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Hello Maureen, Greetings from the other end of the planet - New Zealand. My wife and I are always entranced by the beauty of the English countryside, the history of ages that we do not have in this young, raw country of NZ. We do have natural scenery, but the hand of man has not wrought anything like your farms, villages, bridges, and historical ruins here. Ours is functional, utilitarian, do the job without much thought given to aesthetics or intrinsic beauty of form. Thank you for your show, giving a cameo of your English heritage. How I would like to be able to travel there with my Canon! Just one little ask; could you extend the time of your last image with the credits a little longer? It went past too fast to be able to read it all and appreciate the final image. Regards, Colin

Make sure your images are signed as sRGB. Unsigned or aRGB images can do funny things.

I tried running a 58 megabyte PTE show direct from a folder on my Dell laptop, it opened and ran within 2 seconds or so. Then I ran another show about the same size from a memory stick, which took about 4 seconds to open and run. I put the small difference down to the stick being slower than the hard drive, but not by much at all. I can't think why your laptop experience of shows having a very long pause would be, unless you are using a USB 1.1 stick, or perhaps the lappys you tried all had slow graphics. A lot of laptops use a fairly basic graphics chip on the main board which shares ram memory with programs and other data, as opposed to having a dedicated graphics board with its own memory and a much more powerful chip. So-called business machines often have only basic on-board graphics which will handle relatively static output, like word processors and spreadsheets, and DVD videos which run at just under 30 frames/sec, but choke on PTE shows which run at 60 frames/sec. Perhaps somebody else may have a better idea. This laptop I use has a dedicated graphics board with its own unshared 512 megabytes memory. Regards, Colin

Hello again Gary, I forgot to explain why the choices are 16-bit or 32-bit in your video driver. In actual fact images with 8-bit depth are actually 8 bits per primary colour, so the total for 3 colours is 24 bits, or three bytes. But because Windows works in 32-bit which is four bytes at a time, it uses a dummy byte so it can work with 3-byte variables, a sort of padding to suit the 32-bit environment. The image is still only 3 bytes or 24 bits, the extra byte is just ignored. In 16-bit mode, the colour depth is reduced to 4 bits per colour, 12 bits of information, and the remaining 4 bits are padded to make 2 bytes. The same happens in your camera. My Canon uses 14 bits of data in RAW mode, but is padded out to 16 bits for the cpu, and again the last 2 bits are ignored. That's my 2 bit's worth.

Aha. Yes, your nVidia driver software can deliver 32-bit colour depth, but that is not your monitor depth. I just looked at this laptop with its 6-bit screen, and the nVidia driver is set to 32-bit (this lappy has a dedicated nVidia Geforce 8600M-GT graphics chip, which is why I bought it). According to the relevant literature, the screen dithers the colours it cannot directly produce. I guess the marketers do not want to admit limitations in their product, so they hide things like TN and 6-bit screens, which puts you in the 'awkward customer' category, wanting to know these things. I guess it's only those who deal with graphics who worry about it, others are just happy with a coloured screen Regards, Colin

There are a couple of ways to find the bit-depth your monitor has. The response speed is one, screens that boast a 2 millisecond response are almost certain to be 6-bit, most 8-bit screens are 5 msec. The other way is the quoted number of colours it wll display. This is calculated by multiplying out the bit depth for the each of the three primary colours. A 6-bit depth can display 2^6 different shades between darkest and lightest colour, and an 8-bit screen can display 2^8 shades. 2^6 is 64 steps, therefore 64 steps for each primary colour is 64*64*64, equals 262,144 displayable colours. A lot of laptop screens claim this number. An 8-bit screen can display 2^8 or 256 steps from darkest to lightest, so its displayable colours is 256*256*256, equals 16,277,216, usually rounded to 17 million colours. (note that .jpg images are always 8-bit images.) A top-of-the-line monitor like the Eizo range can display 2^10 steps darkest to lightest, which gives 1024 steps, and a huge total range of over a billion colours. Two more comments. I would be very surprised if your Samsung has 32-bit colour. That sounds like marketing hype to me. Also, resolution has nothing to do with bit depth and everything to do with pixel count. 1920x1080 seems to be the current standard for desktop monitors and a few 17-inch lappys. My 15-inch laptop is 1680x1050 and isnt too bad for a 6-bit device. Sorry for the novel, Colin

Are you aware that most, if not all laptops have 6-bit screens, not 8-bit as your desktop will have. They look ok, but 6-bit screens are useless for accurate colour work, even if calibrated. I have a Dell laptop with a 1650 x 1080 6-bit screen, not bad to look at, but I do not do any photoshop type work on it. It's ok to put shows together with images from my desktop, but I wouldn't use it for working on an image. The computer itself works in any image bit depth, 8 or 16-bit as required, but the screen will only display 6-bit images. An 8-bit external monitor will show 8 bits, just not the laptop screen.

One would think so, Barry, but some problems are really difficult to resolve. One needs programmer-level understanding of what is going on when software hiccups, and often the actual problem is never found. Sometimes a rewrite of parts of the software, to work around a conflict is easier than trying to pin down the lesion, and it all depends on the willingness of the software purveyors how much effort they are prepared to put into solving it. Sometimes I think they are waiting for some savvy persons to find the problem for them rather than expend time and money themselves. It reminds me of the Ford Pinto vehicle sold in the States. There were a number of rear-ended crashes where the Pinto would burst into flames, possibly incinerating the rear seat passengers. It was rumoured that Ford did an analysis of the problem and concluded that it would be cheaper to pay damages for each accident than to recall and fix however many thousands of these vehicles that were on the road. I don't think Lightroom will kill anybody, but maybe the same principle operates? Regards, Colin

I think that either the Lightroom guy is confused or insufficiently knowledgeable to have suggested large monitors might be the cause. An image displayed on a 1920 x 1080 monitor takes a whisker over 2 megabytes to fill the screen, and 2 MB is peanuts to a reasonable computer. The time for a graphics card to generate that size image is in milliseconds - bear in mind that the PicturesToExe 60Hz refresh rate fills the screen 60 times per second without a problem. If your computer can handle that, then Lightroom displaying a single image should have no problem. My take on the problem is Lightroom has issues with other software running, maybe anti-virus, firewall, or some component of Windows. I used to use a program called PowerDesk, a superset of Windows Explorer, and it was deadly slow when listing the contents of a folder. The reason appeared to be that it opened and checked every single file in the folder for malware I finally ditched it and bought Directory Opus, a similar program, which opens folders immediately. I'm sorry I don't have 'the' answer as although I have Lightroom 3.6, I don't really like it, and I stick with DxOptics and Photoshop, a great combination. Regards, Colin

Some anti-virus software takes it on itself to delete anything it doesn't like. There have been stories on this board of losing multiple PTE .exe files because of overly aggressive software. If any AV software did that to me it would be uninstalled immediately and the purveyors of such software would hear about it. MS Essentials is fine, some others aren't.

Hello Igor, I tried your two test programs, and found no difference at all in loading from the setup file, each taking 14 seconds (timed)to install up to the 'finish' screen. Launching from the finish screen was less than 1 second. Repeating the install in case MSE 'learned'the program gave the same times. Computer is a Dell 1520 laptop, Intel Centrino Duo-core cpu at 1.8 MHz, 3 GB of ram, running XP SP3 32-bit with MSE active and up to date. Regards, Colin

I tend to use 16:10 because it is the nearest to the 3:2 dimensions of my Canon dslr. I find that 16:9 is just a wee bit too long and narrow for my liking. However, it's a momentary thing to select the aspect ratio when commencing a new show, so the default setting really doesn't matter to me. Fit to slide seems to be the general choice, but again, it's so easy to change that I consider it unimportant. I could make a case for having no default at all, so users would be required to always make a choice when starting a show. At least the trap of starting a show without checking what the format is would be avoided. :rolleyes: Colin

No, it isn't. The onus on the organizers is to ensure their equipment will run shows that comply with their rules. If a 1920*1080 show fails to run it is not their fault, since such a show does not comply with their rules. I prefer to make my shows with specs complying with the required rules, which means if the competition calls for 1024*768 then that is what a show should deliver. If the organizers specify those dimensions, why should they have to guarantee to run a 1920*1080 show? If such a show stutters or shows poorly, who is at fault? The organizers or the author? I would say the author. Additionally, the aim of entering a competition is for your show to compete with other shows, and possibly be a winner. Why reduce your chances by deliberately entering a non-spec show that might cause a problem? Regards, Colin

Don't get me started on that! The club website is hopelessly out of date in some areas, and this is an example. I will make some waves about it next club night. Our webmaster is very busy in his business life, and the site gets neglected, sometimes for 2 or 3 months at a time. The club ran the Central Regional Convention here in Palmerston North in November, and as at February this year the old information was still on the site. Having said that, the position of webmaster is nothing short of onerous and time-consuming, and few members are clued up enough to handle the job. Apologies to forum members for drifting off-topic - a hazard plaguing all forums, I guess! Regards, Colin

Hello Barry, Thanks for asking, the club has a website, www.manawatucamera.net.nz, which has upload channels to send entries to the competitions, which are then picked up by the competition secretary. The sec. then compiles all the entries on a stick to be shown on the club computer. Works well. Regards, Colin

Hello Eric, I have bolded part of your response, as what you say will be the case when the OP's show is projected. The projector will be set so that a 4:3 show will fill the screen (as that size is specified), so obviously a 3:2 show will have the black lines visible (can black be visible?) We have a similar problem at our camera club. We have purchased a Dell DLP projector which uses a 1280 x 800 format. Although the club members have been told this, they still produce work at 1024 x 768, which leaves - in this case - black lines on all four sides of the image. An alternative that I would consider would be to use a border at 1024 x 768 and fit the 3:2 image within the border, so at least the aspect ratio could be seen to be complied with. Regards, Colin.

AS others have said, downsizing your images to the required 1024 x 768 will not impair the definition - actually it could be better as you will have control of the downsizing algorithm by the software you use to do the job, whereas the projector's downsizing quality is an unknown, specially if it is an older machine. Also, you might want to crop your images to the 4:3 format instead of your native 3:2 from the camera - otherwise your images shown on a 4:3 format projector will have black lines top and bottom on the screen, not a good look. Finally, you are asking a lot of the hardware - computer and projector - to handle unnecessarily large images. If the machines at the venue can't handle it, your show will be ruined. I would want everything in my favour in a competitive situation! Colin

Just regarding the show quality of DVDs, I have recently done a DVD of a family occasion, an Mpeg2 compilation in PTE. On a 52-inch LG TV the quality was spectacular, far better that I had expected, so I think that Mpeg2 compilations from PTE are top of the tree.

Ok, back from having another stent inserted into my diagonal (branches off the Left Anterior Descending artery) very successful, so pleased about that. I've been cogitating on CPU speeds etc, and have come to the conclusion that the once-fast P4 pentium chip is no longer so. These i7 and Xeon chips are so blindingly fast it's beyond belief. I tried Dave's Standard Test compilation on my laptop, sporting a 1.8 GHz Core2 Duo cpu, and it's much faster than the P4, so there's my problem, which isn't really a problem at all as it turns out. My thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. I have been dragged into the current state of computing, shaken out of my complacency, and am considering depleting the nest egg for a new machine. Regards to all, Colin.

Thanks Barry, I'll give it a shot on the weekend. I'm off tomorrow for another stent in my coronary artery, pretty routine now, a day job these days.

Sorry Eric, my exe is only about 61 MB, and the video disc is 700 MB. However, I ran Dave's standard template, and it projected the time to be 8 hours for a video DVD, but it was much quicker for an AVI file, about 50 minutes - which is still slow I reckon. Maybe the old girl is slower than I realised. Might have to look at an upgrade after all. Money, money, ... Regards, Colin

Gobsmacked I am! I thought my pentium was reasonably fast! I downloaded your template Dave, and it's running on my machine now, has been for about 10 minutes. Your comp compiled it in under 4 minutes - mine is predicting EIGHT HOURS!!! That can't be right, there has to be a problem somewhere, surely? What are the specs of your computer Dave? Chagrined regards, Colin

Hello Eric, Thanks for your reply, Anti-virus was turned off, as always when I burn a DC/DVD. OS is XP SP3. Project Options were all default, except aspect ratio 16:9 and images all sized to that format at 1920 x 1080. I should point out that it was PTE's compilation that took the time, the disc write was only a couple of minutes, file size about 700 MB. Paradoxically, publishing to .exe took less than 4 seconds. Regards, Colin

Hello Lin, Thanks for the quick reply there. Perhaps it's a little overkill for several members to burn DVDs as a comparison, I did think that a time versus size ratio might be possible, if a few members gave their times and sizes for their compilations. I don't think it's my DVD drive, a Liteon of fairly recent vintage, as when I burn copies of the program from the ISO file, it takes only 4 or 5 minutes to write the disk, at the 8x speed limit of the DVD blanks. A few more replies might prove helpful, my thanks to any who do reply. Regards, Colin

I have just bought the De Luxe DVD option for 7.5.4, and compiled my first DVD show. I normally only compile exe's so this is a first for me! But, it took around three hours or more to produce the DVD, which surprised me somewhat, considering the speed at which exe's compile, a few seconds in this instance. Ok, the computer is older, but is a 3.3GHz P4 Pentium cpu, still pretty fast even today; memory is 4 GB, and when I checked the cpu usage it was around 50 - 60%, so not bottlenecked there. GPU is an nVidia Geforce 6600GT, again older, but not too slow, it will run everything I throw at it. So, is this 3-hour compile normal, or is there something I have overlooked? I changed nothing in the setup options, just altered the title on the menu page. The show is comprised of 99 images, all sized to 1080 x 1920 or narrower depending on the image, no zoom/pan/rotate, slide duration 9 seconds, 3 seconds dissolve, and the exe file size was about 61 MB. Any comments gratefully received. Colin