Barry Beckham

One way to send large files is to get your own web space. Its not an expensive thing to do to gain some storage on line although I have not researched this recently. As long as your band width traffic is not high it used to be reasonably cheap. Even if you don't want to create a web site, you can use the space for file transfer. Upload your slide show and give the link to whoever you want to download it. The web space people will create a link address and you would put /myslideshow.zip on the end of it. Thats what I did recently with that Robin sound effect as shown below. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/robin.zip

Pam Even with PTE5.1 your slide shows will not retain the same quality on DVD that they have as an exe file, especially when you view those DVD files on your PC. At least with a TV we view from about 10 feet away. See here http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/audiovisual/dvd/dvd.htm Many people think they are doing something wrong when they compare the Exe file and DVD file and only yesterday I had a call from a wedding photographer with the same concerns.

JFA I wrote to Tony O'connor for permission to use his music after buying a CD of his while in Australia in 2005/6. I have noticed with the music supplied to me by Medwyn Goodall that the artists change the names of tracks from time time. I found it quite confusing at times and with your AV I thought I have got my credits all wrong. I tried some forest recordings with our Pixman and got a reasonable recording of the Bell Birds and background noise, that I now know I can clean up considerably using Audition. Those I try in the UK always seem to pick up noise you don't seem to hear at the time.

Sergio, Here is another alternative 5 hours of videos covering all you need to know http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/editingsou...oundediting.htm

FH I tried some noise removal in Audition and increased the volume and managed to get the attached from your basic Robin recording. I didn't realise Audition was so good at this ! http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/robin.zip Jfa Your recordings made in Australia are great and I assume you are a bit further from the road than we can get in the UK. When there is no raod noise the quality is very very good. Ron The voice is in the H4 samples

Ifa The sounds were pretty good for tape and I suspect they would be much better now with digital. Funny you should choose that track by Tony Oconnor for the flight part. I used that too for a balloon show. Its called Artisrty of Balloons and its here if your interested, no sound effects though http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/freestuffdigslidesw2.htm I notice you had quite a loud hiss on the Gentle Wind track. Not sure how that has occurred, its not in the original music.

FH Well, that was interesting and thanks for doing that. We are going to suffer a bit with ambient noise from roads etc I suppose, but even so the quality sounded pretty good to me. What made me sit up and really listen was the voiceover. The quality there is superb and I truggle to match quite that crispness in my DVD recordings. I think Ron has a point that some ambient noice may be able to be filtered out, but your right too that often that is exactly what you want left in. Many thanks for those examples Barry

Denwell Couldn't have put it better myself. That all I want, Just what you describe, nothing complicated. Conflow Well, yes I do expect the same from my camera, but that is a little different. I have had 30 years to learn all about those. I don't want to have to do that with sound recording. Denwell, has summed up just what I want and I would love to hear some samples.

If you can give me a week or so, I'll take a walk down on the seashore and into the wooded valley not far from where I live and record some "natural sound" for you on the H4. That would be very nice of you, thanks. I really would like to hear what they produce. I would also like to state that I had no wish to offend you or any other forum member with my choice of the phrase "Sound wallpaper". It's just that I firmly believe that A-V is more than just images set to music. To me it should include, when appropriate to the content and theme, voice-over and sounds (natural or otherwise). I am not offended, I am too stupid and thick skinned for that. However, I can't really agree with your paragraph above. AV is whatever you make it and at any level. What is basic AV to one person, is advanced to another and we all have to start somewhere. I hear that term or something like it too often and I don't think it is helpful to send out a message that putting images to music is not real AV. That is what comes over when that phrase is used and it can put people off, especially beginners. I encourage newer users of PTE to do just that, hang some images to music, becuase I know that once they have made a show or two they will be hooked. Then later they may move onto to something more adventurous, but many are quite happy to hang images to music. For about twenty years I made sequences involving one projector, music and voice-over - and that was enough complexity for me. With the advent of software such as PTE and Audacity I am now moving slowly into more complex sequences. I bought the H4 because I was struggling to get a noise-free voice-over recording. Now, using the H4 I can get a noise-free voice-over. The surprise came when I walked around the nature reserve and pointed the H4 at the birds singing, or just left it to record the sounds coming from all around me. For such a compact little box it delivered what, to me, was absolutely brilliant sound quality. Be back when I've got some sound captured for you. Well, if it can create noiseless voice recordings that a great start. I will look forward to whatever you can post.

This is all getting far too complicated for me, I like simple I am not interested in using tapes, done that, didn't like it and don't really want to go there again. All I really need to find out is if a digital hand held recorder is good enough for my needs. I have no desire to start going into omni directional microphones, I don't understand them, I would not know what to buy and I don't have the enthusiasm to learn about microphones too. I want something much simpler than that and I suspect 99% of AV enthusiasts do too. If I can't buy the gadget, keep it in my bag and use it when I need to, then I will give up any thought of live sound recording. An example was the burners I recorded at the balloon fiesta this year. Not quite up to standard with the Pixman, would it have been OK with the hand held digital recorder. Is there no-one out there with a few examples from one of these machines or an AV where they were used? Hearing is believing

fh1805/Brian You are preaching to the converted really , but there are times when live sound could be usefull. I used to own a Fostex 4 track tape recorder in the old film AV days and I am well aware of ambient noise and how that can destroy any sound recordings. I tried some recordings of the woodland Bell Birds in Australia with my portable hard drive (Aqua Pixman) and it did a pretty good job. In many circumstances, especially mixed with low volume music those recording would have been usable. People tell me that digital recorders are better and I would like to explore that, but my thoughts are these. This forum has probably the greatest number of enthusiasts in AV that I know. I am not really concerned about those who don't feel they can add sound/commentary, because they see it as beyond them. As you know its easier than Image editing, thats for sure. If live sound recording is possible to the quality enthusiasts want, why do I not see it used more often, if we don't see it from this forum, where will we see it. My gut feeling is that while these digital recorders are good, to get something acceptable we need more than those £150-200 bits of kit. That is really what I am interested in. If I bought a H4 Handy Recorder and went some miles from the nearest road and ambient noise, would the birdsong or running river/surf be of good enough quality to use without music accompanying it. I am beginning to think that perhaps it isn't, unless we start to lug around a portable recording studio or invest in a second mortgage. I want good quality from a hand held device, or I will forget the idea. _____________________________________________________________ As an aside, I don't care much for this term Wallpaper category. It seems to get used as a derogotory remark and I don't feel comfortable with it. The one great thing about AV/slide shows/presentations call them what you like, is that people can pitch in at any level and get a great deal of pleasure from it. Put a slide show together in minutes automatically or spend all year doing it is a personal choice. Give me a Wallpaper category slide show with great quality images and I will watch that over and over again and can often prefer those to the more Serious AV. Some serious AV's are not so wonderful and they are not elevated in my view for the inclusion of commentary. They can be, but I can't see anything wrong with hanging a batch of images to music. KISS

The samples I am looking for are maybe birdsong, or any individual sound, church bells, waves, rain etc Something that we would typically get from a sound effects CD I am also interested in how many AV enthusiasts actually use these recorders. I don't tend to see many shows where sound is used. I don't want to get heavily involved in recording live sound, but would like the opportunity when it presents itself, but I am a bit fussy when it comes to sound and picture quality. The small hand held unit looks OK, but my burning question is, why don't I hear more examples of this recorder in slide shows, or perhaps I do?

Dave Have a look here that covers the frame technique in full screen videos, plus a lot of pre made frames http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/digitalav/...m?idCategory=84

Follow this link http://www.acoustic-energy.co.uk/E-Shop/in...EARCH%20RESULTS 4th from the bottom £99.99

Thanks for the replies so far. I have downloaded the sample, but the ambient sound is difficult to judge. Is there anyone else with some more specific samples.

I get a number of questions about live sound recording and while I have done a little using a Pixman portable hard drive I have heard people saying that a digital recorder is very good. Are any of you using these devices for PTE shows and if so what do you have and how to you rate it. If you do use one, would it be possible for me to hear a sound file that has been recorded live, I would be most grateful for any current up to date info. One question I have has come from using the pixman. With the Pixman the on board microphone does pick up a bit of sound from the spinning hard drive, but I suspect that is not an issue with a digital unit. Do they record good clear sound? What sound file format do they use? Are they better when used with an external mike? Thanks

Tom I was introduced to a set of speakers by Maureen Albright a few years ago and they are superb. I now have two sets, one for lectures and one for home use. They comprise a powered bass box and two tiny speakers that plug into the bass box. They are easily powerful enough for a 40 person room and I have used them at the Maltings in Ely which holds 200 people and they are good enough for that size hall too. I have never found them inadequate in any demo venue I have been to and I have been to quite a few. I paid less than £100 for the set and I think they are perfect for demos and especially for PTE shows, That is what I bought them. You can get them from the link below. They make a great desktop PC speaker system too. http://www.acoustic-energy.co.uk/product_r...eries/index.asp Its the M series that I have and the price now is £99.99

Peter A cracking slide show and what made it for me was the quality of the images coupled with great presentation. Too many people seem to use AV as a way of trotting out images that should never see the light of day. Not here though. The virticals worked a treat as did the stylish text, you could read it it if you wished, but often the images were so good, that I was rooted on them and missed the text. No problem with that as the show was good enough to view again. How to create this for 1024*768 monitor?? What I did was to first create a backup in zip. I then used the zipped backup files to make another show. I used an action to reduce the images to their relative size for 1024*768, obviously with your frame that will be less than 1024 as these images are less than 1280. Recreate the frames and your there. Its not a long process normally, but then your frames are all separate with their own titles, so you may have to recreate them. I can't think of another way, but I have been thinking about this lately. I go to a lot of work to make sure my shows can be seen on both resolutions, but recently I wonder why I bother. Really the viewer should change their resolution to 1280*1024 to watch the show. After all its not a difficult thing to do. I now do that when giving a demo. If I have a 1280 slide show to play, I change the resolution of my PC to 1280 and the shows then play perfectly through a 1024 digital projector. On my DVD's I am now including a video on how to change the resolution, even if that is just to watch a slide show.

If you set the slide show to run once, it will run once on any computer it is played on. I just carried out a test and the slide show ran once on the computer it was made on, then stopped and gave the expired message. However, it then played once on two other PC's before expiring. So, you could run the slide show many times if you had access to different PC's Download this little test below that has been set up to expire different after 02/02/08 http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/expiretest.zip Run it today and it should be fine, but tomorrow it will stop. It will be interesting to see what happens if you reset the date on your computer to before the set expire date date to see if that fools it into playing again. I suspect it will not

I would be looking first at upgrading your graphics card drivers

Probably the best option is to prevent the show running after so many plays. Once it runs out then it will not play even when copied to another machine, you can easily do a simple test. Set a show to play only once, then play it and allow it to expire. Take the exe to another machine and try it. I am pretty sure you will find that it will not play. You could do a belt and braces and set the number of plays as well as a time limit, whatever is reached first.

LumenLux Funny you are the only one to mention the frame as it is/was and experiment for me too. As you have picked up, I like to control how my images are displayed. After all this is 70% of AV isn't it. I do use frames quite a bit and this time I thought I would use the same presentation we would use in a print, where a wider lower boarder is much easier on the eye and looks right in landscape images. I did also try a number of different shades and textures, but came back to white in the end. However, I am not totally sure white is right and perhaps I should go back and try another shade again, now that the creative mist has lifted. None of us make our best decisions when our head is full of that creative mist, wait a day or so for it to clear and we can then make the final decisions. The Enigma ? Religeon, never believed in it from an early age and blame it for most of the strife in the world, yet there are these great monuments built all over the world. I can't quite understand why we do not seem to be evolving away from it. Perhaps we are, but its not visible in one lifetime.

Dick I did bring our the colour that was already in the stone via the Raw palette in Photoshop CS3. The colour controls and the new vibrance slider is very good for that, but if you get the light tones and dark tones right the colours emerge almost naturally. Barry

I think both versions of this show work well for a number of reasons. The choice of music is perfect; it sounds like a cross between the film music from Jurassic Park and Titanic and is a perfect choice. Probably the most important part is the length. It’s fairly short, but just right in my view. The place and images are interesting The Voice over does explain a few things too. Your voice is perfect for the voice over and I wouldn't have any comment on the need for more or less of that, because that is largely a personal choice. You will never please all of the people all of the time, so don't worry too much about trying. You are suffering a little quality drop in the voice/sound with a noticeable hiss in the background and I know many struggle with this. I invested in quite an expensive microphone and pre-amp for voice recording, but then I do a lot of it. I know some people seem to get great quality from a standard PC microphone and others don't. I suppose it is either the microphone quality or the sound card, perhaps a little of both. You also have the same issues I had a few days ago. How to present the show to those who have higher resolution monitors. You have chosen to display your show in a frameless window. Those running 1024*768 will not notice anything, but those on 1280*1024 and higher see around the edge of the show. It’s not a disaster, but we will then see anything that was already on our screen around the edge of your show after we fire it up. This does lower the visual appeal a little. The whole point of creating a show is to present our images so that they flow along and create a mood. The only thing you could do is add a 1280*1024 frame for those on a higher res monitors. At least then you get to decide 100% how we see your show and its not a lengthy thing to do. I know some PTE users create their images bigger than they need and allow PTE to downsize them to fit the monitor they are being played on. That usually leaves black bands around the top and bottom and is not one of my favourite ways to present the show. The show doesn't end correctly, but I assume this second version is a work in progress. I enjoyed it. B

Brian Glad you liked the Enigma show, but we rarely carry a tripod, bad enough carrying the rest of the kit Barry