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cjdnzl

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Posts posted by cjdnzl

  1. Finally got the full version out. Hope you enjoy it. It is at

    http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/index.asp

    It may be a little long for most folks, but I wanted to include photos that helped convey the feeling of camping in such a beautiful place.

    Feel free to let me know what you think.

    Jeff Lunt

    Hi Jeff,

    This show has a mystical quality, almost surreal, more than just the images. To both my wife and me, it seemed more of an experience than a show, and the 15 minutes went by completely unnoticed.

    I have always held the view that when image(s) literally reach out from the medium, so that whether paintings, photographs, or slide shows, the medium is forgotten, and one is conscious only of the images and music enveloping and entrancing the mind, then you have art.

    Your shows have art.

    Congratulations,

    Colin

  2. Help! Help!

    The starting sequence of my Canada Show will not run!

    I reduced the problem to 5 slides.

    Attached you will find the error message and a small template with 5 slides to show the problem.

    Many thanks.

    Manfred

    Could you give some details of your computer - memory size, graphics card processor unit, cpu speed? Your problem might be software, or it might be that your computer is not up to the requirements of PTE v.5.

    Our old camera club machine, a laptop with only on-board Intel graphics could not even start a PTE show, throwing an error I can't now remember.

    Colin

  3. Hi John,

    Welcome back ~ and as you said..yes,you're out of touch..because I can't see that Photo on

    my Laptop, its 36"x25" in size....aahhh give us a chance, we do have the New PTE 5x but we

    have'nt got around to the New Foldable Laptop yet ~ I wish !

    Best of luck in your New Home...

    Brian.Conflow.

    Hi Brian, depending on your browser, you can hit the '-' key to reduce the size of the screen image so it fits on your screen, and the "+" key to increase. Opera does this, and so does Firefox. I don't know about IE since I never use it.

    Hang on, I think you are using a Mac - I know nothing about Macs, but maybe their browser does likewise.

    Colin.

    STOP PRESS: I just tried it in Firefox and it doesn't seem to work there, but it definitely does with Opera.

  4. On the subject of resizing images for PTE, and rather than doing it in Photoshop,, I use Irfanview's batch resizing, which has extensive resizing by pixel count, cropping and/or 'shapeshifting' if you want to reshape a 3:2 image to 4:3 without cropping (personally, that idea appals me; I would far prefer to crop if necessary, but I make my shows as 3:2 anyway).

    The resizing operation in Irfanview uses a Lanczos algorithm which in my opinion is superior to PS's bicubic, and using Irfanview's advanced menu, you can auto-crop from 3:2 to 4:3 by trimming the ends of the image, resize all images to a constant long side at (say) 1024 pixels, and sharpen to taste after resizing, all in one pretty fast operation, about one to two images per second on my 3 GHz P4 machine.

    In any case, have fun with PTE, it's a great program!

    Colin

  5. I have the version 5.0 of PicturesToExe... The transitions seem to work fine when previewing in the program itself, but once I transfer the slideshow to AVI format, the transitions are choppy and not smooth. I used to have an older version and had no problems with this. Someone please help as I have a deadline tomorrow morning. Thanks.

    Version 5 is different from earlier versions, in that it uses the graphics card much more intensively than Version 4 did. It sounds like your graphics card is not up to the job with v. 5.

    You don't say exactly what you are doing, but you can assist the graphics chip by reducing the size of your slide images to 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 pixels, whatever your computer screen is set to, specially if you are using high quality images straight out of your camera, typically several megabytes each, whereas a 1024 x 768 image is only about 400-odd kilobytes, much easier on your system

    Don't be caught by looking at your image sizes on the disk, if they are jpeg they may report as a megabyte more or less, but as an image they expand to full size, maybe six or more times bigger, that PTE has to handle.

    If all else fails, you can still download 4.48 and use that - it should recognise your existing ver. 5 key.

    Let's know how you get on,

    Colin

  6. Wideangle,

    No problem there, Pte will recognise 2 different Filenames because they are different !!!

    Title1:- pic.jpeg

    Title2:- pic.JPEG

    Two different Files ~ one with 'lower-case' characters the other with 'capital characters'

    consequently the Ascii Codes will be different ~ so 2 different Filenames.

    Brian.Conflow

    You surprise me, Brian. I have always understood that filenames and folder names are case independent in Windows - and the old 8.3 names in DOS likewise.

    Does PTE make a distinction then between upper and lower case names?

    Colin

  7. During the last weeks I have endeavoured to ascertain a specification for a Laptop computer which would allow the production and showing of animated shows. At long last I have such an animal which was made for me by PC Specialist of the UK . Its main feature is a GE force 8600GT +D-SUB+TV -OUT which seems to do all one would expect of it. In all respects I am delighted with it to date and having put several sequences through it I can say without an compunction that I have made a good buy. I will not specify any of the other contents but if anyone in the UK is interested I am happy to email a copy of the specification to them. Undoubtedly the info I gained from so many on the forum has made this all possible and I thank everyone who wrote me with help and advice. Gilbert

    Hopefully you also got an Intel duo core processor of at least 1.6GHz, and a GB or more of memory, plus a 7200 rpm hard drive of at least 100GB, and a 1680 x 1050 screen?

    Then you have an excellent machine. Congratulations.

    Colin

  8. I created a program tonight with 55 images with a time interval of 10 seconds. I have 7 songs for a total of 21 minutes 30 seconds duration. The music is set to repeat after the program is finished. The music mysteriously stops and the video slide show continues after about 19 minutes into the show. I"m at a loss to figure out what has caused this. I am running version 5.03.

    I never seemed to have this problem with older versions. I've read through quite a few posts and wasn't able to garner anything that seems to help from them. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

    I'm not sure I understand your problem. 55 images at 10 seconds each gives a duration of 550 seconds, or 9.17 minutes, yet your sound duration is 21.5 minutes.

    I would expect your slides would finish and leave the sound continuing for another 12-odd minutes. Perhaps you could clarify with some more information.

    Colin.

  9. Okay, newbie here.

    Tried going through the tutorial at the top of the forum page, got lost at post 14 and realized that the dates were from 4 years ago and at least 2 versions ago. I have a feeling that my problem is a simple fix, I just need the key.

    Please help.

    Backstory:

    Running Windows XP.

    Have version 5.0 Deluxe with Video Builder (bought, paid, registered, cool)

    Made slide show

    saved as EXE and PTE file- works great.

    CLicked on Make Avi

    Made and saved Avi

    All seemed to work fine

    Problem:

    Went to folder to play/test AVI, clicked on AVI file.

    Windows Media Player v.11 loaded up, then stopped:

    came up with error reading " 80040154 Class not registered."

    Tried RealPlayer and Firefox, same thing "class not registered".

    Help?

    Thanks

    Lorie in SC

    Try this link:

    http://www.free-codecs.com/guides/How_to_f...40154_error.htm

    Colin

  10. Well, I'm somewhat taken aback by these posts talking about limiting digital images to XGA dimensions, 1024x768 pixels. Is this rule applied to prints made for competitions, or only for digital projection derived from an exhibition print?

    Most exhibitors of prints in our club are using 8 or 10 megapixel cameras, and their prints are in the range of 2,500 x 3,500 pixels, myself included, and there would be a riot if they were limited to 1024x768 prints.

    Please tell me that you don't limit prints to these dimensions.

    Colin

  11. Hello Al and Colin ...

    Thank you for your help. If I can, may I ask a couple of follow-up questions:

    >> The slide show is a story of my mom's life, and will be filled with ~ 90 minutes of audio clips from her children (4), grandchildren (~20), my dad and her sisters (2)

    • Audio Clips = Expressions of love, honor and memories
    • Typically, I would not remotely entertain a 105 minute slide show ~ will the audio clips make it more tolerable?
    • If I were to use a menu, to break it up, would that hinder the flow of the slide show?
    • Is menu fairly "easy" to do? We're runnig out of learning time :)
    • I think it will be fairly emotional for my mom, so don't want the slide show to become sluggish and/or too broken up.

    Given that we're racing against the clock would value your perspective, as we don't have a lot of time for experiments, etc. We (more acurately, my son) has done many slides shows, typically 5-15 minutes; capturing memories of our vacations and times as a family. ...but, nothing that remotely approaches this magnitude.

    Thank you, again.

    Kelly ....

    Kelly,

    Anthing that will renew interest, such as a change in tempo, a change in slide content, a new or different subject, will tend to maintain interest. Conversely, long periods of the same slide rhythm, similar sound bites, can lose viewers' interest and once lost, it's hard to get it back.

    You know what you want to do better than I do, but my penny's worth would be to shorten the show to about 20 minutes or so, remove redundant or repetitive shots, keep it tight and moving - emotionally as well. From what you have said, you have about 90 minutes of sound bites from about 26 people, so that equates to about 3 or 4 minutes per person. It might be difficult, but I would edit that to a minute or less per person, and go for about a 20-minute show - and that's not allowing for any music you might want to include. It will be tighter, faster, and more memorable than a nearly 2-hour show.

    My wife and I did a show for her parent's diamond (60th) wedding anniversary, about 150 slides and 14 music tracks - mostly shortened in Goldwave - that ran for just over 20 minutes. The last track was "I remember well" from Gigi - a duet between a man and his lady. His memory was failing, and she corrected his recall, whereupon he would reply "Ah, yes, I remember ... well". He sings " Am I getting old?", and she replies "Oh no, not you, you were so strong, so young and gay, the Prince of Love in ev'ry way" to which he again replies "Ah, yes, I remember ... well". The slides mirrored the words, interspersed shots of the couple when young and old, the last slide being of the old couple sitting on a bench in the garden. The show was very poignant, as although the song has him losing his memory, in fact my mother-in-law was suffering from Alzheimer's, and her memory was such that she couldn't remember half of her family. There wasn't a dry eye in the room among the 80 or so guests, and although it was some years ago now, that show is still remembered and occasionally shown again.

    Best of luck,

    Colin

  12. Hello Jeff,

    I think this promises to be another of your most interesting shows. Your dog amazes me also, he/she seems to love heights, and standing on the very edge of huge drops! I don't know too many people who would go where that dog goes.

    To a non-American, the Utah scenery is just wild, untamed, compelling, breathtaking, and your choice of music, as always, is unusual, and excellent.

    Bring on the full show!

    Colin

  13. Hello ...

    Need some help completing a slide show for my mom's 70th Birthday. We're down to a week and half, so this is becoming a bit of a white-knuckle exercise. Slide Show stats (so far): Over 650 pictures, 83 audio sound bites of memories from family members and ~90 minutes in length.

    At any rate, here's our latest puzzlement :) ...actually three puzzlements:

    >> When we changed the slide duration time, it reset all my customized slides. Why?

    >> Why can't we play the slide show in the time-line window? Why?

    >> Any ideas on how to gracefully increase the length of slide show? We need it to be ~ 105 minutes

    o We're currently at 8.5 seconds/slide

    Thank you very much,

    Kelly ....

    PS. We're using Pictures-to-Exe 5.0

    Well, Kelly, firstly, a personal observation - 650 slides over an hour and three quarters is a very big show, asking a lot of viewers'attention spans, but of course it's your prerogative.

    To (partly) answer your questions:

    There are two ways to set the timing of slides; individually, and overall. If you set an overall time after having set custom timing for some slides, as I understand it there is no way for the program to differentiate between custom-timed slides and others, so they all get set the same. I have seen other slide show programs that allow proportional time adjustment (ProShow) but PTE does not seem to allow that.

    Your second question loses me somewhat. Why would you want to play the show in the timeline window?

    Third, adjusting the length of the show is easy. Apart from your problem of losing custom timing of some slides, you divide the show length in seconds by the number of slides, in your case 105 minutes is 6,300 seconds divided by 650 giving 9.692 seconds per slide, which you can set for all slides. Then using the timeline, you can move the timing for individual slides without altering the overall show length. It may well be a tedious job with 650 slides!

    Best of luck,

    Colin

  14. JUST AN IDEA FROM THE COLONY:)

    from what i have heard bulb replacement is expensive for projectors

    sorry i have no control over your pricing :)

    ken

    Ken,

    Yes, bulbs are expensive, but their life is typically 2000 - 3000 hours. At an average of, say, an hour or two a month for camera club use, that's 1000 months minimum, or 83 years!!!

    And LCD TV's don't get off free, either, the projected life of an LCD display is about five years, when the brightness will be about 50% of new.

    I can't control pricing either, so we're evens there :)

    Colin

  15. I seem to remember a thread on this kind of thing but I cannot find it in the 'search' option. Maybe somebody will remember where it is.

    A colleague has asked for some advice on using PTE to simulate a Camara Club image judging sequence. His idea is to use PTE to display up to 50 indivual images one at a time. Each image will remain on the screen until the next image is selected for display. The images will usually be displayed in a sequential manner, e.g. image 1, image 2 and so on. However there should be way of selecting a particular image that is out of sequence so that, if requested by the audience, a particular image can be recalled at will, e.g. by selecting its number. A simple fade transition would be required between each image selection.

    Those of you who have attended a camera club will know the kind of thing I mean.

    Any ideas and suggestions would be appreciated.

    Ron

    P.S. It would be useful to be able to create a template of the finished utility so that futgure imaged could simply be added to this template.

    Hello Ronnie,

    My camera club looked at doing something similar, actually to project an image as the judge delivered his comments while discussing the actual print. The rationale for this was so the audience could see the image in detail instead of trying to see an A4 print from 20 feet away.

    The immediate problem that arose was that the data projector could not deliver the same image quality as the original print, and in fact the idea was abandoned on account of this. We were using an LCD projector, and probably a DLP machine may have been a bit better, but the conflicting requirements of light to see the print versus darkness to see the projected image also proved problematic.

    Just using the projector and not showing the print was not too well received by exhibitors either, some making the point that the time and expense of producing an exhibition print was wasted if judging was to be done on a projected image. Couriering fifty or sixty prints to a judge each month is not exactly cheap, and some angst ensued when it was thought that only the digital images on a CD might be sent instead, which meant that the judge would not see the prints.

    At any rate, the idea was dropped.

    Colin

  16. John

    your question on the forum re monitor size kind of piqued my interest and the other day i got a chart in a magazine that showed optimum distance to view -- but ARTICLE was not available on the web

    if you are planning for the future why would you not get a ws lcd TV big enough to put on wall for all the club members to see -- i think some of the current sets will take a computer input, and i think it would be a whole lot cheaper to run than a a/v projector

    - so did a search and came up with a few links

    JUST AN IDEA FROM THE COLONY:)

    KEN

    Ken,

    If I understand you correctly, are you advocating a WS HDTV for club use rather than a data projector and regular screen? That idea simply floors me. In this country at least (New Zealand), WS HDTVs are about 3 to 4 times the price of a reasonable 1024x768 data projector, which can show images 6, 8, or even 10 feet wide, with less power consumption than a TV. Further, data projectors are eminently portable, which is certainly not the case with 60-inch TVs, and a 5-foot image is just not big enough for a room full of 50 or more persons.

    Although film use seems to be dying, some club members still exhibit 35mm slides, which mandates the use of a regular screen as well.

    Finally, LCD HDTVs are a prime target for thieves, and leaving one on the wall of an unattended club rooms is asking for it to be ripped off. At least a data projector can be locked away out of sight.

    YMMV,

    Colin

  17. Carol,

    Just in case Igor did not read your last Post may I make a suggestion that you

    EMail him and ask if the "Radeon 1300 Graphics Card" is suitable for Pte.5XX.

    Perhaps Ken Cox might know ?

    Brian.Conflow.

    For general interest, this link shows a pretty complete list of graphics cards in descending order of performance, compiled by an overclockers member.

    http://www.overclock.net/graphics-cards-ge...rd-ranking.html

    There are actually three x1300 cards, an x1300se, ranked lowest, then x1300 with no suffix, then x1300xt. Both the x1300se and x1300 rank well below the Nvidia 6600GT, considered minimal for good graphics performance, while the x1300xt ranks just above the 6600GT and below the 7300GT.

    Unfortunately, I would consider the x1300se and the x1300 as not good enough for advanced graphics, i.e. zooming and panning and/or fast slide changes. The x1300xt, like the Nvidia 6600GT, is marginal but probably usable for most, but not all, requirements of PTE 5.

    If a graphics card upgrade is to be considered, then an Nvidia card is preferable to ATI because of lost profile problems inherent with ATI cards. My recommendation for a mid-range card that will perform but not break the bank would be an Nvidia 8600GT, or perhaps better if it can be afforded.

    Colin

  18. I am glad that I ordered my new Dell 1520 with XP instead of Vista, likewise the same laptop I bought for my camera club. My advice to persons buying a new machine is to insist on getting Vista Home Premium or better, or XP, or no deal. Microsoft have recognised problems with Vista by recanting on their hasty removal of XP from sale, and allowing XP sales to continue till June 2008.

    As I see the problem with Vista and PTE, Brian has said more than once that it appears to be related to Vista Home Basic only, and also the problem happens to other graphics programs as well, which points the finger to Vista Basic. Therefore, the solution for those afflicted is to either upgrade to Vista Home Premium, which will allow their programs and data to remain intact, or reinstall their drive with XP, which will necessitate a clean install, backing up all data and reinstalling all programs.

    I would take the machine back to the supplier, with a copy of Microsoft's paper on the subject (see Brians's link above), and request an upgrade to Home Premium or better. This should cure your problems with your club machine.

    Colin

  19. I need to create fifteen copies of the DVD I just created, but the burn process takes upwards of 90 minutes each time. Is there a faster way to "copy" these files? Thanks!

    Most DVD burning programs, Nero or Roxio, allow you to copy a DVD and then to burn DVD's from the copy file. The program will read the 'master'disk and store the copy on your hard drive, then you can specify how many copies you want, and just keep shovelling the blank disks in as directed. Should take around five minutes or so per copy.

    Colin

  20. Hi Colin,

    Congrats on the New Laptop ~ you made a very good choice there. That PC was also featured in my

    recent Post:- 'LAPTOP COMPUTERS' (reviews) from Digital World Expo 2007 (Topic below this thread).

    I do hope it will help resolve some of your other issues with the Flash Drive problem.

    Best regards,

    Brian.Conflow.

    Thanks, Brian, nice to have confirmation of my choice. It goes very well, and the surprise is the battery lasts for more than 4 hours even with the 8600M GT graphics card. It also runs cooler than the Alienware, whose battery life was only about an hour and a half.

    Regarding the stalling problem, I haven't had it since from the same memory stick, so maybe XP has seen the exe files and all is ok.

    I saw your other post about spending all day trying to get Vista to behave - I bet the bloke dumps Vista and goes for XP!

    Kind regards,

    Colin

  21. Just bought PicturesToExe Deluxe And trying to register it. I have the instruction that was emailed to me but am still lost. Save attached file with your license key to any folder. Hoe do you do that?

    Thanks

    Larry

    OK, this is an unusual but easy way to do it.

    Open the email from Wnsoft, and locate the attached file called reg.txt

    Double-click on the filename, and open it in Notepad - do not use a word processor.

    The text shown in Notepad will start with 'REGEDIT4', followed by random characters - which are the key.

    Click on File/Save As (NOT save), and choose the folder you want to put it in. A memory stick might make it easier to save to.

    Now, put the cursor in the filename line by clicking the mouse in the line, then hit the'End' key. This should take the cursor the the end of the filename.

    Now, type in '.reg' - without the quotes of course, so the filename will be reg.reg. Any file with the extension '.reg' can be run as a program, and will insert the contents of the file into the registry, which is what we want to do.

    Exit the email, and use Windows Explorer to find the file, then simply double-click the file. Presto, you will get a message saying the file has been inserted into the registry.

    Now, if you run PTE and click on Help/About PTE you should see 'Licensed to', your name, followed by 'Deluxe Edition'.

    You can save the file into the PTE folder, where you can use it directly if you have to do a reinstall at any stage.

    Colin

  22. <snip>

    Colin~

    The easiest way out of your dilema without having to 'Load' the Shows on to your PC without

    always having to invoke a 'Restart' of your PC is to load the Shows on to a 1.Gb Memory-Pen.

    It costs about £12 from Argus. Now go down to the Club and Transfer the Files to a 'Temp-Folder'

    on the Clubs PC. name this folder 'Download'. (You can reuse the Pen over and over)

    Create this in Win.Explorer on the HD and send a Shortcut to the Desktop, you will reuse it again.

    Simply load the Memory-Pen into the Shortcut and restart the PC ~ all will work fine for you.

    When finished -->Open Folder-->Edit-->Select All-->File-->Delete. This clears the Folder

    which is left intact for the next user. It takes longer to explain how, but doing it is a few seconds.

    Hope this is of some help...

    Brian.Conflow.

    Would it not be the same if I boot the computer with the flash drive inserted? When it finds the FD it should register the programs the same as if they were on the HD?

    Colin

  23. For what it's worth, I have just been through the same experience. Off-the-shelf machines seldom have proper graphics cards, mostly they have the Intel Accelerated Graphics 900 or 950 which is adequate for simpler graphics, but not for the demands of PTE.

    I wanted a machine with a separate graphics card, as high-end as possible. The only course available was a custom-built to order machine, so after a couple of false starts, I ordered a Dell 1520 with Windows XP - no Vista for me, thanks - note Microsoft has relented, and XP will be available until June 2008.

    I specified an Intel Duo core 1.8 GHZ CPU, 2 GB ram, 160 GB 7200 rpm HD, geforce 8600GT graphics card - not the top, but damned good, a 1680x1050 LCD screen (there's also 1280x800 and 1440x900 if you prefer).

    The computer is of course fan-cooled, there aren't too many heat-pipe laptops around, but cooling is ok.

    Performance is stunning. Lin Evans' 'Puzzle' show is a real test of a computer system, and this machine runs it effortlessly. Also, the sound was a surprise. Most laptops have tinny sound, naturally, but the audio from the Dell is the best I've heard from any laptop.

    Have a look at the Dell website. I am very pleased with mine.

    Colin

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