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TVs of course can be calibrated if you feel the need. Just go into any TV store and have a critical look at the banks of receivers on display - every single one will have color differences. I was a TV tech for about 20 years, and I can tell you some tales regarding color balance. More often than not, if I adjusted the color on somebody's TV they would ring me a bit later complaining about the color, and what had I 'fiddled with' to alter it. On telling them the color was now correct, most would say they liked it as it was - usually far too bright and oversaturated - and would I please put it back!! On one occasion I corrected the color, and when the husband got home after work, his wife asked him if he liked the color better now. He said 'I can't see any difference'. She rang me to ask if the color was really right, and said that her hubby couldn't see any difference. Given the set had been badly out, I said he was probably red-green blind. Well, that blew his cover! he admitted that he was color-blind, but had kept it a secret from his wife for over twenty years. Moral: people get used to what they see. We photogs rock the boat a bit with concern about color balance. My own practice is to shoot the shot raw, convert to sRGB, and don't alter the color balance of the shot at all in Photoshop. That takes care of monitor calibration. I accept that the camera got it right, and even if it looks wrong on the monitor, I stick with not changing it. I crop, use brightness/contrast, levels - not auto-levels!, maybe a bit of cloning, but I don't change color balance. Projected images in slide shows look right. I go along with the person who said "The aim of color photography is pleasing color, not so much accurate color". The less one fiddles with an image, the better. Colin

The project(n).pte file contains all that information, albeit you may have to dig a bit to reveal the info. It's a plain text file that you can open in Wordpad or Notepad, and contains a complete list of timings, images and other parameters. Actually, PTE uses the information in this file to generate the .exe files. Colin

Hello Ken, I had cataract surgery with phacoemulsification and lens implant in both eyes at age 66, about 8 years ago, and I have never looked back. I had rapid-onset cataracts, about 10 months from starting to where I was unable to drive at night because of the interference with my vision. The biggest surprise was my color vision after the surgery. Whites were really white, almost blue-white, and colors were just brilliant. The surgeon said that natural lenses yellow with age, and replacement with water-clear plastic lenses restores the proper 'white balance' of the eyes. I am intrigued though as to why you are looking for color charts. Colin

Hello again, Yachtsman, Having read through this entire thread, it boils down to three possibilities for your friend. He has to accept one of: Black lines top and bottom; Cropped ends off the images; Distorted images. There are no other possibilities. Of those three, the optimum choice would be black lines, thus preserving the entire image in the correct 'shape'. How about using a frame around the images, possibly even making the image smaller horizontally so you can have a frame all around. Also, if you want you can add titling to the frame without intruding on the image area. Colin

Yachtsman, I think you may be confused between resizing and cropping. What you appear to be doing is altering the aspect ratio of the image by separately sizing the height and width by different amounts, i.e. you are not keeping proportionality between width and height, so of course the image will appear either squashed or stretched. The only way you can alter the aspect ratio from 1024*683 (3:2 ratio) to 1024*768 (4:3 ratio) is by cropping the end(s) of the image. You cannot stretch or compress the image in one direction only and hope to keep proportionality. You should scan the slides at the scanner's native resolution, which should be noted in the book. The scanner always scans at its native resolution regardless of your selected ppi, and interpolates up from the native resolution to produce greater ppi, or down to a lesser ppi. This means that when you resample to your final size, 1024*683, the image has been resampled twice - not good. For optimum image quality, scan at the native res. and resample from whatever that is to 1024*683 in a single resample move. The resampling algorithms in Photoshop or Irfanview are much more sophisticated than the scanner's. Regards, Colin

I'm not sure if this is relevant to your problem, but it's worth mentioning. I did a peruse of Google for sync problems with the SX-50, and found this from a technical review of the SX-60, successor to the 50. Quote: "Most importantly, the SX50 I tested more than a year ago (see svconline.com/mag/avinstall_canon_realis_sx) clearly had a preference for digital inputs. Thankfully, that is no longer the case with the SX60. There is no more of the noise and sync problems of the older model's analog inputs". As you are almost certainly using analog video to the projector, that may well be your problem. If the desktop machine has perchance a digital output, you might try that; or perhaps the purchase of a graphics card with digital output would do the trick. Colin

It's possible, as Xaver says, that the projector is the problem, but it could also be the graphics card in the desktop. Not all Nvidia cards are good for PTE when panning etc. I had an Nvidia 9250 card with 128 MB of ram in my 3.00 GHz desktop, and it stuttered on playback. I replaced it with a 6600GT which works well for PTE. I would first check the card in the laptop. Try running the desktop into a monitor, to see if the condition exists with a monitor. If so, graphics card. If not, projector. Colin

I would try diagnosing the disk quality with Nero CD-Speed (correct name?) program. This will read the disk and report any physical problems with the disk. If that checks out, then your problem is with your software or hardware. Colin

Why not edit the music in Goldwave or Audacity ( both are audio editors) to remove the 2-second delay? Then you can dispense with the blank slide as well. Colin

Hi Dave, Yes, I work along the lines you have said you use, i.e. multiply the linear size in pixels by the zoom ratio so that at maximum zoom the pixel count contained in the screen image is equal to the non-zoomed images. Several subsequent posters have tended to agree with the OP in wanting to assemble a show with full-size images, and then have some sort of algorithm that looks at the zoom ratio - if any - of each image, and the required final image size, then automatically resizes every image to its optimum. Sounds good, especially as Xaver says it would facilitate tailoring a given show to different sizes according to the end use. I can see that, in theory, such an approach would have merit, but practically there are serious objections. Depending on the power of the computer used for the show, handling full-size images at around 20 MB per image (or more) when zooming or panning, and with fast slide changes etc. may well exceed its capability, not to mention running out of RAM and having to use paged memory which ruins any timing requirements. As an example, consider a medium size show of 150 slides from an 8 MP camera. At full size, each image is 24 MB, and 150 images will use 3,600 MB of memory space. Allowing for the operating system etc. and a sound track, it would be easy to exceed 4GB of memory - the maximum for a 32-bit computer. Reducing each image to 1024*768 pixels resizes the image to under 800 KB and a total show size of a little over 117 MB plus sound - a far easier load for the computer. It doesn't take a rocket scientist's education to see the inherent problems in working with full size images. Of course, one could reduce the images to some intermediate size, wich may be a partial answer, but I still think the approach is flawed. Just a quick remark here: regardless of whether the images are jpegs or other formats, in memory the image expands to occupy its full size. The 24 MB images mentioned above may well be only about 3 MB as a jpeg, but they will each occupy the full 24MB in memory. Colin

This facility sounds like a good idea, but I think it would encourage people to start and work with their shows with full-size images, waiting until the show is pretty well finalized before sizing the images, so the sizing algorithm would know the final image size required for each slide. Many problems can be caused by having too many, too-big images, like out-of-memory errors, slow execution, skipping of images when changing slides quickly, and others. I resize all my images to final size, 1024x768 or whatever before I start to assemble the show, using a batch process in Photoshop or Irfanview. Then, proceed with assembling the show, applying zooms etc. where appropriate, and continuing until the show is complete. Then, and only then, I select the slides that are zoomed and replace them with appropriately sized images. Colin

Hello Peter, Well, I enjoyed your railway show a lot, and it provided some motivation for me to do a show based on our TranzAlpine Express, which runs from Christchurch to Greymouth, South Island, New Zealand, a distance of about 150 miles, and is rated as one of the ten best rail journeys in the world. But not today, or tomorrow either, the total journey from home and back would set me back several hundred dollars that I can't afford right now. I was a little surprised at the pitch of the loco whistle on your engines, as here in NZ they used whistles about an octave lower, a gruntier sound altogether - and the 'WHOOOoooOOO" sound never fails to produce an adrenaline reaction, and a moist eye or two, such is nostalgia for us oldies. I am reminded of a story from the war years; a number of American soldiers were to travel by train from London to Edinburgh, the 'Flying Scotsman' no less. As the train was about to depart, the engine driver blew the whistle as usual. The soldiers, used to the deep sonorous blast of the American locomotives, laughed themselves silly at the toy-like sound from the Scotsman. However, they laughed no more when the train accelerated to its 100 mile-per-hour speed! Or so the story goes. Cheers, Colin

What difference is there between the software on your old machine and the new one? Some anti-virus/spy/adware programs check each and every file each time you open a directory or folder, and large files can take quite a time. How big is your PTE exe file? I tried to show a 700 MB program on my Dell laptop, but after several minutes the computer remained apparently locked up. On a hunch I disabled ZoneAlarm Pro - didn't matter as I was off-line - and the show then started within a few seconds. I also use a file manager called Powerdesk, and when I open a folder containing several large - 30- 80MB - PTE shows it can take minutes to display all the files in the folder. Disabling ZoneAlarm allows the folder to display almost immediately. Disable all your anti-malware programs and see what happens then. Colin

Hope that helps, Peter. Regards, Colin

Ah, well, that website was in relation to Vista, but it's entirely possible that the problem is not limited to Vista, as it appears to be a registry corruption. Did you try their solution to repair your registry? Colin

Error 2909 appears to be a Vista problem, acording to this website: http://simple-pc-help.com/support/error_29...CFQL8iAodeQ5yfg Colin

Is the sound level different from when you preview your show? The sound level on your DVD should be the same as when you run a preview or make an .exe file. The level may be being altered by how you are sourcing the music, by ripping from a CD perhaps, depending on the program you are using to copy the sound, or maybe the level on the CD is very loud. If you are using a sound editing program like Audacity or Goldwave, you can alter the sound level to whatever you want. I am not familiar with Audacity as I use Goldwave, but is should be a simple matter to reduce the level. You may find the level controls calibrated in dB (decibel) steps; as a starting point reduce the level by 6 dB which will halve the apparent volume. Colin

er ... where's the link please? Colin

I installed SP3 on my Dell laptop about 2 weeks ago, after setting a restore point, and performing an Acronis image backup. The installation went with no problems, and I cannot detect any change in the computers performance - to date at least. Dell 1520/3 GB ram/duo core 1.8 GHz cpu/nVidia 8600M-GT gpu/160 GB 7200 rpm HDD/1680x1050 screen. Colin.

The email you received acknowledging your registration should contain either an attachment or a section at the bottom containing a text string that looks like REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\PTE] "Key"="0HEBCx9fqXNNFP1F+CGeZJZemDAFpQyp/WBcyIdoDjlQ2fP1TIpZQR9cnYYkAVcKxoNHcHjALoQstdmKMZRLoq2FUw8qjMtzLrC8YHo/St+vIV1zwbtjcMax037Idysgc3YCshOR ..." (I have removed the last 20 or so characters for security) That is your key. If it came as a file called 'reg.txt', just rename it as 'reg.reg' and run it as if it is a program; if it is text at the bottom of the email, select the entire key starting with 'REGEDIT 4' and down to the final quote mark, copy it into Notepad,save it as reg.reg and run it. Colin

Just rename your reg.txt file to reg.reg and run it as if it were a program. The registry will see it and install it, after which you will be registered. Colin

Ok, the U.S. uses NTSC encoding for TV signals To check, click File>Burn DVD, then in the next screen, click Options (bottom left of screen), TV System is the first choice in the dialog box which opens. For the U.S. it should br NTSC. Colin

Do you have the correct video system checked, NTSC or PAL? I think PTE defaults to NTSC, but you might have to use PAL depending on your country's TV system. Colin

You're welcome, Amanda. By incorporating the key into the registry, future versions of PTE will be automatically unlocked. The downside to this method is that getting the key into the registry is not as straightforward as typing or pasting it onto the PTE program, as most other programs do. There are other ways to get the key inserted into the registry, but I find the .reg method the easiest. The key for PTE Standard will not expire, as Igor (the programmer) has said that lifetime upgrades will be available. The Deluxe version for burning DVDs is currently on a two-year cycle, so any updates more than two years after purchasing Deluxe will require another key to be purchased. Colin