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Maybe you can try to build the DVD image on your computer then burn it on the other one. Anyway, keep it simple... and enjoy your wedding first of all Best wishes! Umberto

Just for Igor and Lin to know what I mean with my previous post... This link will not survive for long time, i'll keep it alive for a week or so. Fake 3D test This is a bare nested zoom over png layers... If it was possible to work also on Z coordinate, also a slight 3d rotation would be possible with better results. Anyway, if only 3d rotation but no z offset will be available, the same result would be really difficult to achieve. Greetings! Umberto

Hi Lin, after having a look at your two demos I think that I'll follow the second one (perspective). The way of producing multiple frames to obtain the 3D effect is not the right one for me, because this would lead to lose all the smoothness of PTE animations. If I cannot lever on the PTE animation features there's no point in using it and would be better doing all the work directly in After Effects and Premiere. But I don't want to do that, because projecting an AVI is not a solution for me. Actually, I don't need real 3D objects, simple plain pictures are right, and I don't even need the camera concept since I can simulate it by rotating the object. For now I'll work like the perspective demo, waiting for (maybe) some news in future about being able to work also with the z coordinate. Greetings! Umberto

Lin, I'm looking for a relatively easy way to obtain something like this video Virtual 3D photos in After Effects I know that the video relates to AfterEffects, but was hoping to obtain some kind similar into PTE. I obtained something by moving layers (without rotation, obviously), but being able to build a tree structured object (like you can do with current version of PTE) and being able to offset each component both on X, Y, and Z could let me obtain the effect without not too much effort. Can you suggest some trick to obtain such an effect? I understand that the 3D rotation is not possible and only zooming and panning of layers is available (rotation on Z axis is not much interesting in this case) but the "animate each layer separately" technique is much time consuming. Greetings! Umberto

Igor, will it be possible to build a structured object composed of several parallel layers (with png transparency) at different depths and partially rotate around it? This would solve problems with my next slideshow! Greetings! Umberto

I'd accept to pay the licence one more time if this can give me a decent audio adjustment environment into PTE! I think that PTE shoud almost have: - Multiple stereo tracks - Possibility to choose the start and stop point of a track (maybe splitting?) - Fade in-out through a simple line drawing schema (like most audio products out there) Greetings! Umberto

You are right. Sound editing should be done with a sound editor. If I need to add echo effect or do something that will alter considerably the waveform of my sound, sure I'll go with a dedicated sound editor. But being not able to put a piece of music in the timeline and adjust another piece position does not make PTE simpler to use IMHO. It makes harder when you just want to do something synchronized with music. It's always possible to hide the complexity (if any) of the interface making PTE behave like always and letting the "advanced" user to expand the audio interface only when needed. It's not necessary to put on the screen all the complexity all in one if not needed. Anyway, with such additions, the video and audio parts of PTE would be more balanced, letting the user move the audio samples just like it moves the slides on the timeline. I'm sure PTE is a great software, the flexibility of the video part is awesome but I admit that sometimes I look around for something that would let me manage audio better (and I dont' need a recording studio software). And it makes me little sad. Greetings. Umberto

Peter, I'm completely with you. It's so frustrating to continually switch between the sound editor and PTE only because you want to reach a great synchronization between complex slide animations and music. Also, I used Adobe Premiere (it's not and audio editor I suppose) but it lets you have several audio tracks and move, truncate, mix them. I don't want fancy audio filters and so on, only the possibility to choose the start and stop position of an audio track and to have some volume interpolation facility to produce fade-in, fade-out (useful for mixing tracks) and maybe to correct volume levels if the slide or the animation requests it. Working in PTE without these features is simply working (a lot sometimes). Working with these features is enjoying. Greetings. Umberto

Really great news Igor! If with "simple management of audio tracks" you mean multiple tracks with fade in/out... well... cannot wait to test this new feature! Greetings! Umberto

Great improvements, Igor! What about a "display choose dialog" at slideshow start? Greetings! Umberto

I had a look at your suggestion but I think that you focused on a different aspect. Your concern is to being able to create multiple isolated sequence loops. My request is simply to "freeze" some slides in a group to avoid touching them by mistake. No behaviour change in PTE engine. Sure your suggestion is really good (I needed this function time ago but was forced to use multiple slideshows, as you said). Anyway, I think were are talking about slightly different concepts. Greetings! Umberto

Xaver, my initial idea was about a simple grouping of slides with no behaviour change in PTE rendering pipeline. Say, for example: A sequence like this: Group1( A, B, C ), Group2( D, E, F ) and one like this: A, B, C, D, E, F should behave the same way. I mean, if a transition exists between C and D slides, this will be kept also with grouping. If I reorder groups then the effect should be the same as reordering slides. I don't mean to have a "super transition" between groups. This should keep the problem at easy levels and make the grouping easily understandable by users. About the synchronized audio track.. oh yes! I'd like to have an audio track sticked to the group... But I understand that this is problematic when we start speaking about audio track mixing. If each group has his own track, I expect to be able to mix the tail of one track and the head of next one... I suppose this is hard to solve with flexibility. Also we will start speaking about multiple tracks with variable volume, that I dreamt from the first time I started using PTE. Imagine... multiple tracks with mixing and grouping... a killer app! Greetings! Umberto

Hello, In my slideshows i often have distinct parts (introduction, event1, event2, final etc). Each part is composed of several slides. It would be really handy to be able to group a sequence of slides into a single entity with his own description. The grouped entity should be large exactly as the sequence it represents (maybe also the slides should be visible but something should tell me that this is a group). Double clicking in the group should let me "enter" it and work as usual. Clicking some kind of control button should let me "exit" and freeze the content. Dragging the group should move everything as a single unit. Moreover, I like a lot the "detailed" timeline, but it would be nice to see the thumbnail of the slide as the background of the timeline segment where the slide appears. Maybe not the full thumbnail if the time slot is too short, but it would let me understand where i'm looking ad without moving the cursor over the timeline to see the content. A semi transparent thumbnail should be nice. It lets me understand the content but it does not annoy me with too vivid colors. What do you think? Umberto.

I solved this issue in a more manual fashion. I selected a good map zoom level and started taking screenshoots. After each screenshot, manually scrolled the map near the previous screen edge and took another screenshot, and so on. After that, cropped out all the surrounding interface graphics (included the google logo) and finally sticked all together with photoshop automation function. Then I could produce several resolution maps to use in a pan sequence directly within PTE. Nice result, absolutely smooth, but lot of work. Greets! Umberto

Hello Igor, I think that it's a great addition! So one can play the show on an external projector and still be able to work with sound mixer on laptop display. One thing I think could be useful: if the player detects the presence of multiple displays, to show a dialog that lets the user to choose one of them for the projection (and all subsequent shows launched by the root one). Maybe this choose dialog can be activated by a project option. Greets! Umberto

Thank you nobeefstu, this link will be useful now and in future for me! Regards... Umberto

Anyone has an opinion about this graphics accelerator? Is it suitable for PTE, considering that it's for laptops? Thanks in advance.... Umberto

I'm with you, Xaver. Regards.... Umberto

This perfectly matches with my needs. I would prefer the second feature over the first, since it's annoying to wait for texture creation while in design mode, and caching them on a folder may be disappointing to the "folder purist". But that's only my opinion Regards... Umberto

My main need in this topic is to reduce the computing power/size needed to project the show. Large images need more computing power to gain the same framerate, also if the screen resolution has been locked. In my last show I reduced all images to the right size for a 1024x768 projection (considering also zooming levels and so on) but it's really annoying and I would like to get the same optimization without manual effort. I don't want to force anybody to rescale their pictures in the show if they don't want to, but an option for getting this result would be welcome (at least, by me). So the suggestion was to being able to activate such optimization maybe with switching the fixed resolution parameter and, if you like, by one more flag. I want to emphasize that the optimization algorithm should not resize the original pictures, but only the one inserted into the final EXE. No resized picture will be left alone on the disk. Sure this will lead to longer compilation time, but with the possibility to switch this thing on or off everybody should be happy. I understand that if I want to gain higer frame rate I should buy a faster machine, but sometime the brute force way is not necessary to get what you want Regards... Umberto

I would like to update this topic adding a consideration. Since in "Project Options/Screen" tab there is a "Fixed size of slide" checkbox, in the case of setting it, the picture optimization algorithm should be used in EXE creation sequence. So I can produce different EXEs with different resolutions (and file size and so on) only by changing the "Virtual size of slide" parameters. If I check the "Fixed size of slide" checkbox, the screen resolution will be always the one set in the "Project options", bigger images are useless (of course the algorithm must consider the maximum zoom level used for each picture, even nested zoom levels) This solution should let everybody happy Regards... Umberto

When I purchased PTE (v5.5) was just to produce EXEs. So, when in v5.6 a popup menu appeared when pressing the Create button, I did not appreciate this. Since PTE was primarily intended to produce EXEs, my wish is that the main function should be EXE creation, and other options should be under an "Export" menu. This will warn the user that the main format is EXE, and all other formats (which are under the Export menu) are supposed to be somewhat lesser quality. Personally, when I see an Export command in the "File" menu of an application, I think that the formats under this command are for compatibility with other standards, but are not able to fullfill all the power of the application. So, my choice would be to "relegate" the video formats under an "Export" command, and to keep the EXE creation standalone. If you think about it, EXE creation and video output are two distinct worlds. Regards... Umberto

Sorry didn't notice there already was a topic on this.

After a few time I decided to recompile my show with 5.6. I noticed that in menu the clickable items does not show the pointing hand when the mouse hovers over them, but keep the arrow. This makes impossible for users to understand if an item is clickable, so they must try to click every item to discover it. Is there some kind of setting somewhere to solve this issue or is it a bug of 5.6? Thanks in advance... Umberto

Thanks Igor for all your efforts in developing this great piece of software. I wish you and all members of the forum a great holiday season! Merry XMas! Umberto