Carol Steele

Doesn't seem to do that on my TV/DVD comb Eric. Don't forget there is a 'safe' zone and stuff outside the safe zone gets clipped. It appears full screen on my telly (with a very small amount clipped on upright images). PS. When running the actions, it will fail because you will not have my drive/folder structure on your system - so make sure that in the Destination you elect folder as where to save and then select the folder on your system where you want to save the files to as in:-

I size the images to 560 x 1000 pixels and then run a batch action which increases the canvas size to 576 x 1024 pixels (with a black background). I also find that I need to substantially oversharpen the images. They look terrible in Photoshop - but display fine on screen. Previous to doing this I always ended up with soft images on the television. I have included my actions which you might like to try out. Contains actions for both 4:3 and 16:9 displays. Video_Preparation_For_PAL.zip

When in Video Builder, turn on the TV Safe Zone (Edit->Show TV Safe Zone) - place your chapter titles a little inside the safe zone and you should be OK. Regarding the music sync - simply checking the 'Synchronize Music & Slides' check box is not enough (a common error I believe) - after check that, go into the Timeline and either (1) check the box marked 'Auto spread slides along music or (2) Hit the 'Timed Points' and then choose the 'Add arranged points' option.

Well that was fairly easy to understand and follow and now I have the front Menu page looking exactly the way I want

Thank you gentlemen. Late last night I discovered if I uncheck the option 'Return to Menu after each title' then it will play through all the chapters - however, if I just select one chapter from the menu, at the end it continues with the next chapter. It would really be nice to be able to return to the menu after completing a chosen chapter (by checking the 'Return to Menu after each title' option) and have another option on the menu screen to 'Play All'. I'll go check out the tutorial now - thanks Limey.

HD TV is being broadcast in the UK - SkySports/SkyMovies and the Beeb have HD channels but you have to be either a Sky user or a cable customer (eg Virgin Media) to subscribe to these channels, but I think BBC HD channel is free provided you have a set top box. See this web site for more info.

First time I've played with VideoBuilder and I'm very pleased with the results to date. However, I do miss a 'Play All' button or link which will play all the chapters with one click, rather than have to click on each chapter to play it. Don't get me wrong, I don't wish to ditch the chapters as they are very useful for splitting sections of a wedding down so that brides can play their favourite chapter as often as they want, but a 'Play All' button would be great too. The only way I can see of doing it at the moment is to create a separate chapter containing all the images and music, but this would be a waste of time and disk space. Also, is there any way I can add further frames to the title page so that all the chapters can appear on just one page?? The existing frames can be resized and moved, but there are no options for adding extra frames. Thank you.

That's strange as I use wma audio files all the time in the majority (around 95%) of my presentations I use P2Exe v4.46 - but have used wma files in much older versions too.

Personally, I purchase my royalty free music from AKM Music where you can purchase complete CD's (around 10 to 12 tracks) for a very reasonable sum.

Wasn't it in the US that MS was first taken to court over Anti-Monopoly laws??? Doesn't seem to have affected their desire to introduce new software there

Unfortunately it would appear that you can only register if you are a US/Canadian resident, it throws out any attempts to register if you live elsewhere. I have sent them an email querying this - hopefully I will get a response quickly.

Thanks Igor. As a pro photographer I am often shooting over 2000 raw images per week, especially towards the height of the wedding season - one of the Seagate disks is for use in a removeable drive, the other two are for wedding images and one for studio work. The two small exceedingly fast Raptors are for the Operating System, a multitude of programs (including P2Exe ), the Windows Page File and Photoshop's Scratch disk. I also like to keep all my data well away from the program files and op sys files. These latter files are the ones most frequently accessed and are therefore best suited to be on the Raptors - and it is these drives which are likely to go bad first because of their constant use. I don't mind re-installing all my programs/OS should this happen, but my image data is very precious to me and so I put it onto drives which do not have as much use. Anyway, it makes sense to me Thanks, I'll go investigate

I am planning to move to a 64-bit OS (XP Pro x64 - unfortunately the Vista beta program has now ended) when I build my new system next week. Will P2Exe work in this OS?? If it does are there any problems I need to be aware of?? For those who are interested in these things, here is the spec of the new system: 1 x Intel Conroe Core Duo 2.67Ghtz CPU 1 x Asus P5B Deluxe (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard 1 x Thermaltake Shark case 1 x Thermaltake 500W PSU 2 x Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX (4Gb Total) 1 x EVGA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) 2 x Western Digital Raptor 74GB WD740ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache 4 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache 2x CD-078-SA Samsung SH-S182D 18x18 DVD±RW ReWriter (Black) 1 x Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse 1 x Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000 Keyboard 1 x Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition 1 x Netgear WGT624 108Mbps Wireless Firewall Router 1 x Netgear WG111T 108Mbps Wireless USB2.0 Adapter + a few other bits and pieces Any comments gratefully received - especially with respect to the video card. Anybody recommend something different?? Are the ATI cards rated better or worse than nVidia cards?? Thanks

One suggestion for the next version (I don't know if has been suggested or is already incorporated) would be an onscreen volume controller - or the ability to change the volume in the tabbed 'Music' header in the Project Options so that music level is reduced before the show is made.

You might want to consider doing a front end menu system for your CD so that the first thing that runs is a menu wherby you can click buttons to run different slideshows, launch your brochure and/or price list, link to your web site or send you an email. There is some quite expensive software out there which will do this - but it can just as easily be accomplished in P2Exe. I wrote a tutorial about how to create one a few years ago and you download it here CD_front_end -- Carol Steele

I use Memset - a UK based company. Haven't had any major problems with them during my last 3 years with them. Basic package is £4.49 per month and this gives you 500Mb of disk space with a bandwidth of 5Gb/month. Be aware that hosting slidshows on the internet really consumes bandwidth, although having said that, I have had 5 small streaming shows on my site for the last month and have only used 2Gb of my 5Gb allowance. Your account also allows you to have up to 5 subdomains - so if you have several domains, they can all be hosted on the same account.

I've been searching for a while to get good streaming slideshows and in the end elected to purchase a nice flash template from Winklet Web Design. I also can get quite nice fast shows for streaming online, but I need to use ProShow Gold in order to do this. I can keep the file size down to a reasonable 10-15Mb if I keep the image resolutions low (and small) and use low quality audio. Here's a sample:- http://www.carolsteele.co.uk/pages/slideshow/album_03.html To see the flash slideshow go to my main intro page at:- http://www.carolsteele.co.uk or http://www.devon-weddings.info and hit the button for the flash portal.

I completely agree with you Jeff - although last time I suggested it, I was rather lamblasted by some of the more impoverished folk here. I just wish Igor would make some kind of voluntary contribution available on the website whereby licenced users who value his work and gain monetary value from it (pro photographers) could donate an extra few £'s as and when they see fit to enable him carry out all the work he does.

Is there any way that I can take an existing Pictures to Exe file and convert it into something that by clicking on a button it will automatically play on a web site??

Here is a PDF Tutorial which will give you step by step instructions: CD Front End Right click the above link and choose to download/save the PDF file

Thank you Igor (and thank you for deleting the duplicated posts too)

Can anybody clarify the situation regarding protected shows We now have the ability to set either a definited expiry DATE, or set it to expire after X number of days or Y number of runs If any two of the three options are set, id it the shortest which would be activate the show not executing?? If the clock is set back on the computer, previous versions could still be run if set back prior to the expiry date. What happens in the present version 1. If the date is set - will it still run by setting the clock back 2. If a number of days is set - will it still run by setting the clock back 3. If the number of runs has been exceeded - will it still run by setting the clock back Thanks for any insight

I realise this is too late for the next release, but a suggestion for the release after v4.3 When I create my slideshows I will often use 5 or 6 tracks of music which I splice together in Audition to make one seamless track of music and make a note of the exact time that one track fades into the next so I can use these timed transition points in my slideshow. When doing a custom synchronization if you alter say the the first 5 or 6 slides to fit in an intro, the remainder all have to be altered to give an even space between slide changes (unless you are prepared to have one slide on screen for very much longer than the rest). Would it be possible to click on the first and last slides in a series of images (to select all those images) and have a button to distribute those images evenly along the timeline - say between 30 secs and 3:20:20 mins. I know it would certainly make life a lot easier for me - and I suspect a lot of other people. Just food for thought.

Well said both Jim and Mike - and before Rod says that I would say that seeing as he replied to my query, I have asked questions here on numerous occasions about various aspects of the program and I think Igor has only chimed in on one of them previously. I too appreciate the hard work that Igor does in keeping this program moving ever onwards and realise that he can only respond personally to probably less than 5% of the queries here. Nor do I expect he will get further involved here - he will have a look at what I and others have said - evaluate it, and, if possible incorporate something into the next version which he is now working on - and if not the latest version he might look at something in the one after that.

Hi Igor, Yes, in the 'Project Options' it is set to display the filename. However, in previous versions, if you set the comments to show the file names (from the menus at the top of the application) if you subsequently deleted the file name (in the comments box under the image window), it would stay deleted. It no longer stays deleted in version 3.80, but comes back after the slide show has been previewed or saved. When I am creating a slideshow for a client I have an intro and an exit sequence where I don't want the filename appearing on the screen - only on those that a part of the show that the client is ordering images from. Thanks for looking at this issue for me as I am sure it affects a lot of other users too.