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Dave, When I tried it with the defaults it didn't save the avi file. I had to move away from the PTE video codec to get it to encode and save the avi file. In case it's relevant to your situation, I'm doing these tests with v5.6.4 not v5.7 beta. regards, Peter

I, too, have just gone through the steps that Bill has gone through and, upon clicking the Save button, I then get a pop-up window advising me to take this file into my favourite burner. But the file has not been saved into the folder that I asked it to save it in. After using Windows search, I can find a shortcut but that shortcut is a broken link - there is no target file. I repeated the test but this time choosing one of the Microsft MPEG4 video codecs and now the PC is busy encoding the AVI as I write this. Bill, try a different codec! regards Peter

Bill, As I understand it (and I don't currently do any burning to DVD) the PTE codec is suitable only for preparing a temporary AVI file for use when burning a DVD through the VideoBuilder part of PTE DeLuxe. I believe that this codec is not suitable for creating an AVI file that you then save and burn through an external burner program such as Nero or Roxio. If, when you see the list of video codecs, you have other choices (Microsoft MPEG4 for example) you should try one of these. Regards, Peter (This might be a case of the blind leading the lame! - but I hope not)

Bill, The next version of PTE (v5.7) will create an exe that will run on a MAC. V5.7 is going through its beta programme at present. You can download the latest beta here. See also here for recent discussion about PTE for MAC. Finally see here for guidance on creating a custom AVI file. Hope this helps you get going. regards, Peter

Ron (and all others reading this post), It is a first law of computer system problem solving that, when something which previously worked OK suddenly starts to play up, you first think back and identify the most recent changes that you have made. The root cause of the problem is more likely to lie with one of those recent changes than with anything else. That is why all computer departments and companies are so keen to establish really good "change management" procedures. It is a good philosophy to apply on personal computer systems, too. Keep some sort of diary or log of the major changes that you make to your systems, especially software installs and uninstalls. regards, Peter

Ron, I know this is of no help to you but... I've just checked a sample of my music files (CD rips by various rippers, downloads, Audacity - in my case - compilations, etc) and they all show the expected Type value (mostly mp3 and.or wav but some wma's, too) Have you seen the comments I added to the personal conversation that you started with me? Just a further thought on top of what I wrote there: you haven't made any changes to your Preferences in Audition lately, have you? regards, Peter

Ron, Not relevant to this discussion but I've deleted your duplicate topic on this same subject. regards, Peter

Your music is full of drama and tension. Your images are full of drama and tensions. In that respect they complement one another. But, in my opinion, you haven't really brought the two together to emphasize that drama and tension. The slides advance at the same rate throughout the sequence. The transitions are the same type and the same duration. Where the music is running slowly and steadily you should try and make your images flow slowly and steadily. Where there is emphasis in the music (a sudden emphasized beat, a pause, a crescendo) you should try and have your images match that moment. The audio-visual medium is a combination of the two elements (sounds and images) such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. But to achieve that the parts must work with one another and not against one another. Your choice of images and music has great potential but, in my opinion, would benefit from further thought and rework. Don't be afraid to discard some of those images as part of that rework. You will, inevitably, choose what you consider to be weaker images to discard. And so each discard raises the visual quality another notch. regards, Peter

Michel, O&A is shorthand for Objects and Animation. If you are using v5.5 why don't you take the free upgrade to v5.6.4? It co-exists with other versions. Just visit WnSoft.com and download it from there. regards, Peter

Michel, I have very little experience of using the Comments feature, however, would the Offset value enable you to move the comment so that it was within your image area in both cases? If not, then an alternative you might wish to explore would be to add your comment as a child object of the main image via a Text object in O&A. Use the "Insert text template" to set the slide name as the value. Position this text object where you want it, at the size, font and colour that you want and then copy it to the clipboard. Then work steadily through your slides in O&A pasteing the text as a child of every image. Because the text is a child of the image it should appear in the same relative position no matter what the actual displayed size of the image is. regards Peter

Hi Michel, You cannot fill both a 5:4 and a 16:9 without either some distorting of the image or some "cropping" of it. However, I thin the answer to your problem lies in the Project Options...Screen tab. Try setting the first button to Fullscreen and the Aspect ratio to be the same as the aspect ratio of your actual images. This will cause PTE to fit as much of the image as it can on the monitor without cropping anything off. As for the image sizes themselves: if you do not want any upsizing then you need to make your images to the maximum resolution that you will use. So if the long axis of your largest monitor is 2048 pixels then you should make your images 2048 pixels wide. Then PTE will only ever downsize the image to fit on the smaller monitor. Hope this helps answer your question. regards, Peter

Mike, With those subjects in mind I suggest that you definitely need a DSLR. I doubt you will find any other camera type that will give you the range of magnification that you will likely need. So, thinking in terms of the lens(es) first: City buildings - do you want a perspective correcting lens? Landscapes - how wide an angle would you like? (I've always liked the effect of a 20mm lens for landscapes - put something strong in the foreground and get a real feel for the depth of the landscape) Wildlife - how big is your subject? Insect = macro lens, bird = 400-800mm, squirrel = 300mm, deer = 200-600mm, flowers = macro lens Family holidays, etc = mid-range zoom (N.B. All focal lengths are expressed in terms of 35mm film cameras) What fancy features do you think would be useful on the body? Last, but probably not least, what will the purse strings permit? Whatever you end up with, have fun using it! regards, Peter What use will the images be put to? Print, project, display on monitor? Do you want

Maureen, I wasn't sure that I would be able to get along so was waiting intending to just show up at the door on Saturday. As that is now ruled out, I'll just have to give this year a miss. Good luck to all the entrants. regards, Peter

Isabel, Take a look at this new FAQ on this subject. regards, Peter

Jeff/Lin, I think there is a bug in the forum software. I tried to remove my avatar (with the intention of putting back again). When I tried to save my profile changes I got the warning message (see attached file) and it looked as though the Remove Avatar process had failed. I tried to Cancel out of editing my profile and it wouldn't move off the page I was on. I used the navigation sequence (top left of the screen) to jump back up the forum hierarchy and looked into the FAQ forum. My avatar had gone! I then reinstated it again by uploading a fresh copy. regards, Peter

Two points to clarify/confirm/correct from some of the above posts... Firstly for Eric on the matter of sound files. If the music runs for, say, 55 minutes and the resulting MP3 file is 55MB then adding in the voice-over will not change the file size. Typically, the sound file is composed of 44100 sample points per second. By adding voice-over to the music all you are doing is changing the data of each of those sample points. If you have chosen, let's say, 16-bit encoding then each of those sample points is going to use 16-bits (= 2 bytes) no more and no less. The only remaining factor is the amount of data compression applied in the MPEG routines. Secondly for Ken. You are correct when you say that PTE stores an image file once irrespective of how many references there are to that image within the sequence. So Dave's tests where he simply repeated his use of a handful of images have produced the correct, if to him unexpected, result. regards, Peter

Dave, You cannot just do a straight "proportional" increase on your EXE file size. Your music files are going to take the same space irrespective of the size of your images. If your music is MP3 then you are probably looking at about 1MB per minute. If the music is WAV raise that to 10MB per minute. So, to do your up-scaling you must first calculate the music element and subtract it from the file size - and then up-scale what is left. regards, Peter

Brain, Thanks for your useful (as ever) technical input. However, none of your situations apply. My operating system is Vista Home Premium SP1 (32 bit) and my browser is Firefox 3.5.2. I've made one change to the forum and that seems to have resolved my problems. I have used the link at the bottom of the main page to "Mark Board as Read". It seems as though the new software needed to be given a precise and clean new "start point" against which to monitor changes. Since doing that I have not missed any posts in any of the watched topics and forums. regards, Peter

Eric, No! The e-mail notifications can be set once by using the settings options. Click on the little down arrow beside your userid in top right corner of the window. Go into My Settings and then explore the Settings and Forums tabs. If you get these values set properly the forum should send an e-mail in the precise situations that you want it to without you having to ask for the e-mail. I now have the values set to watch any topic that I have replied to, and to send me an immediate e-mail whenever a new post is made to that topic. I also have Watch set on the FAQ Forum with immediate e-mail notification. When I got the e-mail that you had replied to this topic, I came onto the website, did "View New Content" and your item came up in the list. So this time around everything has worked as I thought it should. That leaves me somewhat mystified as to what was going on before. Added: And I nearly always use only Fast Reply. My signature is added automatically to each of my posts. I only go into Full Editor if I want some of the more fancy formatting or to add an attachment. regards, Peter

I'm encountering a problem with using the new forum software that is different from any described elsewhere to-date. I have my settings such that I should be receiving immediate e-mail notification for all topics to which I have contributed a post. I have contributed a post to Barry Beckham's topic on Image Size and, yes, I am receiving e-mails each time one of you chips in with your "four-penn'orth". But when I then go into the Forum and ask it to show me the new content (using View New Content), the Image Size topic never shows up. Now, this post is in the Slideshows forum. I do not have "Watch this Forum" activated on that forum. Do I need to "Watch" a forum before I can "watch" any topics in it? Is anyone out there absolutely certain that they are receiving all the e-mails that they should and that, when they go into the website, all the right entries are coming up as "New Content"? I'm not convinced that these features are working as I thought they should. Is it just my set-up that's wrong or is there a deeper problem? regards, Peter

I'm back. I've just tried the sequence on my Acer laptop (2 years old) and no trace of moire on the Koala and no jump during the zoom. The spec file for the Acer is attached. I've tried to fire up the old Fujitsu Siemens laptop (10 years old) and it wont have it. I'll have to dig a bit deeper on that. If I can resurrect it I'll run the show and come back again. regards, Peter PC_SF Report.txt

G'day Barry, Lovely sequence. I noticed some definite moire on the koala's fur and a slight jump during the zoom of that image but probably not enough to be a worry to a general audience. A camera club audience probably would pick up on it, being the perfectionists that they are. My system's spec is in the attached file (courtesy of nobeefstu's PC Reporter utility). I was one of the participants in your previous discussion on this subject. As a result of that I am, for this year, building all my new sequences at 1920x1080 (making them HD Ready). My reasoning is that, by the time I might need to replace my digital projector, the world will have gone past HD Ready and will be HD There and the only projectors available will be HD format. I have not noticed any obvious image degradation when running a 1920x1080 sequence through a 1024x768 projector. I have seen very obvious image degradation when running a 1024x768 FullScreen sequence through a 1920x1080 projector at a club I was visiting. It was so obvious that I never want to see any of my shows projected in that "up-sized" manner again. Later today I will check your sequence out on my two laptops and will come back and post the results. regards, Peter PC_SF Report.txt

Alternatively, start your reply in Fast Reply and then switch to Use Full Editor regards, Peter For Ken,

John, I've never had any problem, so I would be inclined to suspect a problem on your PC. What browser software do you use? I'm now using Mozilla Firefox v3.5.2. I switched to Firefox last year when, following a set of patches to Internet Explorer and Vista, my access to a whole host of websites went absolutely haywire. I was clicking on links and nothing was happening. I was unable to use browser plug-ins that had worked fine the previous day. Eventually, after two or three friends confirmed that their IE was behaving oddly too but that Firefox was OK, I switched to Firefox. I now realise I should have done it sooner. Firefox is much quicker than IE and has, since late-summer last year, never left me feeling that it was playing up in any way. regards, Peter

John, All you should need to do is scroll down the topic to the Fast Reply area, key in your text in the big input area, scroll down a little more and click Post. regards Peter P.S. There is an FAQ on "How to reply to a post"