cjdnzl

That assumption is not correct, I'm afraid Ron. The two keys reside in the registry adjacent to each other, and the presence or not of the PTE key has no effect on the VideoBuilder key. There is no need to remove the PTE key. If you have the VB key, rename it to keyname.reg, and double-click the file to run it. Any file named *.reg is automatically imported into the registry no matter where the file is located in your folders. I realise this system of registration is confusing, but it is necessary for the key to be recognised by future versions of PTE. Colin

It's a bit like 'how long is a piece of string?' - I have done a 9-minute show of about 50 slides including music in under an hour, and at the other end, a show on family genealogy took my wife and myself several days, using two monitors, one each so each could see what was doing. If you include researching music where a work was not obvious at the start, resizing and photoshopping the images, applying special effects, and sweating over getting the multi-image overlays etc. to work right, it could take weeks. And I guess everybody is different. Colin

I'm afraid I can't agree about those changes; they amount to a complete change of tack and a rewrite of the whole show. We must allow the author to produce the show he wants to. Thus far, the extensive criticism has all been constructive and aimed at polishing the show as it is, and it's getting fairly well polished now. If one wanted, one could see the blue sky and the green grass as the emergence from the terrible events that happened there, into the peace of today, and the promise that such a thing will never happen again. It all depends on your point of view. There is one thing you mentioned that I don't think has been covered, and that is whether there is a time limit on shows entered into the competition. Here in NZ the National AV competition has a time limit of five minutes for a show, and disqualification happens if the show runs over that time. Andrew should double-check that. Colin

Sorry, I spelled Reichsfuhrer wrongly in my previous post, but for some reason an edit to fix it wouldn't stick. Colin Aaahh, I see it has now stuck. Too late again, 20 past midnight here.

Oops. Sorry Andrew, there are still two mistakes I can see. First, there is still no space between April and 1940 in the first line, and as Xaver pointed out, the u in Reichsfuhrer should be a ü. You can produce this character by holding down the Alt key and typing 129 on the numeric keypad. It will not work with the regular number keys on the keyboard. "All that remains of Gas Chamber #1 and Crematoria #1" - this should be Crematorium #1. Otherwise, I think you've done it. Congratulations, Colin

I hesitated to comment on the music, having said so much about the text, but the music Andrew used from Schindler's List is very appropriate. I did think of the 1812 Overture, some of the very evocative passages in that work would fit well, specially since most of the Auschwitz victims were Russian Jews. Colin

I wonder if this problem might be linked to false positives that occur from time to time with anti-virus programs that have reacted to PTE programs, requiring dialogue with the anti-v programmers to resolve the falses. Igor has several times needed to straighten out problems of this nature with anti-v people. Norton, Avast, Trend Micro, AVG, and other anti-v programs have all at various times reported such positives from PTE shows. A search in this forum on 'false positive' turns up several pages of posts on the subject. The thot plickens, Colin

Yes, that's another subtle point I missed as well. Well spotted, Peter! The style of 'nnth of Month Year' is British English, where the numerical equivalent is dd/mm/yyyy, and 'Month nnth Year' is American, corresponding to mm/dd/yyyy. Depending on where Andrew is domiciled, he may like to use his country's format. (I am not sure what France and other European countries use as their date formats - personally I like the Japanese form yyyy/mm/dd, which has the advantage of being directly sortable.) I'm sure he will act on your suggestion when he gets home. Regards, Colin.

Great, Andrew! Your change to that sentence to remove 'whose' is first class, reads very well indeed. I congratulate you on your willingness to accept constructive criticism, not many of us are able to do that - too much ego! And I missed the no-space between April and 1940 in the first line, but Maureen picked it up. Excellent! I would like your permission to use this show at our camera club meeting in June, if that's ok. Kind regards, Colin

Apologies about the spelling of Auschwitz etc., too late at night!! Colin

Me again. This show haunts me. I am from New Zealand, and our history is both very short and devoid of tragedy on this scale. Yet, this show has a powerful effect on my mood. The camera is incomparable when conveying drama, nothing else comes close, except maybe music; when powerful imagery is coupled with powerful music, the effect on the viewer is dramatic and unforgettable. This show is unforgettable. There are one or two small points about the text which for me need fixing so as not to interrupt the mood, as follows: In the scrolling preamble, line 1 reads '1940,Reichfuhrer' I would suggest removing the comma and inserting a space to make it the same style as '1940 Rudolph Hoess' a few lines below. Line 3 has 'initiates', should be 'initiated' to maintain past tense with the rest of the narrative. Line 9 has 'whos', correct spelling is 'whose' - but 'whose' is a pronoun, that is it should refer to a person. Here it is referring to Auchwitz. A better sentence construction is 'where the gates carry ...'. or maybe rewrite the whole sentence to remove 'whose'. After Áuchwitz II, line 3 has 'gas,shootings', but needs a space after the comma, 'gas, shootings'. Line 8 has 'crematoria'. If there is more than one, ok, otherwise it should be 'crematorium'. The next slide of the swastika is overlaid with words in a completely different font to the previous scrolling intro, and I found the much bolder non-serif font to be rather unpleasant after the serif font used earlier. You might consider changing to the same font as the intro. lastly, the credits slide at the end is too quick; it needs to be about twice as long, and to do a slow fade to black. Set PTE to keep the black slide until Esc is pressed, as I find the abrupt return to the desktop jarring after the sombre show. (Project Options/Main/ and tick When show ends keep last slide in show on screen) The above offered in good faith, Colin

Yet another nitpick; crematoria is plural, crematorium is singular. I think the text should read 'Crematorium 1' These fine points are what will sink the show if not fixed, I believe. Colin

Yes, I agree with doing a correction on 'gas-shootings'. A dash used like that is actually a hyphen, joining gas and shootings as a composite word. I think what you mean is gas, shootings, etc. Also nit-picking somewhat, the final slide 'never again' could stay on the screen for several seconds, it is too quick as it is for my taste. An idea you might tuck away if you ever need it again; where you have a problem with contrast, as with the opening slide where the writing is lost against the background, is to shoot it from the other side, against, hopefully, sky, and then reverse the image to make it right-reading. You could then superimpose it on another authentic background if you want, so it is more readable. Otherwise a very powerful show indeed, evoking an emotional response in me. It well illustrates the latent raw power of photography. Congratulations. Colin

I should think this action is quite normal. Once a show is paused with the spacebar etc., it needs another key press to terminate the pause and continue the show. Whether this is the spacebar followed by a left or right arrow, or two presses of a left or right arrow, is optional. In other words, probably any key will terminate the pause, so you might as well use two presses of an arrow to do the job. Colin

1024x768 is one of the sizes chosen for computer monitors and data projectors with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Standard PAL 4:3 TV has a pixel count of 720x576, which was never a monitor size. NTSC is similar. The first VGA (video graphics array) monitors were 640x480 pixels, unbelievably coarse by today's standards, soon lifted to 800x600, and then to 1024x768 which became the standard for 15 and 17 inch CRT monitors. A number of digital projectors were built for 800x600, and the better ones for 1024x768. With the advent of LCD wide screens the lid came off pixel dimensions, and now we have screens and projectors as large as 1900x1200, or perhaps even more. The best image display is obtained when the image dimensions match the screen or projector dimensions if you run borderless shows; if you use borders then the image/border combo should fit the screen/projector dimensions. Doing this sets up a 1:1 pixel ratio between the image and the display device, or in other words the image maps directly onto the screen/projector with no resizing, IMO the optimum arrangement. Colin.

I am interested as to your thinking on why you make the resolution 'at least 25% larger' than the monitor/projector/TV display resolution? Doing this means the display equipment must downsize the image pixel count to fit. A 25% larger image has to be downsized by 20% to regain the correct size, a 4:5 pixel (not aspect!) ratio, by no means an integral division. The final image quality is then totally dependent on how the equipment does the downsizing - not a risk I would want to take. The multiplicity of display dimensions does present the show maker with problems, and I personally find that using images sized by good software to the dimensions of the projector, 1024x768 or whatever, realizes the optimum image quality. Colin

Right here I wish to commend FlightDeck on his maintaining a civil stance in this thread. I have seen many a thread develop into a very nasty outcome with fewer differences than this one. Having said that, FD wrote and I quote: "Regarding AVI, it would have been great for WnSoft tech support to suggest using an AVI as a possible solution. However, in the absence of any response from WnSoft, it had been my understanding from other user testimonial (off-line) that the AVI has a lower image resolution than .EXE and is thus undesirable for image quality. Perhaps I misunderstood and/or this is not the case. Can you comment?" The outstanding characteristic of PTE is the image quality delivered in .exe files. No question that it is among the best, if not the actual best of all slideshow programmes at any price. This is the prime feature that keeps PTE devotees loyal to Igor and PTE. But there is a need for being able to run slideshows on television sets, which means .avi image files and DVDs. The regular TV specs for 4:3 type sets include a definition standard of 720 x 576 pixels for PAL receivers, and a slightly different standard for NTSC receivers. Reducing the pixel count from a 1910 x 1200 (is that right?) or even an old-hat 1024 x 768 monitor down to 720 x 576 represents a considerable loss of image quality, about which nothing can be done. Of course newer TV hi-definition standards deliver better pictures, but are still no match for a good monitor. Colin

No, I don't think I can pardon you for your 'political' stance. You are forgetting - or just do not know since you have only posted here 6 times - that the relationship between Igor and forum members is unique and valuable, and not to be undermined with sentiments such as you display with your post. PTE is a very modestly priced program at about $US 49 including lifetime updates, but your attitude is more appropriate to a $600 program from some giant like MS or Adobe. To address your apparent problem; it is quite obvious from the remarks and information presented on the thread dealing with projectors that the fault lies with certain projectors rather than PTE, so I consider you are out of order demanding that Igor 'fix' a program which has yet to be found broken. Colin

I have had this problem, mainly at the end of a show where the last image fades down before the credits appear. I use a simple work-around for this, which is to insert a black slide between the two image slides where you want the first image to darken before the next appears. By adjusting the fade and duration times of the black slide you can get almost any effect you want. Colin

AS in Peter's message, rename the file to *.reg. You can call it pte.reg, mykey.reg, whatever, but the file extension must be .reg. When you have done that, double-click the filename; it will run and install the key and notify you if successful. Using .key as an extension requires that the file be placed in the PTE folder, so when PTE is started it can see the key file and do the install from within PTE itself. It is simpler to use the .reg extension and just run it from wherever you put it. Colin

PTE, along with other modern graphics-intensive programs makes much use of the graphics processor, the GPU, as distinct from the CPU. While your laptop may have a fast CPU, the Latitude series of Dells in my experience do not have dedicated graphics processors. The GPU functions are handled on the main board, typically with chip sets that are ok for general use, and probably DVD video, but they fall short with programs like PTE. The effect of this is to slow the rendition of graphics, 'losing time' with each transition, slowly causing loss of sync between sound and video. If this is the case with your laptop, the sad story is you can do nothing about it, other than buying a laptop with a dedicated GPU with at least 256 MB of memory, and preferably 512 MB - basically you need a gaming computer. Most desk-top machines have much better GPU performance than most laotops. There is an earlier version of PTE, 4.49 I think which, while it doesn't support panning and zooming of images, has much less demand on the GPU. PTE 4.49-based programs will run on practically anything. If you don't need PZR capability, 4.49 could be your answer. You can download it from wnsoft, and it uses the same activation key as 5.n, so there is no further expense. Colin

OOOWWWWWwwwww!! Do you really need to shout so loud? Most, if not all members of this forum are very intelligent and have no need of such yelling to attract their attention. Colin

Yep, me too. 'Please help' from 'Deleted member'. Clicking on the underlined Please Help took me to one of those graphics-type jumbled letters to type in a window, and saw the website was .ru - nuff said, I was outta there quick. Is there no limit to what these sorry low-life scumbags will do?? Colin

Can you tell us the model of your new laptop, and what its specifications are for the graphics processor? Unfotunately some on-board graphics processors can be somewhat slow in delivering the image to the monitor. If you have a slow graphics processor there is probably nothing you can do about it unless your laptop is able to accommodate a dedicated graphics processor card. Colin

It sounds like Vista's Digital Rights Management is sticking its oar into your show, and thinks it is not a valid DVD, hence slowing and desaturating the show, in line with what Vista is primed to do. I don't know the answer, except perhaps to install PTE on a Vista machine and make the exe file there. The easy way to do this is to use PTE's File/Create Backup in Zip, then transfer the zip file and unzip. Colin