fh1805
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Posts posted by fh1805
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Hi Michiele,
To get the appearance that you want all you need to do is use the Zoom parameter of the Objects and Animation feature. To do this, proceed as follows:
- select the first picture
- take the Objects & Animation option and select the Animation tab
- use the mouse to grab one of the "handles" at the corner of your picture and drag to a size that looks about right
- note the zoom percentage in the Animation tab
- now re-key this to a round number (e.g. 83.247 becomes either 80 or 85)
- next click on the little "right arrow" up in the top right hand corner of the window, just above the Animation tab
- this brings up your next picture
- all you do now is key in the same whole number value that you used previously
- repeat this for all the pictures
You will find that you will need a different zoom value for a "vertical" picture as compared to a "horizontal" one. I use 90% vertical and 85% horizontal.
If you haven't already done so, I strongly recommend that you download the PTEv5 User Guide PDF file either from the www.wnsoft.com website or from the Tutorials section of this forum website. This will give you an explanation of all the new features in PTEv5.
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Hi Bob,
I'm not entirely clear just what it is that you wish to achieve or what it is that you perceive as your problem.
You have built a PTE sequence - got that bit!. You've got a title slide at the start of it - got that bit! You've used an image out of the sequence on the title slide - got that bit!
But you seem to imply that whilst the title page is on display, other images come up - overlaying part of the title page?. Is this what is happening?
Once we have a clear understanding of your problem I'm sure we'll be able to help you to resolve it.
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Curt,
I am presuming that your "loop" show is built with Project Options...Main...Show settings... set with "Repeat show until ESC is pressed" selected. Right?
Lets call the executable form of this show AVLoop.exe. Your other show we will call AVMain.exe.
I am proposing a new show(let's call it AVDriver.exe) in which you have
A Black Slide
A Plain slide (Plain1) to trigger AVLoop.exe
A Plain slide (Plain2) to trigger AVMain.exe
A Black Slide
To trigger AVLoop from Plain1 you would select Plain1 then take Customise Slide... Main... Advanced option... "Run external application" and set the file name to be AVLoop.exe (no drive or path data just the basic file name)
To trigger AVMain from Plain2 you do similarly.
Now, create AVLoop.exe and AVMain.exe and ensure that they both are stored in the same folder. Then build and create AVDriver.exe and ensure that this is also stored in the same folder. You can now copy these three exe files to any other computer and, provided they are stored all three in the same folder, AVDriver will call AVLoop and when you press ESC and advance to the next image in AVDriver, AVMain will be called. When AVMain ends normally AVDriver will advance to the Black slide and then end.
I've built several linked sequences using this sort of technique and even done "break outs" to Windows Explorer, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Photoshop etc as well as to other PTE exe files. The only thing I have no experience of is building and running a "loop" sequence.
The above, or something based on it, should provide you with the function that you are trying to achieve.
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Hi Curt,
Welcome to the PTE forum. You'll find lots of knowledgeable individuals here who are willing to offer you suggestions.
Have you considered driving the "loop" sequence and the "play to a finish" sequence from within another sequence?
For example:
Black slide, Slide that runs the "loop" sequence, Slide that runs the "play to a finish" sequence, Black slide
I have no experience of "loop" sequences but if this works as I anticipate it might, it should give you the degree of control that you are looking for.
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Hi yachtsman1,
Are you intending to use them just within your home or are you intending to take your sequences "out on the road" and show them to local organisations?
If home use is all you are planning then almost any set of active speakers is likely to be of better quality than the speakers built in to your PC system (especially if your computer is a laptop). I use a pair of wired Sony active speakers attached to my PC system. The two eBay items you have located are not familiar to me but the specs seem Ok for home use. They will not be totally wireless (unless they are battery powered). They will require a mains power point.
If, on the other hand you are intending to go "on the road" then you want to be buying a good quality set of active speakers (makes such as Bose, Tannoy, etc.). These don't come cheap but the sound quality is excellent.
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Hi xahu34,
I worked for over 25 years as a computer technical specialist and I never did fully understand them. They are supposed to work totally logically but sometimes they seem to take on a life of their own and adopt a behaviour that defies all logic.
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Although the effect seen by xahu34 is very similar to that which I observed using v5.03 (and which Igor fixed in v5.04) I can confirm that v5.1 does have this particular bug fix included. I've just re-run on v5.1 the tests that I did on v5.03 using exactly the same image files. I cannot reproduce that original problem.
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Hi xahu34,
What version of PTE are you using?. I reported this bug to Igor in respect of v5.03 and he issued v5.04 which fixed it. If it has come back in at v5.1 then Igor and his team have left out that bug fix.
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Hi xahu34,
I'm not sure why you have posted this as you haven't asked any question or stated an opinion in your post. Are you concerned that the PTE version appears distorted vertically? Most probably you have set options for the image to fill the screen irrespective of the screen's aspect ratio or you have inadvertently set the zoom parameters to something other than 100% on each axis.
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Hi Lin,
I'd like to join this dialogue, hopefully to the benefit of the newer users of PTE. Since joining the forum I've noticed this point about synchronizing music and images crop up in posts on more than one occasion. I think there is, amongst the newer users, misunderstanding about the "Synchronize slides and music" check box. No, I know there is because I've been asked at my own photo club "why doesn't ticking this box cause PTE to find the musical emphasis points and put a slide change at each one?" (Now there's a challenge for Igor and his band of wizards!!)
I've just taken a look at your PTEv5 User Guide to see what it had to say about the "Synchronise slides and music" check box. I quote: "This by itself doesn't automatically spread the timing of the slides to fit the music, but rather provides the program with the intent of the user to synchronize
slides and music."
If all it does is signal "intent", isn't this pointless? If it has no function perhaps Igor should remove it? For the record, I set up all my projects with this box ticked irrespective of whether they have music associated or not.
For the sequences without music, there doesn't seem to be any adverse effect of having this box ticked.
What would be the effect of leaving the box unticked when a music file had been assigned via Project Options? (I'd do the practical test myself but all my current projects are "illustrated lectures without music" and I don't want to screw up any of the older projects by experimenting cos I believe in "if it ain't broke don't fix it"!)
Can you, or anyone else, enlighten me as to what this check box's setting actually does within PTE?
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Thanks for the info, Mike
I guess the behaviour difference between your machine and mine must be down to a combination of the differences between Norton Internet Security 2003 on what looks like Windows XP (your machine) and Norton Internet Security 2008 on Vista (my machine).
Like you, I keep my protection files up-to-date - and the full scan at the weekend found nothing amiss. I also use Advanced WindowsCare Personal on a regular basis (about once per week) after Brian Conflow gave it a good report in one of his posts. It sometimes catches the occasional "malware" items that have slipped through Norton's normally secure grasp.
I firmly believe it is vital to have a layered defense on PCs these days.
Interestingly, I subscribe to another forum that uses Invision to power it and have had no trouble there. I wonder if Igor's site is being specifically targetted?
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Mike,
Just out of curiosity... what Norton product do you use? I, too, use Norton (Internet Security 2008) and it has never given me any alerts in a pop-up window. All I see is a pop-up banner in the IE window just below the tool bars with the warning message about the so-called Microsoft software.
Thankfully I'm savvy enough in IT to know that you don't touch these things, not even with a barge pole.
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Igor,
The forum website has become re-infected with a trojan again. This morning I was once again asked if I wanted to download some Remote Data Control software allegedly from Microsoft Corporation.
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Hi Peter,
The way I keep things straight in my mind is to regard each image as having three parts:
- the transition into the image
- the image in full view
- the transition out of the image
Within PTE, only the transition into the image is regarded as part of the overall duration of that image. Let's use your simple example of three images, each with 10 seconds duration and each with a transition into it that lasts 1.5 seconds.
What is the total duration of the sequence?: 30 seconds (3 images each of 10 seconds)
What is the total duration of each image?:
Image 1 - 11.5 seconds - made up of 10 seconds own duration (which includes the transition into it at its start) and 1.5 seconds when it remans partially visible during the transition into the next image.
Image 2 - 11.5 seconds - made up of 10 seconds own duration (which includes the transition into it at its start) and 1.5 seconds when it remans partially visible during the transition into the next image.
Image 3 - 10 seconds own duration (which includes the transition into it at its start)
Adding up the individual image durations as described immediately above would seem to give a duration of 33 seconds - but we would then have counted two of the transitions twice each. To get back to the actual sequence duration we must subtract this element of "double counting"
On th pracatical front, by showing both transitions within the O&A window, Igor allows us to programme our animation to run at the same time as an overall transition - should we wish to do so.
It took me a couple of minutes to grasp what I was seeing the first time I used PTE v5 but now I just accept it and it does make sense to me.
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Hi Mike,
If the problem persists, try emtying your Internet Temporary Files folder by using IE's Tools... Internet Options... General tab... Browsing History... Delete... Temporary Internet Files... Delete files...
It is possible that Norton is finding this rogue element in your Internet cache. I was having a similar "pop-up" alert but for a different filename. I cleaned out my Internet cache and now, after the forum upgrade, my system runs clean.
And congratulate yourself on having the good sense to ignore the original pop-up! If you do not know what an unexpected event is all about, treat it as something malicious and refuse to take any action that it offers.
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Hi Peter,
The O&A timeline display shows the transition into your image, the period when the image is fully visible and the transition out of your image. But this second transition is really the transition into the next image. This will become clearer if, in your example, you give each slide a different transition time (e.g one second and two seconds). Your image duration, as seen on the Main tab of Customize Slide for example, includes only the first transition - but the image remains partly visible until the completion of the transition into the next image.
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Hi Jean-Claude,
I must congratulate you on an excellent demonstration of how so many of the "wish list" items can be included in a revised O&A interface. It certainly seems to bring together in one place all the features I would like to see in a future version of PTE. No doubt the forum community will spot other opportunities to add additional function and features. But this really is an excellent way of stimulating that discussion at an early stage of design.
I don't know what is possible in Windows programming but I have a couple of suggestions:
The part of the window where you display the keypoints and where you can show the waveforms... could this be made vertically scrollable? It would then be easier to manage a main image that had a lot of objects on it.
It would be nice to have a link (a button, perhaps) that would take us to the "digital light box" so that the order of main images could be changed, new ones added and unwanted ones removed. Or is this already there and I missed it?
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Hi Dick,
Coming home and finding your screen still powered up simply indicates that whilst you were out some kind of automated background task was activated. This is perfectly normal behaviour for a PC system.
When Beckham's Ireland show was running and the screen went blank after one minute, this too was normal PC behaviour given the settings that you had on it. The time intervals you set for things like screen-savers activation or power-state change are time intervals since last keyboard or mouse interaction. When a PTE sequence is running there are, usually, no interactions from either the keyboard or the mouse. Therefore the power-state will change, in your specific case, after one minute.
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Hi Mike,
I understand your concerns in respect of playback on TVs (presumably off DVD) but don't understand your concerns when playing back on computers. I use v5.04 and have, under the Project Options...Screen... tab the "Screen options" set to "Full screen" and the Aspect ratio to "4:3 PC/DVD".
When I run any shows built this way they appear at 4:3 ratio when projected and when viewed on the computer monitor. My desktop monitor is 5:4 aspect ratio so I get a black band at top and bottom. My laptop aspect ratio is 16:10 so I get a black band at each side. In both cases, and when projected, the 4:3 aspect ratio is preserved.
Are you finding it isn't working this way for you?
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Hi Kurt,
I have no experience with iMacs but the sort of things that would be going through my mind would be:
- what other software is running in the background (e.g. software updates being downloaded from the Internet, anti-virus/anti-spyware scans running automatically)
- what size are the image files? (I have no experience of HD so do not know whether the files sizes I use would be the same as yours. If the file sizes are unnecessarily large that can cause problems running the show with some graphics cards)
- does the "Not Responding" fault occur always at the same point in the same show? (If so, what exactly is happening in the show at that point? Check all the options that you have selected for the failing slide, the previous slide and the next slide)
I cannot tell you what exactly is going wrong but hopefully I might have given you some points to investigate further yourself.
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Nobeefstu,
Thanks for the explanation. When I previously worked as an IT professional, I had some bad experiences when trying beta releases of software from other suppliers. Because of that I do not currently take any. I've followed the progress of v5.1 betas on this forum and it seems that Igor and his team really understand how to handle them - and the bug reports that they generate. I will be upgrading to v5.1 just as soon as Igor releases the final version of it and then I intend to participate in the beta roll-out for v5.2.
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Dom,
What version of PTE are you seeing this in? I have v5.04 installed and I do not see any fields with these labels on the Main tab of Customise Slide.
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Hi Argonaut,
By "floating PIPs" Do you mean small images that appear to move around over the main image? If so, proceed as follows:
From the PTE main window, select your main image from the slide list area and then click the Objects & Animation button.
In the top left of the new window you will see five little icons, the fifth of which looks like a picture thumbnail greatly reduced. Click this
You will now be able to navigate to where your "floating PIP" picture is currently stored and select it and open it.
Now use the Animation tab options to adjust the zoom value to, say, 40%
You will now see the PIP superimposed on the main image.
To get it to "float" you simply animate it with two keypoints: one specifying its start location and one specifying its end location.
If you haven't already done so, download the User Guide (a PDF file whose link you can find in the Tutorials forum on this site). This will give you all you need to know in order to explore the animation features of PTE v5.
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You might find this site of interest in your researches: http://www.digital-av.co.uk/sound.htm
Adobe Encore
in General Discussion
Posted
Lin,
In your reply above, when discussing PTE "objects", you stated : "The "Main" slide is on the top layer"
Would it not be better to describe the "Main" image as being always on the lowest "layer". When you add objects these always obscure part of the main image. Therefore, to my logical way of thinking they sit above the main image and not underneath it.