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David, You mean a visible frame - a border? To be applied around a non-rectangular PNG file image? Not that I know of. Somebody else may well know how to do it. In which case, I'll learn along with you! However, you could always make the two "borders" as PNG files in your image editor and then add them as additional objects in the O&A window. Tip: Add a PTE Frame first then add your real face image and the border PNG as children of the Frame. If you then want to re-position or re-size the face you apply the pan/Zoom change to the PTE Frame object and the two children will dutifully follow momma! Peter

So the complaint really is that PTE doesn't support every possible flavour of every possible video format? To do that would probably require a much larger team of programmers in order to research each new variant as it was introduced and write the support for it. That, in turn, would mean the purchase price of PTE would have to increase, possibly very dramatically. If anyone is dissatisfied with the features that exist in PTE they can always open a new topic in the "Ideas and suggestions..." part of the forum. We all know very well indeed that Igor takes all our suggestions into account when deciding what features to add in each new release of the product. In each new release he includes many ideas that were put forward by users plus some that came from within the Wnsoft team. regards, Peter

Dave, That wasn't necessary. You seem to have mis-understood what I was trying to say when I wrote: I was trying to say that that specific post that I had written and that contained those words was the post which was "off topic". I was not suggesting that your post was in any way "off topic". regards Peter P.S. If two individuals who share a common first language can mis-understand one another, what hope is there for those for whom English is, at best, a second language? P.P.S I'm sorry, I have just realised that I have assumed that English is your first language. For all I know, you could be a native Welsh speaker who has English as his second language. Whatever, I meant no offence to any one.

Dave, This post is "off topic" for this thread. I have deleted that other topic of yours but you are not accepting PMs, so I couldn't tell you off forum. Time for some housekeeping methinks, buddy! Peter

Dave, Do you mean the totality of the Preferences? We can already save different Toolbar sets. Peter

I do not understand this comment. I have just successfully added a H264 video file (previously created using v7.0) into a slide in v7.5 beta 1 and it has played successfully in the mini-player. Peter

This topic has been opened at Igor's request. It stems from a brief discussion in the v7.5 Beta section of the forum. Background V7.5 of PTE introduces at least three new "file types" that can be saved on behalf of the user: - a "Profile" of the Toolbar settings from Settings | Preferences | Toolbars - the auto-recovery data file(s) - a custom-built transition effect file It seems possible that other new file types might be introduced in future releases of PTE. Proposal I suggest a possible solution for managing these files via the following design: - add to Settings | Preferences a new tab called "Folders" - in this tab allow the user to specify their choice of folders for such as Templates, Custom Transitions, Toolbar profiles, Auto-Recovery files, etc. - when PTE launches, use these defined folders to access the relevant data - when PTE is running, use these defined folders to access the relevant data - if a new release of PTE introduces a new type of file that the user's data is being saved into, add a new folder definition to this new tab regards, Peter

Jose, PTE v7.0 does not allow a Mask Container within another Mask Container. The "Add Mask" icon on the O&A toolbar adds the Mask Container and prompts you to add the mask image (the B&W image). Have you found some other "Add Mask" feature?

Do a little test with a one slide project. Add the Mask Container as a child object of the main image. Choose either the Circle or Rectangle predefined mask image to be put in the container. Now add a second real image as a child of the Mask Container. This will appear in the Object List between the Mask Container and the Mask image (the black and white Circle or Rectangle) Now play with the zoom, pan and rotate fields for each of the objects in turn: the main image, the Mask Container, the Mask itself and the Masked image. In this way you will find out what happens to the overall image and you will start to get some ideas as to possible creative uses. regards, Peter

Thus far I've only been "dipping my toe in the water" of including video in my sequences. From what I have read here on the forum, and elsewhere on the Internet, the problem seems to me to be that there are too many different video formats. Each hardware manufacturer seems to want to "lock in" the consumer to their products, so they have their own format. The big software companies definitely would like to "lock in" the consumer to their product range too, so they each have their own format. The technology, both hardware and software, is developing at an ever-increasing rate, so today's format is obsolescent tomorrow and obsolete the day after. Add to all that the fact that each video format could, potentially, be implemented using several different codecs and you have a right old rat's nest to disentangle. Applying the principle of "K.I.S.S.", I suspect the way to avoid the worst of these "incompatability" issues is to find out which formats/codecs are favoured by the software that is most important to you (that's PTE of course!) and then seek out cameras that capture video using one of those favoured formats/codecs. My Nikon D300s captures video using MJPEG codec into an AVI container. PTE converts this very happily into MPEG4 codec in an AVI container. That data was obtained using File Info (Ctrl+I) on video files in the PTE File List panel. I can see no difference between an original video and its converted equivalent - except for its length; and that's because I use PTE to do the trimming to the length I want. If I set up four trim operations and then run the conversion, they run in parallel on my quad-core system - which saves a significant amount of time. I'm not implying that my way will work for others, but it gives me all I need at present. Peter

John, He always brings lots of goodies to all those who have been good themselves, doesn't he? Peter

And he has already indicated that Christmas is coming early this year - next week with a bit of luck! Peter

Da Campos, Benvenuti a questo forum. Si prega di notare che questo forum utilizza l'inglese come lingua comune. "Welcome to this forum. Please make note that this forum uses English as its common language." Google Translate of Da Campos initial post: Among the many things that the computer was bad, that here there is no need to tell, certainly applies to photography has made ​​things more syncretic. He thinks with his eyes and you shoot the image on the monitor, then, can dramatically shorten the chain that once was the era of silver, that the rite of the darkroom. It all focuses on the creative side, get enough of these days too much too fast, in a way unthinkable in was analog. And here PTE is simply unparalleled. An idea, even approximate what you want, then upload the slides and, at times, with music, that's the idea takes shape. Certainly not just yet, but after a project here that the idea sketched at the beginning begins to take shape, so very easily. Too bad that programmers still insist not to provide for printing, as a story borad of the project. Sometimes away from the computer, and the story board in hand, you can continue working without the task of sitting at your computer.

That, in itself, could create new problems. Depending upon the sort of sequence I am building, I sometimes start by copying all the possible images I could use into the project's folder. The "Lead Mining in Weardale" sequence that I posted earlier this year had almost 450 images in that starting pool. There is no way I could have displayed all those at a meaningful and useful size. The most that I could display on my 22" 1920x1080 monitor, and still be able to see clearly what the subject was, would be about 200. If you are having difficulty moving the slider precisely with your mouse, that suggests to me that either your mouse needs replacing or that your mouse control settings need adjusting. regards, Peter

I'm sure that we all have, at sometime or other, encountered the following error condition: Yes, I know, it's always our fault for having renamed, deleted or moved the file; but wouldn't it be nice if PTE had some features to help us sort this out? What I envisage is a new Button (Search) that only appears in conjunction with this error. If we click that button, PTE initiates a Search for the missing file. If it finds a file of the same name, it offers us these choices: - use this file from that location - copy this file to a new location of our choice and use it from there - move this file to a new location of our choice and use it from there - continue the search (because this wasn't the file we wanted) - cancel the search Anyone else think that this would be a nice helpful feature to have?

I do see the formatting icons when using Full Editor (but not when using Fast Reply) and can add a JPEG regards, Peter

Tony, A technique that I have used successfully is to create shortcuts to the various web pages, place these shortcuts in the same folder as the PTE sequence executable and call these shortcut files via "Run Application..." regards, Peter

No. The "TV Safe Zone" is a throwback to the days of CRT technology when the area visible to the viewer was not always the total area of the CRT itself. Modern LCD TVs usually show the full image area. As was suggested in a post above, apply a border around a sample image and check that the border is visible when played back on the TV. My own LCD TV shows all 1920x1080 pixels with no loss. "Fixed size of slide", when ticked, ensures that your images are never "up-sized" on the fly. Let's take an example: with "Fixed size..." unticked, you build a sequence at 1024x768 but then have it projected through a 1920x1080 projector. The result will be that the image quality is massively degraded because the computer has had to add in pixels that never existed (= interpolation). With "Fixed size..." ticked, the images will be projected at 1024x768. They will be the same quality you expected them to be - but very small compared to sequences built to a larger size. General rule of thumb: build to the maximum size you think you might need (probably 1920x1080 with current technology) and, if needed, let the computer downsize your images to a lower resolution. Most computer systems do a very good job of preserving image quality when down-sizing. Peter

Jean, See my previous post: regards, Peter

The difference between 23.Blank (English) and 23.- (French) is because that is how the French translator has chosen to show it. The reason that the slide name does not appear is because a Frame is not an image file. It has no "file name". You can give that slide a name by going into Customize Slide (Configurer la vue) and changing the Slide Name (Nom de la vue). You should be able to remove the duplicate post yourself. Just tick the little box over at the right hand side of one of the duplicates and then click the "Delete" for that post. regards, Peter

I confirm this additional bug too. regards, Peter

Jean, I think you must have done something more as I do not see that problem when I follow your steps. The only way I can create that symptom in the Slide List is by also unticking "Main object of slide" in the O&A Properties tab for the real image. regards, Peter

I confirm this bug in v7.0.7. Note that this is not a manually controlled show ("Wait for a key press..." is NOT ticked). Peter

Hi Bert, Your existing plan is going to avoid the biggest single pitfall. You already intend to have one folder per sequence and to have everything for that sequence held in sub-folders within it. After that, there is no single workflow that is common to everybody. A workflow has to be something that suits you and your approach to your creativity. On the technical front, the first decision is: what aspect ratio are you going to use? The second decision is: what image size are you going to use? On the artistic front, you have to be led by your creativity juices. Sometimes you will have a batch of images and be looking for a suitable piece of music. On another occasion you will have been inspired by a piece of music to go out and capture some images to go with it. I call these the image-led and music-led approaches. As you progress, you may arrive at a point where you want to tell a story. At that point you will probably need to produce some sort of storyboard and/or script, which will then guide you to the images and sound that you will need in order to produce the sequence. When it comes to the assembly process, I usually add in all the images first and get them sized and positioned as I want them. Then I'll add in the soundtrack. Although this can be built in PTE, I prefer to do what I have always done, and assemble the soundtrack in Audacity. I then fine tune the timings of the slides and set about choosing transitions and adjusting their durations. If I am using any animation I will set that up as I go along. If I am intending to use some major feature for the first time (e.g. animation) I will experiment with that in a totally separate set of folders (I call them "My Playpen") with totally separate images and sound files, then take back to the "real world" the skills and knowledge that I have amassed. One final point: I start every sequence using low resolution images (exported from Lightroom as Quality=0 JPEGs). Once I have decided which ones I will actually be using in the sequence, I re-export as TIFFs and then finish off their processing in Photoshop Elements, finally saving them as JPEG Quality = 8. regards, Peter

Isn't that what the profile shapes tell us when we click on the "Linear" button; or am I missing something here? Peter