of year is spectacular. Thanks Maureen That's good to know I'm thinking about moving to a Geforce 6700 or 6800, we are looking forward to along winter plenty of time to play with the new PTE !! :-)

Barry I agree with Ken, "very slick" presentation and again showing a whole unique way to use the new features of PTE 5.0. I was very impressed by the clarity of you images too. I also have noticed that what you see in the Animations Window is not exactly what is produced in the final presentation.

Thanks John I think I will definitely be upgrading my video card :-) The scenery is pretty much the view outside my window but not for long as we are moving soon :-(

Thanks Ken & Ken! :-) That is one issue I think Igor will need to attempt to solve, is the slight jitter or jerk when you have one image on the screen and a new image then comes on screen, it seems this is problematic and may be down to video card, would be great to hear if ANYBODY with a higher spec video card can view the demo without any jitters or jerks ? And yes all is safe in NZ, but this isn't hard as we are so far away from anywhere else :-)

Heres a small demo made with the new beta:- http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~bussty/test.exe it really is limitless as to what is now possible with PTE but here are the fundamental things for me that make this beta so special. - Multiple scrolling/zooming of images - Rolling text - Zooming & Panning while maintaining the same screen space (Project Options/Screen/ Custom Ratio 1.5 chosen for this presentation) This lets you seemlessly move from standard 35mm Frame size images to rolling panoramas or zooms without increasing your image footprint - very cool, of course the same happens if you do full screen shows but the average computer screen doesn't match the traditional 35mm Ratio of the image so this feature is very handy. Again, a big thank you to the PTE team

Thanx Lin Works a treat!! By the way for what its worth I followed with interest your battle with Jason over on DP Review and agree totally that PSG has not to date even come close to matching the smoothness of pans and zooms that this PTE beta 5.0 is producing.

Lumenlux I think the zoom speed is an optical illusion if you start zoomed in and zoom out for example objects initially appear closer and feel like they are moving faster but as they get smaller the visual rate of change is less so the zoom appears slower and vice versa if you start zoomed out then zoom in. I have seen the non-linear zooms in some other programs which speed up initially then slow down and vice versa depending on where you start from, I think Igor will implementing this in future. P.S. Love the ability to give a 16:9 DVD ratio screen, this really gives the shows a cinematic quality.

Igor!!!!!! WOW! There is nothing I have seen out there that gives the smoothness of fullscreen pan and zooms like this beta release of PTE 5.0 You have done such a good job and its so nice to see so many positive comments back from the forum at this early stage, that is a very good sign. I haven't made a show in over a year in anticipation of PTE 5.0 and it looks like my wait is justified, you have created an almost hypnotic level of quality with PTE 5.0 and our future presentations will have so much more depth. Thank you Igor and the team. I am using an NVIDIA GEFORCE4 MX 440, samples ran fine except for an occassional minor jerk in some of the more complex scenes but almost of no consequence when compared to the terrible peformance of any other EXE pan or zoom effect I have seen out in the market place. Again WELL DONE :-)

Thanks Lumenlux, glad you liked the Timelapse Sequence. No timelapse sequences being used in any Commercial Endeavors of late but there is huge potential. Would really like to see your spring snow sequence :-) And a quick mention for those that are thinking for those long Timelapse Sequences how are you going to make the batteries last? the solution there is to buy a little motorcycle battery or similar and one of those universal car adaptors which lets you use your IPOD or similar in the car and rig up a adaptable plug on to your Optional Mains Power supply for your camera so you can plug your camera into the battery bypassing the normal transformer. This gives you a lightweight portable power supply that wil last for days!

Hi Ken Glad you liked sequence, one I have been meaning to do is by the sea with the tide coming in and out over the course of a day, unfortunately I don't live by the sea and it seems a long way to go to nurse a camera for a whole day :-) Andrew

Hi Ken Yes you are right I sort of did an earlier timelapse but that was a very different thing, it showed the same scene but taken at different times of the year, the images were then aligned and slow dissolves made between each image, that sequence only had about 25 images the one posted here has about 190!! I would post it again but running a bit short on web space.

I don't think Pan & Zoom will be a passing fancy, you can use it very subtly to give just a hint of movement in your shows and used this way gives a very professional feel, for example just very slowly zooming in say to 95% of the original image gives a very nice solid feeling of being drawn in to the image. I think as soon as you PAN or ZOOM too quickly you will reduce the overall feel of the presentation unless of course you are going for an ultra special effect. As has been mentioned many times in this forum most of the motion pictures today incorporate PAN & ZOOM subtly. However what PAN and ZOOM will do is make it more challenging to prepare PTE shows as you now have a third variable to worry about, almost like going from 2D to 3D, but this extra effort will be rewarded with a much more varied style of presentation. I can't wait! :-)

I don't know how many out there are aware that PTE is a very effective tool to display timelapse sequences. The following sample PTE presentation:- http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~bussty/Remarks&CloudsTL.exe (note: is a 14 meg download) shows a timelapse sequence made using PTE. All you need to do is take a picture of the same scene on a tripod at a fixed interval, say 10 secs. You can buy intervalometers for most cameras which let you do this automatically, some cameras even have this built in. Once you have your sequence taken over a period of time, anywhere from 10 mins to 10 days! (or longer) you simply load them into PTE in the order taken and set up a CUT transition for each image at somewhere around 40ms interval (25 frames per second) You can vary these settings of course to have faster or slower timelapse effects.

I definitely agree with the "horses for courses" comment. In my particular case I try to use PTE to give a real Cinematic effect, an atmosphere where the viewer has to sit there for 5 to 10 mins and just concentrate on the sound and images playing before his/her eyes. Quite often a really strong ingredient of your show is the flow of synching sound to images and you just don't want the distraction of a nav bar to upset this. Its like you would never see a nav bar on screen if you went to the movies? On the other hand if I was to make an instructional PTE presentation on how to master the Zone System (for example) I would definitely have a Nav Bar as the viewer needs to Pause to absorb information and understand new ideas etc.

"Positive things happen to positive people" This is so true Harry so often our fears are our worst enemy and how often do we fear something only to wonder why we ever did. I'm sure this will be you to Harry. Our thoughts are all with you.