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I would welcome feedback on my latest sequence which can be found here: http://www.mediafire.com/?bz2dlov1bid The images were taken with a Nikon D70 and Nikkor-Zoom 18-200mm VR lens - all hand-held. The soundtrack comprises Faure's "Cantique de Jean Racine" mixed with birdsongs recorded using my Zoom H4 digital sound-recorder. I have some doubts in my own mind about certain aspects of the sequence but, at this stage, I will keep these thoughts to myself and refrain from "leading my witnesses"! Mount Grace Priory is located in North Yorkshire, England a few miles east of Northallerton. The site is owned by the National Trust and is under the management of English Heritage. The priory was an establishment of the Carthusian order. Each monk had his own cottage (or cell, as it is termed) which had its own garden where he would grow herbs and vegetables. The monks only ever came together for the services in the priory's church. Although it lies just off the very busy A19 main road, it is an incredibly peaceful and spiritual place.

Brian, Thanks for your reply. I spent some time this afternoon Googling around this subject but couldn't find anything that refered to the error message box that I get (which I suspect is coming from PTE code). I guess I could really do with one of Igor's team checking out the circumstances that cause that particular error box to come up.

Ken/Dick, Thanks for your responses, fellas - but I feel you've missed a key point. Just as, when manipulating images in Photoshop, we keep the file in a "lossless" format so as to preserve maximum detail and only resize and convert to JPEG at the very end, so do I want to keep my sound files in a "lossless" format (i.e. WAV) until I'm finally satisfied with the manipulation (e.g. the mix) - and then I'll convert to MP3. You're suggestions are all about getting the music in MP3 format first which I most definitely do not want to do.

I have discovered what appears to be a problem associated with music files and am wondering whether it might just be a bug in PTE v5.1. I build my sequences and do all my experimentation on a Compaq desktop PC running Windows Vista. To rip music tracks off CD I use Windows Media Player (WMP) which I believe to be at v11 (it's whatever version came with Vista). The options are set to rip to WAV. I was doing some experiementation today and wanted to add a particular piece of music to check out the overall effect. I ripped it as usual, then added it via Project Options Music tab. When I tried to preview the sequence I got a pop-up message box telling me that the music had zero length, and that probably my sound card was faulty or had missing drivers. That's got to be a red-herring because the piece plays perfectly straight off the CD using WMP. The ripped track plays perfectly off the hard drive using WMP and also if imported into Audacity. I even tried exporting the piece out of Audacity as a WAV but under a different name. It gave the same error. Converting it to MP3 with Audacity produces a file that works but I don't want to have to convert every piece of music to MP3 just to try it out with images. The convert to MP3 is the very last act on my soundtrack files. All the build is done using WAV files in order to preserve the detail. Yesterday evening I had ripped two Enya CDs. All the tracks from those show up with the same error. A sample of the tracks that had been ripped on my previous computer using WMP v10 behave as you would expect - no problems. Has anyone any ideas, please?

Tom, I think you know what the main weakness is! You've already mentioned it in your post. Given the reason behind this sequence, the fact that the voice-over was unscripted is understandable (you wanted the sincerity of your thanks to come through - and it did!). For a more "normal" AV production you do need to script the voice over. If you haven't already done so, take a look at my post on "Voice-overs for newbies" where I give some advice on that, and many other, aspects of voice-overs.. http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8003 A few small points on the images... On my 1280x1024 monitor the red framing around the lower right image was not wholly in-view when it came to rest. You may have taken the pan a smidge too far. Also the four red boxes didn't line up exactly opposite one another. However, their layout was symmetrical about the diagonal so this might have been a deliberate choice on your part. Perhaps it might have been better if you had not panned the boxes quite so far towards the edges? You're setting them on a background image, so maybe you should leave a little more of the background visible all around the edge? It's a matter of personal taste and style. You're the one building the sequence. When I build sequences there's only one person I'm trying to please - me! If others like it, that's a bonus. If they don't - tough! But I'll always listen to constructive suggestions and give them consideration. Now we've got the enthusiasm stoked up, let's keep this kettle boiling! I look forward to seeing your next sequence.

Hi Tom, Yes, I have "eaves-dropped" on your personal recording for Brian. I agree with the pair of you, your Griffin iMic has produced a beautifully clean recording. When you combine a voice-over made using that device, with some music and/or natural sounds, you'll have a soundtrack that shows fantastic technical quality. I also agree with Brian that your local accent is no hindrance. It's a soft, gentle accent that I think will be well suited to voice-over work. I now look forward to seeing and hearing some of your work in the future.

Ron, Whilst I can understand, and agree with, what you are suggesting in the context of an indoor recording, I fail to understand how your "just the background noises" differ from the "background noises" which are exactly what I want to capture in the outdoor recording. Where is the "just the background noise" when I am standing right beside the breaking waves on the beach, or beside the waterfall or the woodland edge? What you and Brian mean by this initial 10 seconds is surely all about capturing the venue acoustics before the performers begin. What am I supposed to do, tell the Robin to shut up for 10 seconds before he sings again? (I'd use an Emoticon here if there was one for "tongue-in-cheek"!!!)

Brian, Thanks for your explanations and suggestions in your replies (particularly in post #39). You seem to be an expert PC hardware technician and an expert sound engineer, too. Is there no end to your expertise? I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you a little now... I have similar objectives to Barry. IWhen it comes to outdoor sound-recording I want something that is easy to carry round and can do a reasonable job in a wide variety of situations. For me the H4 provides all that I am looking for. It fits in the outer pocket of my little camera bag and requires just four steps to make a recording: - switch it on - set Gain to High - press Record to get a visual on the signal level - press Record again to begin recording And it produces what, to me, sound like crystal clear recordings. Certainly they are good enough for my needs.

Hi Sergio, Bruce has pointed you in the right direction. You need to undo everything that you did after you added the music via Project Options. Now add the remaining pieces of music via Project Options. The end result should be that the 20 second piece plays first followed by any others in the same order that you added them via Project Options. If the pieces of music need to be edited to adjust their lengths then you will need to make use of a sound editor such as Audacity. If you have never used Audacity before, take a look at my Audacity User Guide: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7979

Hi everyone, The sample recordings made using the Zoom H4 are now ready for download from Mediafire here: http://www.mediafire.com/?0cdyzjktutb In the zip file, which is just under 58MB in size, you will find the following recordings: - Surf (not a great surf day, the sea was flat calm! Better described as "waves breaking") - BeachStream (recorded where the beck from the valley flows across the beach) - Beck (recorded where a small cascade enters the beck alongside a patch of broken water) - Waterfall (a long abandoned mill race) - Woodland (birdsong and general ambience) All five have an equivalent image file taken from the spot where I stood to make the recordings. Also in the zip are two more sound files: - RobinSinging (the little blighter flew off before I could get the camera out! He was about 10 feet up the tree which was about 10 feet ahead of me. The traffic sounds are from the bypass road that is about 0.5km away beyond the Robin) - Voiceover (a sample of the original take of the most recent voice-over recording that I've done) All recordings except the voice-over were made this morning (Sunday 10 Feb 2008) between 0730 and 0830 GMT. All recordings except the voice-over were done hand-held using just the in-built microphones and the supplied foam shield. For the voice-over, the H4 was fitted into its tripod cradle and attached to my Benbo tripod. The mics were about 12 inches ahead of my face, about 12 inches up above my mouth and about 12 inches over to the left, pointing towards my mouth. All recordings, including the voice-over, were done "blind" (or should that be "deaf"?). What I mean is, I didn't have any headphones in use to monitor the recording as it was made or immediately after it was made. The first time I heard them was after they had been uploaded to the computer and taken into Audacity. None of the recordings has been altered in any way in Audacity and the outdoor recordings are presented at their actual recorded length. It's "raw" sound. As an extra piece of information, during the recording of the BeachStream, the unit was constantly flashing "Low Battery" warning. This doesn't seem to have adversely impacted that recording. I have no idea how long a set of batteries will last. I am currently using up "second hand" batteries that came out of my now-retired Nikon F90, F801, SB24 and SB16 or were the "spares" for those units. The images were taken using a Nikon D70 and the Nikon 18-200mm VR lens - again hand-held. Note that this is the third time I've tried to capture the sound of a waterfall and I have come to the conclusion that white water creates "white noise". Having analysed my results I now believe that successful outdoor recording has to be approached with the same strict discipline as outdoor photography. I need to actively listen and ask myself: what is it about this sound that I find so appealing/interesting? And then work out how best to capture that. With the H4, "point and shoot" works reasonably well most of the time, but some situations clearly require more thought.

Tom, That's why I'm going tomorrow - to avoid the crowds.

nobeefstu, I think that the correct working of double-click on a *.pte file came in only with v5.1. Last week I was helping a friend with PTE and she was using v5.04 - and the double-click didn't open the selected project file.

Barry/Den, I'm intending to go down to the beach and woods in the morning.

Barry, If you can give me a week or so, I'll take a walk down on the seashore and into the wooded valley not far from where I live and record some "natural sound" for you on the H4. I would also like to state that I had no wish to offend you or any other forum member with my choice of the phrase "Sound wallpaper". It's just that I firmly believe that A-V is more than just images set to music. To me it should include, when appropriate to the content and theme, voice-over and sounds (natural or otherwise). For about twenty years I made sequences involving one projector, music and voice-over - and that was enough complexity for me. With the advent of software such as PTE and Audacity I am now moving slowly into more complex sequences. I bought the H4 because I was struggling to get a noise-free voice-over recording. Now, using the H4 I can get a noise-free voice-over. The surprise came when I walked around the nature reserve and pointed the H4 at the birds singing, or just left it to record the sounds coming from all around me. For such a compact little box it delivered what, to me, was absolutely brilliant sound quality. Be back when I've got some sound captured for you.

Barry, You asked: "...why don't I hear more examples of this recorder in slide shows?" If the question in your mind really was "why don't I hear more examples of ambient sound in slide shows?" then I suspect the answer is that, for too many people, audio-visual means putting some music as "sound wallpaper" to the images. Taking the next step up, adding a voice-over, is a major leap forward in complexity which few seem willing to take. And in this situation all the recording variables are entirely within the individual's control. The next step, mixing a complex multi-source sound-track that involves outdoor sound bites, is seen as being something beyond the skills of mere mortals. And these are not my views, they are the views expressed to me by members of local camera clubs and photography societies when I visit to show them how easy it is to build an A-V sequence with music and voice-over. You also asked: "...or perhaps I do?" I offer you these next thoughts based on having seen many sequences over the last two years at RPS AV events and lasy year's National Championships. If the music and sound combinations on the soundtrack are handled well, the viewer/listener should not be aware of them in a conscious manner. If there is conscious awareness then some aspect of the technique has not been handled as well as it should. Natural sound should sound natural! If it does you will not register it. You will only register when natural sound sounds unnatural.

Barry, Ken has already pointed you to the thread where I told about my use of the Zoom H4. It is probably my ambient (Low Barns ambience of birdcalls and a light aircaft fly over) that you have downloaded. What else are you looking for by way of samples? Within reason I'd be willing to make some more samples and post them for you. Be aware that there is now a Zoom H2 retailing at about £150-160 in UK.

Hi Tom, Make sure that whatever you get is the right quality. There are lots of active (i.e. powered) speakers out there that are fine if all you want to do is play "muzack" on your PC while you work away on it. If you're doing shows in large rooms/small halls you will need something better. I would suggest that you don't want to be going to a PC shop. You want to be going to a good quality hi-fi or music shop. I have found that my best source is a local outfit that specialises in providing kit to pop bands and such like. They really understand the requirements of playback in venues larger than your front room. Good luck with your searches!

Hi zke, Have you downloaded and read the User Guide manual? See link below: http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7202

Peter, I found your sequence inspirational! I think your layout technique has gone a long way to solving the problem of mixing landscape and portrait orientation images. And I really liked the idea of framing the captions in their own "window". One or two points of comment (hopefully constructive): For me, the circle transition on the Burnet Moth didn't really work. Whereas the page turn transitions worked very well indeed. The speed of turn was spot on. I wasn't too sure about the transitions on the captions. I found the "third images" of the text were often just a jumble of script. Perhaps you might have been better to fade each caption out totally and then fade the next caption in. Whereabouts in the UK were the images taken, please? And at what time of year?

Ron, You asked "...what about image size?" A 1024x768 image will always have 786432 pixels no matter whether it is done at 7dpi, 72dpi, 7200dpi or 72million dpi. For projected or monitor displayed images the only thing that matters is the pixel by pixel value. The file size will also be the same no matter what dpi is used. What will change, dramatically, is the quality of any print taken from that image - and the maximum size of print achievable without obvious loss of quality. If anyone really wants to protect their PTE sequence images from being pirated they should create them at the largest possible dpi. For example: - a 1024x768 image at 7dpi will print to a size in excess of 370cm wide - the same image at 2000dpi will print to a size of 1.3cm wide. Anyone reading this who finds it hard to believe, just play around doing image resizing in Photoshop and study the results.

hi Jill, I don't know how to get to the desktop from PTE but a possible (slightly dirty) technique would be to launch into Windows Explorer first (C:\Windows\explorer.exe) and then manually close Explorer. Less than ideal but it would get you there.

Here's the final instalment! I completed the tests this morning with the results being entirely as expected: - Expiry1R was still expired - Expiry1D had now expired - Expiry2D was still active Therefore I conclude that the expiration clock starts running as soon as the exe file is created (which is as I expected it to be). However I did learn from these tests that if you use the Number of runs as the limiting factor, any "used" runs are not carried with the exe file if you then copy the "part-used" exe file to another computer. I can only conclude that the information is stored in some other file (an ini perhaps or in the Registry). However, as Igor commented (as quoted by Ron above): any experienced programmer or hacker can break any limitation.

Judy/John Thanks for your kind words.

Hi interested readers!, First, let me explain the scenarios I have set up. On my desktop PC I have created three short sequences as follows: - Expiry1D - expires after 1 day (created at c.1630 on 2 Feb 2008) - Expiry2D - expires after 2 days (created at c.1630 on 2 Feb 2008) - Expiry1R - expires after 1 run (created at c.0700 on 3 Feb 2008) In reality the file name of all three is Expiry.exe, I'm using the name forms above as short-hand notation to describe their function. Each file was written to a separate flash drive memory stick as follows: - Expiry1D to Flash-A - Expiry2D to Flash-B - Expiry1R to Flash-C (This file was written after it had been run to its expiry point on the desktop PC) I then took all three sticks to my laptop PC and ran them as follows: - Expiry1D (ran OK as many times as I wanted it to - just as expected) - Expiry2D (ran OK as many times as I wanted it to - just as expected) - Expiry1R (ran OK but just the once, thereafter it said it was expired) All this was what I expected. I then removed Flash-C and re-inserted Flash-A. The file names are the same on all three files and the files are stored in the root directory of each flash drive. I was curious now to know whether the "expired" status of the file from Flash-C was going to be carried over to the file on Flash-A. It wasn't! I was able to run Expiry1D as many times as I wanted to. None of the three flash drives has been given a name (i.e. there is no name showing when calling up their properties) but they use three different device drivers. I shall now wait until tomorrow (Monday) and repeat the tests. I would expect both Expiry1R and Expiry1D to come up as immediately expired and Expiry2D to still be functional. I will post more results some time tomorrow.

Hi Fuzzy, I don't know whether this helps advance your understanding but... I have just created a simple 3-slide test sequence and have set it to expire after 2 executions. I ran it once and then copied the file to two different Flash memory sticks (let's call them Flash-A and Flash-. I then ran the file a second time off Flash-A. It worked. I then ran it again off Flash-A and was told that it had expired. I now tried to run it off Flash-B and was told it had expired. All the above took place on the one computer system - no reboots. From the above test I deduce the following: - PTE does not modify the exe file and resave it to record the usage count data. - Where-ever PTE does save the usage count data, it doesn't include the drive and path data. If it did then the attempt to run off Flash-B should have been seen as a legitimate attempt off a copy that had been run once. I'll now create a fresh copy with expiry after 1 day and put that on Flash-A and another copy with expiry after 2 days which I'll put on Flash-B. Tomorrow (Sunday) I'll try both flash drive copies on my laptop and re-post the outcome. I'll do the same on Monday and on Tuesday. By the end of these tests we should have a pretty clear idea of what actually happens.