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Igor, that sounds good to me. I usually load the project and go to a specific point and start working on it. So i usually don't alter timigs, fades and so on of every slide. Hence, the behavior you described is ok and reasonable. Moreover, if i adjust a slide parameter i can accept the rebuild time because it's on a single slide and not noticeable to me. The annoyance starts when at every load it recomputes everything. Greetings! Umberto

I agree. I really was not aware of that detail. And when that file is missing it is automatically rebuilt. This would keep untouched the project file structure. Greets! Umberto P.S. Anyway, when i need to add a binary content to a text file i usually add a the zipped content in base64 encoding. But again, it's not so elegant... Edit: I wonder what would happen when i keep in the same folder different "save" copies of the project and decide to rollback to a previous one. Will the external cache file still work?

Dave, i meant to save the thumbnails in the project file itself, so it's all self-contained. I suppose that P2E does keep all thumbnails in RAM while working, so no need of an external folder. Maybe my use of the word "cache" was misleading. Greetings! Umberto

I think that being forced to hide/show each single track every time i want to change the "track set" will slow down a lot the workflow. I still prefer a dynamic visualization based on tree structure selection. And, why not, a "show all" option. Another option: a checkbox next each tree structure object that will allow to choose what tracks i want to always keep in the tracks panel. So i always see them and, moreover, the tracks of selected objects. Greetings! Umberto

I didn't find such feature so i suppose it's worth a suggestion. The project i'm currently working on is composed by hundreds of complex slides, some of them group 10-20 png files at high resolution (i don't mind the runtime performance because i go out to full hp mp4 file). But each time i load the project it's a pain because it takes a minute an so to load all thumbnails in the time line. The program is very unresponsive until all thumbnails are produced. I know that it's possible to uncheck "show real slides" in the system pane, but if i do so nothing appears in the thumbnail, and this leads to high difficulty in finding the right slide. What about computing this thumbnail and save it into che project file? This should not take too much additional space. This will lead to lightning fast loading times. Maybe as an option, and if this option is checked and the project doesn't contain updated thumbnails, well, they are computed ad load time. I know that the thumbnail could not reflect the real image content if they are updated out of pte, but i can live with this issue if i can enter the O&A editor and exit it to refresh the thumbnail. Greetings! Umberto Uderzo

Jean Claude, your layout design is much better than my proposal. I definitely missed it at the time. The only thing i feel to add is that it could be nice not to see always all tracks, but only tracks of selected objects in tree structure (hence, objects can be multi selectable even if they don't belong to the same sub tree). This will mantain backward GUI compatibility and ease of use for "one track minded" users. Greetings! Umberto

I agree, seeing the waveform in the O&A editor would be useful. Then only thing that makes me thinking is that usually slides are "floating" over the music track and shifting a slide can break keys alignments, so waveform display should be used with wisdom. Moreover, just to avoid visual clutter, only a merged waveform should be visible (i suppose that users don't need to fine tune the waveforms from inside the O&A editor). Greetings! Umberto

Well... this is embarrassing... Looks like that the auto synch issue is caused by the multimedia reader i'm using to reproduce the movie (Multimedia Player Classic). Playing with the iPad works as expected. It took a bit of time to be discovered... Looks like that MPC is not so-rock solid as i tought. Or are there some settings to check? I had the issue with a 1024x768x60FPS Quality 100% video. But the same issue happened also with a 30FPS video. Looks like that MPC is sensible to something i don't understand... sometimes it works well, sometimes not. iPad is rock solid instead (using AVPlayerHD By EPlayWorks, great app!) Maybe i need to update my laptop... or my multimedia player software? Greetings! Umberto

I think that being able to select a block of time points and drag them (maybe) on another track would speed up many workflows. Greetings! Umberto

Something like the screenshot... a vertical scrollbar should appear when too much items are listed (and maybe an horizontal one when zooming into time?) and the selected object should reflect in a highlighted track (not visible in the screenshot, sorry). A multiple selection between multiple tracks would allow to select a group of key points and move them as a group on the time line (horizontally). The properties windows should display only common data. Greetings! Umberto Edit: and what about displaying only the timelines of objects that are selected into the structure tree? this would allow the user to choose only interesting tracks without visual clutter.

What about an option to switch between the current single selected object track and all object tracks? This will simplify the editing of complex nested animations because all key point will be visible. Being able also to select a range of key points (by box selection) and move them on the time line would be my heaven Greetings! Umberto

Igor, i could not restore the backup file (i did not backup that modification). Moreover i cannot ZIP archive the project because i'm using multiple files with same name in different folders. I must fix this issue then i'll try to reproduce the original project configuration. I'll try to rescale to minimum size all pictures/videos and see if i can fit it all into 100Mb size. When ready i'll write into this thread. Thank you! Umberto

I suppose i can restore the old project file from the backup and trim all files but the "offending" song (the whole project is about 2Gb size). Will you be able to render everything also without all files? Is it better if i send files to you through MP? Thank you. Umberto

Congratulations! Too bad it's so difficult to watch someone else's work!

I observed this in 7.5 final. Cheers! Umberto

In my most recent project i faced another issue related to audio synchronization. I used an AC/DC track (so lots of rithms and strict tempo) and needed to make it shorter. Since i was interested in using both begin and end of the track, i duplicated the clip then performed a cross fade between the clip and its copy. I worked a lot to match the clip tempo and make a good fade, and in design time it sounds as expected. But when i render all in MP4 Q100 the fade is not the same, the tempo is slightly out of sync and the entire effect is really bad. Now i solved by performing the cross fade with audacity then exporting a single mp3 audio file. But there seems to be something wrong with the audio synchronization engine. Greetings! Umberto

Hello Igor! I tried to convert video but nothing changed. The EXE is about 900 Mb size. If you wish i can dropbox you a link. Yes, if i watch the entire show until the critical point i notice the out-of-sync issue. If i scrub just a couple slides before the point, it works. I'll try to remove as many slides as possible but i fear this will take some time since i need to re-watch the show from the beginning each time (and now it is becoming boring, i think i didn't do a good work, ahahah! ) Cheers! Umberto

Hello Igor, I have the problem both when i create final rendering in MP4 HD Video 1024x768x30FPS 100%Quality and when i run the exe show from the beginning. The format of the video clips is MPG 720x576x25FPS at 9356Kbps, i suppose they come from a camcorder (PAL format). I tried to isolate the slides with the trouble leaving a still image slide before the video but the issue doesn't reproduce this way. In the original presentation the out of sync issue appears after 7 minutes and 40 seconds, and the music appears to come "too late" by about half a second. Maybe something related to video keyframes timings? Let me know if you need more infos. Thank you! Umberto

I took the screenshots as you said but since i want to animate into che map, i find difficult to perfectly synchronize different zooming images, so i built a fixed image hierarchy where each screenshot is a level of the hierarchy with reduced zoom respect to the parent image. Then by zooming the main picture i achieve a consistent zoom effect without fadings between different singular zooming images. But this approach requires huge zoom values that leads to an extreme behavior the "slow down" algorithm. The final zoom is so huge that "slowing down" is not enough... it should be possible to "sloooooooooow down" :D/> Here is where a logarithmic algorithm could be useful, so the final part of the zoom will slow down in an exponential way and will let the last picture come in with an acceptable speed. Cheers! Umberto P.S. Anyway, i removed the zooming map because i felt it a bit annoying. But the issue remains.

Dopo avere provato molti programmi per la realizzazione di slideshow mi sono imbattuto in Picture2Exe. Inizialmente trascurato a causa del nome e dell'interfaccia "troppo semplice" poi mi sono ricreduto ed e' diventato "il programma" per le presentazioni fotografiche. Il bello di questo software e' che si puo' usare a vari livelli di profondita': da una semplice sequenza di foto in dissolvenza a complesse animazioni tridimensionali con oggetti strutturati, layer, maschere di trasparenza. La possibilita' di gestire i video come fossero delle immagini (in tempo reale!) ne fa veramente il coltellino svizzero delle presentazioni multimediali. Inoltre il continuo supporto da parte degli sviluppatori da molta soddisfazione. After trying lots of slideshow softwares i came to Picture2Exe. I initially underestimated it because of the name and the "too simple" user interface. After trying, it became "the software" for building my slideshows. It can be used at different depth levels: from a simple photo sequence with transitions to complex tridimensional animations with structured objects, layers, transparency masks. Being able to use videos as they were pictures (in real time!) makes it the swiss army knife of multimedia presentations. Moreover, the continuative support from developers gives a lot of satisfaction. Umberto from Italy

Sometimes i miss being able to setup nested masks, i can use them when i want to "crop" different parts of nested pictures. And... being able to choose if a child inherits opacity of the parent by a property flag would be fantastic! Umberto

I had a similar issue. It's not straightforward, but you can lock the audio track then move a single audio clip to drag the entire track. There is a different behavior between slides and audio elements management that makes me feel keeping the feet in two shoes... but that's it at the moment. Greetings! Umberto

Well, if it was possible to select a key point without affecting the time pointer it would be cool. Currently, if you click on a key point the time pointer will go to the key point time. It would be cool being able to CTRL+click on a key point to "flag" it as editing element (maybe rendering it differently to ensure users will not get confused about this behavior), and being able to scrub the time pointer while keeping the flagged key point in edit mode. At next click everything is restored as normal. Cheers! Umberto

Yes, that's what i currently do. But wouldn't be cool to place the blue pointer somewhere and see the effect of a key change without a continue drag of the cursor? Cheers! Umberto

I don't really want to add a key frame in the middle. This may alter the animation flow. What i need is to place the time cursor at the middle and change a previous/subsequent key frame (obviously only by numeric fields and not by mouse dragging objects). Then i wish to see what happens in the middle point. It sometimes happens that you need to adjust some animation starting point but it matches with a zero opacity key frame. Then you need to restore 100% opacity (maybe on several objects), perform the adjustment then restore the zero opacity. Annoying. If i were able to "move a little forward" in time and see the "faded in" object while being able to edit parameters i could save a lot of time. But there is plenty of cases when you really don't need an intermediate keyframe but need to alter parameters then see the result in some "middle point". I think that it should not be too difficult to technically reach this result. Greetings! Umberto