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Conflow said: <<If you have something to contribute to Forum Members about Codecs it would be most welcome ~ rather than the criticism you just vented against me for trying to help other Members whilst trying to keep things simple.>> Um, he did. He suggested an updated version of Classic Player that is equally easy to install and is more compatible with Vista. And “a word of caution” on codec packs that may have commercial codecs in them improperly does not sound like “criticism you just vented against me” to me. <<Concerning 'Sound Forge' ~ do you mean 'SonySound Forge Audio Editor', Sony's attempt to purloin the Open-Source Web Site 'Sound Forge.Net' the distributors of Audacity Editor.>> Um, he originally mentioned Source Forge, not Sound Forge. He also used potential inclusion of the DivX Pro codec as an indicator of tricky business afoot, to which your non-sequitur reaction was to criticize him for mentioning a codec that was “off-base”. Ordinarily I don’t like to comment like this. However, IMHO as a junior member with not many posts, I expect more from a senior member with 1100+ posts than the passive-aggressive, patronizing, condescending misreading and misinterpretation I see in your response to a junior member. This thread should have been over in two posts.

Having just converted my little Asus eeePC model 701-4G (4GB solid state HD, 500MB RAM) to Windoze XP SP3, I thought what the heck, let's run a PTE.exe show on it and see just how badly it does, or even watch it crash under the processor load. After all, it's only using a Celeron-M processor running at 900Mhz (6/27 - actually I think there's a speed limiter inside that restricts it to 600Mhz; whatever). Much to my surprise, everything worked. This is a vanilla eee - no overclocking, no fancy drivers. It's just the straight XP installation. I don't know if the driver can go better than 1024x768 on the external monitor, but I do know that my HP Pavilion 6000 with a fast AMD processor was a little jerky on a long pan in one of the shows. The Asus panned perfectly smoothly. Go figure. I suppose a really intense show with really large pictures might cause trouble, but I'm amazed already. So, if you need to run your show on a computer roughly half the size of a sheet of letter paper and 1 1/2 inches thick, it can be done. (And the battery is good for 3+ hours, so you don't need to bring the wall wart with you.)

Thanks Igor - that command option worked perfectly. In case anyone cares, the reason I asked is because I'm doing a huge program (1 1/2 hours long), essentially a lecture with illustrations and musical snippets, and if the show must be interrupted, or someone pulls the power plug on me, I want to be able to restart without going through dozens of slides again. So, Thanks!! Xaver, I like your solution but need more flexibility on picking the slide number. Command line works better in this case.

Is there any way to go to a given slide in an EXE show when loading the EXE? In other words, can I start a show on slide 13 or 22 or 1? I can see menus for this in a DVD, but can't locate anything in the manual (5.1) about menus that link to specific slides or any other way to accomplish this. Thanx - Argo

I am over 60 and my reaction to Black Country was not depression but nostalgia. No matter what our intent is when we create an AV, the audience will bring its own experience and its own interpretation to the game. (Well, maybe a documentary on prison life is the exception.....) Now, has anyone put Flanders and Swann's "Slow Train" into an AV? That would have me diving into the Kleenex.

I'm making a show where there are many individual soundfiles linked to slides. It's very frustrating that I can't see the waveforms in the timeline unless there is one over-arching track associated with the project. I can't generate such a soundtrack until I've done all the busy work, and the busy work requires a waveform display. Catch 22. So at the moment I have two choices: (1) to make a little show for each short slide sequence and then transfer the animation timing to the big show by hand (because transferring points only works for shows with the same number of slides), or (2) make a silent track the length of the show and drop the individual tracks into it about where I think they should be and twiddle with those positions until it works right. Aargh. So my request is to be able to see waveforms no matter their length or linkage. (and, in a perfect world, be able to move audio tracks around like slides)

Thank Lin and Alan. Alan's suggestion worked perfectly. I can now see the different behaviors of a track depending on whether it's added in the "customize" music tab, versus the 'sound' browser box on a given slide. I'll keep Lin's suggestion in mind when I need a short-term loop instead of a play-once-only track. Great forum!

Version 5.1: I unchecked the music synchro box for the project because I want small tracks tied to some, but not all, slides. The first music track I attached to a slide repeats - that is, it plays, and plays again. I can't find anything in the manual dealing with this. Thanks in advance

I have made a show, which works fine (PTE 5.1 latest version). It has a single soundtrack and 50 slides. Now I would like to add about 30 minutes of sound over a single black slide in 51st position (essentially background music for post-show coffee time). When I try to add the new track to the 51st slide, I am told I must uncheck "synchronize music and slides" in the Project Options. So I do. Now when I preview the show, no matter which slide I start on, the sound track plays from the start. And I can't get the wave form display in the Timeline. Help? and Merry Christmas to All!

OK, stop press, it's my computer sound driver(s). I took a PTE exe file to my wife's laptop and it played just fine, so I took another look at my computer. I use Total Recorder to capture audio streams, and when I disabled the Total Audio drivers and used the sound card's native driver, all problems disappeared. Sorry to raise an issue that, as an experienced (although obviously, inexpert) Windoze user, I should have checked first. I was able to play all the PTE exe files I've downloaded from other users, so I did not suspect my computer. It's an interesting question as to why *my* files don't play back properly on *my* computer without futzing with drivers, but I'm not going to worry about it. A.

Alan - my point is that there is much more noise when playing this file through PTE than there is playing it through any other sound program on my computer. Something I neglected to mention in my first posting is also that the music itself is distorted. I understand about noise floors, but this is something different. A.

Having my first go at building a slide show. The sound track, inserted in Project Options, is very quiet at the beginning and there is a lot (A LOT!!!) of background hiss, fuzz and scratching. I get this noise during Preview and in the compiled exe file too. However, when the same sound file is played through Windows Media Player, or Audacity, or Vegas, there is only a small amount of background hiss. I've tried this file in WMA, MP3, and WAV formats - no differences. Can anyone explain this for me? Thanks - A.

Wow - this has been a very interesting discussion. For me the bottom line is that I will adapt the way I fill in the fields in Lightroom so that what I want to appear in PTE does appear. This limits me to one field, but I can live with that. In terms of workflow and getting on with my life, there just isn't enough time to use an Exif editor *and* my photo editor. If worst comes to worst, I can have LR and PTE open at the same time and copy and paste whatever I need from LR to the comment field in PTE. Unless I start making a living creating PTE slide shows, there's no need to get more sophisticated. Thanks for all the help and information! A.

Thanks Lin and Peter, I see what I must do. Garden work will just have to wait..... A.

Al, let me be sure I understand you. You created a comment using your *camera*, and when you looked at the photo in Lightroom, setting Lightroom so that metadata is saved to an XMP file, the comment was there. I hope that's right. But, if LR can't edit the field, then it's no good for my purpose. There's no way I can use the camera as an input/editing device for Exif data. (I think I must have missed something in your message.) A.

Lin - let's say I have a human figure and want only the head to appear, superimposed on a 'main' photo of, say, a horse. I'm guessing I need to go into PS and select the human head using some kind of montage technique, paste it on to a blank PNG whose background is transparent, and take it back to PTE and animate it over the main photo. If this is what people do, then it's time for me to dig into PS and learn how. If I'm going down the wrong road, then I need some pointers. Thanks - A.

Peter - thanks for that tip, but I'm also trying to figure out how to 'disappear' the background and rectangular frame of the PIP image. That's where I need the most help. A.

I've looked a lot, but can't find a tutorial on the Picture-in-Picture effects, both framed and unframed, and I'm especially interested in the floating PIPs that must have a transparent 'background'. I have Photoshop if that helps. Thanks - A

Conflow - the Caption field was filled in with Lightroom, and that field shows up in PTE, so I don't think there is a translation problem between LR and PTE. I've seen postings about bugs, so I guess that's the problem.

I use Lightroom for editing and tried a test image with *all* the Exif, IPTC etc. fields filled in, and yet when I set PTE project options to "JPEG Exif Comment" and set it for all existing slides, nothing came up when I previewed the slide. The "JPEG Exif Description" works just fine and in Lightroom this field is the Caption field. So, where can I find the Comment field and display it in PTE? Thanks in advance....