mcinal

Thanks, Limey. It helped a LOT! My probem is RESOLVED. Your interpretation of the fade settings is correct. Using the default settings as I described, I was effectively shutting the sound off for the duration of the menu, which was set for 10 seconds. It just didn't occur to me that this was how those fade settings were intended to function, but it makes sense now that you have pointed it out to me Thanks to you and to everyone else who have been so helpful to me in sorting this out. I'm very impressed and pleased overall with what can be done with PTE 5.5 and VideoBuilder and will continue to use it now that I have more time. Kudos to the designers and to the contributors on this forum. mcinal

In another attempt to learn something, I downloaded PTE 5.6, Beta 4. and with that built a small PTE test program. With VideoBuilder I then created a new simple menu, assigned a sound clip to it and burned a DVD. Same problem occurs - no sound will play with the menu, on the computer or TV. I've used both MPEG2 and LCPM audio format settings with no percievable difference. The test programs otherwise play perfectly as DVDs, video and audio, on both computer and TV. Absence of sound with the menu is not a show stopper feature, but I am curious if anyone has experienced a similar problem, and if so, what they did to remedy it. Thanks all. mcinal

Thanks for the info, Ken. Wow! This forum contains so much good information it's hard to get ones head around it all. I'll try digging a little deeper before posting an unnecessary question. My problem of no sound playing with the menu continues, however, with what is apparently a "final" release of PTE Deluxe 5.5. I will build a small test file to continue investigation of why it doesn't seem to work correctly and perhaps experiment with some later "beta" versions of PTE to see if that fixes my problem. If anyone has any other ideas, I'm all ears. Thanks to all for your helpful suggestions. mcinal

Just another comment in response to your helpful reply, nobeefstu. In purusing Wnsoft website, I don't see an option for downloading "Beta" vs "Final" versions of PTE. The download page provides only one choice for downloading PTE 5.5 Deluxe. I presume what's downloaded from there is a "Final" version, but there is nothing to indicate whether it is or is not. How do you obtain "Beta" versions, or for that matter, know if you are downloading a "Final" version? mcinal

I obtained PTE 5.5 Deluxe from the download page of the WnSoft website on 10/17/2008. Under Help/About, PTE identifies itself as Pictures to Exec (Deluxe Edtion) 5.52. VideoBuilder, under Help/About, does not identify a version number, however the Title Bar at the top of the VideoBuilder page identifies itself as "WnSoft Video Builder 5.5". I looked at the last modification dates of the exe files for PTE (apr.exe) & VideoBuilder (VideoBuilder.exe). They are 7/11/2008 and 5/21/2008, respectively. I don't know if these would be "Beta" dates or not. mcinal

Good question, Ken. It does not play on the computer, either. I should have mentioned that. I guess it's reasonable to expect that if it doesn't play on the computer, it won't on the DVD either. Unfortunately, this does not suggest to me a solution for the issue. Does it give you any ideas? mcinal

Thanks for your reply, nobeefstu. I tried the LCPM setting - same problem occurs - no sound with the menu. My TV system is rather simple - the DVD player feeds its output to the input of an A/V receiver, which outputs the signal to the TV. The TV is switched to receive input signal via its video input ports rather than the over-the-air antenna input while watching a DVD. This setup has been verified to work satisfactorily with other commercial DVDs and audio CDs. Do I understand correctly that if I assign a music clip, such as an mp3, to the menu, then after building the DVD the music clip should play while the menu is dispayed on the TV? That is my expectation. I have verified the customize music dialog box and left the default settings of fade in = 100, fade out = 10000. My understanding of this customize setting is that the menu music should fade in at 100 ms and fade out in 10 seconds and repeat that fade in and fade out as long as the menu is left displayed on the TV. Is this correct? I have been selecting "animated menu" and setting duration at 10 seconds in every instance of my attempts to resolve this problem. The menu itself displays perfectly on the TV - just no sound plays with it. Of course the slideshow itself plays perfectly. It seems odd that this feature doesn't work when everything else about the menu itself, and DVD Build process in general, has worked so well. It's as if the music clip isn't "compiling" with the visual part of the menu. I'm at a loss as to how to resolve this. Any further thoughts on this would be much appreciated. mcinal

After a long absence as a PTE user (v3.x era), I upgraded to v5.5 Deluxe with VideoBuilder this past week. In fact, it’s been so long my original membership to this forum has evidently been purged, so I created a new one. To learn the new features of 5.5, I opened an old slideshow I had created years ago and proceeded to modify it using some of the new pan, zoom, etc, capabilities of 5.5. This went well and I then chose VideoBuilder to create a DVD, which also went well and the DVD played exceptionally well on my NTSC TV system. I was very pleased with 5.5 and VideoBuilder to say the least. I did note one problem however. I had assigned a music clip (.mp3) to play with the menu created with VideoBuilder, but this music did not play on the TV. Everything else functioned perfectly. I then created another DVD, same result. A third attempt using different music (known to be a good mp3 file because it plays in the background of the slideshow itself) produced the same result – no music with the menu. A search of the forum did not turn up anything addressing this problem as far as I could determine. If someone has an idea as to what I may have missed or am doing wrong, a reply would be much appreciated. mcinal