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Peter, You have raised a good point there. I experimented by starting a show from the flash drive, and after the first frame or two, I yanked the flash drive out of the usb socket. The show continued for a few more frames, and then stopped with the message "Cannot find Image ...". I figure from that, what actually happens is that the executable part of the show and maybe the sound track is loaded at once, but it fetches the images as they are required, which will minimize memory requirements, but means the flash drive will be constantly active. This also implies that the speed of the flash drive is relevant as well where fast slide changes are happening, and would also be a good reason to pre-size the images. Anybody with more knowledge out there?

Thank you, Brian, I think you have nailed it there. Which raises the question as to how to tell the computer about the exe file when it is on a flash drive the computer hasn't seen before? If I take the FD to the club computer and run a show straight off the drive, I am risking the lockup happening, right? What if I use Windows Explorer or My Computer to open the drive and display the exe files, would that give the computer the chance to 'log' the files? or do I have to copy the files to the HDD? Sorry for the questions. Doesn't matter how much one knows about these things, there is more to learn ... Regards, Colin.

Regarding the 1MB Imation flash drive, 'HD Tach' (a speed-measuring program) measures this drive at 11MB/sec, which I would think ample for replay speed. Also, exe files are completely loaded into memory before running, so I should imagine the source would be irrelevant. My thoughts so far are on something like a happenchance interrupt taking the CPU away from the show enough to miss a transition marker of some sort, but then I would expect the show to pick up the next slide transition and run one slide behind, but not so. It remains stalled on the one slide. This is not a common happening, unfortunately, and seems unreproducible on demand. But it is often enough to have me sweating a bit when I have an audience. Regards, Colin

Aaahh, sorry Ken, it's happening on downloaded shows where all I have is the exe file. Colin

Hello all, Occasionally I have had a show just simply pause on one picture, and while the sound track continues, the image just sits there, stalled. This has happened on my desktop machine, 3.00GHz P4 Pentium and 1 GB ram, GeForce 6600GT graphics card, and now it has happened again on my brand-new Dell laptop, Intel Duo 1.8GHz, 3 GB ram, GeForce 8600GT graphics card. Program source is a 1 GB usb 2 flash drive (Imation) but I am fairly sure it has happened when the source is a HDD. Replaying the show will run properly, and I cannot seem to be able to trigger this stalling. In front of a room full of viewers it's a bit embarrassing. Has anyone else struck this, or does anyone have an idea why it happens. It doesn't seem to be linked to any one show. Colin PS: OS's are win 2000 and XP Pro. Happens with both.

It might be easier to accept the slide timings as they are, and adjust the sound length to fit. I use a sound editor called Goldwave, and it allows me to lengthen or shorten within limits the duration of a sound track without audibly altering the sound. I used this for a AV show intended for a competition, which stipulated that the show must be less than 5 minutes, and Goldwave was able to shrink the track from 5:21 to 4:59, worked well. I don't know if Audacity will do this, but if not, Goldwave is free to d/l and try. OTOH, if you are trying to achieve some sort of lip-sync, well good luck is all that I can say ... Colin

It's on Beechbrook. top left first page. Colin

Hello Jeff, How I envy you with that record of your wife's and your parents. I would never have thought of doing anything like that, too busy with kids of our own, I guess. We have a few snapshots of my wife's and my parents, but nothing I could make a show from. Although you all are total strangers to me, I have to confess to moist eyes at the end, such is the emotional content of the show. Congratulations! Just one tiny, picky point: the music is a little overmodulated in the first half or so, my speakers were showing a rattly distortion. But great music, as usual with your shows. Kind regards, Colin

I have had the experience of buying a laptop from a retail store, an Alienware M5550 that fried its graphics card about three weeks after I bought it. The retailer seemed to equate the service of a laptop computer with that required for a washing machine or a toaster, i.e. any service shop could fix it. The whole story is in another thread in this forum so I won't repeat it all now, suffice to say I returned the machine for a refund. Once bitten, I then researched the service facilities for several well-known brands like HP/Compaq and Sony, etc. HP didn't let on anything about their service, Sony quoted two service facilities in my area - a retailer with a a general electrical service department, and a specialist camera store. Call me picky, but none of those options appealed to me at all, so I eventually ordered a Dell on-line. In contrast to an off-the-shelf-take-it-or-leave-it machine from a retailer, Dell allowed me to specify exactly how I wanted the computer built. After sales service is handled by Dell, with access to a Dell technician via a free phone. Depending on the fault and your ability to replace a component, they will either ship you a new part, or request the return of the machine to Dell. None of this corner-store back-bench 'servicing'. I have heard horror stories about Dell, but they have a lot of computers out there, so some problems are to be expected, I guess. Time will tell. Colin

Ronnie, Perhaps you missed where he said he was running the slides at 25 slides per second - 40 msec each - to simulate a movie. At that speed, if he can achieve it, the show will last for 104 seconds. I shudder to think what the graphics card will be doing ... Colin

Hello John, I'm in the same boat - finding a laptop for my camera club. Since PTE uses the graphics chip so effectively in producing high-quality images, I went for a laptop with a good graphics card, an Alienware. It was a good machine till it fried the graphics chip, and then I found there was no guarantee service nor any parts available here in NZ, so I returned the computer. and have now ordered a Dell 1520 with Nvidia geForce 8600GT graphics. Dell's presence here is solid, backed by Australia. With regard to the operating system, if at all possible I would steer clear of Vista. There are numerous problems with drivers and program compatability, and the built-in Digital Rights Management (DRM) has the potential to cause problems with your shows if it thinks you don't have permission to run them, and the DRM continuous checking while a show (or game) is running shaves about 10% off the computer's performance. Dell still offer XP with some of their machines, including the 1520, and the two machines I have ordered - one for the camera club and the other for me - will both come with XP. I can always upgrade to Vista if and when I consider that OS will suit me. Rats. I just took a minute to look at Dell UK, and they don't offer XP with a 1520. Perhaps you could get one from Australia if you want to go the XP route? Colin

Welcome to the group, Miles! Check that your PTE is deluxe enabled. Open the program, click on 'Help\About Pictures To Exe'. The box should say 'Licensed to' (your name) and then 'Deluxe Edition'. If the words 'Deluxe Edition' are not present, you have a problem with the Deluxe key file. Colin

A very interesting thread as it is relevant to how I run PTE shows at the local camera club and other places. I haven't personally struck the problem yet, but Brian's autorun program interests me. One question I have is this. I usually have several PTE shows on a 1 GB flash drive, and if I understand autoruns, you can't have more than one autorun program on a flash drive or a CD. So, can an autorun program handle a menu system from which a choice of PTE program to run can be made, and can the program be made to invoke the autorun again so as to select another PTE program? Colin

I would caution anyone thinking of buying an Alienware laptop to make sure service will be available. I bought an AW Area 51 M5550 in July; on 1 September it fried the video card. I took it back to the supplier, a major retail chain here in New Zealand, only to find that the NZ AW wholesalers had collapsed. They were a subsidiary of AW Australia, so I emailed them - having to do my own guarantee work! - but got no answer. I tried their 1-800 number - disconnected. I emailed AW support in USA - no reply. I then rang AW USA, spent a fortune in toll calls, they had no knowledge of my computer even though I supplied the serial number. They were to get back to me, but I am still waiting. I have thrown in the towel and applied for a refund. It was a nice machine, but it's like having a nice car without being able to buy petrol. Currently I am looking at a Dell 1520 - 1.8GHz duo CPU, 1440x900 screen, Nvidia geForce 8600GT, (now that's a card!)3 GB memory, 160GB HDD, all for about $200 more than the Alienware. Whatever the stories about Dell are, they at least have a solid presence here in NZ, and service is available. Regards, Colin D.

Hello Jason, Obsessed isn't the right word here, and the PSG post to which Lin is referring was sent by me, querying why PSG is just not sharp, either as an exe file or as a DVD. As for Igor's remarks being not quite true, neither are Photodex's. Stones and glass houses country here. Originally I was impressed with a few shows put up by wedding pro's, whose images were probably not too sharp anyway, being nice soft bridal shots, and I noised PSG around my camera club, with the result that several members bought PSG on my say-so. Not too long after that, when I was having misgivings about PSG's performance, some CC members complained to me about the same problem, along with other complaints on the PS forum. My contribution to that discussion was along the lines of 'why isn't PSG as sharp as PTE?'. Somehow, PSG manages to throw away 90% of my efforts with a dslr camera to get pin-sharp, breathtaking clarity on the screen. That's the end of the story for me. PTE does it, PSG doesn't. I made a rule at the local camera club - exe files for computers and data projectors, DVDs for your TV box. DVD's on a computer are third rate quality compared with exe files, not to mention the additional overhead decoding the data, a process which will cause a lot of computers to stumble and stutter. YMMV, Colin.

Thanks for the demo show, Barry. I ran it on my Alienware machine and it was dead smooth right through, as I expected, but it's nice to confirm its performance all the same. Colin.

There is an aesthetic problem with fading music at an arbitrary point and not at least at a cadence or the end of a phrase. My solution would be to have your wife modify the timing her delivery to coincide with the natural end of the music, which would be a more professional way of doing it. She would probably need some sort of timer, or actually record her comments on each slide in PTE. Of course, if some interaction with the audience will take place, timing will be very diffficult, and manually fading the sound will be the only way. Good luck Colin

Very slow zooms, almost subliminal, on subjects like landscapes can add interest to a completely static image. When in real life a subject catches one's interest, the mind focuses on what is being viewed, a sort of mental zoom if you like. A very slow zoom of an image, maybe only a 5% zoom over 10 or so seconds, can mimic the effect of mind-focusing, and allow a longer duration of the slide without boring the audience. Well done, the zoom is not noticed by the viewer, but induces a greater interest in the image. Colin

Aahh, thanks for the info. There are similar laws here also, but I don't know of anyone who has taken the trouble to obtain licences as you have done. Most just rely on such a minor infraction not to be worth pursuing by the copyright holders, and it seems they turn a blind eye to more or less private usage of music tracks even though technically it is illegal. Colin

Just curious - what are the licences to which you refer at the end of the show please? Colin

I would be interested to know what shows you used for your tests, and whether they were compiled DVD shows, or PTE exe files simply saved to a DVD? If the shows were executables saved to a DVD, then the read speed of the DVD drive would be suspect; but if you were using a compiled DVD show from VideoBuilder, then the performance of the application used to play the video and how the show was assembled comes into it. I recently bought a laptop - an Alienware wide screen (an American manufacturer, recently acquired by Dell), with a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor, an Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 graphics card, and a dual-layer DVD R/RW drive. These machines are recognized as good gaming machines, so I figured that it should be ok for playing slide shows and DVDs. Almost the first DVD I tried to play just staggered from slide to slide, with jerky transitions. The DVD was compiled by a professional photog, who later said that it didn't run on some computers. I put this down to her using images that were too large, and not resized to suit a TV screen, thereby choking the software codec in the application running the show - Windows Media Player. Other shows, from commercial film DVDs to DVDs I have made with suitably resized images run properly, so I am happy that the computer is ok, but I tend now to look askance at DVDs rather than the computer. My attitude now is that DVDs are strictly for TV showing, and exe files are for computer showing. Playing a DVD on a computer is a last resort (unless you have a Mac). Colin

I am totally amazed at the absolute smoothness of the animation in this show. The second hand movement is absolutely, completely smooth and continuous. I could not see any sign at all of discontinuity of movement anywhere. It is a staggeringly good demonstration of what PTE can do. Bravo!!! Colin

John, Some points about your current problems. You say your images are 4 to 5 MB each, but at that size, unless you are zooming every one, they are unnecessarily large. I presume because you are having DVD problems that your show is to be projected from a DVD player in one or other TV format. The standard 4:3 TV screen is equivalent to only 720 x 576 pixels (for the PAL system, NTSC is less by a small amount), an image size of 1.24 megabytes. If you are zooming, then you will need a larger image to start. If you will be using a wide screen format at 16:9, the TV image needs no more than 1024 by 576 pixels, a 1.8 MB file. Resizing your images will save at least 2/3 of your show size, reducing the 1.2GB down to 400MB or less. When burning a DVD, shut down your internet connection and disable all anti-virus/spyware programs and firewalls, and any other running programs. Leaving those running can wreck a DVD write. Windows Media Player will play ISO files, if you want to check the compilation before you burn. However, can I suggest you forget about DVDs and use an exe file instead? An exe file on a laptop through a data projector will leave DVD for dead as far as image quality goes. PTE is optimized for stunning image quality in exe files, DVDs throw away most of that in sizing for TV. Colin

Ok Andy, thanks for the detailed remarks. From your figures it seems that GPU processing time is a factor here, as the show repeats on my laptop after just under 90 seconds, a bit slower than your desktop machine. Perhaps my planned show is different in that it is static, apart from whatever clouds may be around, and I can therefore afford a slower slide rate and let the fade transition smooth out the changes. The weather here in NZ is cold and wet and heavily overcast, so I won't be doing the photography for a month or so yet. Colin.

An interesting show, as I have plans to do something similar, a sequence from pre-dawn to full sunlight of my city from a high vantage point, about 3,000 feet. I thought I would take about one shot per 30 seconds or so over about 3 hours, as an intro to a show about the town and environs. On viewing your show on my laptop - a Pentium 1.6GHZ dual core with a gig of ram and a Geforce Go 7600 graphics card - the clouds appeared to move in a mildly jerky or stepping manner. Did you use any kind of fade transition between slides? It appeared as if there was no transition, just an abrupt change from one slide to the next, so I am curious as to how you set up the changes, and what experimentation you did to get presumably an optimum transition. Colin