Tom K

My PC has a 1.8GHz P4 with an NVIDIA GeFOrce4 Ti4200 video card. Both shows ran completely smoothly, no jerks or stutters, no error messages. I assume both are supposed to loop indefinitely, as that is how they ran until I hit Esc. The PteShow's music did not appear to be synchronized, just looping at a diferent rate than the visuals. I would have preferred to have seen a synchronized show, as I think that is what most people want to create. And like everyone else, I'm wondering about being able to vary the zoom and pan rate within the show, as all the slides looked like they were moving at the same rate. I'm also wondering about things like starting off with a stationary picture, then starting up slowly to pan/zoom across it at a constant speed, then slowing back down to stationary again. Also wondering about whether there will be improvements to transferring to DVD, where there are no video card requirements and it's a more universal platform (these days). I guess hopefully we'll be finding out next week. Thanks Igor!

April, sounds like you've been doing it the hard way. It might seem reasonable that if you assign a time to each frame that they would all add up to the same total time, but it doesn't work that way. As you've found out, there will be slight variations when you play it on different machines that accumulate to throw everything out of synch. If you're doing a simple slideshow that doesn't rely on timing it doesn't much matter, but if you have a music background that you want to synch to, you need to use the timeline function. Here are a couple of places with tutorials. Select the PTE Timeline Guide here: http://www.bishopthorpe-camera-club.com/Re...s/resources.htm Beechbrook Cottage hosts a number of slideshows. Download AlRobin's PTE 101 Tutorial (it may not necessarily be on the page I've pointed to so look around if you don't see it): http://www.beechbrook.com/pte/index.asp?categoryid=&page=7 You might also download some other shows from Beechbrook just to get ideas and see what's possible. I hope this helps but if it doesn't, don't hesitate to ask for more help. There are people a lot more knowledgeable than me on this forum. Although, sometimes knowing a lot can get in the way - it seems to me that the initial replies assumed that you had used the timeline and produced a true synchronized show, and were thinking it was a hardware problem. Unfortunately the path to creating a synchonized show is not necessarily obvious to the uninitiated. Good luck!

With the generous slide times above there shouldn't be any synch problems on CD vs hard drive. You mention that you spent hours setting up the slide show to be synched to the music. How did you do that? Did you use the timeline or did you adjust individual slide display times? Unless you're synching using the timeline, different machines will not produce the same result as your original machine.

This is a show that I put together a couple of years ago. Since I'm the digital photography buff in our engineering department, I was sent around with a company digicam (a Sony that wrote 640x480 shots to floppy) to take pictures of everyone in the department for our annual Christmas lunch. So I put together a 50-second show using the theme from the television show "ER". By the way, that's me in the last few shots. And if you look closely you can see the PC screen reflected in my eyeball as well as my glasses. The show is set up to freeze on the last frame so you'll have to hit "Esc" on your keyboard to get out when it's done.

Thank you for the comments Patrick. Your English is vastly superior to my French, which consists of, "Je suis desole'. Je ne parle pas Francais, parlez vous Anglais?" Still, my girl and I were able to get along quite nicely for a week in Paris with only that, thanks to the grace of your countrymen. (Our week in Paris is the subject of another slideshow, which I would like to upload once I get it to a managable size.) First, the music is "Classical Gas" by Mason Williams. I actually selected it several weeks before we went to Reno, and was roughly composing the slideshow in my mind even while we were there. I thought I had set the mouse cursor to hide itself after a few seconds, I don't know why that didn't work. Seems to work on my PC here. I put the navigation bar there because the show is so fast paced, people sometimes want to pause and go back to look at pictures that had just zipped by. Yes, not only the planes are sweet.... Your idea of using a series of smaller images during rapid sections intrigues me - I shall have to consider this in the future. And yes, the sound of the aircraft is incredible. I truly believe a blind person could enjoy the experience of being at the Reno Air Races. Hmmm, mixing in the sound might be possible. I did tack on the sounds of Strega and Rare Bear (two top race planes) at the end of my 2003 show but I hadn't thought about adding to the overall soundtrack. Might be possible.... Thanks again Patrick.

Hi all, I've just uploaded a slideshow of the 2004 Reno Air Races to the Beechbrook Cottage website. I've been using PTE for several years but this is the first slideshow that I've released for public viewing. I didn't build it with a general audience in mind - there are shots of my friends and me in it - but it should give an idea of what the Reno Air Races are like. There are airshows all around the country but Reno is unique. There is no other place where you will see every year (mid-September) a pack of heavily modified warbirds pushing the limits, the engines just that close to coming apart, rounding the pylons at speeds approaching 500mph. It's a sight (and sound!) that raises the hair on the back of my neck. They also race jets, biplanes, sport planes and WWII T-6 trainers. In addition to the races there is always an assortment of aerobatic acts and military demonstrations (often including the Thunderbirds or Blue Angels) but it's the racing that makes it a unique experience. It's the world's fastest motorsport - no auto racing comes anywhere near 500mph! Since this is my first upload I'd like for people to post feedback here. And for what it's worth I have also done shows for 2002 and 2003. Thanks, Tom

Google is your friend. Use it. http://www.brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclop.../ken_burns.html

Audacity is the recommended free software for music editing here, mentioned time and time again. However I thought I'd bring up another free program, Wavepad. I did a forum search and did not find any discussion of it before. As implied by the name it's a very basic editor, but it is free. Check it out: http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/

1. "Ken Burns" effects - smooth scrolling and zooming. I've done reasonable scrolling of panoramas with the "push" effect by breaking them up into individual slides, but there's still a hitch between frames. If I don't allow at least 1/10 of a second between the end of the push and the start of the next slide it may redo the previous slide, too. Interestingly, it looks smoother when transferred to a DVD than it does on the PC. 2. The ability to lock or fix a slide (or block of slides) to a certain point in the synchronized timeline, and be able to space adjacent slides from it. For instance, start with a slideshow with 30 slides and a two-minute music file. When initially put into the timeline each slide is onscreen for 4 seconds. But let's say that I want the first slide to be onscreen for 10 seconds, so I drag it over to the 10-second mark. I want all the slides after it to respace themselves. Then I want to drag slide #10, 11 and 12 to the one-minute mark and lock them in place, and then respace all the slides between them and slide #1, then all the slides after #12. And so on. Like grabbing a spring somewhere in the middle and pulling towards one end, the coils stretch apart on one side and squeeze together on the other in a proportional manner. 3. Ability to apply a display scaling factor to individual slides, preferrably by choice of numerical value or grabbing and dragging an edge or corner, and placement on the screen the same way. So for instance I'd like to be able to start with a small picture that only takes up a corner of the screen, then transition to a larger one that is offset from the corner, then a larger one that is centered, then a smaller one offset, and then finally a small one in the opposite corner. Of course this type of thing can be done by preprocessing the pictures in Photoshop or similar programs, but I'd like to do it on the fly in PTE. 4. Similarly, the ability to have more than one slide onscreen at the same time. Slide 1 comes in and takes a portion of the left side of the screen, slide 2 comes in on the right, slide 3 comes in and replaces 1 as it fades out, 4 replaces 2, slide 5 overlaps the previous ones, etc. Again, these effects can be done by processing the images beforehand but I'd like the flexibility to do it in PTE. 5. Igor and company have done such a great job I can't think of a fifth thing to list (and I was really reaching with 3 and 4 above.) The Ken Burns effects and being able to lock slides and respace in the timeline are really the only ones I care about. Thanks!

Igor, thanks for attending to the Pause problem. Most of my shows are fast-paced (usually just a second or two per slide) and sometimes people want to take a closer look at something that zipped by. Backing up to a particular slide is a pain when the show begins running again after clicking the Back arrow.

This is the first chance I've had to work with the new version 4.30 (Beta #3) and I just did a quickie show to check something. I believe you added the capability a version or two back to allow use of the Navigation Bar during synchronized shows. There's a checkbox for this titled "Permit the control of show" on the "Main" Project Option tab. This seems poorly placed to me - I would think it should be on the "Advanced" tab next to the "Show Navigation Bar" checkbox. At first I thought that it was redundant to have those two options - why would you show the Navigation Bar but not control the show? Conversely, why would you permit the control of show but not show the Navigation Bar? Then I remembered that you can also control the show by setting actions for mouse button clicks, and you would not necessarily need a visible toobar. But there is what I think is a flaw with the Navigation Bar when used during synchronized shows. When control of the show is permitted and the Navigation Bar is used, the Pause buton works fine. But when the Back or Forward arrows are used, the show resumes play instead of staying paused. To me this defeats the whole purpose of using a Pause button - you want to be able to pause the show and then back up or go forward, slide by slide, without play resuming until you click the Pause button again to resume play. I had mentioned this when 4.20 came out and there was general agreement with my view, as I recall. Could you look into this please? Also there's something that bothers me about the Customize Synchonization window. I seem to remember (perhaps wrongly) that when it first came out you could use the Play button to play the show in the small window (and with the timeline visible), starting from any slide. But when I try to do that now it always starts at the beginning of the show - the only way I can start from a slide in the middle of the show is to use the Preview button and then it plays like a normal show, without the timeline being visible. Am I remembering wrong or just doing something wrong? Whether I set the blue pointer or select the slide where I want to start, when I click the Play button it always goes back to the first slide. By the way, it'd also be nice if I could grab the edge of the Custom Synchronization window and drag it to whatever size I wanted. As it is now it only goes across about half my screen and it'd be nice to enlarge it. And thanks for the slide thumbnails! The T, V and F buttons aren't very prominent and I almost didn't see them, but I like what they do, especially the F (Fullscreen?) button. Much easier for slide arrangement and something I've wanted from Day 1. And I love the slider bar for controlling thumbnail size. Igor, you're a genius.

1. Constraints when using the timeline. In the CAD world, we create 3D models that can be modified afterwards by altering dimensions and then "updating" the solid. Often parts are contextually linked to one another so that if one changes, the other does too. I'd like to see a similar concept used on the timeline. For instance, I want to "fix" or "anchor" slide #32 at 1:18 on the timeline and slide #80 at 4:12. Then I want to drag slide #48 to 2:02, with all the slides in between 32 and 48 spacing themselves equally, and the slides after 48 spacing themselves as well. Like grabbing a spring in the middle and pulling to one end or the other, the coils space themselves evenly. I want to be able to do this multiple locations on the timeline, fixing and unfixing slides as needed. It can get even more complicated in the CAD world where one feature is represented by a formula based on another feature, but the above sample would be most useful, I think. 2. Preferrably this would be under a sound timeline that shows a waveform, so that I can see just where the beat is that I want to anchor a slide at. 3. Smoother "push" transitions, and add "zoom" (in or out) and pan as well - preferrably able to combine them. 4. I like the option for the mouse pointer to disappear after three seconds (or time of your choice) and reappear when the mouse is moved. Can you make the Nav bar do the same thing? I second all the requests for a slide table sorting scheme and manipulation of blocks of slides. I think here is a "bug" that needs to be fixed, and not a new feature as such - when the Nav bar is used with a synchronized slideshow, the pause button becomes "unpaused" when you use the FWD/BACK buttons and the show restarts playing. It should stay paused until you toggle it back to play again.

I have a question about that. I added "control of show" to one of my synchonised slideshows and while the pause works fine, if the back or forward functions are used the show starts playing again. That is to say, if I pause the show and back up one slide, I have to immediately hit pause again or it starts to play on from there. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? Can it be fixed so that the show remains paused until it is toggled back to "play? By the way, this was done using Beta 4 - I have not tried any of the later versions.

Actually when using the Nav Bar I prefer to use the option to hide the pointer after three seconds or so, then reappear when the mouse is moved. That way it's there if you need it but not in the way if you don't. Best of both worlds.

I just tried using beta #4 to create a DVD with the two slideshows that I've been using (a wedding with all fades, and the Reno Air Races with all quick cuts.) Clicking the box "For ULead DVD Movie Factory" produces a .ptev file (Pictures toEXE video for Ulead) which ULead does not recognize. Windows Media Player won't play a preview either. I went ahead and tried making a DVD with just the ULead box unchecked and "Interlace for TV" checked, which gave the same interlacing problems I had before on quick cuts. I'm not sure how the .ptev files are supposed to work - am I doing something wrong? Is there something in ULead that I need to change to recognize the file? Frankly I'm not all that happy with trying to use ULead anyway, since it took an hour to render and burn seven minutes worth of slideshows (is this typical?) But if it will eventually give the best results I might be able to live with it.