Barry Beckham

I did think about using the hard drive, but my thought process went like this. If I can find one that runs perfectly from a DVD, then I am assured of it running from the hard drive. If it works on the hard drive, but not from a DVD, perhaps that is too close for comfort. Well, that is what went through my mind. I abandoned laptops a while ago for demo purposes because they seemed unpredictable, but I have to say I was surprised at how many laptops could not handle animation. The fades were all right, but they couldn't do both together. I will look at the Dell and I see there is also another Toshiba with a 256 nvidia card. I will probably be buying one some time this year, but no rush. This time I want to make sure what I get handles CS3 raw files and PTE5

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I went to PC world armed with a DVD of PTE5 slide shows containing animation and tried the disk in various laptops. The view I have come to after that excersize is that you cannot buy a laptop for this sort of animated slide show without testing it first. The most expensive laptop in the store at £1299 with what appeared a good Nvidia graphics card could not handle the animation. Most of the others couldn't either, but we didn't try the real cheap ones. We tested most of those they had in the £600 range and higher that gave a high spec with 2 gig of ram and a known graphics card. Only one seems to handle all I could throw at it and the cost was £999. It was a toshiba Satelite P200-143, ironically the same name as my current laptop that has passed its sell by date. The spec was: Intel T5500 17 inch screen 2 Gig ram 1.66 GHz 200 MB hard drive 128 Nvidia Gforce Go 7600 Graphics card http://tinyurl.com/28wxcx

Mario Could you not seperate them as parent and child and animate them independantly. You can add the same animation settings to what was the child, but have the flexibility to stop that part of the enimation when you wanted.? Just clik into the Objects and Animation screen after adding the parent to lose the bounding box, then add what was the child. Would that work?

Peter This isn't exactly the proper solution I know, but I use PTE quite a bit as menus just as you describe and I always find PTE4 works better for me. The buttons in PTE4 are not quite so grand as in PTE5, but it works every time. I aslo don't like the way the button sizes change in PTE5 depending on the length of text on that button. I just feel PTE4 buttons are easier to size and they look good too PTE5 and PTE4 will install and work fine side by side, so there is one option while you track down one for PTE5

Peter Your right the auto setting doesn't work all the time, but a manual one will. Not knowing what your skill levels was and what editor you were using I just gave a hint of the improvements you can get. It really is worth learning a bit more about levels. In some cases where all the lighting conditions are perfect it makes little difference at all, but at the other end of the scale, the different can be WOW ! Barry

Really nice slide show and the music was perfect. I hope you don't mind me saying that you have some great wildlife shots in this show, but you are not getting the best quality from them. Check out what I mean here www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/temp/temp.htm You will see two versions of your own images with a smallest of adjustments in an image editor like Elements or Photoshop. The balance of tone just needs a slight adjustment and when you do that the added contrast helps sharpness too. I used an automatic setting here to create the difference, so its not a difficult thing to do and your images will be better for it. Regards BB

There is another problem with the other slide show software. It works on some PC's and not othersand there seems no reason for it. Even their tech guys have no solution. Only to say reduce image size....What from 1024*768, how small do we have to go...

Here is a little more detail in case you need it: First thing to check is if your graphics card acceleration is turned on. Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Display Then click Settings > Advanced Look for a trouble shoot tab and make sure your hardware acceleration is set to full. __________________________________ If that doesn't fix it go to: Start > Settings > Control Panel > System Click the hardware tab and then device manager Hit the little + sign next to your display adapter and make a note of the graphics card that is displayed. Then double click the graphics card (radeon etc) and then click the driver tab. That will tell you the driver version installed. You can then click on update driver and allow your PC to access the internet to find later more up to date drivers for your partcular graphics card. Alternatively once you know what graphics card you have, do a search yourself for the manufacturers web site and see if you can find more recent drivers there. This cured my own problem with PTE5 and this answer also helped someone with the same problem only a day or so ago Hope it helps Barry

I would try updating your graphics card drivers first. Check to see if there are some later drivers, it cured the problem I had which sounds the same as yours. B

Yes, I fully agree with you and have a great deal of sympathy for those who try. I often think that Microsoft gets far more flack than is ever warranted. I only produce a few videos on disk, but I am amazed at the problems people have when in theory there should be none. Still most of the time modern software is superb and I only get shirty when the software doesn't do what it says it will do even on a number of different PC's. Thankfully PTE is not one of those, but I know another slide show software that is...................Its a dirty word on this forum though so I won't speak the name.

Auser I am not sure I understand your point with your last post. Are you pointing the finger at software creators or just indicating that it must be nigh almost impossible to create software to work in every circumstance, on every PC in the world, with a myriad of configerations. Its just one of those things I think and I am not sure there is an ultimate solution to it. The good thing is how the software team here react to positively to their customers and users. Its a rare thing.. BB

What image editing software are you using? If you are using Photoshop or Elements this page may help http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/audiovisual/audiovisual.htm Barry

Igor Thankyou I will pass this on to the customer Barry

Ron. Its me alright, taken in Tenerife a few months ago, but I have lost almost 4 stone in the past year since retireing. Lots of healthy eating and excersize. I swim almost 2 miles about 5 times a week Barry

Yep, that may do it. Sometimes even when we have a new graphics card, by the time we get it, new drivers have been created. A search for new and better drivers is a good start. Good luck Barry

Brian There is a free video tutorial at the address below, which may help. http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/downloads/PTE5/DVD/dvd.htm Barry

DougM I have experienced the same problem as you, but it was a while ago when we were still using a beta copy of PTE5. I don't really have a need to write my shows to DVD and only did so to create a tutorial. I have assumed that the problem was solved, but I havn't written a DVD for some time. However, when I was experiencing problems I did find a work around. Try this:- Open PTE5 and rather than creating a DVD, choose the Create AVI file option. Leave that version of PTE5 on screen when the AVI is created (The AVI is a temp file and if you close PTE5 you will lose the file) Once the AVi is saved open another version of PTE5. This method is like the old way we used to create DVD's with PTE4 using Ulead Movie Factory PTE5 will allow you to open up more than one version of the software, so don't worry about having two on screen. Then go through the DVD process again, this time using the AVI file rather than the project file. Whenerer I did experince your problem I switched to using this method and it always seemed to work for me. It may get you out of trouble until the main cause can be tracked down. Hope that helps Barry

Jenni Like you I also liked the option to start and end a slide show from the desktop, but I was also one of those who felt it should not hold up the development of PTE5. My view was that while I like it, I could live without it. However, I know what you mean about the abrupt start of a slide show and attention to detail is important as is first impressions. There are some alternatives and forgive me if you are already aware of these. You can use a blank black slide or white whatever is appropriate and allow that to be on screen a 3-5 seconds before the show starts or any music begins. It sort of prepares the viewer for the show and in my view its better than an abrupt start. It does have the advantage that we can use a colour or shade of colour that is in keeping with the first slide in the sequence too. You could also produce a generic mini slide show menu that you could slot onto the front of all your slide shows if you wished. A designed page that maybe has a small introduction to the sequence (text) and a start button. This would be a small completed slide show, albeit using only one image. The button could then be linked to the main slide show. We can fire up another exe show from the buttons within PTE. So if the page in the mini slide show was basically white, when the button to start the show was pressed the button and any other artwork would disappear leaving the blank white screen screen. I havn't tested this to see if the join between the small intro show and the main show is a good one, but its an option. Barry

Terry I have read this post and the replies a couple of times and I can't quite understand exactly what your problem is with your slide show. The trouble with trying to help in these circumstances is often a lack information. You seem to be putting together a fairly simple slide show with a PC that should give you no problems at all. If you can answer these few questions we may better understand your issues. 1. How many images are you using in your show? 2. Are you reducing the size of those images before selecting them in PTE5? 3. If not, what size are they? 4. Are you making an automatic slide show or using the time line to program the show? 5. Try converting the Wav file to Mp3. It shouldn't really be the cause of your problem, but Mp3 is the standard we all use and the Mp3 file size is far smaller. You never know, it might help. 6. You are using the latest version of PTE5 I hope and not one of the earlier beta copies? Barry

Well, for real ultimate quality from our images in a slide show, the images should be made at the screen res we want to display them. That way we can be sure that we squeeze every ounce of quality from our image. Its always going to be better that squashing an image to fit a smaller screen or enlarging it to fit a larger screen. I am talking more of static shows rather than animated. As we reduce the resolution of an image to our chosen display format and size, we can add unsharp mask to put back some sharpness in the image that we lose when we take out pixels. However, we need to be careful when we do this with animation or we can induce the dreased Moire effect. If our aim is a static show where the moire effect is not an issue, we can probably squeeze more sharpness into an image than we would ever risk for print purposes. The reason is that an image in a slide show is only on screen for a few seconds and if there is anywhere where we can take a few liberties, within reason of course, this is it. Image quality is vital in my view. The mix of music and subject matter is also vital for the overall feel and mood of a slide show, but slide shows should not be used as a vehicle for us to use images we would not normally show. Barry

Can anyone give some ideas on the following query please. It has me beat I am having a problem with pte 5 , when burning a dvd disc , and when the program has finished it comes up with a tick that says everything is ok , but when I try to play it on my DVD player it wont recognise it. I tried to play the disc on both my main computer and my laptop and it doesnt work so I bought new DVD discs ,tried them but still the same. I tried another TV with a DVD player, still didnt work. I have a copy of proshow gold so I used the same photos made up a trial show and that worked fine on all the other players . This is the first time i have made a dvd with pte. After I tried all those things above I decided to uninstall PTE and then reinstall it to see if that would sort the problem, but im afraid it didnt could you please advise me. Testing the disk on other players and the fact that the green tick appears, seems to show the process completed fine and it has me at a loss what to suggest next. The fact that PSG works OK indicates the equipment is working ok?

Good thinking, I never thought of that. You must know a thing or two about this software

I cannot recall what version those slide show were made with, but they are very old. In fact, you know how time flies when your having fun. They are some of the earliest stuff I ever did so we could be talking 5 years old, or more They were made long before we moved to Ely and we have been here 3.5 years. I will have them backed up somewhere, so the issue for me is not much of a concern. All the other early shows seem fine. Barry

I wonder if that Lakeside slide show was one of mine. I have noticed tonight when I opened an old file of slide shows that some are being picked up by AVG with a trojan horse virus. They can't have of course because they were made a few years ago. One of those is Lakeside. It appears that the problem we experienced with AVG some while ago has re-appeared. I seem to recall that last time Igor had to get onto AVG to fix the problem. BB www.beckhamdigital.co.uk

Keith When I play my 1280 pixel slide show back on a 1024*768 monitor it shows two black edges. By creating one show at 4:3 format and one at 5:4 I don't get that annoying black band. I have noticed a lot of slide shows seem to be created that are edge to edge each side, but show a black band top and bottom. (probably the fit to slide option is used as the default) I don't like that, AV is all about presentation and attention to detail. In my view, either fill the entire screen or retain the original formal within the screen space. The final result looks far better as the images do not stretch edge to edge on only two sides. Better to have a gap all around the edge of the image if format needs to be retained. In my opinion of course Barry