Carol Steele

Hi Mary, I have found that Pinnacle Studio 14 doesn't like the mp4 files which are produced from PTE, they play back fine through Windows Media Player etc, but once brought into Pinnacle S14 and played back there, I start to get video breakup and stoppages in some of the shows (not all of them though). In the end I resorted to making the slideshows directly in Pinnacle Studio 14 and saving them out from Pinnacle as mp4 files. Not surprisingly, the Pinnacle software decided to play nicely with the mp4 files it had produced itself. I think this is more than likely to be a problem caused by the Pinnacle software rather than by mp4 files rendered out from PTE. Producing the various slideshows from Pinnacle S14 which are then authored into a Blu-ray HD video is a little more tricky than producing the slideshows in PTE as there is no 'sync slides to music' option like there is in PTE - but it can be done, just not quite as efficiently or easily, but it is not difficult once you have thought through the process of how it can be achieved. However, Studio 14 is a lot more powerful than PTE in other respects (not surprisingly as it is much more expensive and is written from the ground up as a video editing program rather than PTE which was devised initially as a means of viewing still images as a computer slideshow and which evolved from there). If you simply want to see your slideshow via a BD player onto an HD TV, then you are probably going to be fine just using PTE and then using one of the free applications to create your Blu-ray disk. On the other hand, if you wish to add titles, menus, mix video footage in with slideshows, add transitions between these, add video overlay tracks etc then you have to do this via different software at the moment. Of the two which I have got (Pinnacle Studio 14 Ultimate Collection and Pro Show Gold), both of these will allow you to create menus and titles for Blu-ray, but the Pinnacle software is probably the more powerful and versatile of the two. Pro Show Producer (the grown up brother of ProShow Gold) might be just as capable as Studio 14, but I can't really comment on that as I don't have that program. If I can be of further help, please let me know and I will try and assist (but please bear in mind that I too, am fairly new to this arena (i.e. HD video authoring and production).

Hi Ray, I tend to go with what Pinnacle defaults to with these formats i.e. DVD is set to best quality which equates to a 7,500Kbits/sec bitrate AVCHD is set to custom and for a 48 min video slideshow I have to knock this down to 14,000Kbits/sec to fit all the show on a standard DVD (the bitrate can be progressively increased if the show is smaller) Blu-ray disks are created using Pinnacle's Best Quality option which equates to a bitrate of 40,000Kbits/sec (from the same project).

I think that is most folk's reaction to their first HD slideshow after watching a standard definition one on a large TV. I think the reaction becomes less startling if viewed on a smaller screen (say 32" or less), but on a larger screen it blows your socks off as they say.

No problem Brian, just clarifying the matter and hopefully pointing out that even if mp3 files had been used, there are other factors which might arise to prevent audio from being heard

Hi Brian, Not in my own particular case, the sound files were mp3 (generally edited in Adobe Audition) in all instances. However, I was splitting the audio track and this was going through to my amp and 5.1 speaker system whereas the video signal was being passed to the TV.

Hi Davy, Yes, I have used double layer DVD's to reduce the compression, but these disks are almost as expensive as the BD's which I buy, so I don't tend to use them and you could also have problems with some BD players. However, it is certainly something worth considering if you don't wish to plunge into buying a BD writer at this moment in time. I have a Wedding Sampler which is 48mins long and although I have not had problems with the static images, I have had a few problems to overcome with transitions (oddly enough I had to switch back to Pinnacle 12.1 to eliminate the problems - but that's another story ). However, I wouldn't want to go much past this time limit - but having said that, I would think that most slideshows made in PTE would be comfortably within this time frame. Hopefully Ron will post his observations of the disks which I have sent him in this thread as I might be too blinkered now (I've watched this Wedding Sampler umpteen and 10 times and I now tend to switch off after giving them a brief run through) - but I think he will report back excellent image quality from the BD and AVCHD DVD disks with the standard definition disk being far inferior in quality.

You beat me to it Nobeefstu - I had this problem a while back with a certain player and changing it to LPCM restored the sound.

That is OK if you haven't authored the show to include menus, titles etc Ray. If you have a completely authored show then it needs to be played back in a BD player (unless you have a copy of Cyberlink Power DVD or similar software installed on your PC). If you are simply playing back the m2ts files from the 'Stream' folder via Windows Media Player, then you cannot see the titles or menus to check if everything is working as it should.

Hi Ron, Yes, I am burning both to Blu-ray disk (in which case I use the BDMV [AVC] format when producing the files for burning) and DVD disks burnt to with the AVCHD format (these will only play in BD players). I can see a small difference between the two types (which gets larger once the quality drops below 50-60%), but if one didn't have the other to compare it to, then I doubt if most people would notice. I also produce a standard definition disk from the same files and the drop in quality is vast and very easy to spot (when viewed on a 46" plasma TV) - but these look reasonable when viewed on a 26" TV and played back via an ordinary domestic DVD player. If you are really interested I can send you copies of both a Blu-ray disk and an HD AVCHD burnt DVD disk so you can compare the two. Carol PS. For experimentation, I would recommend that you buy a couple of BD-RE disks (the rewritable ones) as you can use these many times over. Once you are happy with the results, only then burn to the standard BD-R disk (the write once type). It has saved me many more times the amount I paid for them - especially when the BD-R disks were selling for over £5/disk at the time.

It all depends on the size of the shows Ron and whether you wish to splash out on a BD burner. I use Pinnacle Studio to author my shows and the Studio software allows me to write HD shows in AVCHD format to ordinary DVD disks. You can use the compression within Studio to create shows of around 45 to 50 mins without any serious deterioration in quality. If you want the ultimate in quality though, you are restricted to shows of around 20-25mins if going via the AVCHD route on plain vanilla DVD's unless you want to go to full Blu-ray disk burning. Top rated burners include either the new LG BH10LS30 burner at around £133 or the Pioneer BDR-205 burner at £163. Although these drives are rated at 10x and 12x burn speeds, this is rather pointless until BD's of this write value become available and affordable. The best value Blu-ray media can be obtained from MaxMedia Supplies Ltd where you can buy 4x full face inkjet printable disks from just 99p/disk (in large quantities) or £1.11 +VAT if bought in smaller quantities - but as he is a wholesaler, his minimum order is £50. If you don't wish to get into disk authoring to produce a professional looking BD with proper menus etc, then you can (as Goddi has pointed out) use a media streaming device to connect your TV to your computer and view the files directly. I have an Xstreamer for this (around £90 on ebay - search on Xtreamer) as the Xtreamer is capable of dealing with many more file types than the WD Streamer - however, I do get better quality when viewing my BD or AVCHD disks. Hope that helps

It doesn't affect any of the slide transitions which I normally use Lin, but I rarely (if ever) do animations of the Ken Burns type in these slideshows. I suppose the compression algorithm is looking at the static parts of the show and giving greater compression to those areas than the transition areas - things only appear to start deteriorating using compression below around 50%. This on viewing in either a Blu-ray player (via AVCHD format) or HD-DVD (in HVDVD_TS format) and played out to a 46" plasma TV. I might see more of a difference if I were to use an HD projector to view the shows projected onto a large screen (100+").

Correction Lin, you can get much more than 15mins on a 4.7GB DVD disk simply by reducing the quality, I have burnt HD AVCHD on standard DVD disks with slideshows of 30mins and longer without serious deterioration in quality, certainly far superior quality than a standard DVD slideshow, you simply need either a Blu-ray or HD-DVD player and suitable HD television to view them on. However, because I sell both DVD and Blu-ray slideshows (of weddings), then if people go for the Blu-ray version I only think it fair that I supply them with a genuine Blu-ray disk.

It's getting better now that BD's are down in price (if you know where to buy them as many places are still retailing them at £5 to £7 per disk). I buy mine from ]MaxMedia Supplies Ltd. where you can buy full face inkjet printable BD's (4x speed) for just over a £1 per disk (10 disk pack) - but you need to order £50 worth of goods. However, like yourself, when I first started Blu-ray projects over a year ago, I bought myself a couple of the RE disks so I could just erase all my mistakes and try again on the same disk later For authoring menus for Blu's, it is unfortunate that Adobe stopped selling Encore as a standalone product and bundled it inside Premiere so I use Pinnacle Studio for this - and this burns HD slideshows onto BD's without a problem - it can even burn HD shows onto DVD disks in AVCHD format which can be read and played on most Blu-ray players (especially on newer BD players). It can even produce HD-DVD format disks on standard DVD disks if your show is not too long (around 40 mins max).

Another good utility to have is Mailwasher Pro - this reads the emails (or the first so many lines) on your ISP's server before they are downloaded to your computer. Email is probably one of the biggest threats as simply opening a contaminated email is sufficient to infect your system. Mailwasher Pro checks against known spammers from world wide databases and marks up suspicious emails and you can delete them from the server before you even download them. You are also able to bounce the email back if you so wish (and hopefully spammers will receive hundreds if not thousands of instances of their bounced emails) so, if you are ever unfortunate enough to get put onto a database of email addresses which are sold onto spammers, then if they receive enough messages saying that yours is an invalid email address, you will be taken off future lists - but this can take months (if not years) to happen.

I would have to agree with what JEB just said - and also add that if you don't wish to run the Windows emulator on the Mac, you will also be stuck with buying replacement software for all your Windows based applications, which could double the price of the Mac hardware. However, what you should be asking is "Why does my system crash so often?????". Personally I have not had a system crash for probably over 4 years (i.e. where it blue screened) except for when I was deliberately crashing the system to find my best overclocking parameters. Windows Vista x64 was extremely stable as is Windows 7 x64. The most common suspect for system crashes is poor quality hardware in the system which can also be allied with poor quality drivers (and poor quality drivers will even make good quality hardware peripherals become unstable). That is one reason I build my own systems, that way I can purchase all the peripherals separately (eg RAM, Video card, cooling, motherboard etc) and make sure that only the highest quality stuff goes into the system. Yes, it can be a lot more expensive than buying a pre-built system from the likes of PC World or Dell - but at least you don't get the headaches associated with these low cost systems. Sometimes more is much, much better .

Not sure I actually said that Brian - what I did say was that IE x64 was hype and was pretty irrelevant as folk don't need access to large chunks of memory when accessing the Internet . Most users, who might be on the borderline with 4Gb of RAM (between choosing Win7 x32 or Win7 x64) would find that there is not a huge difference when using a program such as Photoshop CS4 x64 in a 64-bit OS and when using Photoshop CS4 x32 in a 32-bit OS - when using ordinary sized files. However, when dealing with large images there is a huge advantage in the OS and the 64-bit program being able to address significantly more RAM, especially when applying changes of most types in Photoshop as the whole file can be in the memory at once and it doesn't have to drip feed bits in and out to render the changes.

Most programs (discounting operating systems) are still 32-bit Ken, the main exception actually coming from the Adobe stable in the form of Photoshop CS4 x64 - indeed Pictures to Exe is still 32-bit and I doubt if Igor is working on a 64-bit version yet . Unless (and/or until, programs need access to large amounts of memory), most software companies will not be investing the large amounts of cash required in rewriting their software in 64-bit code. Even Microsoft Office is still only available as 32-bit coded software, despite the billions which MS has at its disposal and their current drive to move their OS's onto the 64-bit platform. Look at the reluctance of camera manufacturers to provide their users with their OEM image processing software in 64-bit code - and it's photographers who really need to work with native 64-bit programs due to the size of the files they are using (Nikon and Canon being amongst the biggest culprits). IE 64-bit is purely hype, it really isn't needed as a 64-bit application, it doesn't gain anything from being 64-bit over its 32-bit sibling, MS would have been better spending the money on providing a more secure version of the 32-bit version IMHO.

Ken, This is only a problem if you use a 64-bit browser. If you use the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer or any current version of Firefox (with of course, the Flashplayer plugin), then you will have no problem accessing flash driven sites at all. Adobe are working on a 64-bit version but unfortunately only insiders at Adobe know just how far away this is from release. In the meantime just use 32-bit IE or Firefox - they both work on a 64-bit version of Windows (and I have been using XP x64, Vista x64 and now Win & x64 for quite a few years now) PS. I fail to see the need for a 64-bit browser anyway - it's not like you need access to vast amounts of memory when browsing the internet

Thanks Tom, after a few glitches, I finally got it working. I reloaded the original PTE files into version 6 and did a 'Create as' and for some reason that did not work, then I later tried doing a straightforward 'Create' and the exe files then started to display on the correct screen. For some reason the 'Create As' option must have been recreating them in version 5 format - which of course ignores the instructions in the .bat files. Maybe because they were version 5.x .pte files the program decided to recreate the exe files in that format too . Anway, problem solved - so thanks for the pointers.

Hi Tom, Thanks for coming back to me with those suggestions - I will try them out later when I've got back from the gym.

Hi John, I have been running Windows 7 x64 throughout the betas and I am now using the Windows 7 x64 Professional version. During all that time I had no problems with PTE 5.6 or 5.6.4 (or now with version 6) - however I did have a problem with delayed loading of PTE exec files, but this was down to a problem with AVG which was taking absolute ages to scan even the smallest PTE exe files. I switched from AVG to another Antivirus program (Avira) and that particular problem went completely away. I don't think I tried anything in 5.5 though. I wonder if it might be video card related - which card do you have, and more importantly, have you updated the drivers to the latest 64-bit drivers from the video card manufacturers web site. Windows 7 ships with many drivers but it is best to install the latest drivers from the manufacturers web site.

Now that it is possible to run a preview of a slideshow on a second monitor, it would be wonderful if a monitor could be assigned in the projects options. My problem is that whilst it is fine for creating slideshows, when I wish to show them to clients in the studio (via a projector, which acts as a second monitor), I have to run the monitors in 'clone' mode - which means I have to set the studio computer to run at 1024x768 pixels the same as the projector, otherwise I cannot move the show onto the 2nd monitor (the projector) unless I create the show to run in a window and not full screen. That would be OK if I had a smallish main monitor in the studio, but it is a 22" flatscreen with a recommended resolution of 1440 x900 and so by running it at 1024x768, not only are the icons on the desktop far too large, it doesn't really make use of the increased screen size and resolution. I am sure I am not the only one with this problem.

Igor must be reading my mind :rolleyes: Just after posting this and then going to the support site, an email arrived with my Licence Key :rolleyes:

Hope Igor is monitoring this thread. I paid for the VideoBuilder licence yesterday ($34 + VAT), but have still not received the key yet. When I went to Regnow and paid it allowed me to download 6.0, but as I already had installed it, I saved it to a slightly different location - but it would appear to be exactly the same as the one which I had downloaded and installed earlier. Any idea when you will send me my licence key please Igor??

OK, it must be a problem with Regnow and Firefox as I was able to get in and pay if I used Internet Explorer. Just a heads up if anybody else runs into this problem.