Barry Beckham

I think there are a number of interesting issues here and I would remind everyone of two things 1. You can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time. 2. Jack of all trades equal a master at none. (ie for most of us on this forum, sound editing in PTE would have to equal the capacity of Audacity for most of us to be happy with it) The majority of people who contribute to this forum are not typical PTE users, you are in the main PTE enthusiasts, so your needs are miles away from the average user. Some of you can often get very defensive of PTE, which can sometimes get in the way of a balanced debate . As enthusiasts don't we need to take a step back and think about how sound editing would impact into PTE for the average user, not us. Most of you don't need sound editing in PTE to do what you need to do, but then we are not typical users either. However, I do a lot of demos and I meet a lot of amateur photographers and there is not a shadow of a doubt that PSG is popular to some degree because is does allow basic sound editing. In time PTE has to adopt some form of sound editior, that will reduce music to the length of the show and fade it out over the number of seconds the author chooses. I would expect that would meet the needs of the PTE bulk users. If PTE was able to offer sound editing to the level Audacity does perhaps it should be via an add-on like Video Builder. That way the screen controlling the sound would be available to enthusiasts, but not clutter up the normal windows making it harder for newer users to learn PTE. One of the issues people have with practically all software these days is knowing what three essential buttons they need to press to get the job done from the other 999 other options that they just don't need, either for now or forever. The more that is put into PTE, the more complex it makes the software to learn and some will be driven away by that. You cannot use your own experences as a judge here, because you are not typical users, you have to stand back. Finally, to contradict my own waffling here, where is it written that we always have to follow the crowd anyway. Someone has to forge their own path and be different from the competition.

I have a 20" Imac with Apple and Vista (bootcamp) 2,6 GHz dual core 4GB mem. and 256 mB ATI video card. The specification you have quoted doesn't mean much to me never being a Mac user, but I am glad the shows run well on your Mac and thanks for the feedback.

Peter I just plugged in that drive that hasn't been running now for 3-4 weeks and its still working Barry

I tried it for 30 mins and that didn't work so I left it overnight and then plugged it straight in and it worked

I have put up on my web site a few slide shows that I have created in the past few months, but I have included the Mac version created with the PTE 5.7.3. Not being a Mac owner myself or access to one it would be interesting to hear any feedback on the technical aspect of the new Mac output. They can be found here http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw4.htm P.S Forever Floating is a show that many of you felt I made too small when it was first made for PC, it is now at 1920*1200 as are all the others on this page

close down, reboot and try again

Of course don't trust the drive after one failure, but what a great way to possibly redeem stuff that may be lost. You know how some are lack about backing up and only regret it after the horse has bolted

When we set up our computers after emmigrating to Australia I found one of our external drives refused to work. The lights came on, but there was no-one at home. None of my externals have unrepeatable stuff on them and this one was only a misc drive so I just used it as a backup of a backup for the trip. I tried a few things to get it going including different PC's, but nothing worked. I was about to call it a day and throw it out when something came up at the camera club here in Australia. Someone said they had heard about a tip pros use to get external drives working. It was to put them in the freezer for a while. Now when you hear that you look around for people chuckling, but no-one was. I tried it and it worked. I was able to gain full access to the drive and just double check that their wasn't anything on that I needed. The funny thing it has kept going even after it became warmed up. I am a bit nervous about using it for anything of worth, but as a back up of a backup, why not. So there is a solution that could be well worth putting into the gray matter for the time when we may need it.

Dom Super smooth this time and a great lesson in matching images to music too Great to see

I would be very nervous about PTE going down this particular road and I am glad that there do not seem to be any plans to do so. These effects should not be thrown into our slide shows on an ad hoc basis and if that is what is wanted there is another product that will do that for you. PTE stands apart from other similer products for all the right reasons and I hope it can remain that way.

Barry, I prefer to present my slideshows in full screen mode and not limit its resolution, even if I agree with you that people will not see it as it should be. I have not made the test but I wonder what happens if you fix size of slide to 1920 x 1200 by example and the user has a lower resolution ? The trouble with that is image quality as you know. If your going to set your images up at 1024*768 it doesn't make any sense at all to allow them to be stretched to a much higher resolution. 1. It could be what it putting more strain on my PC to run the demo, though I doubt it. 2. The images lose their quality. Something I see quite a lot in slide shows I watch, but how would those authors know that this is happening unless they see their show played back on a higher res monitor. I picked up this issue a long time ago, because I have a PC running 1024*768 for video recording and I also have my standard PC running a resolution of 1920*1200. I test my slide shows on both PC's and make sure they run correctly. I now make my shows and slide show demos at 1920*1200 and fix the size of the slides. They run perfectly on my machine running the same resolution and also the other one running 1024*768. Yes there is a black band top and bottom, but I have to live with that. The main issue as you know is that PTE can reduce size far better then increase size. I can't produce demos to show people what PTE can do if the demo that runs on their machine is poor. I have to know that they will see much the same as I see and this method appears to work very well. So, larger shows will project great on smaller monitors, I know that because I test everything I make at 1920*1200 on a 1024*768 res monitor The conclusion is that this slideshow requires a recent graphic card. But it's not a suprise. But as you already said it Barry, I don't understand why some people reports jerkiness with high specs computers and other with lesser computers have a very smooth animation I am sure your right about the card, but it's not as though the graphics card that I and others are using is ancient and it does everything else I ask of it. My original reply to you was because I know you make templates for sale and the issue then is they have to work on all machines, or the vast majority. I think your expertise with animation is a little ahead of the game and like I said before this last one is probably your most ambitious and its showing the weaknesses of some machines it's played on. I have long since given up trying to fathom PC's. I have experienced so many of these odd things where one PC will do something and another of a similar or identical spec will not, that now, I accept these problems as par for the course Either we need speedier machines or some way to slow you down a bit

Dom Your slide show made at 1024*768 is automatically stretched to fit my larger screen of 1920*1200. The height touches the top/bottom edges first, so your right, there are black bars left and right. However, when the three images finally becomes one, it shouldn't be stretched so that it touches the top and bottom of my screen should it? If you made it at 1024*768 it should show at that size on any monitor running a higher resolution. You need to tick the box in the Project Options > Screen Tab > Fixed size of slide (in Pixels) Then I will see it as you presented it and then it might run right. At the moment I am seeing your 768 high images shown at 1200

Dom This version is much better, just a small flicker as the images appear. The fade out is fine, but that slight flutter as images appear would annoy me no end though. For me a faded transition has to be perfect and I guess you would want that too. This puts me in mind of my experiences with PSG some time ago. Even with 1024*768 images I could not get smooth animations using PSG on all three of the machines I had at home. All three had a good specification and all were perfectly OK for everything else. Some people reported no problems at all from lesser machines and in the end I could not find a reason why some PC's play a slide show fine and anothers don't. Over a period of a year or two many PSG users approached me at demos saying they experienced the same issues as me and they thought they were doing something wrong, but I couldn't help them because I just could not fathom why PSG worked OK on some machines and not others. I think your probably working on the limits and pushing the boundaries, where I expect these sorts of things will come up from time to time. One thing though, what resolution did you make this at as it fills my screen top and bottom, but not edge to edge. Its like a 1280*1024 image stretched to match a larger screen, is that what I am seeing?

You can do all you have decribed with PicturesToExe, but you will need to use a sound editor for some of what you ask. Joining musiv tracks and adding commentary for example. DVD quality is now very good and will meet the needs of most viewers. There are tutorials available on this forum and also video tutorials here http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/digitalav/pte5.htm If your going to need DVD's for TV viewing, why not make your basic slide show at HD resolutions 1920*1080. That file size will convert very well to modern flat screen TV's and you will have a slide show resolution that you could use in HD as and when the oppotunity arises. It will also play back OK on modern flat screen PC's too

I don't actually want to use the effect you have created, I just looked at it out of curiousity and thought I would let you know that I am unable to see it at its best. I think your animated work is very good, but it is not really my style of AV. I don't believe I have any issues with my PC and yesterday I was working on 16 bit multi layered image files approaching 500 meg and had no problems at all. The machine plays everything else and works fine. Don't worry about it, it was just a bit of info I thought you would want to know. In fact it is issues like this that makes me sympathetic to software manufacturers who have to battle the same issues.

Both these last demos react exactly the same here. Quite a bad flicker/pulse that would make the template unusable for me.

Yes, my resolution is 1920*1200

The stutter is on every image using Vista business I am running a large monitor 27in Dell

Dom This is good work, but the transition as each image appears flickers quite a lot on my PC. It's probably better described as a pulsed effect. It looks as though too much is going on for my PC to cope with the transition. A Quad Core 2.66Ghz 4 Gig of Ram Nvidia Gforce 8600GT graphics It runs everything else OK

This is a very clever slide show and extremely well done of it's type. I find I am impressed with the skills of the author, but not inspired by the work. Sadly I think I am a bit too old to appreciate it as I do find myself attracted to the more traditional AV approach. It great, but it doesn't inspire me to want to have a go and inspiration is vital. Just as I was about to close this thread when it came to me what this reminds me of. Graffiti, It attracts my attention, I do have some respect for the authors, but then nothing afterwards.

Yes, that sounds positive, it's a funny thing but I was talking to a few clubs here in Australia about trying to find a wall to project onto so we can get a much better sized picture. I recall doing a demo at the Maltings in Ely Cambridgeshire and using their cinema screen to project onto. It was an enormous image and one thing that impressed me at the time was the clarity and brightness of that image. HD does seem to be the way that was my original first thought, but some doubts crept in after talking to Epson. Your right Ken, we always assume we are talking to someone who understands our needs and our questions. Perhaps not

Thanks I am beginning to think that the person I spoke at Epson misunderstood my needs.

Nothing specific, but interested in results and a little confused by Epson saying they were not designed to be transported. I wonder if I was talking to someone who didn't really know and was simply passing on what they have been told and it is the size of the unit that they were on about and not that it is delicate

This thread seems to be loosing it's waya bit. Can I assume that no PTE experts are yet using a HD projector for their slide shows? I and others would be interested in any real projects that have been made and projected on HD projectors I am not entirely sure which way to jump and a discussion often opens up things you never thought of..............

I still have to buy a colour monkey calibration tool for my own monitors, but I don't think they are too far off the right colour. I have been looking again at the HD projectors and may try for one of those.