Barry Beckham

No typo, I didn't want to be rude

I still think the point I am trying to make is being missed. Image quality is important, but a show will not be destroyed by one out of focus image, unless the author uses that image as the opening one and then the appeal of the show is reduced considerably. First impressions etc !! The appeal of many of the slide shows I see can be improved tremendously, with just a little thought and a small amount of work. Nothing too complicated or outside the abilities of a beginner. Forget all the claims of elitism, it is just plain common sense. You don't need to be an expert photographer, have a fancy camera or anything else. What I keep saying is just take care of the basics and your show will improve enormously. I believe in the KIS principle and so do most of the people I come into contact with.

Xaver By all means, whatever you said I agree

Lin Summed up perfectly

Shame the videos have to be so small though.

Xaver Not sure I understand your point, can you clarify?

If we are not careful we can make a simple part of slide show creation over complicated for the newer user of PTE5. For example, if someone asks the question what size images do I need for a slide show, it seems pretty obvious from the question that the person is a newer user of PTE. Under those circumstances isn't it better to just give a basic answer to a basic question. We can forget all about frames and retaining format. They can find all that out a little later, once they have a show or two made. Isn't is best to just say, use your image editor (whatever they are using) to make your images the same size as your monitor and leave it at that. Even getting into unsharp mask at this stage may be too much for some, but if we do, we should give some step by step advice on how to do that and what level of unsharp mask is required.

I also notice that while working on the time line, if you highlight a transition point and hit the delete key instead of the cut transition button, the slide is not only removed from the time line, but also the slide list. I have done this a number of times and accept that it is probably because I am not familiar yet with the new layout, but I wonder if the delete key can be used as a cut transition while we are in the time line and not remove the slide from the slide list. It is the most natural thing to do, to highlight a transition point and hit the delete key. Bunching Transition points When I am 20 images into a sequence and copy some more images into the show, then drag them into the slide list. Why do they all have to appear on the timeline bunched up. I constantly have to keep hitting, cut transition before I can continue adding transition points. Do images selected for use in the slide list, but not yet added on the timeline, have to appear anywhere in the timeline at all? It's not natural for them to appear there because we havn't hit the new transition button yet. File Panel Often I want to get rid of an image completely from my show, I have decided it has no place in the sequence, but if I highlight the thumbnail, hitting the delete key does nothing, can it be made to completely remove the image to the recycle bin?

I am using Windows Vista and just got the attached message when I installed Beta 5

Igor I have a current project on the go and have been using Beta 4, not downloaded beta 5 yet. I added some images and got the slide show started, but then created some more images in photoshop and then selected them in beta 4. When I go into the time line, I cannot seem to click and drag to highlight those new images to remove them from the time line. After dragging over 7 images that used to be selected, now only one of them highlights. I had to remove each one, one at a time. What I want to do is carry on the programming from that point after adding some images. In addition, if I try to select an image from the slide list to remove it, often the slide next to it becomes selected and the one I click on refuses to select. It will select in the light box screen. Hope that makes sense

For those interested I was asked to produce some videos for the Ephotozine.tv web site and the second one I did was PTE5 http://www.ephotozine.tv/video/Creating-sl...rry-Beckham-628

John Nice one, you have captured the atmosphere and the mood.

Jeff I have experienced something like this and was guided by Igor to another way to create a DVD. Sometimes we can spend half our life trying to find out why our PC will not do what others seem to do with ease. Often a work around is quicker and less stressful and this way worked every time for me. Details below http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/audiovisual/dvd/dvdprobs.htm

As images are downsampled they also often loose sharpness as pixels are removed. Lanczos, Pyramid, Various iterations of Bicubic, Genuine Fractals, Spline, etc., are all unique in certain ways. Really good interpolation is akin more to a "black art" than to science because there are so many variables it's nearly impossible to know what will work best in every case. For example - I use variously Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sigma, Pentax, Sony, Fuji, Panasonic and a number of other digital camera systems. When I'm enlarging for prints I use nearly all the above interpolation algorithms plus a half-dozen others depending on the nature of the files, number of artifacts, presence or absence of an AA filter, etc. There simply is no one single "right" way to do it. Glad I didn't read that when I started Digital Photography. I might have given up before I started. There was me thinking that all I needed was Photoshop or Elements to resize images and to keep things simple. Probably the best advice to get sharper images, is to hold the camera steady!!

Igor Just got back from a few days away and tried beta 4 and it looks pretty good to me. It works fine and it's now great to see the animation and any frames used to when adding points on the fly. Great work. I think an extra start and stop button between the New Transition button and the Cut Transition button would be a nice inclusion. There is quite a distance between the start and stop buttons if your not aware of the space bar shortcut. Barry

Stonewall The answer to question 1 is, that's up to you. A title can help set the scene and give the audience a clue as to what is coming, but it is not essential. You could have the title come up after 4-5 images if you wish. Competition rules may ask for a title, but that may be one you give the show for identification or physically at the start of the show. Question 2. The answer is yes, you can have a book turning technique. There are a couple of demos at the link below if the effect you may want. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw2.htm Question 3. Yes, you can give the impression, but this will be a personal thing. One may choose to have the images gradually blur out, or fade to white. There are a few ideas that come to mind. Sound effects can be obtained from sound effects disks, via dedicated sites on the Internet, or even recorded live as some members do to good effect. These are generally mixed together using a sound editing software and one that appears to be used by many AV enthusiasts is Audacity. This is completely free, reasonably easy to use and will meet all of your AV sound needs http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/editingsou...oundediting.htm

Well, with the examples you sent, the Infranview one is marginally sharper. Thanks for the test, see, well worth doing

Colin I think what people are trying to say to you here is that once you have a slide show created, your obviously happy with it. To then spread your slides over an extra minute and a half has the potential to add one and a half minutes of bordom for your viewers. Your show is already quite lengthy and I appreciate you can get away with this far better with a family show such as you describe. However, you obviously didn't think that spread of time was necessary when you first created the show, so why now. If you must use the ending of the classical piece use that crossfade option mentioned by DaveG, that is your best option if you think a fade loses something

Xaver Why would you want a PNG file for a slide show in 16 bit? I can't see the point and it is not where the focus needs to be applied in relation to image quality. We need to keep it much simpler than that or we just over complicate the simple procces of putting a slide show together don't we?

Colin How about processing the same basic image twice using both methods you describe and post the resuts so we can take a look. As you can guess, at the size we use these images at 1024 I am thinking you would have a hard job telling the difference, but I would be delighted if you can prove me wrong. I am always looking for an edge on image quality.

I have penned some thoughts on exposure, any use to anyone? http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/articles/e...re/exposure.htm

Felix Try updating your graphics card drivers, I bet that is the issue.

Igor I am not sure what to say really. I am one of PTE's biggest fans and all the improvements over the last few years have been superb and they keep PTE top in slide show software. I appreciate all your hard work, but I can't hide the fact that I think you would lose far more than you would gain if the same function we had in 5.1 cannot be returned. I have tried beta 2 and can't say that it improves the fuctionality from beta 1 very much. Yes the ability to delete the time points without losing the images has been corrected and I can add time points while listening to the music. However, doing that while not seeing any of the images as I go is just as restrictive as the previous problem. Obviously I have no idea of the technical difficulties of this, but we must be able to see the images as we create the slide show, even if in that mode we have a small thumbnail as before. I think it may need to be tried, but if you have the music interupted for a thrid of a second each time you add an image, won't that create the same disruption we are trying to avoid. I think ADB summed it up better than me in an earlier post where he said you would totally lose the flow of what we are trying to achieve. They are my sentiments exactly. For me this is so significant that if beta 2 was a final copy, I would stay with 5.1.

Peter Try what your suggesting yourself and see. You will find that it works, (just) but detroys the flow of this way of working. It would be so significant for me, I would remain with 5.1 despite liking how 5.5 displays. This is fundemental to the usability of PTE and I can't believe no-one esle seems to have picked it up. It makes me wonder how people put thie shows together? Barry

To make sure we all understand this issue To create a slide show the first thing I do is delete all transition points from the time line. I can then hit the play button and while looking at the wave file represenation in the time line and listening to the music I can add a transition point while the music plays. That is now not possible in beta 1 and it MUST be returned. Its far too big a function thing to lose in my view. Why does the time line have to be integrated with the slide list? Its great to see the time on the main page, but do they have to be tied so much together. I think it is important to retain the slide list as images you have selected for the show and the time line where you place those images. Hundreds of times with PTE I have the wish to take off the last 3-4 transition points and re apply them while listening to the music. I can't effectively do that now and that really is a big loss of functionality. Yes you can slide them along, but you lose the ability to create the slide show on the fly. It appears that if you hit Ctrl+A all points can be cut and placed at the end of the music, but when you then hit play and add the points as the music plays we lose all the effects on the slide and the music/cursor jumps to the end of the transition every time an image is added. I am very sorry Igor, but its not going to work for me like this. It doesn't move PTE forward in functionality, in fact it takes it back. Is it not possible to have the time line viewed as it is in Beta 1, but not connected to the slide list? Barry