think(box)

Yes, music especially Oleg That is where we hide all of our secret messages. At least that is what everyone is encouraged to believe If they only knew....

Quoted from another topic thread that diverged a bit, this is a Custom Synchronization window feature originally requested by Pege (member name pegebo) in Pictures 2 EXE in national UK Magazine, September issue topic. We have general agreement that visual cues about sound level will help get the best timing most quickly. Here are the three defining messages: Here is my feedback to an intermediate message from Al: And here are Al's conclusions: Igor, please consider our proposed feature! ==>

"You [boxig] and Granot"? Boxig is really two people? Maybe that is how he makes so many utilities so fast.

Guido, regarding your request of six days ago from within this topic thread, I have confirmed an OGG only timing bug: Using the Nutcracker OGG file that you sent to me I set up the show as requested with the one precisely defined transition amidst the rest automatically positioned. Timing was OK when making the show (in segment playback of Custom Synchronization window) but when I played the .EXE show afterward it was not the same. The slide that was supposed to appear with the cymbal crash was exactly ONE second LATE. Then I re-opened the show in PTE and found buggy behavior: When playing from start, the cymbal crash happened at 17.3 seconds on the timeline. Yet when I previously created the show the cymbal and defined transition were at 18.3 seconds. It was as if the music was now playing ONE second advanced in time. Then when I tried playing just a segment from before my 18.3 second sync point the timing of the music CHANGED to cymbal crash at 18.3 seconds once again. You might call this a moving target timing bug. I would also like to point out a very short sound skip at the beginning of the show playback. The new music player is skipping where the old method did not. This has been mentioned in other threads. My system is Win98SE, P2 400MHz, 512MB ram. Since we should eliminate the lieklihood that we were using a defective OGG sound file, I set up a second experiment with a totally different music source file in OGG format, and I used CBR. Conversion to OGG was by the latest dBpowerAMP converter, to 96kbps. The result: Exactly the same one second bug. Finally, I made a matching music file in MP3, 96Kbps and ran the same test. From MP3 format the playback timing was flawless under all circumstances, including before creating, after creating, segment playback or playback from the start. It didn't skip at the beginning, whether OGG or MP3 for this other music selection. The skipping problem is generic, and not so much related to sound format. By the way, using the MP3 of exact same music I was able to determine that the earlier of the two times was the correct one. So in Guido's music test the cymbal at 17.3 seconds was correct. It was incorrect whenever it happened at 18.3 seconds. Guido, did you find the same one second error value in the timing that you observed? Thanks

Leif - were you saying in Swedish that you think PTE is really great already for timing features? Al has great advice about how a slide transition has to be positioned in time relative to a musical beat. But Al, don't you think the job would be a lot easier with a visual sound amplitude graph aligned to the timeline as Pege suggests? You will get to know the required timing offset from the beat for various transition effects, visually. Right now the visual association of timeline and effect duration in PTE custom sync window is very well done, in combination with the ability to play from a spot preceding the transition. But all that you see is the position of the effect against absolute time. The sound beats or level changes, if also visual, could greatly improve developer productivity in setting the desired timing. Everything you need to know will thus be visual. Listening to the segment can be used far fewer times in setting up a given transition. I agree that there is always some trial and error in setting the timing, but I think a sound level visual association would be a great advance for Igor to consider. I know that Igor considers sound-music synchronization to be an important feature of PTE. Therefore I think this improvement idea should be added to the wish list for future PTE versions beyond 4.10? Al and others, how does this sound to you?

Sounds like software somewhere is not working. You should see firewire, USB, Memory Stick and other "drives" attached to the local machine as you expect. Is the drive letter missing from the A:, C:, D:, etc drive graphics in the PTE file listing window (on left)? Have you tried folder up/down navigation buttons to right of drive letter graphics in PTE, or double-clicking on ("..", back-one level folder) and folders up and down until you saw a familiar set of folders in PTE file listing window? Can you see the root level of the firewire drive at all? Does this drive appear as a network drive by any chance? It shouldn't, but may. If so you have to use "Map network drive" feature in Windows Explorer to assign a drive letter to the firewire drive before running PTE. Please let everyone know what you find.

two2go, this happened recently almost identically, and here was Igor's advice about how to fix:

Harry, Bart - Any chance that Harry's system has been set to not allow cookies? If this is true is it any problem, Bart? I use software that with just one click in the taskbar tray, I can turn on or off all ads, animations, auto-refresh, popup windows, background images, background music, cookies, referrers, java applets and Javascript. It's real handy, but if I have all of that stuff disabled the forums don't know who I am.

I have many times needed to pass parameters to an application called from PTE in visual object editor button, link or graphic link actions, but no syntax I have tried will work. This leads me to the belief that PTE does not support starting applications with parameters. Can "run application" command boxes in customize slide, project options and visual object editor all have support for applications with parameters? Thank you

Olga, Thank you! I look forward to a very special show

Sergei, I'm sorry I couldn't make it to your 50th birthday party last January. I heard it was a smash. I was on a top secret mission with a dear friend. I'm sure you understand. It's been almost 3 years now since Vladimir signed your retirement decree, General. You haven't done so badly in civilian life. Still trying to keep those secrets, I see

Sorry to pop your fantasy bubble, but here is what Sergei (a.k.a Oleg) and Olga said, for the most part: Oleg's reply: To balaganov Welcome in forum, my dear friend! Thank you. I would like very much to hear more from you. Thank you for the good feedback. I'm looking for opinions about how I could have done better with Olga's work. And that we have! And plenty of it! Regards, Oleg Olga's reply: Oleg!, Many thanks! Oleg, thanks enormous!!!!!!! Honestly speaking, until I see opinions to the contrary, from everything so far it was appreciated. Successes!

Thanks for the tips! I downloaded and installed dBpowerAMP and a boatload of add-on stuff. It feels like I just installed Photoshop Nice player! How do I make the player repeat a track without a playlist? I am doing a conversion to Ogg Vorbis as I type.

Photographer45 your problem is solved. PTE does now sort correctly in v4.10/4.11, but this is not what you need for your wedding photography. When the PTE sorting issue came up the following software was suggested at the time. I installed it and have been using it ever since. This software will adjust the file names of your photographic works by when the shutter snapped, as in by the EXIF data recorded with your picture in the image file at the wedding. When you edit a photo the file modified date may change, but not the EXIF data or file name. So if you've already edited photo files, as long as the EXIF data was preserved by your photo editing tools the file can still be processed by SetNameToTime. And of course if you have not edited the photo files they can be processed. Here is the link to the software (free for non-pros, so you can test then buy for pro work): Click for Storck Software's SetNameToTime web page Here are Storck's words about this product:

I don't have any .ogg sound files, so unless you email one to me or post a link for download, I can't do the .ogg timing tests.

If you think about the CD drive read speeds, where 10X or more is common, a 10X read speed is delivering a 1.46MB/s data stream. And the CD spin rate is 1200 to 3000RPM for that example, delivering a maximum random access seek time of 100-200ms depending upon laser lens positioner, drive design quality, etc. Comparing to hard drives with constant spin rates of 5400 and 7200RPM commonly, the random access seek time is generally 8 to 10ms avg due to both higher spin rate and super fast read/write head servo. The image data rate varies, but is generally VERY slow. With one picture every two seconds and 150KB image files, that's 75KB/s and one potentially random CD position access every two seconds. By random I mean that whereever the music data is, it is not likely very near the image data on CD. There isn't any sense in having locality between music and image data (combined stream) unless the show is a "sync" type where it plays like a movie. The sound data rate varies widely, much more so than the image data rate. For MIDI it will be very little, at about 5KB/s due to the compactness of MIDI synthesizer instructions. For MP3 it will commonly be a steady 12KB/s. For CD audio WAV it is always 172.3KB/s. Putting all of this together, P2E show coding has to be done using buffers in system memory in order to avoid skipping. The rate of random accesses is once every 1 to 4 seconds for images, so perhaps several images can be stored (if they are not huge BMPs) every time they are read. That's only about a 1MB buffer allocation in memory. The buffer management has to keep from running out during all of the show performance demands. Random image sequence in non-sync shows doesn't work as well in that buffer model. And for sound, the toughest one, the worst case is WAV format at 172KB/s. Considering the way performance demands go, a good buffer is needed here too. If a 1MB buffer is used, then six seconds of sound are ready to be transfered to the sound card. Unfortunately, the sound card is the best place to have this buffering, but it can not be so in the mix of sound hardware out there. Sound cards have precious little buffering, generally a fraction of a second of sound. Finally the show processing has to be merged with the image and sound data streams in such a way that both the small-buffer sound card doesn't run out (a high priority buffer service requirement) and the screen bitmap processing doesn't stutter and show a jumpy image dissolve (extreme CPU performance requirement), all while reads have to be serviced from the CD drive. The management of priorities and queuing is quite a daunting task, given that we want older, slower machines to be able to run our shows. It is tough to provide a smooth dissolve, that will generally max out the CPU on older machines, and allow buffer servicing to interrupt the graphics operations without visible glitches in images. If images are given top priority, then sound will skip. If sound is given top priority then image transitions will be rough. P2E shows already adjust the dissolve smoothness based upon available machine speed. The new music player built in to v4.11 P2E that doesn't use hard drive temporary sound file storage as in v4.01 and earlier, simply has to more carefully manage sound stream transfer to the sound card during BOTH CD drive sound data access and CPU intensive dissolves. And in between CPU-intensive dissolves P2E has to get as far ahead as possible in filling buffers, computing MP3 data decompression and next image data decompression. I highlighted the word simply and add that this is anything but simple Appreciate the genious people at WnSoft

It was crystal clear to me. Thanks to all for a good laugh! And Fred, I have the scripts promised in another thread ready to send tonight. I decided to debug some tough windows problems in prep for my target show idea. I hope this saves you the trouble of the same windoze debug. Bond, James Bond

Oleg and Olga, thank you! There is a new little girl adopted from Belarus in my sister's family, birthnamed Daria, given the new name Arianna. It would mean a lot to me and my family to see your upcoming show about Belarus. Please do! Just call me Bond, James Bond.

I too have encountered music skipping, on a 339KB, yes that is KILObytes, show made with MIDI music. The slightest windows performance demand, like a pop-up menu will cause a skip or note "hold" in the MIDI sound. I have encountered the same problem with MP3 in many other shows, except that MP3 only skips. It doesn't hold a note too long as MIDI does because MP3 sound is not "synthesized" in the sound card. In all cases I have run the shows from hard drive only (I've worried about what may happen once I load these shows to CD...). I have all other closable applications stopped, and my system is 400MHz P2 512MB memory. Shows made before new music player were totally skip-less and flawless in playback.

Talk about a freaky coincidence, I just reported the same bug to Igor by email before reading this post! I gave him a step-by-step duplication and .PTE file, but now I see that possibly any project will fail similarly. FYI, all I had to do was trying to change the spelling of a linked .exe file in a button action. The properties sheet "OK" worked without trouble, but the fatal bug happened when I tried to OK the visual object editor window.

Barry, this was made to be used by customers to conveniently select photos to order. It uses the screen capture technique to know what photos were selected from show. The pictures in the show are small enough and low-res such that they aren't theft targets.

Sure Fred - I'll send email with a baby step music control example and then the giant step mouse-over sound control built-in to a P2E music player show. We can't send attachments through forum email, so just reply to my email so I will have your reply email address. I'll use ZIP so there is only one attachment. If you use AOL then ZIP can be the least trouble. If you want to customize to your specific needs it will take some study to understand Windows' coordinates for mouse, window positions and the changeover between application focus changes. The script command syntax is exceedingly simple, but I frequently trip over the difference between a variable name argument and a value argument, accidentally using the wrong type. Seeing the AutoIt help command syntax definitions/examples and a few examples from me should be enough for you to start. The FAQ section of AutoIt help has also been a great source of examples to tough questions. It could have saved me a lot of time seeing coding examples for various Windows controls etc. Hopefully it will do the same for you. It becomes second nature quickly enough.

Music buffering in sound card: Igor, are you using the maximum buffer size supported by each sound card? I am having a significant incidence of short music skips since the built-in music player was introduced, including in final 4.10 version. Judging by the rate of repeats in skipping I wonder whether buffers are most fully utilized. Can you make a buffer such that P2E shows can be like portable CD players with no-skip buffers (they never skip)?

I'm more and more believing that my Photoshop installation is apparently "Unplugged" When Oleg flips the switch on Photoshop it must dim the lights Maybe that is how the great Blackout of 2003 was started... somewhere in Adobeland, USA???

Stu, I agree - the AlwaysOnTop and NotAlwaysOnTop capabilities should make it into the next release. It's time Al and Ray - thanks for reminding me. ALL P2E shows can be PRECISE, not just sync shows I have had an idea about non-sync show timing since long ago and now is this time to ask. Igor, will you please make ALL shows SYNC shows? I think it can be done. Here's how: Keep track of real clock time and eliminate imprecise timing! A show is made up of events in sequence. Each event is timed even in the so-called non-sync shows of today. Effect times and slide display times are everything. There are no other times that matter unless the user pauses the show. So it's simple. Watch the clock. Music playback is by the clock. Do this for slides too. Start an effect that is supposed to last 750ms ON TIME, at time zero. If it lasts longer because of imprecise display speed then make it up. Do this by starting the slide display timer at time zero plus 750ms. This means we shorten the image display time to make up lost time. That's one way. It is least obnoxious when event timing completion is off. Start effects ON TIME. End them as closely as possible to the correct time. Smartly adjust as you go. The show timing suffers only when back-to-back events just don't have enough time to execute. And that does NOT have to mean that the MUSIC HAS SKIP TO MAKE IT UP! Be smart and shorten a programmed effect fade or wipe time to make up lost time. And/or shorten slide display time. Maybe even let the show developer declare priority, as in aperture priority vs. shutter priority in photography, only they are declaring accurate effect timing priority or accurate display timing priority. I've just described how to remove NON SYNC from the PTE showmaker's vocabulary. We should be differentiating between fixed, independent, and fixed, customized per slide, and fixed, timeline specified music to slide timing. Forget SYNC vs NON SYNC. Everything is SYNC. Everything is ACCURATE. Take preparatory steps to keep timing on track (some techniques are likely already being used in P2E): Read image files from hard drive or CD immediately when slide display time interval begins. Form image bitmap immediately after reading image file. Then wait for correct transition start time. I'm sure P2E already does some of this in SYNC show mode! If you think about it, a SYNC show with pause capability and a NON-SYNC show with pause capability and accuracy are really the same thing! We need only decide whether to pause music or let it keep playing when the show is paused (a PTE option checkbox can be used to declare preference). In let it keep playing mode, if music is left playing during pause then there is a fresh start on wall clock vs. event timing once the slides are resumed. That is the closest to unsynchronized that a show should ever be - not at all.