HaroldB

Igor, I find that the ability to type values into the size and position boxes in Objects and Animations in an excellent feature, since it allows precise alignment. However, now, typing into those fields is quite strange. You need to arrow over between the left and right of the decimal point. Could you allow typing into all those boxes like in every other box? H

Igor, Can we have an option on text to set an outline around the text? Most graphics programs that handle text support this. I'd want to specify a color and a thickness. Question: Should the thickness change proportionately when the text is made bigger or smaller by pulling on it? I think yes. Question: Should the thickness be allowed to change for different keypoints? I think yes (it seems required if the answer to the above question is yes). H

Either I am misunderstanding you, or this does not work. The problem is that changing the zoom value changes the text size from both sides, to to speak. H

BTW, just in case anyone should run across this problem, it seems to go away on the ATI card I have if I turn the ATI PowerPlay option off in the ATI Catalyst Control Center. That DOES make it seem like an ATI weirdness, Igor. Thanks for working through that problem with me. H

Thanks, guys! "Hold Time Points" was what I wanted. And I am willing to switch to Slides view to get it done. It seems to me like implementing this in Timeline might take a lot of effort and would not make it to the top of the list. BTW, right under "Hold Time Points", there's an option "Keep Full Slide Duration". Is that the opposite of "Hold Time Points"? If so, I observe that setting one does not turn the other off? H

Please add my thought to Ed's suggestion. At a minimum, optionally adding the waveform would be great. H

In a show where the timeline sets slide transitions to the music, it often happens that I want to keep the transitions in the same places, but reorder the slides. It seems to me that when PTE moves a slide, it also "moves" the slide duration. If slide number 6 is set to a duration of six seconds, and slide number 7 is set to a duration of three seconds, moving slide number 7 to before slide number 6, makes the new slide number 6's duration three seconds, and this "destroys" the previous timeline settings. Is there a way to move just the slide and keep the current timeline without doing it completely manually (which is very tedious)? H

When adding text to a slide, is there a way to apply an outline to the text in PTE 7.0? H

I figured it out. TypeLight has a field in the Font Description window where one can enter the font weight. If you have a family of fonts, and you enter "Normal" for non-bold fonts, and "Bold" for bold fonts, everything works out well. Windows adds the fonts correctly, and PTE can use them. I am leaving this here in case someone else, sometime in the future, has the same problem as I had. H

Could I ask someone for help on this font problem? I'm using PTE 7.0 Beta 14, so this is still a problem there. Unfortunately, I have the complete selection of the old Corel fonts, and they work everywhere but in PTE. I downloaded the TypeLight utility, and while it works perfectly for fixing any font where there is only one font in the family, when there is a bold font and a regular font in the family, the bold font does not install correctly, and Windows can't see it in its font directory (even though it is still there). So I wanted to ask you, Igor, if you could take a quick look and see why this collection of fonts ("unfixed") doesn't work in PTE, while it seems to work everywhere else? Or perhaps somebody can suggest what I might do to try to get these fonts to install correctly as a family? I am using Windows 7 Home Premium, and that may be why it works for some people and not for others. I've tried attaching two files of a family to this message, but the forum software says "You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file". Is there any way to get around that? I've tried renaming the file, but I get the same error message. So I uploaded the two fonts in the family to 4shared.com (mediafire.com seems to be having problems now). The two URL's are: http://www.4shared.com/file/NaTY3CBc/bangkokb.html and http://www.4shared.com/file/1w9t7Wtd/bangkokn.html for the bold and regular versions of the font, respectively. Thanks a LOT! Harold

I am running PTE on a Lenovo Ideapad with an ATI Radeon HD 6750M chip and a 1366x768 display. I am using a current (8/2011) Windows 7. I find that in some slideshows, if I specify the global Unsharp value to be zero, some pans in that show become very jerky. To confuse matters more, this happens only when I am running plugged into an AC outlet. My PC's power profile specifies "performance" when I am plugged in. When I run from the battery (the power profile specifies "optimize battery use" for that), it runs fine. This seems extremely weird to me, since intuitively it seems one would expect that specifying zero for Unsharp should result in IMPROVED performance, and particularly so when the hardware is instructed to optimize performance. Fortunately, specifying a value of "1" for Unsharp in PTE eliminates this problem, and seems like a very effective workaround. Harold

Igor, Thanks for your explanation of what you are doing in Unsharp processing. It was very helpful to me. I would suggest, though, that if it's easy to do, you allow it to be overridden for a particular slide even before letting it apply to particular objects -- I think that having it as a global show option makes it less useful. Your understanding of the bug is exactly correct. This bug does seem really weird to me... the only thing I can think of is that the PTE code skips something when unsharp is set to zero that turns out to affect pans. Note that it does not seem to affect zooms. I'm uploading both a good version and bad version of this show... I'll give you the details of what to look for in a PM once I get the upload URL's. I haven't worked with PTE in quite a while, so I don't have 6.5 installed on my system. If you need me to try it after looking at my sample shows, I will try to download it. H

New problem, and it seems really weird to me. Basically, when you specify an unsharp value of none (zero), many (but not all) pans in the show become jerky. Changing the unsharp value to even "1" eliminates the jerkiness in pans. Is it possible that PTE bypasses some relevant code when unsharp is set to none? I am using Beta 14 on an AMD Radeon HD 6570M with 1024Meg in a fast Lenovo laptop. (It says "Powered by ATI", but it DOES say "AMD") BTW, can you tell us what actually goes on with Unsharp and the object sharpness/smoothness? I am used to the unsharp filter taking three inputs: radius, strength, and clipping. What are the values used with the Unsharp value? With the object sharpness/smoothness values? It seems to me that the Unsharp modification to the slide is much more pronounced than the sharpness/smoothness modification for the object. FWIW, I find the Unsharp feature, in its current format, not particularly useful for my shows. It would be much better if it could at least be overridden for a particular slide (I tried to do that using sharpness/shoftness on the slide object, but it doesn't sharpen it by much). Harold

Thanks! A set of followup question, if I may. It seems that the keyfrsme times are kept relative to the beginning of the frame display. If I am setting events in the object and animations screen to points in music, and then decide to shift the beginning of the slide, does that mean I have to necessarily manually readjust all the keyframe points in the objects and animations screen? Also, on the objects and animations timeline, the times seem to be shown relative to the slideshow, while in the keyframe box, they seem to be shown relative to the slide. Is there any way to get a common display or toggle back and forth? Also, is there any way to zoom in or out of the timeline display on the objects and animations screen? Harold

Is there a way to show the music waveform on the Objects and Animation screen? If not, is the workaround to keep on switching back and forth to the Waveform view to get the precise numbers and enter them, or is there some other way to do precise work that I am missing?

Hi, Igor! I am running Win7/64 and my old slideshows seem to work just fine on it. But it's good to know that there is a solution if I DO find a problem. Thanks!

Thanks, Peter, and everyone else who responded. This really IS a great place! I think I have what I need now! H

Hi, Howard, and anyone else! I am an old-time user of PTE, and used to frequent this forum a long time ago. I have not been active with PTE in ages, and have not been here in a long while. I am in the process of migrating to Win7/64 and I am having a small bit of trouble doing so. The last version of PTE that I used was 4.41. I never migrated to Version 5 because at the time I was using a PC that was not capable of the advanced effects featured in that version. While I would like to eventually migrate to the current version, I have many slideshows that were built using the older PTE versions and I want to maintain the capability of easily updating them. To do that, I would ideally like to make PTE 4.41 (or some version very close to that) work under Win7/64. Unfortunately, PTE 4.41 doesn't seem to work under Win7/64!!! I've got beta versions from 4.30 on my PC, and those work perfectly. I've got 4.11 and that works perfectly. But NOT the version I used for years and years, 4.41. The symptom is that it simply doesn't start. Windows Task Manager shows a running process, but shows no running application. SO: Could somebody email me the .ZIP file used to create a PTE version close to but later than 4.41 that works on Win7/64 (4.47 sounds real good)? Alternatively, the actual PTE directory for such a release would be welcome instead of the .ZIP file. I don't think that Igor will at all mind, since PTE is protected by his key system. (Hi, Igor, btw!) Anyone? Harold

Thanks, Igor! Since I am not set up now for PTE 5, I am going to wait to look at it until you have a version that runs in some way (albeit slowly) on my type of PC. I AM concerned about something else that I see has raised other people's concerns in another thread. One of the big advantages of PTE for me has always been that I can send a PTE show to anybody with pretty much any PC and they can watch the show. If possible, I'd suggest that PTE shows with P&Z should still be able to PLAY on low-end video cards (like mine) even if the performance is not smooth. (This is as opposed to the error message I now get). Otherwise, it will become irresistible for me to to use the new P&Z features, and there will be a whole group of people that will not be able to view those PTE shows that I create. Another point relates to what is possible on a low-end video card like mine. I often see Flash movies run on IE on my PC with very nice and perfectly smooth P&Z effects. Now, I'm sure that there are limitations (perhaps the size of the picture) beyond which that would not work. But if you want and if you still have a low-end PC around, I can email you a URL so you can see how nicely Flash appears to be able to work on that kind of PC. As to Vista, I actually plan on junking this PC and getting a new replacement PC when Vista is out and stable. It seems like a waste of time to upgrade all my drivers to XP and then again to Vista... I'd just prefer to completely skip XP on this PC. By skimming some of the threads and looking at some of the demos, it seems that you have done wonderful work with PTE 5. I think that's great, and good luck with getting all the features back into it and getting it to production quality! H

Igor, I tried the PTE5 demos on a different PC, and I'm impressed. It looks like you did great! I read your comment about video card requirements. How about PC requirements? My PTE PC is ~1gighertz Pentium 3. If I stick a new-ish video card into it, will it work? If not, what are the minimum requirements? And I assume Windows/ME is good? H

Thanks, Igor! I'll wait for future betas or until I upgrade my PC! H

Hi! I haven't been on the forum lately, and when I checked back in this morning, I see that I missed a lot of stuff! I quickly tried downloading some of the slideshows done with PTE 5.0, and I can't seem to run any of them! Specifically, when I start them, I get an "ED3D Error in xxxxx.EXE at 01CF6F Get Device Caps". I tried upgrading to Directx9.0c, and the problem persists. My system is Windows/ME with a Maxtor MGA Millennium card (probably very low-end). Is this a software problem on my PC (in which case how do I fix it?) or a way of saying that I need more powerful hardware? H

Do you have "synchronize slideshow to music duration" in Project Options checked? H

Igor, That's great to hear! Good luck with getting it done! Harold

Igor, Is it still in your plans to include pan and zoom effects in the next version of PTE? If so, do you have any idea when you might have a beta of that available? While we're on the topic of the next PTE version, I think it is time to clean up the glitch that PTE develops when slides are put too closely together on the timeline. Right now, I bet that PTE code ends up with some negative number somewhere, and the result is that the presentation hangs up, repeats itself, or does other bad things. Can you make the change to degrade gracefully, and come as close to the PTE specifications as possible instead of simply having the show glitch? Harold