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Hi everyone, It's nice to have this "technical" feedback (it was an important part of what I was after) but I'd like some thoughts on the actual content too! Peter

Xaver, I've now extracted the "brown wheel" from the "Kaleidoscope" sequence and built a simple three-slide sequence. Please read the ReadMe document included in the zip file and then follow the instructions. The problem is not one that I can readily explain by producing an example of it but I hope that the simple sequence and the instructions will enable you to understand what my problem is. RotateBug_Aug25_2008_16_49_04.zip regards, Peter

Xaver, I'll put something together this evening and post it. Who knows, in trying to set up the example I might even find the answer! regards, Peter

Ken, I've just downloaded from MediaFire and it ran OK on the same PC I used to build it. So the MediaFire file copy isn't corrupted. Can only suggest you try another download - if you really want to go through the hassle again (I'll understand if you decline to take it any further). I mis-led you in my previous post. The heaviest animation has been and gone before the one minute 18 second mark - so I'm even more puzzled. Peter

Ken, I'm a little bit baffled by what you're encountering. At that point the animation hasn't got anywhere near its most complex. That comes when we get to the wheel rotating in the centre and the twelve little wheels around it. I wonder if there's something amiss with the copy of the exe on MediaFire. Leave it with me a while and I'll download the file back to my system and see what I get. Be back soon! Peter

I'm now in the midst of "polishing" the sequence called "Kaleidoscope" (see my post under the "Sequences" forum) and have hit a problem. At one point I have the large brown wheel rotating through 1440 degrees anti-clockwise over a period of about 33-34 seconds. At four points in this rotation, timed precisely to fit with the music, I need to set a triplet of keyframe time points, the members of each triplet being about 25ms apart. I have not yet found a reliable way of doing this. I have tried producing a simplified sequence of just: black slide, background, black slide with the brown wheel added to the middle slide. If I set a keyframe for the wheel at the end of the middle image and assign -1440 rotate to this the wheel rotates smoothly throughout the 34 seconds I've assigned to the middle slide. If I then insert a keyframe point and give it the specific offset I need (which for the first of the triplets is 4500 ms into the image), I cannot guarantee that it will have the correct value assigned to rotation. Sometimes it does seem to assign the correct value and sometimes it doesn't. Does anybody have a technique for inserting keyframe points into a long running rotation that guaratees to pick up the exact state of rotation at that particular time offset and with a precision of at least 25ms? regards, Peter

Ken, I think, perhaps, your PC is unable to cope with the graphic demand. This is exactly the sort of thing I wanted to find out. I've run the exe on three systems so far: my desktop and two Acer laptops - all with no hiccups. I've another problem with the sequence which I'm going to raise in the PTE main forum: I cannot find a way of injecting keyframes in a long rotation so that they pick up the state of rotation as at the time offset value that I key into the Keyframe Time field. I cannot position the keyframes visually as I'm needing them only 25ms apart in some cases. regards, Peter

Tony, By all means e-mail me with a specific question about Audacity. I don't guarantee to know the answer! I use the Zoom H4 with just its in-built stereo microphones and, so far, it hasn't let me down. It has two jacks for plug-in microphones so you have both options open to you. regards, Peter

Hi folks, The link below takes you to a piece of "work in progress". It's the first rough build of a sequence that has no photographs in it, no voice-over, no sound effects. Just an idea that has been prompted by the music and then realized using Pictures-to-EXE. It has taken about 12 hours of fairly intensive effort to get to this stage. Along the way I had four "Out of memory" conditions when I asked PTE to make too many edits, too quickly and it ran out of space to hold the "Undo" data. Thankfully I was saving fairly frequently so never had to step too far back: although on one of the occasions it did delete the .pte file as I tried to close everything down. I also had to change design at one point because I exceeded the ability of my nVidia GeForce 8400 graphics card to handle the animation I was asking for. Interestingly, the animation I wanted played through fine in the O&A window and in the mini-player - but not in full Preview or as an exe. I'm aware that the sequence needs some "polishing": tightening up the animation to the music at some points, for example. However, I'd welcome all feedback - good and bad. Kaleidoscope.zip: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=7836f6f...8365492a3e39a71 regards, Peter

Hi John, You live in Scotland, so I am presuming (possibly erroneously) that you are a Scot. Where's the problem? You go with the lowest cost option, don't you? Just as I, as a Yorkshireman, would have done had the H2 been available when I bought the H4. Seriously, I have heard verbal reports about the H2 and they were all good. However, my only experience is with the H4 - and it impresses me no end! I posted this link a while back: http://www.mediafire.com/?4gdwi2bdn1l It's an ambience recording built up from tracks made at a nature reserve. The tracks were the very first I ever made with the H4. This link: http://www.mediafire.com/?4tn2fbgu0jz is to a sequence I built on which the voice-over was done using the H4. regards, Peter

Tony, There are basically two kinds of microphone: - omni-directional - will pick up sounds from almost the complete sphere around the mike. - directional - have a "cone of acceptance" from which sound is picked up (usually no more than the front hemisphere) If you are going down the microphone route then you want a directional one with a cone of acceptance around 60degrees (any narrower than this and it is difficult keeping your mouth in the "sweet spot" of the mike. A directional mike will help enormously in reducing the pick up of unwanted sound. You will still have to deal with the problems of unwanted pickup of EMF within the PC if you are still thinking of recording via the Line In/Mic In jacks on the PC. If this is your intended route then choose the jacks that are part of the soundcard baseplate rather than any extra jacks on the front casing. The jacks on the card have got the minimum of "aerial" length and so will pick up less unwanted EMF. Hope you find a solution that works for you and at the quality you want it to have. Don't under-estimate the challenges that you have set yourself. You're in for a period of frustration and elation in roughly equal measure as you travel along the learning curve. AV with voice-over is a whole new ball game and whole set of new skills to learn. The end result will be worth it, so persevere! regards, Peter

Hi Walker, I've added my replies in the quote of your post below. regards, Peter

You can go to Photoshop (or whatever editor software is file associated with jpg and png files) simply by right-clicking on the desired slide and then "Open picture" from the pop-up menu. Alternatively, select the slide and Ctrl+W. You can specify your chosen sound editor via "View...Advanced Options... Path and name of sound editor" but I cannot find a way of making anything happen with this info. The obvious way, to me, would be to right-click the music item in "Project Options...Music" tab and then have a pop-up which included "Edit music". regards, Peter

Hi all, Anything that connects via a USB port is likely to produce a clean recording because the data will be getting captured "outboard" of the PC and then uploaded as a data file. I know nothing against the USB microphones except, as I understand it, that they cannot do an outdoor recording at an event unless you take the PC with you. I find it hard enough doing the photography (with my Nikon D70) and the sound recording (with the Zoom H4) without the extra hassle of having to lug around a laptop as well. As a studio mike, the one mentioned by John Leslie sounds (pardon the pun!) an excellent option. But for location recording I feel that you need a unit such as the Zoom H4 or the Edirol R-09. regards, Peter

Hi Tony, Ken got in before me! I have posted at some length on several occasions about voice-over recording. If you are going to be using Audacity you might be interested in this thread: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7979 And for some background on voice-over work, this one: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8003 The problem with trying to record into the PC is that you are operating in an "audio-signal hostile" environment. There are the power supplies, the processors, the cooling fans, the hard-disks, the CD/DVD drive, etc. - all capable of generating unwanted electro-magnetic frequencies (EMF). And running from the Line In jack to the sound card through all of this clutter is a signal cable of dubious shielding quality. The cable has the potential to act as an radio aerial and will pick up these unwanted noises. The soundcard then does its job and amplifies the signal - and of course that includes the noise! My personal opinion is that it is impossible to get good quality recordings by driving the signal in through the PC's input jacks. I've chosen to use a battery-powered, solid-state digital sound recorder - the Zoom H4 (it also has a little brother, the H2, but that hadn't been released when I bought my unit). The benefits of such a device are: - It's battery-powered - so no mains hum - It's solid-state - so no mechanical noise - It records in WAV or MP3 format (my choice is WAV) - It connects to the PC via a USB cable at which point its SD memory card is seen as just another device and the files can be transferred to the hard-disk via normal "drag and drop" with no file conversion software to modify the signal. I don't know whether you subscribe to the RPS AV Group's magazine "AV News" (you don't have to be an RPS member) but it is likely that the next issue will carry an article by myself about my experiences with the Zoom H4 (the editors have got all the material, so the ball's in their court now). The H4 was a touch pricy at £250 but I think the H2 retails at about £150-170 - not much more than you would pay for a new lens for your camera. You probably end up paying that sort of price for a good quality mike anyway. Although I cannot release the text of my article until after publication day, what I can say is that I keep setting the H4 new challenges - and it rises to the occasion every time. I am really impressed with it. regards, Peter

In a sense you are right: the hardware can be a limiting factor. And therefore the sequence needs to be built taking that into account. A CD is just about the worst media on which you could store a PTE sequence - from the point of view of speed of access. A USB memory device is a much better option - it is only marginally slower than your hard-drive. I don't have any detailed technical information to hand to give precise numbers but if Brian (userid =Conflow) reads this post I'm sure he'll be able to give us all the precise details. I would think that all computers these days buffer their data. By this I mean that the data from, let's say, your hard-drive is read into an area of memory called a cache. The operating system will keep the most recently referenced/most frequently referenced data in the cache in order to improve access times and thus give you, the user, a quicker response. This cache is not infinite in size. Some of it may exist in the disk controller hardware; some of it may exist in main memory. So, if your system is at all memory constrained you will suffer a performance level that is sub-optimal because you cache will be constrained in size, too. Also, when your file is read into memory the first time around there may well be a virus check run on it. If, on the second run, the file is still in memory/cache the virus check might not take place again. By keeping the file size no larger than absolutely necessary you reduce the impact of these, and other, adverse factors. regards, Peter

This has my support. I can see at least two ways of doing it from the user's point of view: 1 - the ability to open multiple projects in the one instance of PTE (just like opening multiple images in Photoshop) and then be able to copy and paste from one project to another 2 - the ability to have multiple instances of PTE active at once (already exists) with the ability to copy and paste from one instance to another (not currently possible) Personally, I'd prefer the second option. regards, Peter

LeRoy, I go along with John on this; it sounds as though your image files are too large for the available resources in your PC. I've been using PTE for three years now; and I have never encountered anything like this problem except when using deliberately large files during attempts to recreate problems reported by other members of the forum. What size (in pixels by pixels) are your images, typically? regards, Peter

Xaver, I agree entirely with you! Why not open a new suggestion yourself in the "Ideas" forum? regards, Peter

Nettleton, You don't have to Preview from the beginning every time. In the main PTE window, on the lower toolbar and between the Preview and Video buttons is a small button. If you select your start slide and click on this the sequence will preview from the selected slide. regards, Peter

DaveG, The BlackSlide project file is redundant in my final workaround. Sorry if I confused you by leaving it in the zip file. That was an oversight on my part. regards, Peter

Xaver, I'm in agreement with you on this. I was merely pointing out to Nettleton that what he/she wanted to achieve was possible. I agree with you that being able to see the waveform when positioning transitions - and animated objects too - is highly desirable and therefore adding the sound via Project Options...Music tab is the better option (even though, at present, we cannot see the waveform in the objects window). regards, Peter

Hi kbg, To capture a copy of the screen image showing your ghostly triangles, press the "Prt Scr" button when they appear on the screen. Provided you did not tick "Dont allow <Print Screen> to copy pictures" in Project Options...Advanced tab, then this will place the screen contents into the clipboard. You can then copy the clipboard into a new image file in Photoshop and save that as a jpeg to attach to your post to this thread on the forum. regards, Peter

Please give consideration to allowing some form of macro to be recorded that can be played back to streamline repetetive tasks during sequence assembly. Something along the line of Photoshop's "Actions" or Microsoft Office suite's macros is what I have in mind. regards, Peter

On the question of CS3 - I cannot help you. I use Elements v5. On the question of PTE probably the simplest approach would be to create a sequence that contained just the five images with the animations and get this working to your satisfaction (something like the sequence I provided but refined to do exactly what you want it to). You should then save this as you would any other sequence. Then, when you want to include this kind of "transition" in some other sequence proceed as follows: Open this "quadrant transition" sequence in PTE, select the slide that carries the animation and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C). Then, keeping this instance of PTE the active window do File...Open...for the sequence into which you want to add the "quadrant transition". Find the point where you want this transition, select the image after that and do Ctrl+V to insert your "quadrant transition" image. This action will include all the object images and all the keyframe points for the animation. Now, select this "quadrant transition" image and go into O&A and onto the Properties tab and use this to change the five images to those that you really want. For any other instance of the "quadrant transition" in this sequence all you need to do now is to copy any of the existing instances of it, insert the copy where you want it and then change the five images via the O&A Properties tab. It sounds complicated but once you done it and mastered it, it is very straightforward - just time-consuming. Unfortunately, the current version of PTE doesn't allow us to record "macros" to automate repetitive assembly tasks. (Thinks: maybe I should post that as a suggestion on the "Ideas" forum.) regards, Peter