HaroldB

Igor, Is it possible to remember the top left position of the timeline window within a given PTE session, and when re-showing that window, put it back where it was the last time it was closed? Now, it seems to always put the timeline window in the middle of the screen. Then, when I ask for the waveform to be shown, it seems to remember the HEIGHT of the timeline window from the last time I asked for the waveform. But since it doesn't seem to remember the top left position, I then always have to move the window each time I show it. What a PLEASURE this new version of PTE is to use! I hope you don't mind that I am coming up with these little suggestions, but they are only the most minor suggestions for improvements to a great piece of work! Harold

Igor, 1) In the file list, Seq3.jpg sorts before Seq1a.jpg. It happens both in the text and visual displays. This seems wrong. 2) If the contents of a particular jpg file are changed, the visual file list doesn't seem to pick it up. It may impossible for PTE to be notified about this, but if so, it might be appropriate to be able to right click on the File List and have a Refresh option. This is not a big thing, since eliminating the file names and then getting them back seems to pick up the changed contents visually. Harold

Igor, I realize why you made the display of the waveform optional. But if my method of working on a show is to add a slide or two at a time, then for long shows, it is a REAL PAIN having to reload the waveform often. Is it possible for you to keep the waveform around in memory as long as a given project is open? If PTE currently supports changing the contents of the music file while a project that uses that music file is open in PTE, then you could check the music files' sizes and timestamps to see if you have to read it from disk again. Otherwise all displays of the waveform after the first should come from the in-memory version. Harold

1) A hotkey will be great. Is the spacebar available? 3) A hotkey will be great. Thanks a lot! I haven't gotten a chance to play much with the new PTE today, but I am really looking forward to doing so! I can't wait to see how the timeline with the waveforms works! Harold

Interesting. I had my association for .JPG files set to "Microsoft Photo Editor" because I thought that it opened faster than PSP. But I just tried it, and for now, I am leaving it associated to PSP.... it opens quickly enough. (Al, I don't have the problem with PSP closing when I do that from the PSP main screen.) The main advantage of having drag and drop, I guess, is that you can choose where to drag and drop it. "Open picture" depends on a Windows association. But I can certainly live with it the way it is now. Thanks, Al and Ron for getting me to go back and revisit my Windows associations. Harold

Igor, I hope you don't mind if I throw things at you as I find them. 1) When returning from the full-screen slideshow view to the vertical view, the slide last selected on the full-screen view shows at the top of the slideshow panel on the vertical view. However, the large picture in the middle panel is not updated to show this picture. Could you change that? 2) In my previous note, I suggested opening a new window for a larger view if I double-clicked or hit some key on a single picture in full-screen slideshow view. It occurs to me that it might be better (and actually easier for you, since you already have the code elsewhere) to simply show a full-screen view of that picture. Doing anything on that screen would return me to the full-screen view of the slideshow. Harold

Igor, WOW!!!!! I've been away on business and vacation for the last six weeks, and what a pleasant surprise it was to see all of this wonderful work when I came back! I haven't a chance to play with all the goodies, but it seems like you have done an INCREDIBLE job adding all these new features to PTE! I tried to re-think my workflow using the new PTE light-table features, and I'd like to discuss it with you, and possibly ask you for three very minor additional features. Additionally, I'd love it if anybody could help and suggest different workflows that might work better for me. I do two kinds of presentations. One are quickies, and the other are more professional-looking, polished work. The quickies use original photos right from my camera, and the current light-table features seem perfect for this. But I'd like to focus in on what I do for a more polished presentation. I typically start with a single directory of "original pictures" (representing the topic of the presentation). I then create a storyboard, ordering the pictures in the order I think I will use them (I may do this in sections for large presentations that lend themselves to a sectional approach). I then open pretty much each picture in PSP (a Photoshop equivalent), edit it, and possibly combine multiple pictures into one PTE frame or produce a series of PTE frames for some effect. I save these to-be-PTE frames in a directory associated with the slideshow I am building (my "edited pictures" directory), and then switch to PTE to add them to the slideshow and put them on the timeline. It seems that with the new features of PTE, the first thing I would do is add all the pictures from my "original pictures" directory to the slideshow. I will eventually delete all (or most) of them, but they are what I will use to create the storyboard. I then shuffle these thumbnails around and around, and eventually end up with a storyboard I like. I see myself using the full-screen view of the slideshow for this. So, here I see my first two minor feature requests. First, I need a way from the full-screen PTE slidehshow view to quickly see a picture much bigger to see if I really want to use it. I would prefer that double-click simply brings up a window that shows it to me pretty big, and waits for me to close the new window. If you'd rather bring up Customize Slide with the double-click, the Enter key would be my next choice, although any hotkey combination would really be OK. "View larger version of picture" should also show up in the right click menu. (I realize I could change the size of ALL the pictures on the full-screen view to make a single picture bigger, but that is very disruptive to workflow. I realize I could also right-click and click on Open, but that is very slow.) Second, as I build the storyboard, I will be discarding pictures. I can hit the DEL key to get rid of them, but that makes them GONE. What I really want is to "put them on the side". Could you add a "move to end of slideshow" right-click command and hotkey? For a small slide show, I could obviously drag and drop it. But for a slideshow with lots of slides, that doesn't work. Now, after I get my storyboard done, I presumably want to open each photo (or series of photos) in PSP, save the edited slide in my "edited slides" directory and then add the edited slide to the slideshow and delete the corresponding "original pictures" slide(s). This seems straightforward, but I would like what I hope is a minor feature enhancement to make it that much easier. When NOT using the full-screen view, could I drag a picture from the slideshow list into a DIFFERENT application (eg, PSP or Photoshop)? This would make opening the picture a snap and would save many extra steps. That's it! With these three I-hope-minor features, my workflow would be dramatically improved with the new PTE! Of course, I'm sure I'll come up with other usability thoughts as I start using the new PTE . What a great job you've done, Igor! You really do GREAT work! Harold

I realize I am over my limit of three ideas, but I forgot to mention more transitions! I've liked the new ones in 4.20, but could certainly use more of them. Yes, for many shows, cuts and/or fades are all that is necessary, but I like having a much wider pallette. Harold

I think the way Bill thinks. I find waveform visualization very important to the way I work, even though as Ed says, I tune afterwards. I currently use Cool Edit 2000 in another window to do this. I could certainly live with Cool Edit, but prefer an integrated product. In a similar way, I currently use Microsoft's Photo Editor as a light table, but I hate doing that. Whether you should do it sooner or later -- I guess it depends on how much work it takes to do it. Harold

1) A way to look at slides in a directory visually, and move them around to prepare them to put into a show. FWIW, my normal work flow is that AFTER this "organizing step", I usually edit each photo before actually putting it into the show. 2) A way to move around the show at execution time. The current "pause" feature is great, but I also want to go backwards and forwards to any slide (if the show developer permits). Right now backward and forward via the arrow keys is not very functional -- but I want to be able to go to ANY slide. It would be nice if this were combined with an improved nav bar and a built-in menuing system within PTE to eliminate the need for a menu show and the associated sub-shows. 3) Better implementation of the new push and slide transitions so that they are not jumpy. Ideally, this would include "build-ups" with transparent GIF's, so that just text could be pushed or slid. This "build-up" request could possibly conflict with my #2 above, but we can talk about how it should work if you are thinking of doing this. 4) Display of waveforms on the timeline! Harold

Yes, I meant synchronized mode with the "Permit the control of show" option. There was a thread on this a while ago. Now, when you hit the left button repeatedly, for example, it DOES go backward successfully. But since it apparently also tries to go forward after going backward, it seems to go backward for a slide, then start going forward, then go backward again, etc. It ends up working but looking terrible. In addition, if I want to go back exactly ten slides, for example, it becomes confusing to know exactly where PTE is up to in repositioning. The previous thread suggested that when you hit the left or right key, the PTE show should also go into pause mode, which would allow me to go back or forth to EXACTLY wherever I want to go to, and then I should be able to press the space bar (or the mouse button, if appropriately specified in Project Options) to resume the show. Harold

Igor, A question and a suggestion. Do we still need to edit APR.INI to add opt_fastFade=1 with beta 9? I'd consider adding a fix for using the arrow keys during the playing of a show to 4.20 before it is officially released. As it is now, the arrow keys work, but since using them doesn't also pause the show, it's very jumpy and pretty unpredictable when you hit the left arrow key a number of times. You'll know best how to fix it. Harold

Igor, 1) On the Customize Slide Effects tab, the word "advanced" in misspelled in "Advanced hour hand". 2) I noticed that you added a simple graphic under the words "Permit control of show" in the Project Options Main tab. To me, the graphic looks too much like buttons that I ought to be able to click on. Harold

Igor, While I DO think that the fade effect is somewhat better with the SmoothFade option, I think that there is a problem with including it as a default. And that is that the fade is somehow noticeably faster and it somehow LOOKS different! I realize that you said that if we use SmoothFade we should increase the duration of the fade by a factor of 1.3, but this will mean that if we use a newer version of PTE on an old PTE file, the presentation will look noticeably different. And you can't automatically the fade times by .3 for an old presentation, either, since if the presentation runs with close tolerances on fades, increasing a fade by that factor could make the show stutter. 1) Is there any option of making it "look better" but still not look "faster"? 2) If not, then I think either there needs to be an option for this either in Project Options (defaulted to "no" for PTE files created by earlier versions of PTE, and possibly to "yes" for new files) or on the individual transitions themselves. For now, I deleted opt_SmoothFade from my INI file. Harold

Igor, I assume that you read about my alternative thought of transitioning a transparent GIF or a non-transparent JPEG (that are smaller sized than the existing picture) ONTO an existing picture. Just fruit for thought -- I think it might significantly enlarge PTE's scope if you were able to include this type of transition. We'd finally have the ability to do real builds! But I DO realize that this would probably be a major piece of work. Harold

I just did the same thing with Cool Edit 2000. The quality is astonishingly good (to my ear). I expected it to sound pretty lousy, but it sounds great! Thanks a lot! Harold

Iceberg, Why don't you just work on the timeline right from the begining? Harold

I was afraid it was no longer easily available. I was interested in the music from one of the shows on Beechbrook, and I emailed the author to ask him what he used. Thanks, guys! Harold

Al, That's what I was worried about. I can't seem to find the MP3 in the Windows temp file directory . Harold

I vaguely remember that there used to be a way to extract the music from a PTE EXE file by playing the EXE and looking at some directory. Can anybody tell exactly what to look for? Harold

Igor, I think that the new fade is great!!! And I like the "apply first transition from desktop", too. But you've set a high bar for yourself. Do you think you could make the push and slide transitions much smoother, too? Those really do need work at this point. Also, the issue of using these effects to allow pushing/sliding a picture element (such as text) is still open, too. Right now, it pretty much won't work exept with solid backgrounds. In earlier posts, you discussed maybe not pushing/sliding the background. However, if you implement that, you also need to give us more options (other than tiling) for the background picture! We'd need an option to center it without tiling or to expand it to the screen size (which are the options we now have for the main image). You do great work, Igor. Keep it up! Harold

Absolutely. I think that a robust user interface for panorama (and zoom) would also let us designate (by drawing boxes on the original large picture) which part of the large picture should be the starting display and which should be the ending display. PTE would then pan (or zoom) from one box to the other box. But if that were not possible initially, I'd love for Igor to just give us either purely horizontal or vertical pan (up to down, down to up, right to left, and left to right) of the full image, and we can adjust the image in Photoshop so that it will look the way we want. I, for one, would very much like to have these transitions, and I'd like them to work as smoothly as PTE's fade works today. I know I'm asking for a lot, but then, Igor has a way of doing this stuff much better than other program creators! Harold

Igor, If it's a lot of work, I would definitely NOT pursue this! I think that what we really all want is the ability to be able to pan over a single picture. You should be able to get PTE to do that by adding it as a new transition, right? If we REALLY want continuous motion, stitching the images together in Photoshop or its equivalent and then using this new "pan" effect would work just fine. Harold

Igor, I had another thought when I thought of this some more. As an alternative to my first idea in this thread, is it possible that when doing the push or slide transtions, you can honor GIF transparency when the image being transitioned to is a GIF with transparency set? That way, I can push or slide only the elements I want to push or slide. I realize that this may cause some problems if the preview is started from such an image or if somebody executes a GOTO such a GIF image. I think it would be perfectly acceptable to treat the image non-transparently in those cases. BTW, while we're on the topic: is there any reason that support of GIF transparency in the current object eitor does not use the standard GIF transparency definition to define transparency but instead uses the pixel in row 1 column 1 as the transparent color? Harold

I think it would be real neat if this transition could be done so that it appears to be continuous across more than two slides. This would presume that PTE is internally organized is such a way that the PTE thread reading the PTE EXE data and the PTE thread handling the display execute at the same time. If not, it would seem that there needs to be SOME delay while PTE obtains the next JPG and uncompresses it. If this IS possible, though, I'd like to suggest that it also be possible within a synched show. Harold