Barry Beckham

I have been rumbled, I though that if I did a lot of work on my mug shots in Photoshop I could pass as 25.

I took a number of shows to the store and the one that I tried first was the one called PTE5 demo here http://www.beckhamdigital.co.uk/slideshow/pte5.zip The second one was a fairly heavy wedding AV with lots of animation, its about an 80 meg file and I don't have that one on my site. Any problems with a laptop capable of coping with animation will soon be shown up by the PTE5.zip demo above. With regards to graphics cards I recall Igor saying sometime ago that I should avoid a laptop with shared graphics memory, so I stayed away from any of those. Had another interesting experience yesterday while in Tescos. A laptop for £299. What surprised me was the fast dual core processor, half a gig of ram and a very respectable Nvidia graphics card. Sadly they were not set up so I could not try them, but that would be ironic to find a laptop for that money in Tescos that copes with animation. Seriously I also need a powerful laptop for Photoshop demonstrations. Now we are in the RAW age I cannot reduce resolution to allow the laptop to cope with what I want to do in Photoshop and I do place a little pressure on Photoshop when I use it for demos Barry

I hope forum members agree with me, that the older gentlemen Like Ron should be made to have a medical examination before being allowed to purchase a Canon 1Ds MkII I am only thinking of his health of course.

So your putting music into the Project options and individual slides too. Well, PTE can't play both and something has to give. Generally, as soon as you begin to get creative with music you should turn to a music editor like Audacity. Its free and there are loads of users on this forum. Editing sound is very similar to editing images really. If you want to mix music and have one track ending at a particular point and another coming in, you will get a better result by using something like Audacity. You can work in multi-track mode and get your soundtrack just right before exporting it as one Mp3 file. That multi-track file will then be flattened into one sound file. Now you only have one sound track to add into the PTE project options > Music tab. Advantages, you control the exact point the next music/sound effect/speach starts. You control the fade in and out of these sound files to get the balance perfect. You can make a soundtrack worthy of the BBC with Audacity and its fun too.

I think we need more information to help 1. Can you see your sound file when you browse for it? 2. Is the file in Mp3 format? 3. Can you see your background music in the large white box under the music tab? 3. Does sound play when you put a domest Music CD into your PC? Barry

Ron. Done, I get your 1Ds Mk2 for £500 and you can have a copy of every tutorial at 50p each. When can I come over and collect. Seriously, IFA has the answer, I turned away from backpacks for years because you have to take them off and put them down every time you change lenses. I didn't want to do that, but that is a small price to pay for ease of carrying gear in a backpack. I have used a backpack style for some years now and would not go back to a standard bag. When your kit is supported across both shoulders you almost forget its there. When you are taking pics at least the heaviest bit of kit is then in your hands and the rest is easily supported. B

Jacques Personally I am not keen on watching small web sized slide shows that generally have lost all their impact and quality by streaming them from the internet. Apart from an advertisment or a teaser I would favour the viewer having to download the full slide show as a zip file. Just as we do from our sebsites or Beechbrook I would want the viewer to see my show the way I intended it to be seen and with internet connects getting faster and faster that isn't such a problem. My reasons for saying this is that AV is all about presentation and I want my presentation to be at it's best.

Ron You should have thought about that before buying a Pro camera. If you can't handle that Canon 1Ds mk2 I will take it off your hands for a few quid. I could carry that and my 1Ds and save changing lenses. I'll give you £500 for it, no questions asked

Jeavons It's interesting how different people work with PTE. If I use commentary I set up the entire slide show first, so that the images are in sync with the music. Then I use the time line to indicate where commentary of sound effects need to go in relation to the images and the time on the background music. I then take them into audition and mix the two together, reducing volumes where needed. I generally do a number of sound mixes and just adjust the number of each sound file name, just in case I get something wrong. Its more or less the same as you really and it achieves my aims, but just a slightly different approach. It does allow any animations to be checked and time allowed for the animation to complete, before finally adding any other sound files.

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